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.