CURATED BY CHEN BAOYANG AND SHAO XIAOMING

Through its theme, Resonant Cities, Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2021 attempts to bring a new perspective on the quality of life in future cities as they prepare to meet emerging challenges in the 21st century. The theme has become even more relevant in the context of the current pandemic and rapidly occurring societal changes, including the increasing importance of digital platforms and social media in communication.

Chen Baoyang and Shao Xiaoming’s Coordinate System · Sky Box interprets cities as interfaces between human beings and the world. They reflect on societies and urban spaces from the perspective of technological history and uses games as metaphors for the interactions in these domains. ‘Coordinate System’ symbolises the reference system of all abstract concepts of things, and ‘Sky Box’ refers to the six planes that constitute the sky and the earth in the virtual space.

“In games, we imagine an ideal society. However, games are for more than just delivering a sense of alacrity， they can create a model of social organisation, the meaning of the space between imagination and reality, the transition between center and edge, the differential values of civilisation, and the realm of the senses in which distant places and cities are immersed in history.” said the duo.

The exhibition consists of both online interface and offline, tangible exhibition space, for which the rules are established jointly by the curators and artists. Through the online interface, audiences can interact with the whole exhibition, and experience their identities and perspectives switching between the virtual and the real world. (Interactive portal)