:: for more from B Ovensfan on NeochaEDGE, link here. // AjS
This post was originally published on NeochaEDGE, a site I regularly contribute to. To see more of my posts on NeochaEDGE, link here.
NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.
:: I spotted this throw-up today in Shanghai while heading down Xinle Rd., near the the Huating Rd. intersection. I recently saw the same throw-up just around the corner from this one. Does anyone know whose work this is? If you spot graffiti or urban art anywhere in China, please share it with me at EDGE@Neocha.com. I’d like to document it on NeochaEDGE. For more graffiti in China on NeochaEDGE, link here. // AjS
This post was originally published on NeochaEDGE, a site I regularly contribute to. To see more of my posts on NeochaEDGE, link here.
NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.
:: I recently came across some wet paint in Shanghai on Huating Rd. If you know whose work this is, please let me know in the comments section below. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more pieces going up in that area – it’s home to a fair amount of low-profile wall space. For more graffiti in China on NeochaEDGE, link here. // AjS
This post was originally published on NeochaEDGE, a site I regularly contribute to. To see more of my posts on NeochaEDGE, link here.
NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.
:: see below for some random graffiti tags and throw-ups I spotted in Shanghai on Xiangyang Rd. close to the Xinle Rd. intersection. These practically cover the entire length of a temporary construction wall that wraps around the southeast corner of the intersection. Nothing too special, but its kinda rare to see so many pieces strung together like this in Shanghai outside of Moganshan Rd. To see more Chinese graffiti, link here. // AjS
This post was originally published on NeochaEDGE, a site I regularly contribute to. To see more of my posts on NeochaEDGE, link here.
NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.
:: Shanghai is the next stop for A Nice Set, a traveling exhibition of customized slipmats designed by leading artists from around the world. Presented by NeochaEDGE and Jellymon, A Nice Set | Shanghai will feature slipmat designs from international artists as well as the first showing of original slipmat designs from emerging Chinese artists. Further integrating the music + art theme, a set of Aerial7 headphones will receive a custom-design treatment by Chinese artists and displayed at the exhibition.
A Nice Set | Shanghai exhibition will open at 7:30 PM on September 12th at SOURCE‘s gallery space, and run until September 28. Original slipmats, reproductions, IdN’s commemorative book, and custom-designed Aerial7 headphones will all be available for sale throughout the exhibition. // AjS
Exhibition Opening Party :: Sept 12, 2009, 19:30
Exhibition Dates :: Sept 12 – Sept 28, 2009
Location :: SOURCE (158 Xinle Road, Near Donghu Road)
Participating Artists ::
China
Raylei, B6, Tyakasha, Yan Wei, Nini Sum, Jellymon, Kidplastik, Chairman, Shinjil, 96k, Rubberpixy
International
Asif Mian, Ben Loiz & Carolina Chaves, Bob Kronbauer, Build, Carlos Rodriguez, David Ellis, Genevieve Gauckler, Gerry Villareal, Harmen Liemburg, Hanna Werning, Hort, Ian Wright, Ian “Swifty” Swift, Jeff Staple, Jeff Zimmermann, Jenni Kim, Jeremy Hollister, Jeremyville, Maki Kawakita, Marc Atlan, Ray Smith, Republic of Regina, Stephen Bliss, Judy Wellfare, Kai and Sunny, Kenn Sakurai, Kustaa Saksi, Luca Ionesco, Maceo Villareal, Stephan “Maze” Georges, Timothy Saccenti, Universal Everything, Value and Service, Yuko Shimizu and many more
What is a slipmat?
A slipmat is a circular piece of felt material that DJs use on turntables to manipulate a record.
The Concept ::
Just as DJs sample the work of many musicians into the new mixes, visual artists tap into their own cultural surroundings, sampling the influences they have accumulated and integrate them into their work. Both the visual artist and the DJ can be seen as “selectors” who draw inspiration from their respective environments, as well as its trends and fads, with the finished product of a painting or a mix being their interpretation of the world around them.
First conceptualised by Jeremy Hollister of New York creative studio Plus et Plus and Jeff Staple of Staple Designs and The Reed Space, A Nice Set invites leading artists to customize a pair of blank slipmats with dimensions of the canvas as their only constraints.
The Artists ::
The selection of participating artists for A Nice Set is not based on any universal visual aesthetic, but rather on talent, uniqueness and a passion for music – in both the work and the lives of the chosen artists.
Since its debut in Hong Kong, A Nice Set has been on tour for the past three years, travelling from Tokyo to Spain, Paris, Australia and Singapore hitting Shanghai this September. In each city, a selection of local talent is chosen to be included in each exhibition alongside the original collective. The works of the local artists then travel to the next city of the tour, ever expanding global pool of customized designs.
