Visitors to Shanghai's newest museum will find themselves part of the exhibition mounted to celebrate its opening.

"ElectroScape" is the name of the opening exhibition for the Zendai Museum of Modern Art and it launches the city's first private museum dedicated to contemporary art.

Sponsored and managed by a local property company, the museum aims to promote the bizarre or the weird but always avant-garde artworks to the general public.

Wonil Rhee, the curator of the exhibition, has invited some 26 artists from nine countries to be part of the opening show. They include Anthony Hong from South Korea, Beat Brogel and Philippe Zimmermann from Switzerland and Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau from France.

"We are now living in two realities - physical reality and Net reality," Rhee says. "We see real trees and landscapes but more often we see 'imaged' trees. Our beliefs about what is 'the truth' become stronger with Net reality than with physical reality."

"Chinese Garden," a concept filled with Oriental philosophy about harmony with nature and a place to soothe the spirit, is reinterpreted in the show.

Upon entering the exhibition hall on the first floor, visitors encounter a bamboo forest, fish pond and leaves moving under raindrops.

Interactive butterflies guide visitors on the second floor to a "watchtower" looking down onto digital landscapes and pavilions.

The space on the third floor is divided into separate rooms which reminds one of the private rooms in pavilion.

The trees and leaves have been reillustrated by the artists. From digital prints to interactive trees, they show concern about the intimate dialogue between man and nature.

The installation deals with the principles of virtual plant growth and the real-time modification of the three-dimensional plants in the space of a 3D graphic computer.

When visitors touch the real plants or move their hands towards them, they are able to influence and control, in real time, the virtual growth which is simultaneously displayed on the video screen in front of them. Naturally, they also become part of the artwork.

Viewers are able to decide how the interaction is conducted and how the growth will be reflected on the screen.

"It's quite difficult for ordinary people to accept contemporary art as a special art genre in China," says Shen Qibin, director of the Zendai Museum of Modern Art. "This should be a step-by-step process. But how to attract their interest is vital at the very beginning."

At "ElectroScape," the theme is more related to nature and imagination. The familiar sarcastic cultural symbols are gone. Instead, what one sees is more like an appealing fantasy world.

For example, "Landscape Paintings" created by Romy Achituv are a series of installations in which composite physical portions of the environment combine with computer-generated dynamic and interactive patterns. The projection light sculpts the natural and man-made landscape by emphasizing or blurring the shapes the objects are projected on.

"Text Rain," another interactive installation, tries to blur the boundaries between physical and virtual space. Viewers can play with the falling text of a poem which responds to their motion - individual characters may be caught, lifted and released to fall again.

If the participants accumulate enough letters along their outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark objects, the letters assemble to form words or phrase fragments. The text of the poem may be gradually reconstructed through the active and collaborative participation of the visitors.

Another poetic installation, "Reflection -- Pond," discusses meditation and lyricism. It centers around an ordinary chair and bucket. The chair symbolizes a place for rest and peace. A slide projector is placed on the chair and an image is projected on the water in the bucket. The slide is of a drawing in the shape of a tree without leaves.

At the bottom of the bucket, there is a convex mirror. A jar is hung from the ceiling and drops water at spaced intervals to disturb the image in the reflection. The pail plays the role of the palette in painting by mixing the light with the leaves to create new shapes. And the ripples from the waterdrop interrupt the original reflection.

"I hope this exhibition would bring out the subtle vibrations underlying 'tranquil' contemplation, like the way Chinese ancestors took breath from nature to enjoy and meditate in their times," Rhee says.

(Shanghai Daily July 13, 2005)