2003—ongoing

Mixed media: software, works on paper

Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground, which he has been working on since 2003, is an ongoing exploration of communication and language. The project involves compiling symbols and pictograms from the public sphere and using them to create a book exclusively written in visual language. 

The uniqueness of Book from the Ground lies in its accessibility to any reader belonging to contemporary society. Regardless of one’s cultural or linguistic background, the book’s material can be interpreted and understood due to the universal nature of its visual symbols. This eliminates the need for translation and can be published anywhere.

For the Book fom the Ground installation, Xu Bing recreates the working environment of his studio. By bringing select materials from his studio, he symbolically suggests the continuous nature of the project as a never-ending exploration of visual communication. 

2003—ongoing

Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground, which he has been working on since 2003, is an ongoing exploration of communication and language. The project involves compiling symbols and pictograms from the public sphere and using them to create a book exclusively written in visual language. 

The uniqueness of Book from the Ground lies in its accessibility to any reader belonging to contemporary society. Regardless of one’s cultural or linguistic background, the book’s material can be interpreted and understood due to the universal nature of its visual symbols. This eliminates the need for translation and can be published anywhere.

For the Book fom the Ground installation, Xu Bing recreates the working environment of his studio. By bringing select materials from his studio, he symbolically suggests the continuous nature of the project as a never-ending exploration of visual communication. 

Furthermore, Xu Bing Studio also created a character database software that corresponds to the language of the book. Users can enter words either in English or in Chinese, and subsequently, the program will translate them into Xu Bing's lexicon of signs. It thus serves as an intermediary form of communication and exchange between the two languages. As personal computers and the internet become increasingly integrated into daily life, the lexicon of digital icons grows accordingly, and the symbolic language of Book from the Ground has been further updated, augmented, and complexified. In response to his own Book from the Sky (1988) whose language is completely illegible, Book from the Ground is contrastingly legible to all. It may be considered an expression of Xu Bing’s long-standing vision of a universal language.

2003

ABS plastics, stainless steel, electronic components

49 × 42 × 6.5 cm

When Xu Bing began making artwork while living in the West, he discovered that the work of the contemporary artist was not unlike scientific discovery—they both require originality and must benefit humanity. In 2003, Xu Bing designed the interactive installation Ergo Dynamic Desktop. The Chinese title, “Slow-motion Desktop,” describes how the computer’s machine configuration is based on slow-movement ergonomics. The computer and keyboard can only move very slowly in a single direction. When working on this desktop, the user is unwittingly undergoing a slow-motion bodily and visual massage, lowering the risk of computer-related injury. More than an artwork, Ergo Dynamic Desktop is a patented invention for alleviating bodily and visual fatigue.

2003

Materials: Metal cages, motion sensors, fake birds

Location: Beijing, China

2003

Materials: glass, air

Air Memorial is a glass bubble containing air from Beijing during the height of the SARS epidemic. On the surface of the capsule is inscribed, “Beijing Air, April 29, 2003,” one of the days that the greatest number of SARS related death were reported in Beijing.

2003

Medium: Mixed media installation

Location: New South Wales Museum, Sydney, Australia

A work that had been in Xu Bing's mind for some time, Landscript was only realized when Xu found a location appropriate to the piece in the space and setting of the New South Wales Museum in Australia. On the large plate-glass windows of the museum lobby, Xu wrote out an image of the landscape visible through them by using Chinese characters to represent the individual landscape elements: for example, a clump of trees was represented by a clump of the Chinese character for tree. When the viewer stood on a marked point on the floor the calligraphy and the objects seen through the window overlapped, resulting in a conflation of text and objects. Furthermore, the relationship between the viewer, the window and the landscape underwent constant shifts according to the viewer's position in the gallery. By compelling the audience to engage with the landscape outside the gallery, this work effectively extended the museum space beyond the building's walls and into the distance. This work is linked to Xu's interest in the idea of limning nature, and to his exploration of the way humans use signs to represent the material world.