Liu Dao (a

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...

phrase meaning "island number 6" – , ) is an international multidisciplinary art collective based at the island6 Arts Center in 50 Moganshan Road M50, contemporary art district Shanghai, China.

History

Liu Dao was founded in 2006 by island6 Arts Center under the direction of French curator Thomas Charvériat. Liu Dao is an

electronic art Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and elec ...

group composed of multimedia artists, engineers, painters, performance artists,

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographers As in other ...

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

s and writers. Their work focuses on

interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...

installations that explore the effects that "technologies have on our perception and modes of communication" but also on LED art, photography,

modern sculpture Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolv ...

and

paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. Liu Dao has mainly exhibited at island6 Arts Center, island6 ShGarden, island6 Bund in Shanghai, island6 Hong Kong in Sheung Wan and island6 Marina in

Phuket Phuket (; th, ภูเก็ต, , ms, Bukit or ''Tongkah''; Hokkien:普吉; ) is one of the southern provinces (''changwat'') of Thailand. It consists of the island of Phuket, the country's largest island, and another 32 smaller islands of ...

, Thailand. In August 2015 their work was exhibited at SISEA 2015; an exhibition at the

China Art Museum The China Art Museum, also called the China Art Palace (; Shanghainese: ''Zongwu Nyizeh Ghon'') or its original name, Shanghai Art Museum, is a museum of modern Chinese art located in Pudong, Shanghai. The museum is housed in the former China ...

which explored the relationships between science, technology and art. Liu Dao‘s artworks were taken into White Rabbit Gallery's collection of Chinese contemporary art in Sydney as "a less literal and more expressionistic lens" of cultural shifts in China, among artworks from artists such as Bingyi and Cang Xin, and in 2010 were brought into the

Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton Malletier, commonly known as Louis Vuitton (, ), is a French high-end luxury fashion house and company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton. The label's LV monogram appears on most of its products, ranging from luxury bags and leather ...

gallery of

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a p ...

Production process

Liu Dao embraces the use of digital technology to express the emotions and thoughts which arise from what it considers the vivid and hectic environment of Shanghai in the 21st Century. The group claims its collective and communal spirit prevents the art from becoming mainstream or stagnant. The process of creating art works typically begins with a curator developing a concept or theme. He or she then writes a short synopsis which is the basis for which new works will be made. Those works are developed by having an artistic director work with the artists to interpret the theme through varying visual mediums. The majority of Liu Dao's works involve LEDs. A simple movement is arranged by choreographers and coordinated by in-house art directors, which is then video recorded and turned into an LED representation. Homemade software is used to match colors and to create an animated sequence of

bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: t ...

s. Red Gate Gallery, the oldest private art gallery in China, describes the process of Liu Dao as technology becoming organic: "digital reality comes alive, where it begins to speak, dream, conspire, and seduce." It refers to the works as "voyeuristic fantasies", "paraphilia", and "visually rhyming". Collaboration As noted by

The China Post ''The China Post'' () was an English-language newspapers published in Taiwan (officially the Republic of China), alongside the ''Taipei Times The ''Taipei Times'' is the only printed daily English-language newspaper in Taiwan, and the thi ...

, all of Liu Dao's works are created by multiple artists, as the group places emphasis on cooperation and collaboration in order to increase the wealth of ideas and evolution of conceptual projects. Artworks are conceived through discussions between a curator and art director in which a curatorial theme is devised, written in a statement, and shared with the artists. After feedback and conceptual development, the artists work with the onsite technicians in order to design the implementation strategy. The credits for each piece run similar to those found in a film, with writers, directors, models, cameramen, technicians, painters, programmers, choreographers and editors. This process runs as a direct opposite to artists with many employees working for them who are never credited at all.

Themes

History and tradition Liu Dao tends to use a multitude of influences, references and styles from

Chinese art Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based in or draws on Chinese ...

and Chinese history in their works, such as cranes (the Chinese symbol of longevity), Chinese paper cutting,

rice paper "Rice paper" has many varieties such as rice paper made from tree bark to make drawing and writing paper or from rice flour and tapioca flour and then mixed with salt and water to produce a thin rice cake and dried to become harder and paper-like ...

, and

Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...

and Communist imagery. Similar to the theme of urbanization, the technology and modernity that are found in Shanghai, where Liu Dao are based, are main features of the collective's topics, as a reverberation of Chinese traditional life becoming "electrified". Visual compositions often combine LED animation with Chinese paper cuts to take a customary picture and bring it into the 21st Century technological landscape. Journalist Jasmina Najjar wrote that the Liu Dao collective's work "...shows that art really has the power to transcend borders and to open creative dialogues between cities and talents from different disciplines." Interactivity Liu Dao artworks often feature modernized characteristics of conventional art, bringing to light the subject of China's reaction and contribution to

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...

, while artworks "demand" interaction through sensors, motion-tracking devices, GPRS modem controlled videos, or

sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect objects on o ...

rangefinders which help "artists and technologists actively engage with culture". Awards and honors In April 2010, Liu Dao was selected by

for an exhibition curated by Jonathan Thomson in the Louis Vuitton Maison, to be the second art intervention to animate their

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

building. In September 2010, Liu Dao was again selected by Louis Vuitton to take part in an art exhibition
''Raining Stars''
in the Louis Vuitton cultural space in Macau, focusing on the global experience of

fireworks Fireworks are a class of low explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. They are most commonly used in fireworks displays (also called a fireworks show or pyrotechnics), combining a large number of devices ...

. Liu Dao was nominated for the Sovereign Art Foundation's annual charity art prize in 2010, and Liu Dao's member Rose Tang had her first solo exhibition,
Roseless
.

Publications

*2011 "island6 Art Collective" by Thomas Charvériat and Peter Bradt; FoldPress Publications – . 2010 *2010 "Liu Dao" by Thomas Charvériat and Peter Bradt; FoldPress Publications

References

Bibliography

*Ching Ling Loo, "A Quick, Irreverent Note on Art Prices" KIOSK, May 2012 *Ching Ling Loo, "New Frontiers. New Media Art" KIOSK, March 2012 *Eva Martin, "Interview with island6" SHANGHAI 24/7, January 2012 *"HK Artfair 2011", HARPER'S BAZAAR, July 2011, July 2011, ISSN 1673-0828 *interview by G. A. Rhodes, ELLE MAN MAGAZINE, September 2011, 这个世界不需要又一个伍迪.艾伦 (p. 325) *P. Bollmann (Ed.), Kerber, FOCUS ASIA: INSIGHTS INTO THE WEMHÖNER COLLECTION, 2011 (p. 150–153) *J. INGLEDEW, Laurence King, THE A-Z OF VISUAL IDEAS, 2011 (pp. 49, 113, 118–119, 162–163) *Jo Baker, "Comfort Zones", SILKROAD INFLIGHT MAGAZINE, November 2011, (p. 64) *Deepika Shetty, "Tang art goes pop", THE STRAITS TIMES, July 21, 2011 arts section (p. C2) *Matthew Neckelmann, 'An island in the ‘hai', ''

that's Shanghai ''that's Shanghai'' is a monthly English-language listings and entertainment magazine published in China. As of May 2020, the print magazine had a staff of 30 and a circulation of 62,500 with 40 percent of its readership being expatriates. The ...

'', April 29, 200

External links

{{Sisterlinks
http://www.island6.org
not-for-profit art space founded by Thomas Charvériat that represents the collective Liu Dao New media artists Digital artists Chinese artist groups and collectives