The celebrated Chinese colored painting, A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains is being revived by digital interactive technology in Lijia Smart Park, Liangjiang New Area of Chongqing, on August 22.
A Dream Journey through A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains, the digital art exhibition sponsored by the Palace Museum, Phoenix Television, and the Liangjiang New Area, is curated as part of the Smart China Expo 2021.
As the upgraded version of the exhibition “A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains 3.0” displayed at the Macau Museum of Art as a tribute to the 20th anniversary of Macau’s return to China in 2019, A Dream Journey through A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains focuses on enhancing the immersive and interactive experience of the audience. The digital technology elements are more prominent, and the technical content is improved across the board.
Wang Ximeng (1096–1117) was a Chinese painter during the late period of the Northern Song Dynasty. He was widely recognized as a genius painter, learning skills directly from the Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty. At the age of 18, he finished the painting A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains, where he depicted fishing boats, Chinese pavilions, bridges in fishing villages, and mountains and rivers often seen in Jiangnan (South of the Yangtze River) which was the most populated and the richest region in China during his time.
The celebrated painting revives as a thirty-meter long and five-meter high digital scroll on the wall. This is the world’s first dynamic digital scroll with multichannel technology and real-time interaction with the audience, and is equipped with the function to change the appearance to represent different seasons and weather.
Apart from the natural landscape that echoes the theme of the exhibition, the unique cyberpunk-style painting wall also extracts elements of the modern “Misty City”— Chongqing, such as Hongya Cave, the bridges across the Yangtze River, and the light railway running through residential building — Liziba Station.
Themed on “Picturesque Rivers and Mountains”, the exhibition area Huijing Space is inspired by the painting experience of Wang Ximeng, the author of “A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains”. Based on the painting and culture courses taken by Wang in the royal academy of fine arts of the Northern Song Dynasty, Huijing Space presents a surreal version of the Xuanhe Painting Academy through three-sided immersive interactive projection.
The cultural experience and consumption space, Songchao Youli, is featured by the elements of the Song Dynasty, a Dynasty of courtesy, and the mountainous Chongqing. It integrates the three functions of traditional handicraft experience, lectures, and sales of creative cultural products.
Song Fashion Academy is a brand-new exhibition area based on the layout of Song academies, presenting the knowledge, culture, and lifestyle of that time through physical objects and illustrations.
With eight major exhibition areas and 16 creative exhibits, the nearly 2,000-square-meter space brings you an unbelievable immersive experience and a grand feast of oriental aesthetics.
“This digital exhibition is a gift for Chongqing people, who live in a beautiful city of mountains and rivers,” said Yan Hongbin, the deputy curator of the Palace Museum.
“We cooperated with Phoenix Digital Technology once in 2018. At that year of the exhibition of Ascending the River at Qingming Festival in Beijing, we found the people’s great interest in the digital presentation of traditional arts, especially young people,” said Guan Qi, the general manager of Forbidden City Culture Co., Ltd.
In addition to promoting cultural education of the general public, digital technology can be used to preserve traditional arts. “Some ancient art pieces like paintings are very vulnerable. Digital technology is helpful for better preserving them for our descendants. Academics are pleased to have a digital copy of our cultural treasures to conduct research,” Guan said.
Translated by 汤伊然，彭慧璇，王琼