SHANGHAI.-Electronic art is the fruitful mixing of art and technology, particularly advanced technology, to produce a revolutionary form of art. It is a new and innovative kind of art, partly developed by artists, partly by technologists and engineers, that reimagines the relationship between consumer and producer and allows for‘mutual interaction’between the people and art.

Electronic art may produces in certain ways an entirely new kind aesthetics, but it is also the case that the electronic arts are umbilically tied to a new kind of economy and to new forms of production and if harnessed, can raise the competitive strength of a modern city. In the context of contemporary global development, the digital domain is a resource that cannot be underestimated.

Even at such an early stage of development, the range of digtital practices is immense and includes: digital images including digital painting, digital photography and digital video, computer-made painting and holographs, CD-ROM art and the new realities in electronic games, internet art including hypertext, remote control robot technology, human interfacing which include bio-systems technologies and applied bioengineering technology, computerized music and sound art, as well as its transformation of certain forms of drama, dance and installation art forms.

In March of 2006, the Shanghai Municipal Committee Publicity Department decided to provide a platform for Electronic Art’. It is an important step in helping to advance independent innovation. It is also designed to meet the undertstanding of comrade Hu Jintao and the Chinese traditional philosophy of‘harmony’, which seeks similarities in the dissimilar and wants to find a realized form for this kind of thought. It is designed to further the development of electronic art in practice to cultivate Shanghai’s new era of electronic art talent. This festival and the platform it provides hopes to establish an authoritative voice for Shanghai in the new world of the knowledge economy and cultural development.

The Shanghai eArts Festival has been planned since March of 2006. In August of that year the‘Shanghai eArts Festival Program Feasibility Research Report’was released. In September the Municipal Committee Publicity Department convened a feasibility and analysis meeting and in March of 2007 held the Shanghai eArts Festival preparation work allocation meeting. In April 2007 the Shanghai eArts Festival was officially established by the Shanghai Municipal Culture and Broadcasting Bureau and in June the Shanghai Municipal Committee Publicity Department convened seventeen related work units and related organizations to participate in the Shanghai eArts Festival work organization meeting. The Municipal Committee Representative and Publicity Department Secretary Wang Zhongwei oversaw the organization in person from presiding over the meetings which allocated work. Throughout the process he brought forward original ideas and requested that the Shanghai eArts Festival create an important new trajectory in cultural development not just by borrowing concepts, but by combining new forms of technological and cultural expression with elements of traditional Chinese culture and concepts from Shanghainese thought.

Following this intense period and the preparation work involved, the confirmed Shanghai eArts Festival participating countries include Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Italy, Japan, Korea, America, Spain, Brazil, as well as Taiwan and Special Adminsitrative Region of Hong Kong. Numerous leading electronic arts institutions and artists from around the world will participate in the Shanghai eArts Festival.