The book is written in a way that any reader, regardless of his or her cultural or educational background, can understand. As personal computer and the internet become increasingly integrated into daily life, the lexicon of digital icons grows accordingly, and the symbolic language of Book from the Ground has been further updated, augmented, and complicated. The book is written in a way that any reader, regardless of his or her cultural or educational background, can understand. As Xu Bing has noted, the false characters “seem to upset intellectuals,” inspiring doubt in received systems of knowledge. The image thus transitions from a formless solid block of black, and through a complicated process arrives at formless solid block of white, a gesture with a strong Zen Buddhist implication. In 1620 Hui Su created a grid of 841 characters that can be read in any number of directions and combinations. A video titled ''Elementary Square Word Calligraphy Instruction,' is played on a monitor in the exhibition space, capturing the audiences' attention and inviting them to participate in the class. The book is written in a way that any reader, regardless of his or her cultural or educational background, can understand. They are characteristic of a certain style in Xu Bing’s early works, and they can be seen as a starting point in his artistic inspiration. “Tobacco Project” is an extended project that collects and organizes materials related to tobacco that cannot be easily defined as art or sociology. At the uppermost point of the installation, a flock of these ancient characters, in form of both bird and word, soar high into the rafters toward the upper windows of the space, as though attempting to break free of the words with which humans attempt to categorize and define them. As long as one lives within the contemporary society, he or she will be able to interpret the book. This was the last major artwork that the artist started before moving to the United States in 1990, where it was exhibited for the first time. This is the way things have been done over thousands of years in the Chinese history, so this must have had some influence on the formation of the character of Chinese people. The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting is a dictionary of signs for representing the myriad things of the world. … Users can enter words either in English or in Chinese, and the program will translate them into Xu Bing's lexicon of signs. Established notions of Chinese and English no longer retain, and perceptual norms are reset, marking the new potentials that challenge the foundation of cognition itself. Follow us on Twitter @AestheticaMag for the latest news in contemporary art and culture. Xu Bing 徐冰. set of 4. Viewing the reflection of the moon on a pool of water from their place on the branch of a tree, the monkeys decided to link their arms and tails together to touch what they thought was the real moon. Video, surveillance camera footage taken from public live-streaming websites. He also added a textbook, an instructional video, and a practice sheet just like those used in classroom settings. Xu Bing – A Book from the Sky (Tian Shu in the making), 1988 Xu Bing wanted to title this work ‘Nonsense Writing’ This iconic ink on paper art was earlier titled Mirror to Analyze the World: The Century’s Final Volume before adopting its current title. When reading Square Word Calligraphy, such feeling is joyfully resolved with the sudden revelation that the work does contain “real” text. Xu Bing has been undertaking his Book from the Ground project since 2003. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. A view from the outside only shows the surface. Print. Xu Bing is known for pushing political and social boundaries within his culture. China has long had a tradition that “calligraphy and painting have the same origins.” Xu Bing’s Landscript, landscape-in-script, transformed the visual images of landscapes to linguistic forms, inviting the viewer to reassess the particularity of Chinese culture hidden in landscape paintings and providing a unique way to “read a scene.”, Location: Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1999; Victoria and Albert Musum, London, 2001. The letters of an English word are slightly altered and arranged in a square word format so that the word takes on the ostensible form of a Chinese character, yet remains legible to the English reader. A Book from the Sky (simplified Chinese: 天书; traditional Chinese: 天書; pinyin: Tiānshū) is the title of a book produced by Chinese artist Xu Bing in the style of fine editions from the Song and Ming dynasties, but filled entirely with meaningless glyphs designed to resemble traditional Chinese characters. They express a certain nostalgia for his time in the countryside when he was working in the arts community there, for the pure and simple village life. Das 2002 fertig gestellte Book from the ground be… Eventually an image of a landscape emerges, reminiscent of East Asian painting. About the work. The creation of Xu Bing's Book from the Ground documented and described in text, images, and photographs. Finally the visitor is able to see something that would normally be kept hidden at an exhibtion. Xu Bing states: ''These two creatures, devoid of human consciousness, yet carrying on their bodies the marks of human civilization, engage in the most primal form of 'social intercourse.' The process taught me visual literacy beyond my traditional art education. When at last they touched the moon, it vanished in the ripples of the water. Kurita took inspiration from weather forecasts that use… Users can enter words either in English or in Chinese, and the program will translate them into Xu Bing's lexicon of signs. But I really like the Connect to Art project, because the work has utility. Essentially, New English Calligraphy is a fusion of written English and written Chinese. Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this work was created for the Museum's ''Project Series,'' a group of monumental banners designed by international artists to be displayed outside the entrance to the museum. The intention was both to observe the reaction of the pig towards the mannequin and to produce an absurd and random drama -- an intention that was realized when the pig reacted to the mannequin in an aggressively sexual manner. … While undergoing this process of estrangement and re-familiarization with one's written language, the audience is reminded that the sensation of distance between other systems of language and one's own is largely self-induced. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read. In 1990, Xu Bing decided to realize a longstanding vision: to “make rubbings of some massive natural object.” At the time, he had an idea: any textured object could be transferred onto a two-dimensional surface as a print. As long as one lives within the contemporary society, he or she will be able to interpret the book. He was part of the team working on NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode mobile Internet platform. Each link in the chain is a word for “monkey” in a different language (21 languages in total), including Hindi, Japanese, French, Spanish, Hebrew and English. Xu Bing is interested in reflecting on the problems and weaknesses of humanity by exploring the long and entangled relationship between humans and tobacco. Courtesy of Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art. With its prominent display above the museum entrance, the banner and its slogan served both as a motto for the museum and as a public airing of one of Mao Zedong's most fundamental views on art. Xu Bing is a Chinese-born artist who lived in the United States for eighteen years. It is only when we try to find out what is beneath the surface that we can discover the background, and everything becomes intertwined in the image. In 2012, he published Book from the Ground, an oppositional treatise from Book from the Sky (1987), instead of a book that nobody could read, Xu Bing created a book for everyone. With no human agency operating them, surveillance cameras produce fascinating footage round the clock. The absolute directness of this undertaking produces a result that is both unthinkable and worth thinking about. The Tiananmen square pro-democracy protests and the massacre of June 1989, led to the questioning of the avant-garde movement. The design of the carpet is similar in concept to Hui Su's Former Qin Dynasty creation the Xuan Ji Tu. For the Book fom the Ground installation, Xu Bing recreated his studio's working environment and brought some materials to the exhibition space, implying that this is a never-ending project in progress. Chinese people’s worldviews and concepts of freedom; the consequences of Chinese people’s flexibility, collectivism, face-saving mentality, moral stance that demands focus on communal interests, and worship of symbols and big names; the ability of Chinese culture to digest other cultures, and the Chinese culture of copying (“shanzhai”). This fanciful yet instructive tale reminds us that what we strive to achieve may in fact be an illusion. Carving out approximately four thousand wood blocks by hand, Xu Bing spent four years, from 1987 to 1991, making (in his own words) "something that said nothing".Book from the Sky's lengthy production process is also … Book from the Sky (1987) Made up of 4,000 hand-carved and printed characters, Book from the Sky remains Xu Bing's most iconic work to date. Everyone in China who has received basic education must, over the course of years, commit to memorize and then write and re-write thousands of characters, each character a drawing. Xu Bing has been undertaking his Book from the Ground project since 2003. This progression, from nothing to something to nothing again, anticipates the artist’s desire, stated later in his career, to “make something useless”—to push the medium of woodcutting, and the “usefulness” of figurative arts, into new territory. It implies the way that Chinese people see and approach things, and why China is the way it is today – developing at this breakneck speed but not in line with the Western value system. Tobacco is an object that permeates—it pervades all spaces, ends in ashes, and has many different connections with individuals and the world more broadly—in economics, culture, law, morality, faith, fashion, living space, personal interest, and more. 13(H) x 14(W) m each. Through the medium of widescreen animation, The Character of Characters describes the source of the unique character of Chinese people. The epithet was hurled at Xu Bing by viewers who found Book of the Sky incomprehensible. Front . The result is a readable story … Following his classic work Book from the Sky, the Chinese artist Xu Bing presents a new graphic novel one composed entirely of symbols and icons that are universally understood. Diese sind sämtlich mit Schriftzeichen bedruckt, die chinesischen Schriftzeichen täuschend ähnlich sehen, jedoch vom Künstler selbst erfunden wurden und die keine lesbare Bedeutung haben. But in fact the result was just the opposite: the pigs themselves were completely unfazed, and blithely ignoring their human onlookers pursued their lovemaking with great gusto. On the gallery floor Chinese characters in the “simplified style” script popularized during the Mao era are used to write out the dictionary definition for niao. Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. This animation is conceived as a study and imagination of a calligraphy masterpiece by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) in the collection of Yahoo’s founder, Mr. Zhiyuan Yang. For the first Singapore Biennale, Xu Bing created a prayer carpet for the Kwan-Im Temple, the largest Buddhist Temple in Singapore. Currently residing in Beijing, he used to serve as the vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. After much preparation, in May Xu Bing and some friends, students, and local residents set off for the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, where they spent a little less than a month making rubbings of three sides of a beacon tower and a portion of the wall itself. Later in the same year, he organized his personal views on printmaking and creative insights into an essay entitled “A New Exploration and Reconsideration of Pictorial Multiplicity.” In it, he wrote, “Multiple, prescribed impressions are the crucial element that differentiates printmaking from other fine arts, and it is only by following this line of inquiry that one can seek out printmaking’s essence.” This set of works represents an experiment in the artistic qualities that make prints unique. When the audience goes into the gallery, it is as if he or she enters a study space. The work simultaneously invites and denies the viewer’s desire to read the work. The result is a readable story without words, an account of twenty-four hours in the life of "Mr. Black," a typical urban white-collar worker. In response to his own Book from the Sky, a work dated 30 years earlier whose language is illegible to anyone, Book from the Ground is legible to all. And every time we interact with technology, exchange takes place on the level of the soul.Work Descriptions.Flight: Birds don’t like that we have used this mark to represent them.Growth: Chinese is fascinating in that drawing, painting and writing can be one and the same. Xu emblazoned his eye-catching red-and-yellow banner, measuring 36ft x 9ft, with the slogan ''ART FOR THE PEOPLE: Chairman Mao said'' inscribed in his own invented system of ''New English Calligraphy'' -- English words deconstructed but then re-configured into forms that mimic the square structure of Chinese characters. Xu Bing’s studio also made a character database software that corresponds to the language of the book. Thereby into the Western cultural sphere was written a brand new, Eastern art form. 50 × 66 cm. ''Wu'' in Chinese has various meanings, including both ''misunderstanding'' and ''enlightenment'' in the Chan (Zen) sense. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. It is the artist's belief that people must have their routine thinking attacked in this way. Medium: Digital VideoThree 30 second video art pieces created for the Nokia Connect to Art project. A book without words, recounting a day in the life of an office worker, told completely in the symbols, icons, and logos of modern life. As a next step, Xu altered the critical text by substituting the real names and art works with false names and illustrations of the found paintings. Signature. The artist first compiled symbols drawn from the public sphere and wrote a book using only these signs. As people attempt to recognize and write these words, some of the thinking patterns that have been ingrained in them since they learned to read are challenged. The artist first compiled symbols drawn from the public sphere and wrote a book using only these signs. Materials: Performance media installation with live animal / Live Pig, books, mannequin, wood blocks, ink. The Foolish Old Man Who Tried to Remove ... Book  from  the  Ground  -  Studio  Installation. Behind the walls of the exhibition space there is a maintenance space, with heating pipes and empty shelving. As they rise into the air, the characters “de-evolve” from the simplified system to standardized Chinese text and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph hasde upon a bird’s actual appearance. The work won the inaugural Artes Mundi Prize, the Wales International Visual Art Prize in 2004 and was later shown at various venues across the world. Buy The Book About Xu Bing's Book from the Ground Illustrated by Mathieu Borysevicz (ISBN: 9780262027427) from Amazon's Book Store. Xu Bing Book from the Ground: From • to • (front and back covers), 2012 Print on paper Each: 22.5 x 31 cm (set of 64) Book from the Ground was created with the intention to be read by people from various cultures and linguistic backgrounds without further translation. Landscript, as the title suggests, is “pictures” that Xu Bing intentionally made with “script.”  