Section Introduction

"Chan", meaning birth. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the term "Anthropocene" has often been informally used to describe the current geological epoch of Earth, becoming a record of the impact of human activities on the natural climate and ecosystems. Economic production, like a "factorial", accelerates rapidly, with development, expansion, production, and manufacturing behaviors continuously replicated. As a result, the "natural individuality" and "ecological existence" are moving towards extinction in a somewhat overlooked manner. The works in this section all focus on the history of Earth's and human environment changes in their own way.

All exhibited works in the first section

Featured artists

TerreformONE

Non-profit architecture and urban design research group Dedicated to transforming the Earth through groundbreaking architectural biotechnology

Terreform ONE 

TerreformONE has built an egg-shaped anti-extinction library, which houses frozen embryos of local endangered species. The cryogenic vault is contained within a symbolic "egg" that gradually deconstructs over time. Each species entering the library carries a genetic marker, which contains a "Natural Rights Bill" modified according to United Nations human rights documents, and the encoded marker represents the position of "species equality". The project aims to reverse ecological issues by creating a space to protect these organisms in their earliest and most basic states.

Formafantasma

Research-based design studio

Trimarchi and Farresin serve as Heads of the Geodesign program at Eindhoven Design Academy
 

The name of the work "Cambio" comes from the medieval Latin word Cambium, meaning "change, exchange". Commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery in London and investigated by Formafantasma, it is a long-term investigative project on the extraction, production, and distribution of wood products, raising questions about wood production and its ethical issues. The evolution of commercial forms and their global expansion make it extremely challenging to regulate timber. The forestry it focuses on originated from biological exploitation in colonies in the 19th century, which, in terms of revenue generated and impact on the Earth's biosphere, has become one of the largest industries in the world. The project highlights important parameters in sustainable development by researching forestry and logging. Creating a sustainable project requires extensive research on the production process and planning for the entire life of the product.

“Cambio”，Formafantasma

Accurat

Accurat data visualization design studio

The studio is dedicated to researching the beauty behind data complexity

"The Room of Change" data art installation presents a handcrafted data tapestry, illustrating how various aspects of our environment have changed over the past few centuries, how they are still changing, and how they will continue to change. The installation combines several different data sources, describing the world from global, local, and individual perspectives, telling the stories of people and their evolving relationships with the things around them over time. It provides dense and refined information in layers, emphasizing the universality of "change" on all scales.
  

All exhibited works in the second section

"Sheng" is not only the living of human beings, but also the flourishing of the community of life. The exhibition takes species as its protagonists, covering cyanobacteria in France, croaker fish in coastal Fujian, fungi in Lithua nian swamps, soap bark trees in Chile, dust in the Sahara, and dead wood in Nordic forests. The projects range from sustainable products to digital immersive experience, from discursive scenarios to practical tools, from urban infrastructure to virtual games, from new biological materials to ancient living structures, etc, with distinct diversity, creativity and transcendence. The exhibition is linked by three threads. First of all, the four ancient Chinese characters extended from "Sheng" are used as the outline of the exhibition, placing ecological projects in a specific and distinct historical perspective, thus the exhibits are interpreted, deconstructed and reshaped in different ways. At the same time, the exhibition is based on the key directions of China's development since the 14th Five-Year Plan, with the three key words "ecological governance, energy transformation and new agriculture”. The third thread is a collaboration with Zoöp, a research project of the Het New Institute in the Netherlands, to build a cooperative institution with non-human beings.

Featured artists

Maya Kramer

Assistant Professor at NYU Shanghai Art School

There is Nothing you can Measure Anymore，Maya Kramer

The work is a tiger skull cast from laundry detergent, floating like a 3D X-ray in a one-way mirror glass cabinet, with water slowly dripping on the skull, gradually disintegrating. Both symbolically and materially, this piece implies environmental deterioration – the tiger is a powerful animal pushed to the brink of extinction by human overactivity. Phosphorus is a common pollutant found in laundry detergent, and X-rays can identify and diagnose potential problems. The skull's disintegration also indicates that entropy and dissolution are irreversible processes.

Ken Rinaldo

Focused on cross-species communication

Creative fields include interactive bioart, robotics, and 3D animation

Maximum Frustration Compressor，Ken Rinaldo

"Maximum Frustration Compressor" is a real-time clock for the Global Warming Index (GWI) connected to a Trompe-L'œil 3D printed device of an experimental cold fusion reactor. The image features a clock dial connected to a stepper motor, which rotates irregularly as the Global Warming Index rises, symbolizing the unstable weather Earth is experiencing. If the dial on this 3D print stops its irregular rotation, it indicates that global warming is not intensifying. The word "Frustration" in the title refers to the fact that solar, wind, geothermal, and wave energy have already provided real solutions for many of our energy needs, yet we continue to dream of supreme energy freedom, adopting carbon extraction policies such as fracking, coal mining, and oil refining, and continue to pollute our environment, with the clock's hand constantly rotating.

Chow & Lin

Chow and Lin is an artist duo

Using statistics, mathematics, and computational techniques to address global issues

Equivalence - The Ecological Footprint of Fish，Chow and Lin

In this project, they work closely with scientists, fishery experts, fish farms, and local fishermen. Through research on fish growth cycles and breeding methods, they calculate that it takes 7.15 kg of trash fish to grow one kilogram of yellow croaker from fry to market size. The key image of the work is a mosaic portrait of a school of fish - three peculiar fish are placed at the center, surrounded by 4,136 small fish. The mosaic art structure is chosen to frame the complexity of the theme, as well as to satirically emphasize human's innate desire for order and balance.

