Rugged Spirit:
The Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting of Tao Bowu
/Digital Art
/Digital Heritage
/Naked-eye 3D Animation
/Touchscreen Interaction
/Digital Heritage
/Naked-eye 3D Animation
/Touchscreen Interaction
The interactive installation is based on three of Mr. Tao’s publications, allowing visitors to engage with his creative process and artistic thinking through interactive exploration. The naked-eye 3D piece reinterprets his paintings to narrate and celebrate the journey of his life.
The interactive installation is composed of a touch screen and a supporting stand, allowing visitors to explore the core ideas of Mr. Tao’s three major publications.
This book reflects Mr. Tao’s deep understanding of Shuowen Jiezi and the writing system of Small Seal Script. It covers fundamental brush techniques, structural principles, and the basics of philology, offering learners a systematic path into seal script.
In this interactive experience, visitors can select provided characters to study their brush methods and structural logic, and then practice tracing them.
Based on the ancient Stone Drum Inscriptions, this book showcases Tao Bowu’s innovative calligraphy, which evolves from the style of Wu Changshuo. By simplifying strokes and integrating the spirit of cursive and semi-cursive scripts, he developed a style that is powerful, archaic, and expressively free.
In this experience, visitors first learn the couplets from the book and then experiment with assembling their own matching couplets.
This work draws from the inscriptions on the Western Zhou bronze vessel San Shi Pan, forming poetic and philosophical couplets through the method of character collection. It demonstrates Mr. Tao’s profound understanding of ancient scripts and his distinctive contribution to calligraphic art.
In this interactive module, visitors can study selected couplets and then create their own combinations from the provided characters.
Calligraphy Tracing Practice pages
Character Selection for Couplet Creation
Mr. Tao’s paintings differ greatly from traditional Chinese ink painting. His works are simple, unadorned, and carry a sense of childlike innocence. Moreover, the perspective in Chinese painting operates very differently from that of Western art, which posed significant challenges in translating his visual language into 3D form.
Through careful composition, model design, and cinematography, we transformed elements from his paintings into a narrative film. Using visual metaphor, the piece reflects and reimagines the journey of Mr. Tao’s life.
Selected Paintings
Key Visual
The full video will be released after the exhibition opens on December 30！