Eastern cultural heritage, digital remediation and global perspectives

The paper describes findings from a practice-based research project exploring cross-cultural influences between the West and the East by recreating the concept of Shan-Shui-Hua – the traditional Eastern landscape painting within the new genre of “Video-Painting” as wall-mounted flat screen video installa-tion. It uses concepts of Art Appropriation, Remedia-tion and Remix to re-investigate relationships of man and nature in Eastern traditional landscape art and philosophy and transposes the content to contempo-rary global environmental issues and digital visualiza-tion technology. Using the “other” or the “unfamiliar” allows a fresh access and new interpretation of well-known territory. As such cultural heritage is seen as an opportunity to explore new artistic boundaries and styles of representation within set commodities of contemporary (digital) image creation. Translating and adapting subtle aesthetics, rich metaphor and philosophy of Eastern traditions creates a powerful, subversive tool to address pressing ecological issues differently and allows alternative ways of seeing and thinking thereby detecting Western preoccupations.