"Shen (甡)", the appearance of coexistence among all beings. Human systems, non-human entities, semi-living entities, synthetic organisms... all share a fixed amount of matter in the same spacetime, constantly generating "intersections" like countless sets. In collisions with natural forces and human imagination about the future, humans begin to strongly desire a return to a harmonious state of "unity between man and nature," thereby rebalancing the flexible coexistence model and integrated symbiosis between material development and natural evolution, from which to overlook the growth, perception, and alternation of nature. Artists attempt to unfold the future imagination of living machines or intelligent organisms in overlapping contexts, and the shift of their creative objects from "human-centered" and "humanistic" to "life-centered" may also be a microcosm of exploring the Earth's shared destiny.

Some participating artists 

Michael Sedbon

Masters of Interaction Design from London College of Arts School of Media

CMD 2.0，Michael Sedbon

"CMD 2.0" is an artificial ecological system composed of three bioreactors sharing a single light source. Thanks to the credits they receive for producing oxygen, each colony of photosynthetic bacteria can request access to light. As resource usage rights are granted, artificial intelligence tests different financial system populations on these cyanobacteria colonies, and photosynthetic cells and computers experiment with different political systems. The rules governing the market are optimized through genetic algorithms: genetic algorithms depict these primal social rules as genes, cultivating the population of societies, and ultimately giving rise to a new generation of markets.

Gediminas Urbonas

Artist, educator Co-founder of Urbonas Studio

Former Director of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This exploratory game invites viewers to experience empathetic relationships unfolding in a sentient swamp—a perfect environment for sensing the fragile interdependencies between organisms and their habitats. Here, every member of the community is part of the environment of other members and is essential for the overall survival. The game explores shifts in perspective, allowing us to embody different species by floating among swamp organisms: plants, insects, birds, amphibians, fungi, bacteria, or algae, and discovering the main metaphysical rule of the swamp: to become another, you must be eaten.

Oron Catts

Ionat Zurr  

Co-founder of the Tissue,

Culture & Art "TC&A" Project

The Remains of Disembodied Cuisine，Oron Catts & Lonat Zurr

In this performance, humans taste, for the first time, meat grown in a laboratory rather than cut from an animal's body—eating a semi-living steak produced by tissue engineering technology. The project critiques the vision of a "victimless utopia" in which we could eat meat without slaughtering animals. On a moral level, the project addresses the most common interaction zone between humans and the biological world and explores the apparent discomfort people feel when someone "messes" with their food. While offering the illusion of "victimless" meat consumption, the project also potentially suggests a utopian future in which the killing and suffering of animals for food consumption would be reduced—perhaps, consequently, resolving ecological and economic issues related to the food industry. However, if we turn our food into a new object or category of existence, the "semi-living," it is equally possible that, within the logic chain of this action, the semi-living could be forced to become new subjects of exploitation.

In the fourth section of the exhibition, "Qing," meaning "clear sky after rain," artists explore the coexistence of new ecological risks and new life opportunities. "Harmonious competition" and "adaptation enhancement" encourage humans to actively seek future ways of living and evolving, embracing a natural disposition to return to simplicity, face the changing evolution of all beings, respect the organic laws of all things, and cherish the value of life's succession. In this section, artists hope to consider how design and art can help us survive better on Earth and even in outer space in the future, proposing flexible, speculative problem-solving measures to support the sustainability and sustainable development of humans and Earth citizens. They attempt to find an opportunity for coexistence, integration, and interdependence in the post-human, post-life, post-ecological, and post-economic era.

Featured artists:

Gilberto Esparza

Member of the National Art Creators System.

His practice employs consumer recycling technology and biotechnology experiments.

Autophotosynthetic Plants，Gilberto Esparza

This project takes the form of active organisms, composed of a modular set of microbial cells that cultivate bacterial colonies from different parts of Lima's water system. These bacteria generate electricity through metabolism and improve water quality. The modules interconnect, forming a hydraulic network that manages biofiltered water to a central container, creating an optimal environment for producer species and consumer species (protozoa, crustaceans, microalgae, and aquatic plants) from different trophic levels to reach a steady-state balance. The electricity produced by the bacteria can be converted into light energy to assist plants in photosynthesis, allowing the plants in the central container to complete their metabolic processes.

Liam Young

Designer, director, and BAFTA-nominated producer

Works in design, fiction, and future spaces

Planet City，Liam Young

Planet City，Liam Youn"Planet City" is a film and a book set in an imaginary city designed to house 10 billion people. In this scenario, we leave the rest of the world to become a global wilderness, and return stolen land. The film follows a continuous parade that loops and dances through the city. Each day, it intersects with different carnivals, cultures, and celebrations, walking and changing pace, in an endless cycle of new colors, costumes, and noises. In "Planet City," we see climate change no longer understood as a technical problem but as an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics. This urban fiction serves as a remarkable imagination of tomorrow, offering a fresh look at the environmental issues we face today.

Joaquin Fargas

Director of the San Isidro Exploratorium of Art, Science, and Technology in Argentina

Director of the Latin American BioArt Lab at Universidad Abierta Interamericana (UAI)

The Biosphere Project，Joaquin Fargas 

"The Biosphere Project" consists of natural ecosystems isolated in sealed containers, which are only allowed to be influenced by external heat and light, relying on light as an energy source to promote the development and persistence of the life cycles occurring within them. These systems represent our planet on a very small scale, demonstrating its vulnerability and the importance and urgency of paying attention to it. The spheres are made of materials like glass and acrylic, placed on supports of varying heights made from stainless steel, iron, or aluminum, or simply hung from the ceiling, serving as a metaphor for Earth, displayed and observed on an infinitesimally small scale.

