“Original code” can be understood as source code or primitive code, but it bears huge differences. Although all of them share common platforms, the latter two highlight technological interactions and sharing in the globalized era and the advanced new DIY products and transmission generated thereby. By contrast, original code refers to a larger platform for ideological prototype experiment and social practice when humans enter the post-materialism era and reach the tipping point of saturated mental and physical production. “Original code platform” bears various similarities with the “creator sharing platform” of the Internet era. For example, both platforms are virtual and can gather all sorts of scholars, artists, and folk talents in an open space without costing too much. In the original code platform, advanced technology is demystified and art and design making do not have to rely on expensive devices; instead, people can make the best of affordable recycled parts together with free software and hardware to achieve their goals. However, the difference is that the original code platform is anti-commercialized, whose DIY intention is not for product production. This platform is a logical product when industrial and commercial civilization develops in post-materialism era. It is more like an ideological model experiment, whose participants include not only knowledgeable elites but also marginalized groups, such as the unemployed, the disabled, and the mentally ill. In addition, it is so pure that it is not like a work or product but an original motive of life prototype. That is why it is “original”. Indeed, original code is more inclusive and has a concept of wider range, which includes all content of the life prototype.
Original code is characterized by open community activities. Its community orientation and life prototype are more important than products, it overturns traditional industrial integration of technology and science, and its audience makes a greater contribution than the artist to the art. As a collective and anonymous creation of social empowerment, it challenges the uniqueness and originality of traditional creative content producer. German artist Joseph Beuys once advocated that “Everyone can be artists.” And original code is exactly of the same philosophy, suggesting that art can be extended to society and environment and that art creation is not confined to artists but every anonymous “big Other”.
Ni Weihua is a contemporary artist with experiment spirits and critical awareness of society. In the early 90s, Ni produced Red Boxes and Posters in his Continuously Spreading Event series. He dislocated the order of Chinese characters from a random paragraph on computer and printed them out for Red Boxes. When it comes to Posters, he juxtaposed posters whose disordered characters were processed on computer with traditional Chinese medicine flyers targeting at venereal disease. Although both were the same in form, the former signifier appeared mysteriously meaningful with meaningless characters against the stark contrast to the latter. In fact, those dislocated characters were super signifiers in meaningless condition, the original code for the prototype of people’s life and urban desires in commercial environment. In the mid-90s, the artist explored the boundary of art in Meishu (Art): A Legitimate Presence of Word and Its Objects, where he magnified and polished the Chinese characters for “art” that sanctified commercialism using pop art techniques. Since 1998, he has transformed his focus into cross-cultural art experiment via photography production. With his Key Words series such as Development and Harmony, and Landscape Wall series, the artist attached greater importance to the public aspect in a unique perspective.
Since 2018, Ni has initiated his outdoor action work, The Tracing series, highlighting debris landscapes in cities. The series strengthens the dignity and sacredness of the space of ruins via original codes that are without meaning-giving or intentional creation. This series is another experimental case of “art into society” in contemporary China.
All these pieces, be it ironic or sacred, display the basic characteristics of original code art. And Tracing is a typical example among those works where the art is applied in social practice. This series is also characterized by de-commercialization, de-merchandization, low cost, high efficiency, and sharing platform in the post-materialism era. It is futuristic and eternally extensive in essence.
As the creation of social empowerment, Tracing is also an original code of life semiotically. It is not graffiti, for it does not create meaning but follows and consolidates the symbol of debris itself. The series is the actions of photo-shooting for the symbols on the wall, including framing, reversal, and hardening. In the creation process, participants’ bodies, the “painting tool” in Ni’s eyes, are utilized as cameras.
For common people, artists’ uncommon creations are worth worshipping; while artists’ common daily life also accounts for part of the reason why these curious people worship.
Tracing is also the deconstruction and re-empowerment of “sacredness” in Ni’s art. People from all walks of life, though devoid of painting foundation, became as creative as Ni when they partook the creation of Tracing.
Tracing originated in the constant deconstruction of the artist’s own works, and the process is still ongoing. So far, participants of the Tracing series have reached 700 in total, and the latest Tracing 4.0 has developed into a non-artist creation mode. This series indeed deconstructs Ni’s creation and re-constructs the meaning of the space of debris for present and future development of cities. Instead of ruining urban debris and artistic fairy tales, the deconstructed Tracing displays a sense of divinity in debris. Thanks to the “tracing patches”, those walls became dignified and sublime. As German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach once said, “Sacredness increases when truths decrease and fantasies increase. Thus, the highest form of fantasy is the greatest sacredness.”
In addition, Tracing is a kind of topology with animate original code and dual topology of urban physical space and cultural time. Its charm lies in its deconstruction process, where a group of energetic young people in Shanghai share with the artist the excitement of jointly formulating an art philosophy.
Moreover, this series breaks people’s stereotype on urban ruins, which are not necessarily equal to the fading past. On the contrary, it becomes a special original code prototype by consolidating its own semiotic characteristics. With those “tracing patches”, the blackholes in cities, the special prototype gathers all sad memories, expectations for the future, people, and objects in present “synchronicity”. Although there is no “fixed presence”, as “presence” is the infinite extension from the past to the future, “presence” is open to the future. These concepts, which appear and develop naturally in social practice, are what interest all Tracing participants most. Such an experiment is also the most interesting part in this exhibition.