The audience visited the "Painting Tour of Thousands of Miles of Rivers and Mountains - Immersive Art Exhibition of the Forbidden City" in Chongqing Lijia Wisdom Park. Photo by Chambo (People's Photo)
The audience visited the digital scroll of "Qingming Upper River Map" at the Taihu Lake International Expo Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. Photo by Chin Yan (People's Photo)
The walkers stand at the head of the bridge to watch the scenery and chant poems, the woodcutters return home with firewood in the forest, the fishing songs on the river of the fishermen are harmonious, and the confucian pavilions are happy and self-satisfied... As soon as the 2022 Spring Festival Gala program "Remembering Jiangnan" of the Central Radio and Television Corporation was unveiled, countless viewers were amazed. Based on the famous Chinese painting "Fuchun Mountain Jutu", the program integrates various art forms such as ancient painting, poetry, music, dance, chanting, calligraphy and seal carving, and poetically presents a simple and ethereal aesthetic conception. Under the empowerment of digital technology, the two-dimensional, flat and static "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" has been "alive" into a three-dimensional, three-dimensional, flexible immersive scene, and modern people have crossed into ancient paintings to feel the unique charm of Jiangnan scenery and cultural charm, and traditional paintings have a dazzling brilliance with new art forms.
New Technology Xingyi:
Creativity and scenes of the ancient and new
The development of science and technology continues to help the innovation and development of art, people use digital technology to pull classic famous paintings from the dust of history into the modern living space, by changing the existence and display mode of traditional painting, activating the characters and scenes in the painting, showing the story behind the painting and the cultural connotation contained therein, and effectively realizing the deep integration of dream and reality, truth and virtual, artistry and technology.
Since the 1960s, digital technology has begun to intervene in traditional art, people use digital simulation technology and digital restoration technology to carry out precious cultural relics for "digital collection", on the one hand, these "priceless treasures" are manufactured into high-simulation replicas to meet the collection needs of enthusiasts; on the other hand, the transformation from physical to digital has been realized, so that the preservation and dissemination of paintings have more channels. In 2003, the Cultural Relics Publishing House launched the "Rescue National Treasure-level Calligraphy and Painting Reproduction Project", which used digital technology and traditional reproduction methods to restore nearly 300 traditional calligraphy and painting works, including Wang Xizhi's "Youmu Ti". Digital technology can not only "resurrect" famous paintings, but also create a dynamic display space, restore the historical context of the original work to a certain extent, provide a more three-dimensional and diversified appreciation scene, and bring viewers an audiovisual experience across time and space. The digital dynamic version of "Qingming on the River Map" made a wonderful appearance at the China Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, and the characters and scenes that were originally frozen and static on rice paper "moved", allowing the audience to travel to Beijing thousands of years ago, "one day into the picture scroll, one day dream back to the millennium", and appreciate the prosperous style and folk customs of the capital city of the Northern Song Dynasty.
The upgrading of famous paintings is to use VR, AR, MR, XR and other high-tech technologies to generate a realistic three-dimensional world that integrates vision, hearing and touch, creating a pure "immersive" space where virtual and reality are intertwined. The application of virtual reality technology redefines the realism of traditional painting, constructing scenes that can be "entered" on the basis of the original work. An earlier example is the 2016 NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM's VR Achievements Exhibition in Taipei, which reconstructs classical paintings into a virtual three-dimensional space based on Zhao Mengfu's "Quehua Autumn Color Map" of the Yuan Dynasty, inviting experiencers to walk into the paintings, watch ancient trees, rivers and distant mountains at zero distance, and experience the ancient people's state of mind when they travel through landscapes. Virtual reality technology changes the position in which the painting is viewed, and the viewer changes from passive still viewing to an interactive immersive experience. Digitization allows famous paintings to go out of the museum, approach ordinary people in a new way, and achieve protection, inheritance and innovation in a wider dissemination.
Circle Breaking Fusion:
The rebirth of crossovers between various arts
As a classic art category, painting has not developed independently in the long river of history. In primitive art, music, poetry and dance are inseparable, and painting preserves scenes of song and dance. After the maturity of different art disciplines, they are independent, but in the process of development, they absorb, rely on each other and influence each other. The absorption and reference, cooperation and combination between various art disciplines are important means of artistic development and innovation. Classical famous paintings are the concentrated embodiment of human aesthetic tastes, for a long time is the elegant art hidden in the museum, famous paintings want to truly "live", but also need to use cross-border integration.