 
Literature Section

In the ecological design literature section "The Flourishing of All Things," the historical development of ecological design from 1960 to 2022 is reorganized and visually presented, while partnering with 「Juanzong Books」, to showcase books and materials that have had a significant impact on the development of ecological design. Here, life consciousness from the past and the future, local and foreign, will engage in a cross-temporal dialogue and exchange.

Participating Artists

 Gilberto Esparza
 

Joaquin Fargas

Yizhuo Guo

Lydia Kallipoliti

Maya Kramer

Li Yang

Guiyu Liu

Mary Mattingly

Ken Rinaldo

Daan Roosegaarde

Michael Sedbon

Marin Sawa

Allen Sayegh

Adelaide Lala Tam

Orkan Telhan

Gediminas Urbonas

Richard Weller

Pinar Yoldas

Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr

Chow and Lin

Accurat

Design Earth

Dust Blue

Food Geography Group

Formafantasma

NEDO Studio

TerreformONE

WHOM Digital Art Team

Zoop

Co-Space

Juanzong Books

（Sorted by last name in alphabetical order）

The Eco-Vision Plan is an international research, design, and activity network that explores the tripartite relationship between people, nature, and technology through interdisciplinary collisions, providing proposals and solutions for life, Earth, and alternative futures in response to climate change and environmental crises. The Eco-Vision Plan regularly invites industry leaders such as designers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, decision-makers, and non-profit organizations to serve as catalysts through interviews, lectures, exhibitions, and projects, providing comprehensive media, tools, and solutions for the age of crisis.

Organizing Committee

Director:

Gao Hong, Fan Di'an

Members:

Yang Wenhai, Xu Yang, Lin Mao, Wang Xiaolin, Lv Pinjing, Qiu Zhijie, Pan Chenghui

Academic Director

Fan Di'an

Chief Planner

Song Xiewei

Exhibition Director

Zhang Zikang

Curator

Jing Siyang (Autumn)

Administration Coordination

Dong Huanqin, Che Jing, Wen Meng, Zheng Tao

Exhibition Coordination

Ni Erlu

Exhibition Coordination Assistants

Wu Jingxi, Li Chaoqun, Deng Jiawei

Exhibition Design

Shen Xingyi, Zhao Nan, Zhao Hengyue, Liu Qi, Gong Yi

Curatorial Team

Wang Qi, Tan Songye, Yu Tianyi, Chang Zhen, Wang Xiaotong, Gao Xintian, Wang Guodong, Li Xinxiang, Wang Lu, Li Chenxue, Fan Shuyi, Zhu Yimeng, Li Runze, Wu Jiaqi, Wang Nan, Yu Dian'er, Hu Hanyu, Huang Wanting, Yin Chengxiu, Li Zelin, Luo Woqing, Guo Yimin

***

Host

Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)

Guiding Units

The 8th Design Discipline Review Group of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council

National Steering Committee for Graduate Education in Art

Specialties Higher Education Institutions Design Teaching Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education

Organizers

CAFA School of Design

CAFA Art Museum

CAFA Academic Affairs Office

CAFA Graduate School

NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited

Lianyungang Optoelectronics Co., Ltd.

CUBE Art Museum

Co-organizers

iFlytek Co., Ltd.

UED Week

Exhibition Floor Plan

"Future Unknow" Series Exhibition

The "Future Unknow" series exhibition is held concurrently with the 2023 "Future Unknow " International Education Forum. The "Anthropocene" has become a core discourse of common concern in both science and technology and the humanities, referring to a new geological era that began after human activities caused profound changes to the Earth's ecosystem. In the series exhibition, "Synthetic Ecology - Beijing Art and Technology Biennale," "Ecological Fusion - Beijing Media Art Biennale," and "The Eco-Vision Plan - Life" exhibition will present the chain reactions of the "Anthropocene," reflecting on the ecological crises and challenges facing the world; "Kan·Jian" International Art and Design Education Achievement Exhibition will take design as a method and art and design education as a solution, inviting 100 art and design schools from around the world to present their cutting-edge discipline teaching achievements and design proposals. The "Innovation Opportunities Documentary Exhibition," "Ideals and Thoughts - Future City Documentary Exhibition," and "Design New Goals 99+" exhibition will respond to the changes of the times and issues of global common concern based on the research of the School of Design.

"Sheng" is not only the living of human beings, but also the flourishing of the community of life. The exhibition takes species as its protagonists, covering cyanobacteria in France, croaker fish in coastal Fujian, fungi in Lithua nian swamps, soap bark trees in Chile, dust in the Sahara, and dead wood in Nordic forests. The projects range from sustainable products to digital immersive experience, from discursive scenarios to practical tools, from urban infrastructure to virtual games, from new biological materials to ancient living structures, etc, with distinct diversity, creativity and transcendence. The exhibition is linked by three threads. First of all, the four ancient Chinese characters extended from "Sheng" are used as the outline of the exhibition, placing ecological projects in a specific and distinct historical perspective, thus the exhibits are interpreted, deconstructed and reshaped in different ways. At the same time, the exhibition is based on the key directions of China's development since the 14th Five-Year Plan, with the three key words "ecological governance, energy transformation and new agriculture”. The third thread is a collaboration with Zoöp, a research project of the Het New Institute in the Netherlands, to build a cooperative institution with non-human beings.
 

Featured artists (partial list)

Richard Weller

Richard Weller is the Meyerson Chair of Urbanism and Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and Executive Director of the McHargue Center

"The work Our Beautiful Broken World"，Richard Weller

The work is a series of small models of giant environmental projects that have been created in the world today, arranged (pinned to the walls of the gallery) as a taxonomy - like a collection of butterflies in a natural history museum.

