The artistic group named “linear city under investigation” was founded in 1997. It focuses its interest on issues such as “the virtual city of text and data” and other correlative ones. Among the group, artist Ni Weihua was once engaged in conception art of linguistic disparity, while Wang Jiahao was studying in the architecture department of Tong Ji University.
The present network production “linear city——the utilization of art” is developed from another piece of work produced by Ni Weihua and Wang Jiahao , the “linear city under investigation” group in 1997. They divided the map of Shanghai into 20 pieces, each of which was numbered according to its sequence. Then they mixed all the 20 pieces of map up and ranged them again into a long line. Obviously, Ni and Wang transmitted the conception of linear city by means of photos, devices and performance. During the “linear” process, the conception of area boundary is defined according to metropolitan elements, while not vice versa. Ni and Wang told people by art the new acknowledgement mode of life in a city of text and data. In an era of internet, to exhibit a city is to show not the traditional map representing an authentic city, but the menu in a PC screen. Thus, the text of city becomes parts and factors to be selected into database for dynamic array. It makes architecture, areas, transportation and communication in a city appear in the screen as a virtual world. When parts of the map of Shanghai is transformed into a PC menu, the conception and extent of the city can be immediately constituted at a personal click.
The group “linear city under investigation” concentrates its methods mainly on internet, aided by other ones. In March, 1999, Ni Weihua and Wang Jiahao finished a piece of work named “Act, sex and warning” in the form of internet affair. They picked up from the net paragraphs of “Child Online Protection Act” signed by Bill Clinton and placed them together with Warnings from representative erotic websites as printed files from PC. At the exhibition, a computer connected to Internet make possible for the audience click on all kinds of websites (including erotic ones). When it came to those erotic ones, the “warning pages” turned out to let the audience themselves to choose “in” or “out”. The whole process made possible the contradiction of “viewing demand” and “viewing limitation”. This work reflects the transformation of the conception of city in an online era by means of timely review over internet. When it goes to a concrete issue, art can get right down to the point. For example, it shows the different definitions of legislation and prosecution between net and realistic life. Thus exposes the invalidity of online prosecution and extents the boundary of the conception of “linear”——it means uncontrollableness and all possibilities.
Our life style would be something like flowing on the net did Internet help constitute a virtual one. And all the elements of the flowed city are also continuously flowing, according to what Ni and Wang tell us through their work. They established a website concentrated on a serious of advertisements entitled “development is essential”. In the same year 1999, Ni Weihua and Wang Jiahao photographed in Shanghai streets a serious of pictures of signboards with the slogan “development is essential” on them. Ni and Wang emphasize on the great influence the buzzword, which is the most popular one since the 90’s, exerted on the city construction and public. Though the slogan “development is essential”, the metaphor of our time is flowing on the internet, the previous geographical location and regional boundary turn into a kind of virtual online identification. So as they name it, linear city is a brand new metropolitan mode, which is developed from anything than can’t be estimated.
Shanghai 2000