On March 25th, the offline forum "Zhenxia Qiyuan: The Illusion of Reality and Virtual Reality", jointly sponsored by the Bogurui Research Center of Peking University, the School of Philosophy of Chinese University, the Intersection Platform of Philosophy and Cognitive Science of Chinese University, and Server Art, was held in Beijing.
Liu Xiaoli, professor of the School of Philosophy of Chinese University and scholar of Bogurui
Professor Liu Xiaoli, the initiator of the forum, professor of the School of Philosophy of Chinese University, and a scholar of Bogurui, said in his opening speech: Human beings are experiencing unprecedented drastic changes in the multipolar game, one pole is the strength of human flesh in the physical world, one pole is the power of the virtual world of digital technology, and the other pole is the internal force of human rationality and morality. Today, we realize that humanity has unexpectedly entered the metaverse, a mixture of virtual and real, and the indisputable realism of virtual reality. Does the real world have to be real? Does the virtual world have to be illusory? How is human belief and perception of the outside world reliable? What is the fate of humanity in the future? The pursuit of this series of philosophical questions will surely open up a new generation of great changes in human cognition.
Ms. Song Bing, Vice President of Bogurui Research Institute
Ms. Song Bing, representative of the organizer of this forum and vice president of Bogurui Research Institute, introduced in the opening session: Human beings themselves and human society are experiencing a profound transformation and great change, and one of the major forces driving this transformation is the accelerated development of cutting-edge science and technology and their wide application. This transformation is changing our basic thinking as human beings, and it is also subverting the way of thinking and value systems that we have been adhering to for centuries to organize society.
Ms. Xie Rong, founder of Server Art
Ms. Xie Rong, the representative of the organizer of the forum and the founder of Server Art, said in her speech: Although our actions have been limited by the epidemic, the pace of marching in the spiritual world has never stopped. Today, we are about to launch here "Zhenxia Yuan: The Unreal of Reality, Virtual Reality" sharing and discussion, perhaps like a beam of light, can dispel the smog, and illuminate the way to the future...
Professor Zhu Jiaming, Mr. He Zhan, Professor Zhai Zhenming, Mr. Wang Xing and other 19 guests from the fields of industry, science, philosophy and art respectively focused on the topic of "The 'Pioneering Land' of New Species and New Civilization? The underlying technology of the metaverse and the imagination of future scenarios, "Digital Age and Creativity: Crypto Art Practice in 2021", "Human Cognition of the New Generation: Virtual Reality and the Ethics of Creation", "Digital Natives and Metaversy 'Pioneers' Sharing Meeting" were shared and discussed, and mutual understanding, exploration of ideological resources, formation of key issues, and future cooperation were initiated in multi-faceted exchanges and inspirations.
The "frontier expansion" of new species and new civilizations?
In 2021, the most popular, controversial, and imaginative concept is the metacosm. From a technical point of view, what are the underlying technologies that support the development of the metacosm? How far is there from the metaverse landing application? What are the future application scenarios?
Professor Zhu Jiaming, Chairman of the Academic and Technical Committee of Hengqin Digital Chain Digital Finance Research Institute
Professor Zhu Jiaming, Chairman of the Academic and Technical Committee of Hengqin Digital Finance Research Institute, delivered a keynote speech with the theme of "Metacosm: Revolutionary Choices in the Era of Great Human Transformation". He believes that our human history has undergone about three major historical transformations: the Axial Age, the Renaissance Era, and the Industrial Revolution Era. The causes of the transition are analysed from the economic, social, political, ideological and cultural aspects. At present, we are in a new moment of historical transformation, but the challenges we encounter in our current great transformation are more severe than before, the climate, population, and economic volume have undergone major changes, the crisis has become normalized, complicated, and high-frequency, and humanistic and scientific and technological ideas have become more divided. In the face of such a situation, do we become disordered, divided, and collapsed, or do we immigrate to Mars according to Musk's vision? Perhaps the metacosm is a revolutionary solution and approach: problems that cannot be solved in the real world, and then go back to a new world to experiment.
He Zhan, head of Omniverse in Nvidia China
Omniverse, Head of NVIDIA China, He Zhan, delivered a keynote speech entitled "The Convergence of Culture, Art and Technology - Omniverse Takes You into a New Digital World". He said that the fusion of computer vision, AI and deep learning, VRARXR technology, physical simulation technology and super computing power will help everyone to create their own digital works, digital worlds, and NVIDIA can help everyone realize this possibility through years of technology accumulation.
Chen Xu, founder of Meta Z, a metacostem and future asset research think tank
Chen Xu, founder of Meta Z, a think tank for metaverses and future assets, tried to answer the question of what is the meaning of metacosms around "Metacosm: The Road to Liberation of Human Identity". Is it just an extension of reality? Just a bigger, better internet? Or is it the Internet with lower latency? He believes that an important criterion for the metaverse is "identity". Before modern times, identity was a privilege, and not everyone had an identity. Since modernization, the state has given people an important commitment, that everyone is equal and that everyone has an identity. However, between modern humans and identities arises the familiar "Stockholm syndrome." We work for identity, benefit from identity, and are subject to identity. In the future, identity is an asset.
During the discussion session, Lecturer Zhan Yiwen of the School of Philosophy of Beijing Normal University continued the discussion with three speakers.
The Digital Age and Creativity: Crypto Art Practices in 2021
In the technical application sector of blockchain, digital artworks are transformed into monetized crypto art due to their combination with NFTs (non-homogeneous tokens). The history of the development of crypto art is not long, but the recent explosive development trend in transactions, how is crypto art developing in 2021, and what are the latest developments?