Maya Kramer

Assistant Professor at NYU Shanghai Art School

"There is Nothing you can Measure Anymore"，Maya Kramer

The work is a tiger skull cast from laundry detergent, floating like a 3D X-ray in a one-way mirror glass cabinet, with water slowly dripping on the skull, gradually disintegrating. Both symbolically and materially, this piece implies environmental deterioration – the tiger is a powerful animal pushed to the brink of extinction by human overactivity. Phosphorus is a common pollutant found in laundry detergent, and X-rays can identify and diagnose potential problems. The skull's disintegration also indicates that entropy and dissolution are irreversible processes.

Ken Rinaldo

Focused on cross-species communication

Creative fields include interactive bioart, robotics, and 3D animation

"Maximum Frustration Compressor" is a real-time clock for the Global Warming Index (GWI) connected to a Trompe-L'œil 3D printed device of an experimental cold fusion reactor. The image features a clock dial connected to a stepper motor, which rotates irregularly as the Global Warming Index rises, symbolizing the unstable weather Earth is experiencing. If the dial on this 3D print stops its irregular rotation, it indicates that global warming is not intensifying. The word "Frustration" in the title refers to the fact that solar, wind, geothermal, and wave energy have already provided real solutions for many of our energy needs, yet we continue to dream of supreme energy freedom, adopting carbon extraction policies such as fracking, coal mining, and oil refining, and continue to pollute our environment, with the clock's hand constantly rotating.

"Maximum Frustration Compressor"，Ken Rinaldo

Chow and Lin

Chow and Lin is an artist duo

Using statistics, mathematics, and computational techniques to address global issues

"Equivalence - The Ecological Footprint of Fish"，Chow and Lin

In this project, they work closely with scientists, fishery experts, fish farms, and local fishermen. Through research on fish growth cycles and breeding methods, they calculate that it takes 7.15 kg of trash fish to grow one kilogram of yellow croaker from fry to market size. The key image of the work is a mosaic portrait of a school of fish - three peculiar fish are placed at the center, surrounded by 4,136 small fish. The mosaic art structure is chosen to frame the complexity of the theme, as well as to satirically emphasize human's innate desire for order and balance.

Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly is a visual artist. She founded Swale, an edible landscape project on a barge in New York City, and Swale launched and co-founded the Food Trail at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx in 2017. "The Food Trail is now considered a pilot project and is the first time in over 100 years that New York City parks have allowed people to forage openly for food. Mary Mattingly's work has been exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial, the Havana Biennial, Storm King, the International Center of Photography, the Seoul Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and the Palais de Tokyo. Her work is included in books such as the Whitechapel/MIT Press contemporary art documentation series entitled "Nature"

These photographs tell the story of a journey through deep time to the future or a place through the study of a fossil record found in one place. All images courtesy of Mary Mattingly, annotations relate to where some of the photographs were taken. 50% of the proceeds from this series will be donated to Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.

"The work Pipelines and Permafrost", Mary Mattingly

Ni Erlu / Fan Shuyi / Lin Ziyao / GuoSongnan

Ni Erlu Central Academy of Fine Arts Graphic Design Direction

Guo Songnan, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Ecological Crisis Design

Fan Xuyi Central Academy of Fine Arts Direction of System Design

Lin Ziyao Central Academy of Fine Arts Direction of Digital Media Art

Hyper-Dust”

"The Room of Change" data art installation presents a handcrafted data tapestry, illustrating how various aspects of our environment have changed over the past few centuries, how they are still changing, and how they will continue to change. The installation combines several different data sources, describing the world from global, local, and individual perspectives, telling the stories of people and their evolving relationships with the things around them over time. It provides dense and refined information in layers, emphasizing the universality of "change" on all scales.

"The Room of Change" data art installation presents a handcrafted data tapestry, illustrating how various aspects of our environment have changed over the past few centuries, how they are still changing, and how they will continue to change. The installation combines several different data sources, describing the world from global, local, and individual perspectives, telling the stories of people and their evolving relationships with the things around them over time. It provides dense and refined information in layers, emphasizing the universality of "change" on all scales.

NEDO Design Studio

Jing Siyang, convener of Ecological Crisis Design at the School of Design, Central Academy of Fine Arts, graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her field of creation and research focuses on climate change, sustainable development, and crisis design.

Her works include "Ocean - Pavilion", "New Beef Industry", "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Grand Regional Planning - Green Corridor Design", "Beijing Green Ring Study", "Dallas in the 21st Century", etc.

Jingxian Zhang is a graduate of MIT Media Lab, with a background in computer science and a focus on data visualization and human-computer interaction. Historical projects: email communication network visualization, visual design of brand websites and correlation of perceived prices, song list data visualization, etc. Focus on the presentation of data and interaction with different people.

NEDO Design Studio is an international design-driven innovation agency focused on climate change, sustainability and the intersection of art and technology, providing systematic, multi-layered and resilient long-term attention to solutions in the areas of design research, impact communication and curation. All members of the studio are graduates of Harvard University, MIT, University of Pennsylvania and other top design universities in the world.

“ QS-21”

QS-21 is named after QS-21, a key ingredient discovered during the development of the New Crown vaccine in 2020, which is a key adjuvant for the vaccine and is extracted from the bark of the soap bark tree that grows in Chile. Although only US$5 worth of QS-21 is required for each vaccine shot, it costs US$100,000 to extract one gram of QS-21 in powder form. By 2022, more than 10 billion doses of the vaccine will be needed worldwide, putting enormous pressure on the Chilean soap bark tree, which already needs to grow for more than 10 years to mature. Climate change, the need for human diseases and its own growth rate limitations are all driving this rare species to the brink of extinction.