The multi-dimensional combination of ancient paintings with music, dance, film and television, and games is a new attempt to "live" the current circle-breaking. Henan Satellite TV's "Tang Palace Night Banquet" is a typical case of "painting + dance", relying on the "Picture of the Lady of the Hairpin Flower" by the Sheng Tang painter Zhou Fang, the character manners, costumes, makeup and movements restore the Tang Sancai music and dance figurines to the greatest extent, and at the same time reproduce many famous paintings such as "Trick Painting", "Horse Riding Map", "Riding Travel Map", "Ming Emperor Xingshu Diagram", "Beauty Under the Tree" and so on through virtual reality technology. "Painting + film and television" has a richer practice, and traditional painting can be symbiotic with animation, variety shows, movies, etc. Since 1960, based on traditional Chinese ink painting, Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio has successively created animation films such as "Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "Mudi", "Landscape and Water". The first program of "National Treasures" launched by the Central Radio and Television Corporation, "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", uses the form of a small theater to interpret the legend of ancient paintings, tells the story of the turquoise color of thousands of years, leads the audience to understand the "past and present life" of "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", and gives the ancient and thick cultural relics a breath of life. In addition, the popular mobile game "Glory of the King" has also cooperated with the Dunhuang Research Institute to launch the Dunhuang mural-themed game skin and map design, and launched the "Digital Donor" plan to let the audience know and love Dunhuang art more in the interactive game involved in the restoration of Dunhuang murals.
The classic paintings that were originally "shelved in the cabinet" are close to the public through daily consumption of film and television, variety shows, animation and other works, and are familiar and liked by more and more people, especially young people, and have achieved the spread from the niche to the public. In the context of new communication, ancient paintings are given new vitality.
Yi Yi TongXin:
Cultural self-consciousness in inheritance and dissemination
Famous paintings carry the thousand-year history of Chinese civilization, can arouse the interest and love of Chinese people for traditional culture, and meet the spiritual needs of the people in terms of culture and aesthetics. The reason why the Spring Festival Gala program "Reminiscence of Jiangnan" can be recognized and favored by the audience is that in addition to the narrative innovation brought by new technologies and the cross-border dissemination of various types of arts, it should also be in line with the increasingly strong cultural consciousness and cultural self-confidence of the public.
In fact, ancient paintings "live" and "fire" up are only one aspect of mass cultural self-consciousness. "Chinese Poetry Conference", "Classic Poetry Circulation", "China in the Classics", "Debut! Programs such as "Luoyang" that excavate the value of traditional culture and art have won wide recognition and praise on various communication platforms. In addition to the mainstream media, the same frequency resonance of social media such as Weibo, Zhihu, Douyin, and Kuaishou has attracted more and more young audiences to pay attention to, think and embrace traditional culture. Traditional artistic treasures that were once submerged in the long river of history are now shining again. They have reappeared in a new form in the context of modern communication, awakening the potential national cultural genes of the public, which is undoubtedly a two-way stimulation across time and space. Still taking the program "Remembering Jiangnan" as an example, its creative blueprint "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" is currently divided into two parts, one part is the "Leftover Mountain Map" hidden in the Zhejiang Museum, and the other part is the "Useless Teacher Volume" hidden in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. "Remembrance of Jiangnan" uses technical means to realize the combination of "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map", and the program uses actors from the mainland and Taiwan, vividly interpreting the profound connotation of "cross-strait culture has the same ancestry and the same origin, and is one" in an artistic way of expression.
With digital presentation to break down the barriers of communication, with literary and artistic integration to release cultural vitality, in the cultural inheritance to promote identity, ancient paintings with the help of scientific and technological means and other art disciplines of marriage and symbiosis, to achieve the "art through the heart", enhance the public cultural self-confidence of the communication effect, which is also a vivid interpretation of the creative transformation of traditional culture, innovative development.
(Gu Yaqi, Vice Dean and Professor, School of Art, Chinese University; Shan Simeng, Master of Arts, Chinese Min University)