Exhibition “Next Nature” – NNN (Next Nature Network)

Works of NNN (Next Nature Network)

Exhibition Director: Bi Dasong
Academic Director: Feng Feng
Curator: Selena Yang
Coordinator: Xie Anyu
Assistant curators: Li Kechun, Meng Xiangyuan
Exhibition period: 2 Nov 2019 – 9 Feb 2020
Venue: OCT Art and Design Museum
Address: 9009-1 Shennan Blvd. Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China
Co-organizer：Oooit Art, Shanghai DuoXi Culture
Support：OCT Group，Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Guangzhou
Acknowlegement：InterContinental Shenzhen

In 2018, big data is being generated and counterproductive to our lives by updated and iterative technologies. Genetically modified babies come with expectations for the unknown world and are manipulated by known technologies. The evolution of artificial intelligence robots is proceeding at a speed unimaginable by human beings. The boundary of human perception, vision of imagination, aesthetic judgment and ethics are being constantly challenged. In the future, will human beings’ relationships with others, with machines, with themselves change? Where are the limits of human and machine perception?  The earth’s energy is limited, and people need to constantly consume food, water and other resources from nature. Will the resources be exhausted one day? If we cannot reverse the development trend of human civilization, can we find an alternative? What will nature be like in the future, or perhaps it’s time for a new definition of nature?

In the exhibition Next Nature, we present the result of the experiment and research from NNN (Next Nature Network). NNN is an international research, design and development (R&D&D) network that stimulates discussion of the changing relationship between man, nature, and technology through multidisciplinary projects, publications, and activities. NNN’s research model, collaborative approach, and working methods embody the typical Dutch interdisciplinary collaboration system, and represents the world’s leading and trend-oriented interdisciplinary Innovative laboratory model with subjects involving art, design, new media, technology, and biotechnology. This kind of simulation and participation in the future is very experimental and renovative. It represents the responsibility of artists, designers, scientists, etc., and also conveys this responsibility to a larger audience, thereby achieving the social practice of the work itself.

This is an experiential exhibition about the future. Around the theme of the next nature, NNN’s works bring audience into an open proposition: in the virtual future world, audience will use VR glasses to understand the four possible directions of the future world and make their own choices: are you willing to live in the Garden of Eden, Modernist Dream, Techno Favela, or Hypernatural resorts in the future? Will you be willing to work with robots in Hubot future career tests? Will the robot replace us or help us? In the Meat the Future exhibition unit, you will find that lab-grown meat is no longer far away from us. Audience can even enter the nano-supermarket and see the design objects that will affect our lives in the near future. The audience can taste the taste of the six future ice creams. The exhibition encourages the active participation and interaction of the audience through different medias such as interactive VR virtual reality, and aims to stimulate the audience’s thinking about the present and the future from different angles, and actively explore how we design, build and live in the next nature. At the same time, the continuation of this research is that the choice of the audience is to some extent representing our future trends, because the future of mankind is not determined by one technology or a few characters, but is precisely shaped by the by all human as a whole and the technological interactions that represent human civilization. What we have to do today is to face the irreversible future and walk into the Next Nature.

NNN is a collaborative group of artists, designers, architects, biologists, ecologists, scientists, economists and so on. It was set up by famous artist and philosopher Koert van Mensvoort. Team include managing director Tim Hoogesteger, chief designer Hendrik-Jan Grievink etc. Members include: Dave Hakkens, ECO 2016 award winner; Studio Drift, a renowned Dutch artist and designer group who uses domains and interactive installations to study the relationship between nature, technology and humans; Rachel Armstrong, the experimental architect, etc. Spokesmen for the platform include Dutch space astronaut Andre Kuipers, philosopher and anthropologist Jos de Mul, biologist Mark Post etc.