The digital ink generative video art installation ‘Icy Fire’, created by Lampo Leong, director of the Centre for Arts and Design of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Macau (UM), and doctoral student Yanxiu Zhao, has won a gold award at ‘Glow Shenzhen 2024’, a light art festival held in Shenzhen. This year’s festival featured a total of 209 light artworks from various countries and regions around the city.

‘Icy Fire’ is a digital ink generative video art installation measuring 7.5 metres by 4 metres by 4.8 metres. It consists of a high definition LED panel and multiple mirrored walls, ceiling and floor. The piece uses digital ink generative video art and AI techniques to depict the melting of glaciers through the splashing of ink and the artistic language of geometric abstraction, with a colour gradient shifting from cold to warm. The installation combines sound, light, and immersive settings to allow audiences to experience and appreciate the innovation and development of Chinese ink art in the digital and AI era.

This year’s ‘Glow Shenzhen’, with the theme of ‘Infinite Illumination’, adopts a ‘1+N’ model, with one main venue (UpperHills and nearby parks in Shenzhen’s Futian district) and 29 other locations. ‘Icy Fire’ is currently on display at the main venue in Shum Yip Upperhills, opposite the south gate of Mandarin Oriental, Shenzhen, until 16 February 2025. The immersive installation has attracted many visitors and has been praised for its stunning artistic effect.

Lampo Leong is also a Distinguished Professor and doctoral supervisor at UM, and the associate master of UM Chao Kuang Piu College. He is also a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-Columbia in the United States, and a visiting professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. His works have been selected for over 450 national and international juried or curated art and design exhibitions and have won more than 110 awards, including the Red Dot Award: Best of the Best, a gold award at American Good Design, a gold award at the Creative Quarterly International Art Competition in New York, and the China National Arts Fund. His works are housed in over ten art museum collections, including the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Macao Museum of Art, and have also been featured on the covers of publications such as New Art International in New York, Creative Genius: 100 Contemporary Artists in London, and Art Frontier in the United States.