Organizers ::
NeochaEDGE
NeochaEDGE is a full-service idea and execution house passionate about helping clients understand, engage, and co-create with Chinese creative communities, trendsetters, and youth culture opinion leaders.
NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.
NeochaEDGE is a product of Neocha.com, an online community and social network that empowers Chinese creatives to promote their work, collaborate with other creatives, and engage with fans.
Jellymon
Jellymon / JMGS is a multi-discipline design studio that creates Artwork, Toys, Fashion, Lifestyle products, Branding, Creative Direction. Jellymon was set up by Lin Lin and Sam Jacobs. The pair met at Chelsea School of Art in 2002 and have been working together ever since. Jellymon is about art and products with a fun and thoughtful twist. JMGS works closely with brands and advertising agencies. The projects we work on are very wide ranging but most focus mainly on the Youth Market.
Sponsors ::
Aerial7
Aerial7 was founded in 2008 based on the idea that great sound can be combined with awesome, eye-catching design. Our headphones are influenced by our devotion to art, streetwear, action sports, and DJ culture. They deliver unsurpassed audio quality in models that are as much a statement of individualism as they are a practical necessity.
Vedett
Vedett is a premium Belgian beer brand with a somewhat different attitude; taking itself not too serious (except when it comes to quality, then we’re damn serious!), a bit quirky, modest, not telling you what to do or how to behave.
:: I met up with Nial O’Connor today, a Shanghai-based artist who I’ve written about before on 56minus1 and have had the privileged of working with on a video production. While chatting, I learned of some stencil experiments he did in Shanghai with his comic character Jing Jing. The below photographs capture this work; taken last year in the pre-demolition abandoned neighborhood at the corner of Shimen Yi Rd. and Weihai Rd (just across the street from the Four Seasons hotel). That same neighborhood has since been leveled and is now being prepared for high-rise development. In the coming weeks I’ll be documenting more of Nial’s stencil work in Shanghai – watch this space. // AjS
:: the lovely and formidable Mrs. Jenny Zhu recently interviewed me about the Chinese creative community, emerging youth culture, and social media in China. Check it out on her blog. Please pardon the pink // AjS
:: art+shanghai has an exhibition now through June 21st titled Fold 1: Unifying Art + Design that features a 56minus1 favorite, Nial O’Connor (who I’ve posted about before here, here, and here). Nial recently told me that one of the images he created for the exhibition “is of Little Red Riding Hood playing ping pong against an elephant-riding mythical Buddhist character – it was a lot of fun to make.”
According to art+shanghai, the Fold 1 group exhibition explores the intricacies of art and design as a partnership; it is an equal cooperation on every level from the initial sharing of ideas to negotiating changes and making decisions about possible outcomes. Don’t miss it. // AjS
:: this past weekend I attended the MIDI music festival in Zhenjiang (Jiangsu Province), China. Below is a slideshow of snaps I took of graffiti pieces / tags / throw-ups that lined the inside wall of the venue (just across the street from the west gate of Jiangsu University). These were all painted specifically for the festival (and are probably gone by now), so they are not exactly organic. Nevertheless though, some are quite good. Enjoy. // AjS
:: over the past couple of years the online video space in China has gone through many changes. Several domestic video sharing sites (VSS) have changed focus / strategy, gone out of business, or were forced to shut down in one of the government anti-”filth” campaigns. The big players, which currently include Tudou, Youku, 6 Rooms, Ku6 and 56, have been able to persevere. Nothing new or interesting there. Baidu has a handy listing of ALL the major players in the online video biz.
Slightly more noteworthy are the ongoing efforts by general online portals to beef up their video capabilities and offerings. Sina and Sohu videos harness the reach of those portals’ blogging platforms to promote videos and have tools for seamless integration with other user-generated content. See also Netease and QQ. Additionally, these portal seem to be slightly more lax in how they filter copyrighted material than the VSS and other more video-focused platforms.
Now, to the interesting stuff! The recent growth of the online video space in China has driven significant diversification / niche-ification. A world of sites and sub-sites have popped up in China to cater to specific themes, or to support and curate specific types of user generated video content. Below is a snapshot of how this is playing out on the Chinese Internet.
