Stroke by Stroke: Calligraphic Imagination in Contemporary Chinese Art and Emergent Media

一笔一笔：中国当代艺术与新兴媒体中的书法想象

• 批准号: AH/X012913/1
• 负责人: Panpan Yang
• 金额: $ 26.37万
• 依托单位: School of Oriental and African Studies
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX012913%2F1
• 关键词: Stroke; Calligraphic; Imagination; Contemporary; Chinese

The AHRC research project, titled 'Stroke by Stroke: Calligraphic Imagination in Contemporary Chinese Art and Emergent Media', aims to make sense of the perplexing permutations and ramifications of a distinct pattern of imagination: Chinese calligraphy in the transmedia context. In this project, Chinese calligraphy is reimagined in contemporary art, cinema, computer fonts, iPhone apps, virtual reality (VR) and cyberspace. Placing art historical writings on Chinese calligraphy in conversation with film history, media archaeology, platform studies, and digital humanities, this research sheds light on how cultural heritage is reinvented at moments of historical ruptures. More significantly, it questions what it means to conduct arts and humanities research in the digital world, taking into fullest consideration the ways in which both the history of art and the process of conducting arts and humanities research are increasingly mediated by media technologies.Chinese calligraphy is image and text at once. The image-and-text relation at the core of this research is pertinent to all scholars and museum professionals working with the visual arts. The project shows that the oscillations between image and text give birth to some of the most exciting experiments in the film industry, in the world of contemporary art, and in the realm of industrial design. At the point of convergence between image and text, the calligraphic imagination of this research inspires future creativity in different parts of the world. While calligraphy has always had a place in the historiography of Chinese art, it remains a marginalised, at times intimidating, subject within the English-language art historical scholarship. Most existing scholarship on Chinese calligraphy is narrated as a style history of celebrated masters of seal, clerical, regular, running, and cursive scripts, categorized and marked according to China's dynastic and political time. Transcending the 'masters and masterpieces' narrative and the tendency to privilege the premodern that dominates the studies of the history of Chinese calligraphy, this research charts an unwritten history in the modern and contemporary context in which the now-forgotten profession of calligraphers who wrote intertitles for Chinese silent films comes into view, and calligraphy re-emerges in the most unexpected hybrid forms in contemporary art. Situating Chinese calligraphy within the wider mediascape, this research questions how long-exposure photography, VR and cyber technologies transform our understanding of Chinese calligraphy today. It shifts attention to exhibition spaces, functions, and spectators/users, all of which an established style history of Chinese calligraphy has assiduously neglected. In doing so, it makes visible the minor, the marginalised, and the underrepresented in arts and humanities discourses. It also compels the arts and humanities field to update itself more to significant movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This original and cutting-edge research demands digital expression, methods, and presentation beyond traditional print publication. The Semantic Annotation Tool - a new, practical application comprising a set of digital tools - is used in this research to create samples of time-based annotations for specific areas of the motion picture frames, with a focus on calligraphy on-screen. Combining rigorous research with development and engagement activities (seasonal calligraphy practice sessions, public film screenings, art exhibitions, interactive websites, etc.), it offers a model for thinking about the methods, toolkits, and skills needed for doing digital art history and for disseminating findings to the general public. The research project will result in a monograph, a video essay, and onsite and virtual exhibitions that together testify to the potential and limitations of new hybrid publishing formats.

AHRC的研究项目名为“一笔接一笔：当代中国艺术和新兴媒体中的书法想象”，旨在理解一种独特的想象模式的令人困惑的排列和分支：跨媒体背景下的中国书法。在这个项目中，中国书法在当代艺术、电影、电脑字体、iPhone应用程序、虚拟现实（VR）和网络空间中被重新想象。将中国书法艺术史著作与电影史、媒体考古学、平台研究和数字人文学进行对话，这项研究揭示了文化遗产在历史断裂的时刻如何被重塑。更重要的是，它质疑在数字世界中进行艺术和人文研究意味着什么，充分考虑到艺术史和进行艺术和人文研究的过程越来越多地被媒体技术所介导。中国书法是图像和文本。本研究的核心是图像与文本的关系，这与所有从事视觉艺术工作的学者和博物馆专业人员有关。该项目表明，图像和文本之间的振荡催生了电影业、当代艺术界和工业设计领域中一些最令人兴奋的实验。在图像和文字的交汇点上，这项研究的书法想象力激发了世界各地未来的创造力。虽然书法在中国艺术史上一直占有一席之地，但在英语艺术史研究中，它仍然是一个边缘化的，有时令人生畏的主题。大多数关于中国书法的现有学术研究都被描述为一部著名的篆书、文书、楷书、行书和草书大师的风格史，并根据中国的朝代和政治时间进行分类和标记。本研究超越了“大师与杰作”的叙事方式，也超越了中国书法史研究中对前现代的偏爱，在现代和当代的语境中描绘了一段不成文的历史，在这段历史中，为中国无声电影写字幕的书法家这个现已被遗忘的职业出现了，而书法在当代艺术中以最意想不到的混合形式重新出现。将中国书法置于更广阔的媒体景观中，这项研究质疑长时间曝光的摄影，虚拟现实和网络技术改变了我们对中国书法的理解。它将注意力转移到展览空间、功能和观众/使用者，所有这些都是中国书法的既定风格史所刻意忽视的。在这样做的过程中，它使未成年人，边缘化，并在艺术和人文话语中代表性不足。它还迫使艺术和人文领域更新自己，以适应20世纪和21世纪的重大运动。这种原创和前沿的研究需要超越传统印刷出版物的数字表达，方法和演示。语义注释工具-一个新的，实际的应用程序，包括一套数字化工具-是在这项研究中使用的创建基于时间的注释的电影帧的特定区域的样本，重点是在屏幕上的书法。将严谨的研究与发展和参与活动相结合（季节性书法练习课程，公共电影放映，艺术展览，互动网站等），它提供了一个模式，思考的方法，工具包，和技能所需的做数字艺术史和传播的结果，以广大公众。该研究项目将产生一本专著，一个视频文章，现场和虚拟展览，共同证明了新的混合出版形式的潜力和局限性。