Cartoon anime, digital games, original IP... Take you to break the dimensional wall, this is the Beijing Digital Entertainment Festival, a game animation VR carnival platform created by Ding Zhaochen in 2007, a new media and interaction design festival based on Beijing and going international.
Ding Zhaochen, director, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of New Media of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, was born in Taichung, Taiwan, traveled to Europe and the United States, and is now rooted in Beijing. It is difficult to define him in one word, scholar, artist, designer, social activist, patent inventor... No matter which identity, it cannot cover the nourishment of Chinese culture to his thoughts and spirit.
He is a cross-border "architect", connecting fashion, architecture, design, light and shadow, theater, digital, aesthetics, games and other fields to build one "field" after another. In this "field", the creative design of different backgrounds, different languages and different cultures is docked, collided and integrated with social resources. His wish is to make the world more creative and make human life better.
Taking detours brings fun to life
The first time I met Ding Zhaochen was at noon one autumn day, in a restaurant outside the Beijing Institute of Fashion. When a casual man with a shoulder satchel pushes the door in, intuition tells us that this is Ding Zhaochen. A black baseball cap is his trademark, wearing black-rimmed glasses and calm and restrained eyes. Once seated, we began a chat-like interview.
In 1990, the 22-year-old Ding Zhaochen went to the United States to study and obtained a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in architecture; in 1994, the hand-drawn architectural design won the bronze medal of the American AIA Institute of Architects Competition; the translation of "Engineer's Whimsical AnEngineer Imagines 1996" was selected by the China Times, Lianhe Bao and other island media and Eslite Bookstores; the essay "Paper Mold Europe Tour 1997" won the "Literature and Art Foundation" Literary Award in Taiwan; in 1999, the first streaming media map website in Taiwan was established... These seemingly unrelated fields all deduce his "restless" heart.
"I took a 'detour' with a good scenery, crossed the border and did a lot of non-architectural professional work, and more importantly, walked through thousands of mountains and rivers, and finally came to Beijing, staying for 15 years, allowing me to experience the different possibilities of life." Ding Zhaochen's expression stretched, happy for the original decision.
In 2002, as a teacher in the Department of Media Communication Design at Taipei Shih Chien University, Ding Zhaochen went to Shanghai for academic exchanges, which was his first time in the mainland. "Shanghai is very modern, very international, completely breaking the previous understanding, I want to see other cities." Ding Zhaochen recalled.
That summer, he came to Beijing. "There are very modern parts of Beijing, where modern art from both the East and the West can take root; there are also very traditional parts of Beijing, where a brick under the feet and a bunch of dirt at hand may be a thousand years of history." The fusion of modern and traditional here is so perfect, it is art in itself. ”
As early as 1999, the Ministry of Education, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the Interim Regulations on The Recruitment and Training of Students from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Macao Region and Taiwan Province by Ordinary Institutions of Higher Learning. With policy support, in 2002, Ding Zhaochen applied for the Department of Information Art and Design of the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University and began to study for a doctorate in literature. In 2007, as a senior talent specially introduced by Beijing, Ding Zhaochen joined Beijing Fashion Institute and became the first Taiwanese talent introduced by Beijing in the digital media design major. In 2019, he was responsible for the undergraduate major of digital media art, which was selected into the "Double Ten Thousand Plan" for the construction of first-class undergraduate majors by the Ministry of Education. Not long ago, the "New Media Undergraduate Education Team Based on the Concept of Sustainable Development Education" with Ding Zhaochen and five others as the leader was rated as the outstanding undergraduate education team of Beijing universities in 2021 by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission.
"I've been to a lot of countries, I have a lot of friends abroad, and they live comfortably. I was there, no matter how high the achievements, but always felt the shortcomings of something, a sense of powerlessness always bothered me, maybe home is the place of peace of mind. Ding Zhaochen traveled all over Europe and the United States, and finally returned to the motherland and stayed in Beijing.
In Beijing, Ding Zhaochen found a space for "the sea is wide with fish leaping, the sky is high and the birds fly", and the artistic nature of "curiosity + exploration" is completely released here, and he pursues his dreams and builds different possibilities of life.
You come and go to build design bridges
Growing up in Taichung, Ding Zhaochen has a very deep affection for Taiwan, which is where he has lived for decades. He can count the shops in his hometown and the direction of each road.
Ding Zhaochen objectively views the accumulation and development of traditional Chinese culture between Beijing and Taiwan. Traditional Chinese culture is relatively well preserved in Taiwan, but modernization is also constantly impacting and destroying Taiwan's cultural precipitation. Taiwan, with a population of only 23 million, has limited appeal for creative activities similar to the "design marathon". However, Taiwan's cultural and creative design started early, and the Eslite Bookstore, founded in 1989, created a new way of living experience. These experiences have helped Ding Zhaochen learn from each other's strong points across the strait.
"The mainland is becoming more and more open, the cultivation soil of innovative talents is here, although the creative design of colleges and universities started late, but the progress is very fast." Beijing has both an international vision and a profound cultural precipitation, and its resources are attractive. Art is a personal expression that everyone can work together to complete, and collision and integration can innovate and develop. Ding Zhaochen analyzed.
