Installation Series at Heshan

2021

Overview

This interactive installation series is commissioned by Heshan Town, a small water town located in eastern China, where FONG TSE KA, was born and raised. The local government designed and built a resort village that referred to the story and art of the artist and named it “The Painter’s Ideal Village” to attract visitors worldwide. There is an Innovation Center and exhibition hall, next to the village entrance and the tourist centre, to host public gathering events and exhibitions. In the exhibition hall, the architect planned a permanent interactive wall that serves as a welcoming installation to welcome visitors and aims at promoting the local culture and the local artist - FONG TSE KA’s art to the audience in a modern and entertaining way.



We welcome participants to entertain and impress them with FONG TSE KA’s art through designed interactive visual elements. The visual presentation consists of different designs of the Chinese calligraphy and other patterns found from FONG TSE KA’s painting, including “calligraphy waterfalls”, “calligraphy snowflakes”, re-designed abstract background referenced to the paintings and human profiles filled with vivid colours. The installation will, by default, show a running calligraphy waterfall over a repeating background series as the presentation mode. When the participant walks in the interactive area, the installation will detect their presence and switch to interactive mode in which the waterfall will partially switch to snowflake with falling and bouncing effect. Moreover, the installation will project the participant into the screen as colour blocks in profile shape, and the participant can virtually catch and hold the calligraphy snowflakes as in the physical world.

We have explored the design and development of interactive installations with motion capture techniques and projection display, using a depth capture camera and image processing technology to capture participants’ human contours and 3D point cloud and etc. And we applied physical simulation to the captured contour and other visual elements such as gravity, bounce and etc. in the physical-engine-powered world scene simulation. Through this installation, we have successfully conveyed a message of warm welcome to visitors along with entertaining interaction in an engaging format within the constraints of the specific location and cultural context.



FONG TSE KA’s arts

FONG TSE KA(T.K.), the ‘Progenitor of Modern Chinese Cartoons, was a native of Tongxiang, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. He is also a famous modern Chinese calligrapher, published over 160 books, encompassing such diverse fields as calligraphy and painting collections, essays, art theory and music theory. FONG TSE KA usually wrote some verses on the paintings. Xun Ouyang influenced the brushwork of his calligraphy at the beginning, and then he switched to the Northern Wei following master Shutong Li and eventually formed his style [8]. In both running and cursive calligraphy arts, his strokes flow naturally in the brushwork. The style demonstrates a unique flavour of the strokes, which initially had a clear tendency towards the regular script, with an additional reflection as distinctive as his cartoon paintings.

More Details

Installation # 01: Welcome to Heshan


In this project, we welcome participants to entertain and impress them with FONG TSE KA’s art through designed interactive visual elements. The visual presentation consists of different designs of the Chinese calligraphy and other patterns found from FONG TSE KA’s painting, including “calligraphy waterfalls”, “calligraphy snowflakes”, re-designed abstract background referenced to the paintings and human profiles filled with vivid colours. The installation will, by default, show a running calligraphy waterfall over a repeating background series as the presentation mode. When the participant walks in the interactive area, the installation will detect their presence and switch to interactive mode in which the waterfall will partially switch to snowflake with falling and bouncing effect. Moreover, the installation will project the participant into the screen as color blocks in profile shape, and the participant can virtually catch and hold the calligraphy snowflakes as in the physical world.

Please refer to this post for more details.

Installation # 02: Muse


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Installation # 03: Dance


Please refer to this post for more details.