Beyond the terminal
Digital models
Variable
2021
In the future, as the web-based information society develops, advertising
will be increasingly removed from the physical world, and will be delivered
by big data to the calculated “terminal” of the customers with precision.
Over a period of time, the human race has created countless numbers of
advertising objects for consumption, and at some point in the future, these
advertising objects will all be vacant at the same time, becoming a scar-like
landscape in the middle of the city.
I turned back from the Cyber Migration to the real world and used virtual
reality modeling to create an "out-of-terminal” world, and trying to portray
the strange landscape outside the “terminal” when all the "information" is
absorbed by the “terminal”.
Since 2019, I have noticed that billboards in the city of Beijing have started to be devoid of
advertisements. I sought out some of the agencies that produced them, and some of
them said it was because there were purely no advertising pitches, while others said it was
because municipal planning required that no more advertisements could be posted here.
Instead of being removed, these advertising signs have been left there naked, a blunt
demonstration of the powerlessness of the industry.
I built a model of the city and left all the 'advertising sites' in the city vacant, for example by
making the advertising screens blue and the large billboards aluminium. Finally I exported
the city as a number of images and videos. The city is still being expanded and enriched,
and in the future, if I can wait for the day when all the billboards become useless, maybe I
will perform a ridiculous "virtual physical" advertising for rent.