Zongbo Jiang’s bizarrely beautiful 3D world offers a hopeful perspective on the climate crisis – It’s Nice That

Shared Planet is the kind of bizarrely beautiful and intricate creation that Hieronymus Bosch would have made if he was born in the 21st century and knew how to use Blender. And while that 15th century artist warned his audience of the perils of sexual excess, Zongbo Jiangs Shared Planet deals with contemporary issues with equal outlandishness but a much more positive outlook. Inspired by the BBCs documentary The Year Earth Changed, Zongbos 3D utopia highlights the miraculous flourishing of nature which occurred due to the lower human activity during the pandemic.

I consider myself an earthling and my practice to be visual activism, Zongbo tells Its Nice That. Focusing on issues such as mental health, animal rights and the environment, I endeavour to offer an alternative digital representation of the dilemmas within these areas, to open and continue the conversation of how we can improve the way we all live on this planet as earthlings.

In the midst of the current climate crisis with its dominant narrative of impending doom, Zongbos visual activism provides a welcome glimpse of hope. He tells us that his creative practice revolves around Wired magazines founder Kevin Kellys concept of Protopia which refers to a state that is better today than yesterday. Zongbos vision of a world in which humans and nature live in blissful harmony takes this concept to new heights: I wanted to create this space that was fun and enticing, to build this idea of hope and change that we can achieve if we recognise our past mistakes, he explains. Accompanied by the soothing sounds of birds chirruping and rain falling conceived by talented sound-designer Menex, Shared Planet invites you to wade through lush water reeds to discover crystal pools inhabited by strange and beautiful creatures, their anatomies morphing mesmerisingly between animal, plant and human forms.

While the scene is idyllic and the message hopeful, each tiny detail and character which Zongbo designed has meaning and relates to careful research and a re-imagination of data he gathered for the project. There are four main protagonists in his story of ecological regeneration Wildlife, Air, Noise and Water. Each character is based on areas of the environment or nature that benefited from humans being stuck in lockdown, says the artist.

Read the original post:

Zongbo Jiang's bizarrely beautiful 3D world offers a hopeful perspective on the climate crisis - It's Nice That