This work uses 'QS-21' to represent a microcosm of the relationship between humans and other species on the planet, expressing the complex and interdependent relationships between the planet's species in an era of pandemics and crises, including: human diseases, the medicines used, the extracts of natural species from which the medicines are derived, the species' habitat, and the response of climate change to their habitat. The work is based on a towering "towering" "tree".

The work features a towering 'digital' tombstone and creates a monumental place for meditation. The digitised images are based on real time generation provided by the World Health Organisation, Johns Hopkins University, pharmaceutical companies and vaccine development science, and are implemented in d3.js, Javascript, CSS and HTML, processing and extracting data analysis from multiple layers of abstract data structures and presenting them as time-series data visualisations. The virtual images collide and dialogue with the real materialised sites, inspiring the audience to discover the strong connection between humans and nature behind vaccines and provoking a profound reflection on ecology and the earth's resources.

"Shen (甡)", the appearance of coexistence among all beings. Human systems, non-human entities, semi-living entities, synthetic organisms... all share a fixed amount of matter in the same spacetime, constantly generating "intersections" like countless sets. In collisions with natural forces and human imagination about the future, humans begin to strongly desire a return to a harmonious state of "unity between man and nature," thereby rebalancing the flexible coexistence model and integrated symbiosis between material development and natural evolution, from which to overlook the growth, perception, and alternation of nature. Artists attempt to unfold the future imagination of living machines or intelligent organisms in overlapping contexts, and the shift of their creative objects from "human-centered" and "humanistic" to "life-centered" may also be a microcosm of exploring the Earth's shared destiny. 

Featured artists

Michael Sedbon  

Masters of Interaction Design from London College of Arts School of Media  

CMD 2.0，Michael Sedbon

"CMD 2.0" is an artificial ecological system composed of three bioreactors sharing a single light source. Thanks to the credits they receive for producing oxygen, each colony of photosynthetic bacteria can request access to light. As resource usage rights are granted, artificial intelligence tests different financial system populations on these cyanobacteria colonies, and photosynthetic cells and computers experiment with different political systems. The rules governing the market are optimized through genetic algorithms: genetic algorithms depict these primal social rules as genes, cultivating the population of societies, and ultimately giving rise to a new generation of markets.

Gediminas Urbonas

Artist, educator Co-founder of Urbonas Studio

Former Director of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Swamp Game"，Gediminas Urbonas

This exploratory game invites viewers to experience empathetic relationships unfolding in a sentient swamp—a perfect environment for sensing the fragile interdependencies between organisms and their habitats. Here, every member of the community is part of the environment of other members and is essential for the overall survival. The game explores shifts in perspective, allowing us to embody different species by floating among swamp organisms: plants, insects, birds, amphibians, fungi, bacteria, or algae, and discovering the main metaphysical rule of the ogre: to become another, you must be eaten.

Oron Catts

Ionat Zurr  

Co-founder of the Tissue,

Culture & Art "TC&A" Project

"The Remains of Disembodied Cuisine"，Oron Catts & Lonat Zurr

In this performance, humans taste, for the first time, meat grown in a laboratory rather than cut from an animal's body—eating a semi-living steak produced by tissue engineering technology. The project critiques the vision of a "victimless utopia" in which we could eat meat without slaughtering animals. On a moral level, the project addresses the most common interaction zone between humans and the biological world and explores the apparent discomfort people feel when someone "messes" with their food. While offering the illusion of "victimless" meat consumption, the project also potentially suggests a utopian future in which the killing and suffering of animals for food consumption would be reduced—perhaps, consequently, resolving ecological and economic issues related to the food industry. However, if we turn our food into a new object or category of existence, the "semi-living," it is equally possible that, within the logic chain of this action, the semi-living could be forced to become new subjects of exploitation.

Lydia Kallipoliti

Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer and academic whose research focuses on the intersection of architecture, technology and environmental politics. She is an Assistant Professor at the Cooper Union in New York.Kallipoliti is the author of Architecture in a Closed World, or, What's the Power of Shit (Lars Muller Publishers, 2018), The Oxford English Encyclopedia of Environmental Science's History of Ecological Design (2018), and was the editor of the 2010 Architectural Design magazine EcoRedux

Climate House 2020; Hacking Domestic Machines，Lydia Kallipoliti 

In the post-epidemic era, housing has become a newly formed world order, and today's social revolution should start with houses to combat climate change. "Climate House 2020 investigates smart, green and sustainable systems for houses and critiques the "hacking" of users' home appliances. The project aims to use the devices needed for living as a tool to combat climate change and create resistance, shaping the house into a self-metabolising system. Climate House 2020 is an idealisation of comfort, a fear of disease, a fascination with biological control and a critique of containment. As a result of current lifestyles, life is monitored and quantified, commodified and monetised. The project seeks to create a recyclable living machine that reuses wastewater and nourishes gardens to grow food, demonstrating the fragility and limitations of the food supply chain and the alternative microenvironments we can envision that can produce food from recycled resources, small-scale microbial communities that tell us, in all probability, that the containment of microenvironments in our lives will in turn harm us.

Guo Yizhuo

She graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in fashion design, and was accepted to the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins and Chelsea College of Art as a master's student in 2022. she is the co-founder of Shenzhen Easy Motion Technology Company

Her works focus on ecological survival issues and future material design

Climate Skin，Guo Yizhuo

Air is the most readily available but often overlooked material around us, playing an important role in the shape of space. Air is the most readily available but often overlooked material that exists around us and plays an important role in spatial form. In a time of new epidemics and climate change, what forms of 'breathing' will the air of the future take? The work revolves around the human body and space, body extension design, and wearable fabric research, borrowing from structures such as 'air-bearing membrane structures' and responsive 'movable skins' in architecture, as well as the portability and movability of inflatable spaces, to explore the contraction and expansion of dynamic clothing spaces. The project explores the contraction and expansion of dynamic dress spaces. The intention is to rethink the bridge between human and air by using air as the material medium and wearable as its carrier to respond to environmental space.