“paike” citizen journalism ::
User-generated videos tend to be divided into a number of different categories on major video hosts. “Paike” (拍客) refers to content that can largely be described as “citizen journalism.” Ku6 has a Paike channel oriented toward netizens who want to report on things in society – subtopics are “news,” “charity and relief,” and “events,” An official post from October 2008 laid out the intent of the channel, which follows the motto “Everyone can be a good journalist.” A BBS forum has been set up to let netizens discuss each other’s reporting. Sina also has a Paike channel that is slightly less idealistic: subtopics include “news,” “women,” “weird news,” and in a nod to online culture, a “jiong” net-speak sub-topic called “strange people and things” (囧人囧事). The videos themselves are often entirely netizen-shot and edited: one Sina Paike video is a classic case of a netizen practicing journalism by pointing a camera out an apartment window to capture a grandfather kicking and beating his four-year-old granddaughter. And one Ku6 Paike reporter shot a short about a man who was locked indoors for eight years by his mother. Often, however, these videos are repurposed footage set to background music, although the result still tends to reflect or comment on contemporary society in an original, user-generated way, as in this Sina video about Zhao Benshan’s expensive cars.
games recordings ::
17173.com, a major gaming portal, has an entire sub-site devoted to videos about video games. Some of these are promotional videos released by game companies, but others are in-game / live-game recordings made by players themselves. A variety of tools exist to allow gamers to record their gameplay — missions, speed runs, and impressive fights — so they can share it with the world outside. 17173 has videos related to a wide array of popular online, single-player, and platform games. The sub-site also has a BBS, which features the slogan “I can be the director of my own game” (我的游戏我导演) and claims to be “the country’s only specialty forum devoted to game video production.” Commenters share software suggestions, techniques, and works-in-progress. WOW Movies, associated with the Shanghai College of Interactive Digital Art (CIA), is another gaming video website whose focus is limited to the World of Warcraft universe. Videos are categorized by character class, game version, and activity: the PK (player vs. player, or head-to-head) board is particularly active. Videos are available for download through a normal web browser (for visitors), high-speed tools (for members), and BitTorrent; online viewing is supported but uses embedded videos that have been uploaded to other video hosts such as Youku (example).
niche art ::
Some Web sites geared toward creative types offer video services that are a little more refined than cell phone captured clips of cat antics. ArtIntern (艺术国际) is an artist-oriented community that features a video channel. Videos include artist interviews, art news, and video anthologies of visual arts, as well as original video compositions mostly produced by Chinese art students. Neocha.com, a social networking site for Chinese creatives (musicians, photographers, designers, digital artists, etc.) and has a small, approval-based only video channel for original creative productions. The site’s video channel has a collection of well-crafted videos including mixed animation and jam sessions. More on the pop side of things is Bobig, a community of net-lit writers and comics artists that has a sub-section devoted to “cell phone animation” (手机动漫), which are original movies and Flash reinterpretations of other popular videos, suitable for viewing on small-screen hand-held devices.
music ::
Professional music videos (both mainstream and indie) can be found all over China’s major VSS; also served up on these sites is concert videos and bootlegs (see Youku). Music-specific websites like 9sky have channels for music videos. More specialized sites exist as well: DMC163 provides DJs / electronic musicians with tunes at a variety of “beats per minute,” information about equipment, and a whole bunch of videos of DJs in action. It’s a curated collection of videos of foreign and Chinese DJs hosted on other video sites. Another sort of curated music collection is housed on Increep, an aspiring rock-oriented SNS. The video subsite has a fairly large collection of bootleg videos of live music performances, mostly Chinese and international rock. It’s something of a false front, because only a few users seem to be contributing video content or editing the rock wiki, but it does demonstrate that even tiny niche Web sites can easily take advantage of video streaming: Increep uses the BokeCC plugin service to seamlessly outsource its video hosting needs.
original creative shorts / films ::
Another category of user-generated video content is “original work” (原创). Creative Tube is a website devoted to original short films. These include live-action DV shorts and animation and are divided into various categories and rankings. There are some fairly captivating images in these videos, like transformers rampaging through Beijing. Creative Tube and its parent, Asia Media Entertainment Ltd, recently sponsored a contest for original Chinese shorts in concert with major video hosts like Ku6, 56, and Sina, as well as smaller “creative video” hosts like Aeeboo, which contains original animation like “Rabbit Martial Arts” and live-action shorts like “Remembering our university days”. Neocha has artsy original videos as well, ranging from dramatic shorts like this video by “yhoney” of a young woman dealing with a difficult emotional situation, to more eclectic fare like a graphically enhanced video created by user Yufei. Traveling on Subway Line 8 from Sihui station in Beijing, yufei filmed a journey of tunnels, buildings and lampposts, mirrored horizontally, monochromed, and rendered into a surreal landscape.
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
:: I randomly came across this photograph on my computer and I have no idea how it got there or whose work it is, but it’s excellent. Can anyone help source / cite this? // AjS
[56minus1 update: This photograph is the work of performance artist Zhang Huan.]
