World-Expo City

Shanghai is in the process of becoming the Asian New York, at the heart of the continent. It is this urbanisation process, emerging in a city with no end and no limits, that is being discussed for 2010. Consequently, what is being prepared at Shanghai is not simply an immaterial bridge between a universal-type event and a planetary dimension. Similarly, the theme of the contemporary city is coming increasingly to the fore in exhibitions dedicated to the electronic arts, as at the forthcoming international ISEA gathering, to be held at San Jose in 2006. Some of these planned interactions between urban evolution and current techno-scientific developments constitute the linkage between today's artistic mutations.

Abstract

This dimension is part of the consciousness of "the planet's thinking layer" that was defined by Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit scientist who was exiled to China over a century ago. The internet is sometimes thought to be the incarnation of his "noosphere". Since then, the conquest of space has definitely changed our way of seeing and inhabiting the universe. So, though the idea of linking several continents is today a reality thanks to communication systems and the internet, it is no easy matter applying this to an artistic creation. A year ago, our AIT (Architecture, Image, Technology/2002, 2003, 2004) triptych in the heart of Paris was an attempt at imagining the basic requirements for a project involving several continents, between the cities of Paris and Los Angeles. Why not London, too (see our text from Scenography to Planetary Network for urban screens)? However, with a major partner such as China Mobile for Shanghai 2010, it is also possible to imagine how such an event would offer 50 million visitors from all over the world an orchestrated representation of an urban scene in a state of immaterial flux, that would travel through the fabric of the city, out to the entire planet.

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