At the 2014 Beijing International Design Week, Ding Zhaochen designed and planned the "Cross-Strait Youth Booster Program" section to help young designers on both sides of the Strait strengthen exchanges and exchanges and enhance their innovation capabilities. According to him, the "Cross-Strait Youth Boost Program" draws on Taiwan's successful experience in the training of design talents, and guides and encourages young designers to win the International Design Award through a series of activities such as event promotion, creative training, boosting projects, and registration support.
At the beginning of 2019, Ding Zhaochen, as one of the organizers of the mainland, joined hands with relevant universities in Taiwan to carry out the visual identity system design solicitation activity of the Beijing-Taiwan Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, and design students from 28 universities on both sides of the strait participated. He recalled, "In just one month, I received a total of more than 400 works from the mainland and Taiwan, including many excellent and creative logo designs, which I was very satisfied with!" I was shocked by the work that took my classmates a month to complete, and the short time and the quality of the completion were unexpected. At that time, I very much hoped that every contestant would be able to win the ranking, because it could be seen that every logo design was a work that was done with heart. ”
Ding Zhaochen still remembers the message to the young people on both sides of the strait at the scene of the event, and I hope that through this activity, students on both sides of the strait can be made more "mutually beneficial and mutually trusting." "Mutual benefit" is not only economic exchanges, but more importantly, young people on both sides of the strait have increased their understanding of each other from this activity. In addition, I believe that "mutual trust" is also very important, so that young people on both sides of the strait can recognize that they are one family and create tacit understanding and trust between each other through this exchange, so that the future of young people on both sides of the strait can be more developed. In Ding Zhaochen's view, every activity is an opportunity for outstanding students on both sides of the strait to have more profound communication.
"'Architects' must first consider the needs of society, build models as needed, and then implement them. It is my responsibility to build a bridge of artistic communication between the two sides of the strait and promote cross-strait cultural exchanges, especially youth exchanges, because I am a participant and beneficiary of cross-strait exchanges, and I also hope to show up and say that I will bring more young people from Taiwan to the mainland for development. Ding Zhaochen said seriously.
To this day, Ding Zhaochen has been working hard to build a bridge of cross-strait artistic communication and a bridge for Chinese design to the world.
Running around promotes the beauty of Chinese creativity
21 days of assembly, 11 countries (regions), 76 universities, 30,000 views, 300 workshop students registered...
This is the just-concluded "Design Marathon 2021", an innovative international design workshop. So far, it has been successfully held for six sessions. As the planner of the "design marathon", Ding Zhaochen gives full play to the advantages of cross-border precipitation in the fields of fashion trends, architectural design, interaction design, digital entertainment and other fields, to build a stage that allows students from all over the world to open their creative wings and carry out interdisciplinary, cross-field and cross-cultural design and creation, and let these ideas serve the beautiful life of mankind to the greatest extent. This year's theme is "Designing Sustainable Well-Being," which is "Sustainable well-being is the happiness that contributes to the well-being of individuals, communities, or the world without damaging others, the environment, or future generations." ”
The "Design Marathon" is just one of Ding Zhaochen's ideas to bring the beauty of Chinese creativity to the international stage. Since 2003, he has been guiding a large number of enterprises and academic contacts in the field of academic exchanges, and has exchanged and cooperated with school representatives from Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to share design results.
"Our country has been a traditional craft power since ancient times, and Chinese has design genes, but it needs culture to support it, and when it has a strong sense of identity with its own culture, design will return." Ding Zhaochen analyzed.
In April 2009, Ding Zhaochen brought the "Digital Entertainment Festival" to the 50-year-old Milan Design Week, and launched a week-long academic forum, workshop, fashion performance, exhibition and other activities at the Leonardo da Vinci Science Museum in Milan, successfully presenting the teaching and international cooperation achievements of Beijing Fashion Institute on the world fashion stage in Milan.
In 2010, Ding Zhaochen took advantage of the opportunity of the academic project of the Milan World Expo to successfully recommend 5 outstanding designers graduated from Beijing Fashion Institute to Milan Polytechnic University to study the new science and technology textile master course, so that young Chinese designers can directly have face-to-face dialogue with international design masters on the international stage. In 2013, Ding became the only Chinese to work as a global scholar at the Politecnico di Milano in the field of design.
Chinese creativity goes out, conveying not only a kind of thinking and cognition, but also a way of life, which is a presentation of the development of China's economy, society, culture and other fields in recent years. As Ding Zhaochen said, he is a global explorer, from the United States to Europe, from architectural design to new media interaction design, has been exposed to many excellent design concepts, but the world creative stage also needs the power of Chinese culture. The collision and integration of creative designs with different cultural backgrounds, different languages and different ways of thinking can make life more beautiful and the world more beautiful.
Starting from Taipei, traveling to Europe and the United States, and then taking root in Beijing, Ding Zhaochen's every footprint is precipitating creative nutrients, he will bring the valuable academic resources accumulated over the years to the teachers and students around him, and also bring Chinese culture and creativity abroad, building a stage for the global bloom of the beauty of Chinese creativity.
Source: Jingcai Taiwan public number | Author Lu Liling Zhang Yue
Process Editor: TF016