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posted 2008-11-07 by Henrik Berggren

Live from Shanghai

Thought I'd give you all an update on how the Visual Voltage project is doing on the first stop on its two-year tour around the world. Right now the exhibition is alive and kicking at the Citic Square on Nanjing West Rd. / Shaanxi Rd. Shanghai, China.

This is the second location in Shanghai, before it was a part of the Shanghai Creation Expo where it was on display for three days. The exhibition has now been up at Citic Sq. since a week back and the last day is on Sunday the 9:th. So if you are in Shanghai, hurry up and see it. The inauguration took place last Thursday and was held by the Swedish Consul General as well as representatives from Jingan District and Swedish Institute. After that we showed the exhibition to the press and regular visitors. It was a lot of fun talking to Chinese visitors and getting their view on the environment and energy awareness.

Finishing touches

And there is nothing fundamentally wrong with their view but China has a huge energy problem right now and it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. For example, they open five new coal power plants each week to match the need of energy and one of the biggest plants outside of Shanghai is used only to power the city's air condition, which the Chinese people are misusing a lot. But there is light in the tunnel. Environmental questions are getting a lot of attention at the moment, both by the government and media and they have to get some of It fixed before 2010. Because then The World Expo comes to Shanghai and all the world's eyes will look at China (again, last was of course Olympics in Beijing) and if they haven't reached at least some stagnation in the development in energy usage they will probably end up under heavy fire.

Computer Vision

On a totally different note, the city is quite amazing. It's boiling with people, fashion, art and culture, and I've visited quite some places during my stay here. One of the favorites is Translocalmotion / Shanghai's 7:th Biennale at Shanghai Art Museum on People's Square. There artists from around the world gathered and showed their work. One of the pieces, a Computer Vision installation, simulated a mirror using a high rise facade to show your body's outlines, very cool and well implemented as well.

Other Shanghai favorites is the electronics market on Beijing Rd. A whole block with four levels, totally filled with circuits, sensors, buttons and other random components. An engineers dream come true and a very good source of inspiration for hardware hackers like us!

Electronics market

Today our last weekend here starts and on Tuesday we are heading back to Europe for this time. Next stop for the exhibition is Beijing and we are already looking forward to coming back to China. In the mean time you can read up on some of the articles posted on Visual Voltage so far, links here below:

SvD (Swedish)
DN (Swedish)
China Visual (Chinese)
If Green (Chinese)
Oriental Morning Post (Chinese)

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