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The Light Junkie
As she took off in the old family car, Light is Magic, an old promo from General Motors came on the radio. She took it as a sign. “It will only get worse”, she knew. She had come to terms with it. So like light, she travelled in straight lines around the globe.
She was a nomad. Her ancestors had lived in the cold and the dark for generations, but this wandering soul made her kingdom where she pleased. Never satisfied, she set her sights on bigger, remoter cities seeking light.
Recently her destiny brought her here. She’ll not stop long.
She says there is nothing like dancing beneath the light, moulding shadows with contortions, feeling the pulses, exorcising the darkness out of sight. The power absorbed by the warmth of a bulb, the coldness of a neon light.
Underneath, she is just like you.
Shanghai makes you feel a small part inside a gran mechanism. Most times when you look at the bigger picture from specific perspectives, it all makes sense. The order is there. Citizens of this megacity cross and mix to create an impressive urban composition. Living in Shanghai means witnessing this awesome process.
As part of the inaugural exhibition, Expressions of my City, and thereafter in permanent display, The Grand Disorder Mechanism celebrated Lane Crawford's arrival in Shanghai and the beauty of coexisting visions of urban life.
In its ubiquity, type becomes invisible. Daily, we inhale characters as we do air. From billboards, emails, logos and newspapers. On business cards, toilet doors, t-shirts and milk cartons. Times New Roman, 黑体, Arial, Courier.
It would be impossible to picture a world without type. But how often do we stop and see what we’re reading, or notice how the expression of language is altered by placement and composition? Do we perceive the absence of a serif, or observe the critical space between an a and a b?
Take a closer look.
Urban Typography is an open call to collect letters concealed in the shape of real objects, aiming to identify the importance of font design, through the appreciation of their presence in our routines.
Once you start, there is no stopping, soon to realize that letters are all around us.
Occasionally one's skin can be changed to blend in and seem invisible against the surrounding environment. For this special occasion, SWFC signaled its physical and virtual appearance as it had never been done before.
Unmimetic Days appealed as a life event calling for both passive and active participation: as a light installation on the surface of the SWFC building graphic composition, but also present an interactive platform to create a magic moment blurring the line between what's real and what's virtual.
This interactive platform creates a magic moment blurring the line between what's real and what's virtual.
Blending architecture, digital and new media design and interactive installation Unmimetic Days offers a double layered experience: on the one hand, with the naked eye, a stylized light installation showing a new appearance of SWFC, an Anniversary celebration dynamic skin. On the other, an interactive creative enhancement of the real world environment that opens a view into a fantastic landscape.
This light interactive installation celebrated SWFC as the iconic feature of Shanghai's Contemporary skyline, highlighting its great presence with a site-specific installation of color kinetics.