This project started when the artist went to the Himalayas in Nepal in 1999 and sketched “scenes” with Chinese characters. This animation seeks to reveal the relation between Chinese writing and cultural characteristics, the core and energy of Chinese culture, and its advantages and disadvantages for people to continue to build new modes of human civilization. I’ve wanted to make a film from surveillance footage since 2013, but I had no access to the necessary resources. Black,” a typical urban white-collar worker.Our protagonist's day begins with wake-up calls from a nearby bird and his … It thus serves as an intermediary form of communication and exchange between the two languages. The first emoji was created in 1998 in Japan by Shigetaka Kurita. There is a passageway between the showcases, allowing a view behind the scenes. By Bing Xu ( Author ) [ Book from the Ground: From Point to Point By Mar-2014 Hardcover | Bing Xu | ISBN: | Kostenloser Versand für alle Bücher mit Versand und Verkauf duch Amazon. Materials: seventeen-minute animated film. Since 2008, Bing has experimented with increasingly less traditional methods and materials of communication. His artwork “The Book from the Sky” was an arrangement of large pieces of paper, which appeared to be covered in Chinese calligraphy, but in fact were meaningless symbols. Sometimes they record images that are beyond logical understanding, captured in one mad, fleeting instant. In this installation Xu Bing uses dust that he collected from the streets of lower-Manhattan in the aftermath of September 11th. Installation view of Xu Bing: Book from the Ground, 2016. I believe that a core characteristic of Chinese painting is its schematized nature, which is reflected in classic literature, theatrical expression, and various methods of social production. Materials: Mixed-media installation; instructional video, model books, copybooks, ink, brushes, brush stands, blackboard. '', Medium: media/found oil paintings, falsified magazine article. For more information, visit www.cfcca.org.uk. The third of five children, he spent his childhood years growing up in Beijing, where his parents moved to work at Peking University when he was two years old. Exhibition history. The colorful, shimmering imagery of the installation imparts a magical, fairy-tale like quality. 31(L) x 6(W) m; Side part approx. Taipei. As long as one lives within the contemporary society, he or she will be able to interpret the book. Xu Bing has been undertaking his Book from the Ground project since 2003. The plainness, simplicity, and naivete of these works, made just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, are a stark contrast to the false, grandiose, empty forms of that era. It was rather the audience members who found themselves in an embarrassing and awkward position. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. To the artist, the process of caring for and working with the pigs constitutes ''a kind of ongoing sociological experiment, touching on myriad issues. The works will be as portable as the devices they are on; the art will permeate a limitless space. Image rights. Credits 1. The intention of this installation is to simulate a classroom-like setting modeled on adult literacy classes, in a gallery or museum space. Just before the event took place there was some concern that, once confronted with the unfamiliar cultural environment of the exhibition hall, the pigs would become too nervous to perform the crucial act. Supported by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. Indistint forms of plants and stones can be discerned through frosted glass. The creation of Xu Bing's Book from the Ground documented and described in text, images, and photographs. Ineffably silent, these cameras record incessantly. This animation seeks to reveal the relation between Chinese writing and cultural characteristics, the core and energy of Chinese culture, and its advantages and disadvantages for people to continue to build new modes of human civilization. Since 2015, surveillance cameras in China have been linked to the cloud database: countless surveillance recordings have been streamed online. For the immersive installation, the artist hard-carved over four thousand moveable type printing blocks. Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, “picture”) + moji (文字, “character”). Book from the Ground, 2012. It is an expression of Xu Bing’s long-standing vision of a universal language. Xu Bing. Its feasibility is based on the following principles: firstly, utilize free online services such as auction and sales hosting, money transfers, and even online teaching to achieve the lowest possible costs; secondly, benefit everyone involved in the project; thirdly, utilize regional economic discrepancies ($2.50 is a subway ride in New York, but it can plant ten trees in Kenya). Supported by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. By cutting, reorganizing, and printing motifs from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (1679), I created a handscroll version of the classic manual. Xu Bing has 14 books on Goodreads with 1149 ratings. 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