Along with continuous upgrade of consumption, commercial space is not only a venue for shopping consumption, it is more of a space for public social intercourse in urban city. When consumers gradually get tired of the stereotyped planning of business activities, the method on how to build a commercial space which has more diversifications and experiential sensation and “facilitate consumers to prefer to live in real space” becomes another proposition of business innovation.
In the evening of April 7, 2017, MixC World held Product Launch Conference and it was officially announced to be put into business on September 27, 2017. What exactly is this business project?
MixC World is a business project which represents the thoughts of CR Land on urban humanistic life. It is positioned to be “roaming-style urban creation space”. The design of Block & MALL creates brand-new shopping experience, plans to have four major characteristic business formats including international fashion, characteristic catering, Kids’ World and Humanistic Life. It will become a place imbued with experiential feelings for internationalized social intercourse, consumption, leisure and creation.
MixC World sketches use artistic drawing to intuitively convey artistic and humanistic atmosphere of the project to Shenzhen Citizens.How to facilitate the masses to have a preliminary knowledge of MixC World before the launch of Release Conference? It is a creativity proposition of KAI.As a matter of fact, everyone has wonderful expectation and imagination on life. The emergence of new commercial space is bound to bring more possibilities to urban life. KAI comes back to the original intention on planning the product MixC World.
"We hope that MixC World is not only a business center, but a destination that can create plentiful scenes of life in urban cities. All people can find what they are interested in here, they come here not only to make consumption, but also try to create the life belonging to themselves here.”
On the occasion of upcoming New Year in 2017, KAI determined to solicit Shenzhen citizens’ images of life itself and finally selected 100 genuine images of life itself. It utilizes these images to sketch the contours of urban life state of Shenzhen in the future. All these wonderful possibilities ultimately point to the answer that all of them are possibly realized in MixC World in the future.
How to present these images of life itself?
We chose the method of art intervention and invited contemporary artist Zhang Yinan coming from Shanghai. Yinan once used social media to solicit strangers’ portraits to complete IPAD-based creation and agglomerate other people’s life stories. Moreover he also had held “500 People’s Portraits Program” Exhibition.
Yinan once used IPAD new media to solicit 500 strangers’ portraits to complete IPAD-based creation and sketched portraits for 500 participants that he had never met before based on their self-narrated experience and the photo provided by them.
The masses’ participation is the key to Zhang Yinan’s artistic creation. Thus, the cooperation begins to happen. The artist takes the masses’ creative ideas and individuals’ portraits as basis to create works, forms Shenzhen people’s 100 varieties of humanistic ideal-life models related to family, love or career etc. These portrait works are loaded with people’s wonderful expectations on life in the future and they finally exhibit Shenzhen people’s longings on dreams and fantasies to the public in the form of exhibition.
In order to facilitate the masses to explicitly understand contents of the program, we name the project by means of combining project and contents. An urban-level humanistic public art program —— “MixC World 100 Images of Life Itself Art Program” came into being.
When we received the brief from the client, Product Release Conference was merely three months away. Moreover, it was indeed a festive season that there existed New Year's Day and Lunar Spring Festival within the upcoming three months. How to assist the artist to enter the ideal creation state within the shortest time? How to control the creation level of contents? Do we have sufficient time to execute production? All of them are the practical challenges confronted by us.
KAI divides art planning into three sections, including “Recruitment, Creation and Curation”.
We need to compete two sign-up procedures at the scene of recruitment: Images of Life Itself (completed by means of filling in questionnaire in folder); Portrait collection (completed by means of independent space & automatic photographic device).
Photography-experience space design
The concept of vintage-style camera and shade cloth uses ceremonial sense of design experience brought by semi-independent space and long narrow corridor, uses color and light to create internal and external contrast and finally internally highlights the gallery-like sensation.
Core experience-software development
The photography module equipment within the space uses Android one-touch tablet PC. Experiencers are invited to get involved at fixed place to participate in taking photos. With combination of count-down camera shooting based on face recognition technology, the photo are taken with automatically added color-modulation filter. The photos are uploaded to cloud storage server via Internet and they are finally printed and manufactured to be art participation certificates bearing a serial number. These certificates are taken as commemorative gifts for participating in Art Program.
Participants walked in the exhibition gallery and left their Shenzhen expressions belonging to themselves captured in camera lens.
Each participant will get an individually numbered art participation certificate
The finally created scene of offline recruitment activity: Three exhibition sites, a duration of 7 days and over 2,000 participants.
Artist Zhang Yinan chose 100 people’s photos from over 2,000 participants’ uploaded photos to create artistic portraits. 100 people coming from all walks of life are of different ages ranging from the generation after 60s to young age. Yinan acquired the multi-perspective knowledge and imagination on every participant based on the solicited photos, the filled-in questionnaire and imagination on life in the future. Through creation of artistic portraits, 100 people’s imagination perspectives on life in the future are condensed into Shenzhen citizens’ expectations on life.
What are created in the finally exhibited 100 IPAD Portrait Works are not merely 100 kinds of life stories
What is exhibited in the finally created exhibition is people’s participation and their expectations on life. In order to convey these imaginations and expectations to the public in a better way, which concrete presentation method should be adopted by the exhibition?
We chose to arrange the first exhibition at the scene of Project Release Conference of MixC World.
The continuous upgrade of a city itself is all urban people’s joint creation. In order to facilitate more people to know the attribute of project, we chose the space which can generate close linkage with consumers in the future, finally decided three exhibition sites including Shenzhen MixC, CR Land Building E and Shenzhen Bay Sports Center and subsequently formed an itinerant exhibition.
The role of the artist in the exhibition is weakened, and each visitor is more likely to stride over the recognition of author’s identity, thus paying more attention to the content itself.
The exhibition preface expounds the concept of exhibition. The possibility of various wonderful lifestyles invariably focuses on the proposition of city, people and life, while exhibition is not the only answer. Over 2,000 participants’ heart-touching moments were recorded on the photo wall. All IPAD Portrait Works share imaginations on wonderful life and prospects on urban future. Several visitors even found their own portraits in Portrait Works and they also took photos with their own portraits.
We customized gifts for one hundred participants based on the artist’s creation: 100 People’s Portraits Commemorative Album and Portrait Works (glass utensil & gift box & gift bag) present brand-new experience.
The present Public Art Program arose extensive participation and discussions from all walks of life at preliminary recruitment stage through linkage with various we-media.
We hold the view that people's inspiration for life exploration is intangibly created when people interact with each other in a more natural and more interesting way. It is our original intention to plan this Art Program - facilitating Shenzhen citizens to experience humanistic care of MixC World in advance.
Most of the current art exhibitions are accompanied by the artist's thinking and close attention on specific issues. The art creation like this is often in the initial state of questioning. The Art Program takes Shenzhen people’s image of life itself as creation materials and ultimate answer, sets no limit to all people, facilitates all people could have the opportunity to participate in artistic activities so as to promote the art publization. It places art in the environment that the public can participate in and it doesn’t merely show artists’ demeanor from the pure elite’s perspective. It is exactly the uniqueness of the present Art Program.
As a responsible planning company, we also plan the transmission matrix of the MixC World project based on the Art Program. For more information, people who are interested in this can search keyword "MixC World" via WeChat.