Guiyu Liu

Guiyu Liu , graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, focuses on the relationship between the body and the environment, exploring multi-dimensional ways of extending the body's perception. Based on the context of life mechanisms being mediated by algorithms and data, her works are mainly expressed through interactive images, smart wearable devices, physical media and interactive physical installations, and have been exhibited in more than two dozen international and national exhibitions.

The Symbiote-It’s an individual and a community ，Guiyu Liu

Plant communities are combinations of different plants that have adapted to each other over a long period of time in response to environmental change, as well as in human societies. The human species transplants plants from the community and regulates its species to suit its own needs. We all came from bacteria, although we now live with plants, and the oxygen they exhale and the carbon dioxide we breathe are part of this relationship. We depend on them, but too often we are oblivious to them. The work is a demonstration of the mutual discipline of the body and the plants through a smart wearable device that restrains the body with the habits of the plants, placing the body immovable in the plant community and feeling the plant's vitality through data monitoring and wearable feedback.

In the fourth section of the exhibition, "Qing," meaning "clear sky after rain," artists explore the coexistence of new ecological risks and new life opportunities. "Harmonious competition" and "adaptation enhancement" encourage humans to actively seek future ways of living and evolving, embracing a natural disposition to return to simplicity, face the changing evolution of all beings, respect the organic laws of all things, and cherish the value of life's succession. In this section, artists hope to consider how design and art can help us survive better on Earth and even in outer space in the future, proposing flexible, speculative problem-solving measures to support the sustainability and sustainable development of humans and Earth citizens. They attempt to find an opportunity for coexistence, integration, and interdependence in the post-human, post-life, post-ecological, and post-economic era.

现代藻类生物技术在很大程度上受到技术官僚主义的推动，以应对粮食和能源危机。这项生物技术工作寻求利用微藻不是为了技术官僚的目的，而是为了在“生态”交叉口重建社会实践，正如 Félix Guattari (1989/2000) 所倡导的那样，通过编织自然环境的三个领域（微藻的光合作用） 、社会关系（数字印刷）和心灵（创作过程）。我与生物化学家的实验室合作开发了藻类印刷技术，将喷墨打印技术应用于纸上的藻类种子，以在一个紧凑的创意系统中生长和利用它们的空气净化、健康食品和生物电应用——这是一种用活微生物进行设计的新概念。Algaerium Bioprinter是一个装置，将藻类打印技术与生物工业联系起来——生物设计领域从“智力消费”到“功利消费”的新兴发展。

Featured artists:

Gilberto Esparza

他的研究基于他基于对生命固有智慧的辩护和对人类社会与自然环境关系的重新思考，将技术作为提出问题和解决人类足迹对地球上生命影响的可能性。他的实践运用了消费者回收技术和生物技术实验。他的项目合作方包括西班牙卡塔赫纳大学的化学工程和工艺小组、国家理工学院的 CINVESTAV 机电一体化领域、 Juriquilla 的工程学院、墨西哥大学、瓜纳华托大学的数字艺术等研究中心。

"Autophotosynthetic Plants"，Gilberto Esparza

This project takes the form of active organisms, composed of a modular set of microbial cells that cultivate bacterial colonies from different parts of Lima's water system. These bacteria generate electricity through metabolism and improve water quality. The modules interconnect, forming a hydraulic network that manages biofiltered water to a central container, creating an optimal environment for producer species and consumer species (protozoa, crustaceans, microalgae, and aquatic plants) from different trophic levels to reach a steady-state balance. The electricity produced by the bacteria can be converted into light energy to assist plants in photosynthesis, allowing the plants in the central container to complete their metabolic processes.

Liam Young

Designer, director, and BAFTA-nominated producer

Works in design, fiction, and future spaces

Planet City，Liam Young

"Planet City" is a film and a book set in an imaginary city designed to house 10 billion people. In this scenario, we leave the rest of the world to become a global wilderness, and return stolen land. The film follows a continuous parade that loops and dances through the city. Each day, it intersects with different carnivals, cultures, and celebrations, walking and changing pace, in an endless cycle of new colors, costumes, and noises. In "Planet City," we see climate change no longer understood as a technical problem but as an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics. This urban fiction serves as a remarkable imagination of tomorrow, offering a fresh look at the environmental issues we face today.

华金 · 法尔加斯 Joaquin Fargas

Director of the San Isidro Exploratorium of Art, Science, and Technology in Argentina

Director of the Latin American BioArt Lab at Universidad Abierta Interamericana (UAI)

The Biosphere Project，Joaquin Fargas

The Biosphere Project, Joaquin Fargas "The Biosphere Project" consists of natural ecosystems isolated in sealed containers, which are only allowed to be influenced by external heat and light, relying on light as an energy source to promote the development and persistence of the life cycles occurring within them. These systems represent our planet on a very small scale, demonstrating its vulnerability and the importance and urgency of paying attention to it. The spheres are made of materials like glass and acrylic, placed on supports of varying heights made from stainless steel, iron, or aluminum, or simply hung from the ceiling, serving as a metaphor for Earth, displayed and observed on an infinitesimally small scale.

Marin Sawa  

Dr Marin Sawa is an architect/biodesigner whose research has pioneered the intersection of design and biotechnology. Her work explores the ecological interface of photosynthetic microorganisms and develops laboratory-based biodesign practices and collaborations. She has designed microarchitectures for microbial biophotovoltaics (BPV) that generate bioelectricity through oxygenated photosynthesis.

