It features a suite of pulsating furniture that displays news - user-generated videoclips, pictures, stories, and blogs - fed from geographically dispersed sources. The cocoons glow and breathe slowly. Each tracks a specific keyword (such as "body", "emotive", "recombinant", "alienation", and "reality") and aggregates related local content created on the Internet by both amateurs and professionals.

The spherical shape of Newscocoons is constantly in flux, varying according to the particular constellation and intensity of information flowing from various sources.

Each cocoon features an autonomous microchip and a touch-screen through which it senses the presence of hovering visitors that triggers incoming audio and visual news.

"Everyday, we are inundated with news coming from all angles. News emerges from the most unexpected places, in various multimedia formats, and at unpredictable times in an increasingly bottom-up, decentralized fashion, such as blogs, video stories, and picture books," explains Jeffrey Huang who cooperated with Muriel Waldvogel to create the artwork.

To add even further to the visitors' experience, Dutch designer Lars Spuybroek and his studio NOX have created an interface between a contemporary art form and the classical layout of the 45-year-old museum that is somehow reminiscent of the Dunhuang Grottoes facade. Viewers in certain exhibition halls are required to hike up steep slopes before they can sit and approach the media works on show.

Spuybroek and sound artist Edwin van de Heide have created a special installation in the main entrance to the museum where complex sound and architectural structures intertwine.

Passing and pausing visitors hear this basin of sounds juxtaposed with futuristic structures as they enter. Some look up or even lie down to listen. Others, obviously puzzled, use their fingers to block out the strange noise as they pass by.

"New media art is still a young aspect of the Chinese art scene. Not many Chinese artists have engaged in this field," Wu Meichun, a media researcher from Hangzhou, points out at a seminar at the museum. "And it is natural that the average audience should take time to enjoy it."

Most universities in China have either started courses on or acknowledged digital art or media art, according to Wu.

But in most cases, "video art and animation are synonymous with new media art. And most people doing new media art are mainly trained in visual arts removed from scientific and technological skills," Fan Di'an confirms.

With regards to overseas artists, however, "their works are often, if not always, the fruit of cross-disciplinary, collaborative endeavors. Their creative teams may include visual artists but also architects, computer specialists and experts from other fields," Fan explains.

"China's new media art is emerging. But it has a long way to go before it reaches maturity," Fan says.

(China Daily June 17, 2008)