aaajiao | 2016 Residency
Switzerland | Visual Arts
Jan.4-Mar.30, 2016 — Visual Arts
Nationality: China
Residency location: Basel
Partner organization: Atelier Mondial
Aaajiao (XU Wenkai) was born in 1984 in Xi’an, and later moved to Shanghai, where he continues to live and work. Aaajiao is one of China’s foremost media artists, bloggers and free culture developers. In 2003 he established the sound art website: cornersound.com, and in 2006 he founded the Chinese take on the blog We Make Money Not Art: We Need Money Not Art. He is devoted to Processing, an open source visual programming software, Dorkbot, a non-profit initiative for creative minds, and eventstructure, an interdisciplinary center for art, media technology and academic research based in Shanghai. In his works in general, Aaajiao focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display, and how meaning is understood through the process of transforming the movement from reality, to data, and back again. His most significant aesthetic contribution to new media in China is a social one, acting as a vector for the interpretation and communication of international and local trends in the usages of software in artistic practice.