Accurat data visualization design studio

The studio is dedicated to researching the beauty behind data complexity

The work Algaerium Bioprinter", Marin Sawa

Modern algae biotechnology is largely driven by technocratic responses to the food and energy crises. This biotechnological work seeks to use microalgae not for technocratic purposes but to reconstruct social practices at the intersection of 'ecology', as advocated by Félix Guattari (1989/2000), by weaving the three domains of the natural environment (photosynthesis in microalgae), social relations (digital printing) and the mind (the creative process). digital printing) and the mind (the creative process). In collaboration with the biochemist's laboratory I developed Algae Print, an inkjet printing technique applied to algae seeds on paper to grow and utilise them in a compact creative system for air purification, healthy food and bioelectric applications - a new concept in design with living microorganisms. algaerium Bioprinter is an installation that links algae printing technology to the bio-industry - an emerging development in the field of bio-design from 'intellectual consumption' to 'utilitarian consumption'. development.

Orkan Telhan

Orkan Telhan, interdisciplinary artist, interdisciplinary designer and educator, Associate Professor of Fine Arts-Emerging Design Practice at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, and co-founder of Biorealize. He specializes in synthetic biology and biodesign, with a research focus on the design of questionable objects, interfaces and media. Terhan hopes to create a more responsible future for society through design. He has always been interested in the relationship between design and technology. With a close eye on major issues such as ecology, the environment and climate change, Terhan uses different technological frameworks, from synthetic biology to artificial intelligence, to find solutions to these big problems

作品“马塔德罗的果实”（Fruits of Matadero），Orkan Telhan

"The Fruits of Matadero is one of five projects commissioned by the Centro Cultural de Madrid to address the issue of climate change in Spain. This work enables the public to engage with climate change in an urban air environment dominated by heat islands. The commission site for the project is an old slaughterhouse without trees. Terhan then used this feature to create a shade tree to deal with the cooling issue in a different way. Humans like to bring about physical cooling by eating - by sweating. Terhan created a vending machine in a tree, fermenting organisms, charging themselves, basking in the sun and then when someone paid for their frozen fruit with their mobile phone - like a vending machine selling ice cream with different spices, popsicles designed to taste like different strengths of spices and using microorganisms to create flavours, Matadero's fruit has a special probiotic composition and comes in three flavours, thus responding to the global warming limit commitments made during COP21 and the Paris Agreement (a commitment to limit temperature changes to 1.5-2C°, but currently reaching 2.7-3.7°).

Daan Roosegaarde

Daan Roosegaarde is a Dutch artist and the founder of Studio Roosegaarde, which develops projects that integrate technology and art into urban environments. Daan Roosegaarde is a creative thinker and maker of social design. His fascination with nature and technology is reflected in his iconic works, such as the Waterlight, a virtual flood that visualises the power of water, the Smog Free Project, the world's first and largest outdoor air purifier that turns haze into jewellery, and the Smog Free Project, which recharges during the day and glows at night. "Smart Highway", a road that recharges during the day and glows at night, "Space Waste Lab" to visualise and upgrade space waste, the world's first device to remove coronaviruses from public spaces, and the world's first "Coronavirus". Urban Sun", the world's first coronavirus device to remove coronaviruses from public spaces.

Grow，Daan Roosegaarde

Daan Roosegaarde's latest work GROW is a tribute to the beauty of agriculture. Inspired by the scientific formulation of light that improves the growth and resilience of plants, GROW appears in the world premiere of the film as a bright, dreamy spectacle of red and blue light waves over a vast field. Most of the time, we barely notice the huge areas of the planet that are feeding us. GROW highlights the importance of innovation in agricultural systems: how can cutting-edge light design help plants grow more sustainably? How can we make farmers heroes?

Urban Sun，Daan Roosegaarde

Designer Daan Roosegaarde and his team's URBAN SUN is the world's first artificial sun to disinfect public spaces with coronavirus using safe far-UV 222 nm light. After a successful launch in Rotterdam, URBAN SUN will travel the world to the Aarhus Festival in Denmark, the Design Museum in Atlanta, USA and the Dutch Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai, UAE. URBAN SUN is an innovative design installation that creates better and safer spaces to breathe more freely.

Allen Sayegh

INVIVIA is a design think tank that was founded on the belief that no one particular method or discipline has the answer to complex problems and that an interdisciplinary approach is the key to innovation. Since its inception, this collaborative approach has maintained its interdisciplinary way of thinking

Oct 21 2050 9:32 AM: When Charlotte Slipped，Allen Sayegh

This 3 x 10 m m mural uses projected animation to depict a speculative view of the world in 2050, where rising sea levels and technological developments are already affecting all aspects of our society and daily life. Climate change divides the world into two physical parts - above the sea level and below it. Superimposed on the fresco are three subtle animations that emphasise the changes between the three horizontal moments. Closer inspection reveals the public space beneath the water, where barnacles paint the buildings on one side and sand dunes sweep past. A woman argues with their sideboard and a mother slides down a half-buried public bus stop with her children. Charlotte, the autarchic system, looks at the joys and struggles of the world's inhabitants and the traces they leave behind as they wrestle with their own changing identities. As one delves deeper into the world, it also reveals a variety of contrasting relationships. Some people are adapting to marine life, while others are not. Some have come to accept autonomous systems, while others still find it difficult to trust them. This mural prompts us to consider how we, as a society, respond to the inevitable changes in our environment.

