Lingzheng Zhu: Mediating Nature: The Practice of Synthetic Media in the Contemporary Eastern Context

Supervisor: Professor François Penz

Research overview:

The research inquiries into the model of synthetic media for contemporary practices of immersive space in the Eastern context. Eastern art before the importation of perspective provides rich materials about synthetic media that cannot be reduced to opticality. Renaissance perspective, which subordinates nature to the vision of Man, is a condition for the arts of our time. The meeting of the two traditions takes place in the practices of immersive spaces in contemporary Eastern context. Presentation of moving images in real spaces as a distinctive medium provides a point of departure for studying the influence of this encounter and helps to understand the ideological effects produced by media synthesis with respect to its technological and instrumental base. The practices of teamLab articulate an anti-hierarchical notion of nature compared to that rendered by Western perspective, but they also deviate from the Eastern tradition in terms of the modern Western influence in their making of synthetic media. The contemporary model of synthetic media is further explored by practice-based experiments. Through the experiments and the case study of teamLab, this research aims to propose an architectural framework for mediating the traditional and contemporary cultures, reflecting on attitudes towards nature in the digital information age. 

Biography:

Lingzheng Zhu is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Architecture. He was trained as an architect and urban designer, specialising in place sense-making, environmental design and historical research. Before he came to Cambridge, Lingzheng practised in architectural design and place-making in China. He was a research assistant at LanD Studio, a Nanjing based think-tank for place-making. He received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in architectural design from Nanjing University, China.