Digitized urban life – Art exhibition analyzes man-city relationship

The art group Boredomresearch, created by artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, also unites the virtual and the material in an installation and proposes an unusual kind of slow communication.

Boredomresearch created the installation Real Snail Mail, which uses real live snails equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on their shells to deliver electronic messages.

Users of the service send a message via the Real Snail Mail website which is routed to the tank to await collection by a snail agent. As the sails wander around the tank, they come into range of a RFID reader, which assigns the email message to the RFID tag.

The tags are then physically carried around the tank by the snails until one of them passes close to a second reader. When this happens, the second reader forwards the message over the net in the usual way.

Other artists explore the physical environment, at times in a humorous manner.
Julian Oliver’s interactive artwork Arvertiser proposes an augmented reality that creates virtual add-ons to our known world.

Advertiser consists of a custom-made handheld binocular device and specially designed software used to recognize individual advertisements, each of which becomes a virtual canvas that can be viewed through the Artvertiser binoculars.

“Both Beijing and Berlin are political and cultural centers. With rapid urbanization, the ancient history of these two cities is facing both change and challenge,” the curator said.

Using digital devices, engineering tools and software, participating artists question, reinterpret, expand, visualize and explore the urban structure that surrounds them.

Stadt am Rande (At a City’s Edge) - New Media Art of transmediale, Berlin
Where: Today Art Museum, Building 4, Pingod Community, 32 Baiziwan Lu, Chaoyang District
When: August 16-28, daily, 10 am – 5 pm
Admission: 20 yuan, 10 yuan for students
Tel: 5876 0600