Rania Ghosn

EI Hadi Jazairy

Earth Design is a research institute founded in 2010 by Ghosn and Jazayri. Their work uses speculative architectural projects as a medium to bring the climate crisis into the open. Designing Earth is the recipient of the American Artist Fellowship, the Architectural League's Junior Year Architect + Designer Award, the Boghossian Foundation Award and the ACSA Faculty Design Award for their outstanding work in the field of architecture and related environmental design

Design earth ，Rania Ghosn & EI Hadi Jazairy

The Natural History Museum of the United States in New York is renowned for its taxidermy exhibitions. In the African Mammal Gallery, eight elephants are mounted and arranged as if ready to burst out of the museum. The Elephants in the Room is an animated short film that imagines what would happen if the female elephants came to life and ran wild through the streets of New York, calling for gas. For the elephants, this means questioning the museum as a carbon-intensive activity site and the metal sources that support it. By bringing this message to the streets of the city, the elephant highlights the important role museums should play in the call for climate justice. At the same time, the film reminds us that museums are not simply spaces for collecting and display. They represent the world in ways that often create or perpetuate divisions and inequalities. This includes the separation of the human from nature, a rift that is at the heart of the climate crisis. In this sense, the elephant represents the entire planet, warning us not to continue on this destructive path.

WHOM

Founded in 2020, the digital art team "We¹Humans² on³ Mars⁴", with curatorial team members from the School of Design and the School of Art Management of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, focuses on curatorial experiments in contemporary digital art

The work " We¹ Humans² on³ Mars⁴", digital art team WHOM

The project "We¹ Humans² on³ Mars⁴", organised by the School of Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, with Dean Song Xiewei as academic chair, Xue Tianzou and Wang Naiyi as instructors, and He Yanzhao, Qin Man, Ren Qingqi, Zhang Qianyi and Huang Xiaoxi as co-curators, was completed with technical support from Netdragon.com The project was developed with 3D technology to build scenarios for a multiplayer gamification experience. The project posits a real but never-visited Mars scenario, exploring the possibilities of self-awareness, existential crisis, institutional change and civilizational evolution in a virtual interstellar migration environment. Mars⁴ was born in the context of an epidemic spreading across the globe and has a relevance in this particular post-epidemic era.

In 2 years, more than 40 pioneering artists have taken to this virtual exhibition platform to realise exciting and daring ideas that they would not otherwise be able to achieve in the real world. This ground-breaking exhibition experience not only gives the artists a new opportunity to showcase their work, but also brings a great deal of excitement and engagement to the audience. The team also hopes that through this diverse public art exhibition, it will help artists and audiences to continue to break the limits of the real world and expand the possibilities of life.

Participating artists:

Ai Yitian, Cheng Bidis, Fang Zheng, Fei Xiaotian, Ge Yulu, Gong Yining, Hu Shuai, Hu Jingfei, Hu Jing, Huang Xiaoxi, Kang Yi, Li Ruohan, Li Sihui, Li Siqi, Li Shangru, Liang Jiahui, Liang Wenhua, Lu Qi, Lei Hongcai, Lian Wuchu, Mao Buzzing, Peng Jia, Sha Jinghai, Su Yongjian, Qiu Yu, Full Force, Song Guanzheng, Wang Donghan, Wang Peng, Wang Yicai, Wen Xiaotong, Wu Bilin, Xiao Liang, Xiong Miao, Xiong Zuofei, Xu Xiaoyi, Xue Ruozhe, Yang Risheng, Yang Song, Zhang Xi

Food Geography Group

Initiators: Han Tao and Jing Siyang

"The way we eat represents the deepest connection between humans and the natural world."

--Michael Pollan

Not only is food essential to the daily life of every human being, but it is also a vital medium for connecting me to myself and to nature. As Michael Pollan put it, "the way we eat represents the deepest connection between me and nature". The group uses different scales as a framework for its research, analysing different kinds of tastemakers from different perspectives, observing and analysing them at the cellular, body, room, community, city, map and metaverse scales, feeding the heterotopia of tastemakers (bread), the creation of grains (coffee), the coming of the gods (wine), the carbon-based community (eggs), the history of sodium ion support (salt), the substratum of tastemakers (drink), and the substratum of tastemakers (drink). The Great Explosion (orange), The House of Sweets: The Factory of Consciousness (sugar), Don't let the milk of cow (cow's milk), The existence of the indeterminable (pepper), Vegetable oil: The power of the macadamia (oil), The journey of a leaf (tea) are works that analyse and understand the historical development, production, consumption and dissemination of specific macadamia in space and geography through mapping on the basis of imaginative geography. Four groups of works are selected for the exhibition: Heterotopia, Grainy Rest, The Coming of the Wine God, and Carbon-based Community.

"Feeding Heterotopia", Tan Songye and Deng Jiawei  

As a symbol of man's material need for sustenance, bread has become the most basic right of survival. The authors, Tang Songye and Deng Jiawei, metaphorically present "bread" as a political tool used by power centres to control the people. A series of actions, such as the creation of hunger anxiety, food education and dietary guidelines, constitute methods and rules to discipline and induce the people. The authors construct an underground heterotopia in which bread is used as a cycle of resources according to different social scales.

"Coffee Interest-Bearing" ,Wang Lu and Li Chenxue

From the original "Arabian wine" to the spiritual medicine in the hands of today's office workers, one would never expect that the cup of coffee you drink would affect migratory birds in their faraway habitat. The map tells the story of the relationship between a coffee bean and the course of human history, from the point of view of production and consumption. As a plant, it is a medium for contacts and ecosystems; as food, it is a witness to socio-economic and human activity. The map takes the coffee bean as the object of study and uses the spatial structure of the entire coffee production line as a carrier, arranging the objects and events from micro to macro, individual to whole (from right to left) at each node of the "assembly line", divided into seven scales: cellular scale - fruit, body scale - nutrition, room scale - life, community scale - consumption, urban scale - consumption, and urban scale - consumption. life, community scale - consumption, city scale - marketing, global scale - culture, and metaverse scale - future.