Not Too Late
Feng Mengbo
冯梦波
Production date
2010
Media
3-channel video installation
Measurements
3-channel video, screen dimensions variable, images generated live by computer software
Notes
In 2008, Feng used an electronic game program to create an action painting. This brought together the two most important elements of his practice — his early training as a painter influenced by 1990s Political Pop, and his interest in electronic games. Working in the interstices between painting and digital media, Feng is fascinated by machines, automated electronic equipment, and semi-automatically generated art; he wanted to make an ‘automatic painting machine’ as a twenty-first century homage to Jackson Pollock’s action painting. Not Too Late (2010) is Feng Mengbo’s expansion of the field of painting. It addresses what he believes is its essential nature: the merging of time and space in a single form. Feng configured a dozen ‘bots’ — automated computer game players — using artificial intelligence to provide each with their own personality; they play for the audience to watch. Originally based on a ‘shoot ‘em up’ game, and using ‘Quake III Arena’ as the basic program, what we see are not the characters, but rather their playing actions. Marks like ink ‘brushstrokes’ sweep, spread and stain across multiple screens, completely automated and apparently random, recalling the strokes of a calligrapher. This merging of the traditional and the contemporary is emphasised by the soundtrack: the first phase is a ‘guqin’, a Chinese stringed instrument, playing ‘Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute’, and the second is a recording of the band ‘New Pants’ and their very intense track ‘Not Too Late’.
Accession number
2016.010