Abstract

This practice-led research project includes the delivery of a paper and the presentation of video art. Digital visualisation technology is used to recreate Chinese traditional landscape art within the new genre of the video painting. The concept of multi-perspective and the endless scroll are explored through digital animation, compositing, virtual camera, depths and particle systems creating a crossover of Western and Asian aesthetics – to explore form, and questions digital visualisation practice that aims to represent realistic space. The creation of real or hyper-real space is one of the main objectives in film and 3D visualisation practice. Based on the Renaissance tradition, achieving the effect of realistic space by the employment of linear perspective is a major preoccupation of Western visual culture. In the construction of a virtual 3D space the Cartesian grid is used to reconstruct this geometrical perspective, whereas Eastern culture has a concept of using multiple vanishing points that within which the creation of a realistic space is not one of its aims. The Chinese artist inspects the world from unrestricted, shifting points of view and is essentially different from the strict and realistic western 'single perspective’. Emphasizing to some extent pictorial concepts and practical aspects of the Chinese painting process enables to distance and to take a fresh approach to Western film and digital visualisation practice.