Striving to break down barriers for art to resonate with the people, youth art festival in Hangzhou explores the code of creation in society by sharing graduates' artworks with the public in art venues.

Brain Garden – the 5th Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival 2023 & China Academy of Art Graduation Season recently concluded in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

The youth art festival was presented online on CAACOSMOS and West Lake Sky Screen and offline at six venues, including the Zhejiang Exhibition Hall, the West Lake Art Museum, and the Zhejiang Art Museum with a total exhibition area of nearly 70,000 square meters.

Over 3,000 works from more than 2,500 graduates are showcased. Over 2,000 young artists, designers, writers, and scholars have gathered online for this youthful art event. A large number of Hangzhou citizens have visited the offline exhibitions.

In 2023, ChatGPT swept the human world and AI set off a new technology revolution. In an era where human brains and machine brains simulate each other, and human intelligence competes with artificial intelligence, the youth art festival this year explored the topic of how humans and AI can coexist harmoniously through the theme "Brain Garden". Young artists express their deconstruction and thinking of the theme "Brain Garden" from different angles through various artistic works.

Li Keran, a graduate from the Department of Interactive Media and Games at the School of Animation and Games, CAA, has been inviting visitors to play a VR game "Instant Creater" at Zhejiang Art Museum during the festival.

"You only need to put on this VR head-set and hold a game controller. Then, you can build your own architecture. Even if you know nothing about architecture, you can still build things in this game by using your imagination."

She designed this game in an effort to enhance the users' imagination and improve their spatial configuration capabilities.

The CAACOSMOS app was also launched in June, offering an online art community for users to have real-time metaverse experience. It provides an innovative and interactive platform for artists, designers, and creators across the globe.

"We created CAACOSMOS in hopes that people can roam around in it and do what we always encourage our students to do – to use your imagination to think and create," Prof Xuan Xuejun, vice president of School of Animation and Games claimed. "We hope each CAACOSMOS user will build their own world in this app," he added.

Captivated by the content on the CAACOSMOS, Michelle Hsu, a foreign editor at China Daily, also documented the exciting moments of this year's "Brain Garden" graduate art exhibition through vlogs. She engaged with graduates from home and abroad, delving into the stories behind their artworks and embracing the power of youth and artistry.

"I can see the conviction in these young artists, and their firm belief in what they are doing. And it's all thanks to the CAA's excellent curriculum, the patient guidance of the teachers here, and the students' unstoppable passion," said Michelle.

Gao Shiming, the president of China Academy of Art expressed that the graduation season showcases not only the educational fruits but also flower buds for the future and it represents the vitality that art brings to the world.

He believed that the responsibility of an artist is to create, to generate, and to expand new physical and mental experiences for humanity. "And this requires us to explore the code of creation, the logic of sensation, and to open the brain gardens of each individual," he explained.

The Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival has been presenting the artistic feast of CAA's graduation season to the public in Hangzhou since 2019.