Crypto artist and digital compound initiator Wang Xing
Crypto artist and initiator of digital compound Wang Xing, titled "Digital Age and Creativity: Crypto Art Practice in 2021", cut into the artistic practice in 2021 from the five keywords of CG, avatar, conceptual art, financial engineering, and crypto native. The accumulation of resources in the CG industry can help the blockchain industry break through; the avatar project answers why crypto native is a new thing and what relationship it has with the coin people; the early influential case of conceptual art is Lot, which represents the beginning of crypto art to get rid of the fine art category; financial engineering is used to describe Pak's work, which is a distillation of a unique art language of blockchain, from here we begin to see the necessity of blockchain technology applied to crypto art; crypto native is the creative direction we have always wanted to practice. That is, using blockchain technology as an artistic language and expressing the humanistic connotation of blockchain at the same time, art may have a way to express it indirectly, and art may have a more tolerant participation environment.
In the discussion session, Yuan Yuan, independent documentary filmmaker, artist and contemporary art photography critic, Wang Xing, crypto artist and initiator of digital compounds, Cheng Zhuo, contemporary artist and adjunct professor of East China University of Science and Technology and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Wang Bo, founder of Nervina Labs, and Guo Cheng, editor-in-chief of the Crypto Art Yearbook and co-founder of digital compounds, discussed topics such as crypto art, blockchain and digital art.
Human Cognition of a New Generation: Virtual Reality and the Ethics of Creation
The so-called metacosm, a popular saying is the use of digital technology to create a virtual world of digital living space that maps and interacts with the real world. With the development of virtual reality technology, real life will likely become more and more dependent on virtual life based on network and virtual reality technology, and even to a considerable extent replaced by the latter. Virtual reality technology is not only a research practice in the field of science and technology, but also an exploratory experiment at the level of social ethics, and the relationship between people will be reshaped, and we also have to face the impact of virtual reality on social ethics.
Duan Yongchao, Executive Chairman of the Information Society 50 Forum and Founding Partner of Reed Grass Zhiku
Duan Yongchao, executive chairman of the Information Society 50 Forum and founding partner of Reed Grass Zhiku, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Metaverses: The Last Feast of the Old World", in which he believed that there are three characteristics of the current metaversmonics: enclosure, harvesting, and bubbles, and three misunderstandings: metaversic technology is equivalent to VR; metacosmological applications are equivalent to games/simulation/digital art experiences; and simply consider metacosms as a new round of business opportunities. The roaring "meta-universe" created a feast for the virtual world and also achieved the final carnival of the old world. The underlying logic of contemplation may be the bonfire that cross-language dialogue and thought must be lit, and we should re-understand the metaverse from the three dimensions of "perception", "imagination" and "order". Deep thinking about the metacosm, not only from the perspective of the reconstruction of the world system and order, but also from the level of technological internalization in people's cognitive ascension, will be an interweaving and interaction of academic thought and industrial development and social construction.
Zhai Zhenming, Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University
Zhai Zhenming, professor of the Department of Philosophy of Sun Yat-sen University, gave a keynote speech on the topic of "Philosophical Mysteries of the Metacosm". Starting from the comparison between the atomic world and the bit world, he believes that the metacosm basically belongs to the bit world, and the current era is the era of the outbreak of the bit world. He proposed the concept of extended reality, pointing out that it is a broader concept than the metaverse, namely Expanded Reality, which mainly includes the manipulation of the Internet of Things by humans through networked VR, that is, the implementation of causal control of the physical world through avators.
During the discussion session, Liu Xiaoli, professor of the School of Philosophy of Chinese University, as the moderator, discussed the meta-universe problem from the philosophical level with Wang Feiyue, director of the State Key Laboratory of Complex System Management and Control of the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhu Rui, professor of the School of Philosophy of Chinese Min University, and Duan Yongchao, executive chairman of the 50-person Forum on Information Society and founding partner of Weicao Zhiku.
Digital Natives and Metaversary "Pioneers" Sharing Session
Games, as one of the ways humans understand the world, have long had a decisive impact on the development of human civilization. Since the birth of video games from top scientific research institutions in the last century, the trajectory of the world has been continuously reconstructed by games.
Xue Shaohua, Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology
Xue Shaohua, associate professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Beijing Institute of Technology, gave a keynote speech titled "Fun: How Games Make the World a Better Place", which reviewed the history of "games", which are often not only games, but also play a variety of positive social roles. In some tribes, these roles were ritualized and associated with sacrifice or witchcraft. In the 16th century BC, the Lydian (Asia Minor) king Artis created the concept of the game. Games are the main reason for the creation of the Roman Empire, and they continue in our art, in our cultures, in the stories we tell each other, in our social civilizations. For "virtual worlds", he combed through topics from video games to technological revolutions, discussing the purpose and future of games, and how games can make the world a better place. With the development of game technology, the sensory input modules we can obtain in games will also be more abundant, which will give birth to new scenes with stronger immersion and interactivity, which will be of great benefit to the intervention and effective treatment of emotional and cognitive diseases. Drama is a driving force for the progress of human society, a happy productive force that reshapes civilization.
In the conversation session, Mei Jianhua, professor of the School of Philosophy and Sociology of Shanxi University, together with Su Zhan, associate professor of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Li Zi, a contemporary artist, and Zhu Yuan, vice president of RCT AI, discussed the deep meaning of "game" from the aspects of technology, philosophy and art.
Nandu reporter Huang Qian