With traditional Chinese characters, the language is not only a support for the transmission of culture, but is somehow the culture itself, as it defined continuously an identity, a link between past and present. The digital language, programming, consists of 2 binary digits while the  Western alphabet is composed of 26 letters. The largest dictionary of the Chinese language identifies nearly 56 000 characters. What influence an old system, so rich that’s it’s impossible to totally apprehend it, may have for people who use it, especially in their perception of other cultures?

To answer this question, ActiveCreativeDesign chose to confront Traditional Chinese characters to contemporary art movements based on typographic issues: ASCII art and french movement “lettrisme”. The project « Jing », is a creation dedicated to “Alterity ”, which is the principle of exchanging his own perspective for that of the other. Because ActiveCreativeDesign is composed of French & Taiwanese artists, it is sensitized  about the way people look to each other. The project Jing simply tries to answer this question: ”what reflects me in the culture of the other?”

To address this question, ActiveCreativeDesign creates an installation comparing the two cultures. The project introduces two representations of the urban landscape, one cultural and historical (Paris) the other industrial and modern (Kaohsiung). The apparence of the two landscape is unified with a treatment derived from the ASCII art, but using Traditional Chinese characters. The interaction of the spectator, defined by two bright interactive guardrail, allows to modify the type of representation, rearranging the characters in a dynamic and abstract composition inherited from the french movement “lettriste”.

Active Creative Design designs its installations as immersive and scenic environments, whose stakes deals with the auditory and visual perception that the public have of them. The project “Jing” includes a number of technological challenges, both in programming and in the definition of interactivity.