Theme Exhibition
Code : Blue - Confluence of Currents

In the early 1400s, 80 years before Columbus set foot on the Americas, Chinese fleets led by Zheng He, an eunuch admiral, had traversed the Indian Ocean reaching the Cape of Good Hope numerous times, establishing peaceful relationships with principalities and kingdoms along the voyage routes, propelling cultural understandings, and precipitating trading activities among many nations. The rise of China in the 21st century as a major economic player in the Pacific region and beyond revives the lost legacy of China as an oceangoing nation, unveils her creative merchandising spirit. China's seclusion from the outside world that resulted in an isolated "earth" civilization was but a temporary historical interruption, contrary to the perception of such being the intrinsic nature of Chinese culture.

"Code:Blue" attempts to symbolically establish a relationship between China's once ocean-minded past and her active engagement and rigorous interaction with current global influences both economically and culturally in an increasingly reciprocal construct, visible in areas such as trade / commerce, migration / mobility, identity / nationality, East / West, South / North and their dichotomies either as liberating high tides or as potentially perilous waters. The Exhibition and Symposium also metaphorically seek the confluence of these multiple cultural and economic currents, and propose reconciliation and a utopian vision of peace and harmony in the spirit of Blue as openness, transparency, sympathy and transcendence.

"Code: Blue" is an international exhibition, which comprises works by established and emerging media artists, presenting artist and expert discussions, each giving his/her own insightful approach to the broad thematic structure, rendering a diversity of interpretations and raising issues imminent and critical to the fluctuating social, cultural and economic circumstances across the world. "Code:Blue" presents representative works of telematic art, virtual reality, net art, robotic art, interactive cinema, nano art, and other new forms facilitated through media technologies with critical reflections on the impact of pervasiveness of technology. A subset of the "Code: Blue" is programmed as "The Shipment From China" in which a body of projects by Chinese media artists using shipping containers as a metaphor as well as transporting vehicles for the creation of their works will participate in the ISEA 2006 / ZeroOne Festival in August 2006. The ISEA 2006 in conjunction with ZeroOne: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, is hosted by the city of San Jose, in the Silicon Valley in the United States. "Container Culture" is one of the exhibition themes of the ISEA2006 / ZeroOne Festival.

Complimantary to the theme exhbition, three more shows will be on view: Academic Exhibition, Guest Exhibition and A special screening program

- Zhang Ga, Artistic director

Academic Exhibition

• Teleboat 798, Parsons School of Design and Tsinghua Academy of Art and Desing (Collaboration)
• Water Bowls, UCLA (Victoria Vesna, collaborative)
• Works from other Chinese art educational institutes including China Academy of Fine Art, Central Academy of Fine Art, Peking University)

Special Screening Programs

• Ars Electronica - 25 Years of Excellency in Electronic Arts
• transmediale - Festival for Art and Digital Culture

Curators:

Zhang Ga, Timothy Druckery

Curatorial Consultants

• Alex Adriaansens - Director, V2_, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Andreas Broeckmann - Director, transmediale, Berlin, Germany
• Thomas Munz - Curator, transmediale, Berlin, Germany
• Sylvie Parent - Guest Curator, Groupe Molior, Montreal, Canada
• Soh Yeong Roh - Director, Art Center NABI, Seoul, S. Korea
• Gerfried Stocker - Director, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria
• Peter Weibel - CEO, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

In the Gallery (2004)