This is a video summary of the Future Tense course that NYU Professor Snow Yunxue Fu has proposed and taught in the China Academy of Art (CAA) 2020 Young to Young International Collaborative Curriculum Program. The video is edited by the CAA Professor Zhipeng Wang with the footage recordings from the online class. 15 of the student works from the course will be presented at Supernova Digital Animation Festival and released here through the streaming service in September.

"Hello everyone, my name is Professor Snow Yunxue Fu from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. I am an international New Media Artist and originally from China, but over the past 14 years, I had first pursuit most of my higher education in the arts in the US, and also have been working here. It is worth mentioning that my artist grandfather Zhonghe Liu was a former student of the China Academy of the Arts many years ago. So when I was invited to teach in the Innovative Curriculum by Professor Xu Han, I felt it was my special privilege to be able to participate in the China Academy of Art’s Young to Young Program this year! Thank you for inviting me!

The course I have proposed and taught in the Young to Young program this summer is called Future Tense. Future Tense is a class that I have personally designed to teach students how to utilize 3D Imaging Technology for Conceptual New Media Art Making. The paradigm of the indexical photographic image has come into a new era – a computer generated one. Maya 3D software, typically used to create commercial games and films is used in the class to be introduced as experimental artmaking platforms. The medium relating closely to the concept of simulation, simulacra, and illusion, which is of course the main theme of the Young to Young program this year.

Many of the students in my class did not have any previous background in this new medium of artmaking, but by the end of the class, everyone was able to accomplish a more than one-minute long 3D moving image art piece that is self-driven in its theme relating to the context of our class. We examined works from artists and creatives from the first Machine Age to now, which is often considered the start of the fourth industrial revolution. Class exercises, readings, discussions, demos, and project critiques were designed to help students to develop critical thinking, theoretical foundation, and experimental approaches, while advancing their technical skills in 3D.

It has been a pleasure working alongside both of CAA’s Professor Tongzhou Yu and Professor Zhipeng Wang as my excellent assistant teachers. We were also fortunate to have a good team of class student leaders: Zhixin Chen, Xuyuan Chen, Yulu Wang, and Bixin Yan. And lastly, I have truly enjoyed teaching and communicating with the smart and hardworking students from China Academy of Art in my course, and it’s been a lovely journey to see how their skills in 3D have been improving, their increasing participation in class discussions and critiques, and finally how their ideas in artmaking have grown throughout the course.

So here, please join me to watch some of the selected final projects from the excellent students of the Future Tense class. Thank you!"

Students Work Credits: Siqi Xie, Zhejun Zhang, Zhixin Chen, Hanxun Chen, Yifan Xu, Ziyang Wang, Bingyan Liu, Bixin Yan, Wenyi Ding, Shuning Zhang, Jiaxuan Liang, Haoqiang Xu, Jiaxi He, Zizhen Liu, and Jiaxin Yu

Footage Notes: The visual within the video is from the recording of the online class, including materials Professor Fu has shown to students, such as Alan Warburton's Video Essay "Goodbye Uncanny Valley" and others' amazing work.