COSMOPOLIS MAKING OF - Media Art Installation by MoBen

Making of - COSMOPOLIS OVERWRITING tHE CITY - An interactive artistic and scientific installation on the major issues linked to the World's urbanisation Exhibited in Shanghai 2005 (Science Museum), ChongQing (3 Gorges Museum opening exhibition), Chengdu and Beijing, this 25m diameter interactive installation was one of the major art event of the French Year in China. The exhibition received more than 10 000 visitors/day in Shanghai Cosmopolis endeavours to examine urban realities through people’s eyes. It is an artistic, and scientific interpretation of urbanization, making a visit a physical and intellectual experience. The video presents the testing of the installation in the Zeppelin warehouse, Villacoublay (France), before being sent to China. The visitor enters a big moving panorama of a constantly changing city. Twelve observation binoculars, much like those found at scenic lookout points, allow one to be surrounded 360° by twelve urban environments. Seven Occidental cities and five Asian cities: Paris , Berlin , Barcelona , Chicago , Johannesburg , Cairo , Sao Paulo , Beijing , Shanghai , Chongqing , Chengdu , Hong Kong , can thus be discovered, each from different viewpoints. Bearing no resemblance to the touristy landscapes one may expect to see, these scenes lay out major urban issues simply through a choice of viewpoint: transportation, environment, architecture, energy, health… Only later does the visitor realize that his or her viewpoint through the VR binocular is “captured” and used to create the big panorama of Cosmopolis –the permanently mutating World City- at the centre of the exhibition. Little by little, a surprising city is built, both strange and familiar, the fruit of visitors’ intersecting gazes and visual experiences. The visitors seated in the centre of the exhibition witness this action, which is both artistically stunning and symbolically crucial: the City of Tomorrow must be the fruit of intersecting gazes and experiences. At regular intervals, the big panorama is replaced by one of the urban landscapes, depicted via a scanning action that sweeps the entire circumference of the central space. It displays key areas in the form of words, sounds, and video images. In various spots, it points out the limitations of a urbanistic course or the solutions found that can be adopted elsewhere. Cosmopolis is therefore a space for exchange and analysis, contemplation and action. It presages new ways of confronting major urban tendencies and makes Asian and Western viewpoints converge in a symbolic and interrogating way.