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01 Dec 2011
A digital animation as long as a soccer field breathes life into one of China’s most famous paintings. MATTHEW JONES takes in the spectacle.
What if we could catch up on mediaeval gossip with Mona Lisa? Or listen in on conversations that took place during The Last Supper? Interacting with great art is no longer the realm of science fiction, as visitors to A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty as Living Art will find out.
The exhibition, which takes place from December 7 in Singapore, has as its centrepiece a digital recreation of Zhang Zeduan’s Qing Ming Shang He Tu (Along the River During the Qingming Festival), an incomparable classical Chinese painting. The piece first mesmerised visitors to the Shanghai Expo in 2010. It has since embarked on a regional tour, taking in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan before arriving in Singapore.
Leading digital graphics company Crystal CG, headquartered in China, digitally captured 1,068 people, animals and objects from the original 5.28m scroll and set them in motion amid a 128m-long 12th century Chinese landscape. The multimedia collage begins with children playing outside their rural home. Nearby, a farmer returns from the fields accompanied by his animals. The air is filled with the sounds of the countryside and music from the era.
Further along the scroll, boats gently rock at their moorings and dozens of people mill around preparing for the upcoming Qingming Festival (a day when descendants pay respects to their ancestors). Next comes the imposing gate to the Song Dynasty capital Bianjing (now known as Kaifeng), which signals the start of the urban scenes of the scroll. In the city, merchants dash around attending to errands while officials are carried around in sedans. The frenetic atmosphere is tempered only by the sight of two men laboriously drawing water from the local well.
All this and more ensure that visitors to the exhibition will experience what it was like to be a resident of Bianjing in the 12th century. In total, the exhibition will cover 10,000 sq m, possibly making it Singapore’s biggest ever art show.
A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty as Living Art will be held at the Singapore Expo Convention and Exhibition Centre until February 6.
amovingmasterpiece.com
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