On Dec. 20, the exhibition and award ceremony of the 2nd Think Youth Shanghai International Digital Creation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition were held at the art gallery of USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI). The international competition was hosted by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and organized by ICCI with the support from DOBE Group, MANA, Chronus Art Center. Building on the internationalization and global influence of ICCI and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), the competition has attracted over 220 works from universities globally including countries and regions like America, France, Australia, Japan, Denmark, Taiwan (China), Hong Kong(China), etc. And works from over 30 universities in Shanghai were also submitted for competition. Among all the submitted works, 10 were selected as Top-10 Commercial Category Winning Works and 10 were chosen as Top-10 Technology and Art Category Winning Works.

The award ceremony was hosted by ICCI Dean Weimin ZHANG. Lixia ZHAO, Vice Director of High Education Department, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Litao LIN, Secretary of the Students Work Committee, SJTU, representatives of the co-organizer MANA, Qinghong ZHANG, founder of Chronus Art Center, Feng ZHAO, Vice Dean of ICCI, Titus Levi, Associate Professor of ICCI and Ouchul HWANG, Visiting Professor of ICCI attended the ceremony to present awards including New Media Art Excellence Award, Best Creative Award, Highest Popularity Award and various individual awards. The winner of Best Creative Award received the cash reward of 5000 US dollars, and the winners of Highest Popularity Award and other individual awards received 1000 US dollars each. Students from SJTU, Tongji University, Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, China Academy of Art, Shanghai University Of Engineering Science, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts and New York University Shanghai Campus were present at the ceremony. After the award ceremony, guests visited the exhibition of winning works accompanied by their authors.

Creation Stories

At the exhibition, creative sparkles between science and art, innovation and life shone everywhere with creative projects ranging from public cultural service like saving endangered art and helping children in need, online platform of creative design for the non-professionals, new media art education for teenagers to drawing robots.

The new media work Robotic Voice Activated Word Kicking Machine by Neil Mendoza attracted much attention. Neil Mendoza has a master degree in mathematics and computer science from Oxford University and a master degree in media art design from University of California-Los Angeles. His work combined the technologies of projection and robotics, which endowed those lifeless objects with life and enabled the audience to interact with lifeless equipments. He was very delighted to have won the award and seen his work being exhibited in Shanghai.

There were also many outstanding works from Shanghai. The Drum Dance, created by students’ team from College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, enabled the audience to create unique aureole and drumbeat with body languages in a space surrounded by black curtains. Its authors said, “Although we studied different majors, we really enjoy discussing creative ideas and creation together. The fusion of technology and art, as well as  cross-disciplines, was a good way to express oneself and practice inspirations.” They suggested visitors to improvise a piece of drumbeat music when dancing through their body languages. This could provide them with distinctive cultural experience.

Winners of top 3 commercial category works shared their stories. The innovative project Financial Knowledge that Empowers Asset Wealth Management led by Brady Huffman and Jianyin Roachell from University of Tennessees received the good graces of investors such as Haier Capital, Legend Capital, American AltpointVenture Fund, London and Partners Limited and won the third place in the commercial category. They received an extra reward of the right to 1-year free use of the work stations in DOBE Cultural and Creative Park in silicon valley. After more in-depth learning about the cultural and creative industry in Shanghai, they gave up the work stations in silicon valley and made a decision of leading the project team to Shanghai this December to continue their entrepreneurship story in DOBE Shanghai Cultural and Creative Park.

The second-prize winning works, Marilyn · Twain, a series of short videos produced by Taoyang CHEN from Tongji University were praised for its innovative practice of merging hand drawing with creative dubbing. She was also entitled to the free use of 10 work desks in DOBE Wehome Community Centre for one year. So far, her team has already worked in the Centre for one month. She said that the international competition was a wonderful platform to demonstrate their works. The competition had many professional judges and offered abundant resources to connect contestants with investment organizations smoothly, which benefited the incubation and development of innovation projects.

The first prize of the commercial category was awarded to the team led by Dr. Fei YIN from SJTU. His creative design combined tools and the platform, which enabled people who had no skills of PS whatsoever to create original works with ease. Currently, he was in talks with multiple investors regarding his project. He shared his creation story with the audience and encouraged all university students present to keep on working hard at Creation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative industry.

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Exhibition Time:

10:00 – 16:00

20 Dic. 2017 -1 Jan. 2018

Address:

Art Gallery of USC-SJTU Institute of Culture and Creative Industry

(Bldg. A8，No. 155 Tanjiatang Road, Minhang District, Shanghai )