On September 28, the UNESCO Creative Cities Design Forum, themed "Design for New, Steering Intelligence for Far-Reaching——Challenges and Practices of AI-Integrated Design", was successfully held in Shanghai. At the forum, the UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia officially released the results of the "When AI Meets Design" global call for good practices. The AI interactive art installation Transcendence: Vitality of Mountain and Water by the team of Professor Wang Lei, Dean of the School of Animation and Digital Art, was successfully selected for its outstanding technological originality and cultural expression, and was awarded a Certificate of Recognition by Ai Sugiura, Director of the Science and Technology Department of the UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia.
This "When AI Meets Design" good practice call was initiated globally by the UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia, aiming to discover practical examples of deep integration between artificial intelligence and design methods, and to demonstrate how AI empowers cultural and creative development, stimulates innovation vitality, promotes educational reform, and advances social inclusion. At the forum, excellent practice cases from 15 countries and 40 cities worldwide were showcased together, jointly exploring the opportunities and changes brought by the era of digital intelligence design.
The selected work Transcendence: Vitality of Mountain and Water is one piece in the digital art series Sublimation created by the DigiLab at Communication University of China. This work is a digital art interactive installation using real-time AI generation technology. It draws from the landscape paintings of Northern Song Dynasty painter Guo Xi. Thirteen selected works from his paintings were used to train the team's self-developed interactive generative AI model, allowing the instant generation of artificial intelligence and the "vitality" pursued by classical landscape painting to mutually generate each other. When audiences draw with a brush in the exhibition space, the system is triggered to perform in real time a landscape artistic conception of flowing ink and lingering charm——the painting never freezes; every stroke belongs to this moment, endlessly generating and infinite. Thus, the core proposition of traditional painting theory "vivid charm and lively spirit" is written into the real-time interactive AI generation logic, gaining a completely new technological interpretation, and also enabling traditional art forms and digital intelligence technology to complete a dialogue spanning a thousand years.
Transcendence: Vitality of Mountain and Water exhibited at the inaugural Hong Kong AI Art Festival in December 2025
The Sublimation series is independently developed by the DigiLab at Communication University of China. Wang Lei, Dean of the School of Animation and Digital Art, and Zheng Danqi, Party Secretary of the School of Animation and Digital Art, serve as curators/art directors. Associate Professor Wang Yi serves as visual director. Multiple faculty and students from the School of Animation and Digital Art participated in the creation. The series has been invited to participate in the 10th Beijing International Art Biennale, the special exhibition at the Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK) in Hamburg, Germany, the Hong Kong International AI Art Festival, and other exhibitions at home and abroad, and has been selected for CVPR (Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition), ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art), and other top international digital art conferences.
The DigiLab at Communication University of China was initiated by Professor Wang Lei, Dean of the School of Animation and Digital Art. He and the team's core members have always been committed to exploring the frontier development directions of digital and intelligent technology, while continuously feeding back into the creative practice of animation and digital art. Laboratory works have been shortlisted and won awards in more than 120 festivals and exhibitions in over 30 countries at home and abroad, including the China Culture and Art Government Award Animation Award, the National Radio and Television Administration Outstanding Domestic Animation Award (11 times), as well as the Tokyo International Animation Festival and the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film in Germany. Representative animation works of the laboratory include Mao Mao Town, Strange Wormhole, Ding Ding Dong Dong Mao Mao Town, Three Sons in the Cloud, Mao Mao Town: Ice and Snow Cheering Team, Silent Blue, and others. Representative digital art works include Cats of the East, Grand Qin Splendor, Sublimation and others, accumulating extensive influence at home and abroad in the field of animation and digital art.
Transcendence: Vitality of Mountain and Water creative team: Wang Lei (second from left), Zheng Danqi (third from right), Zhou Huixuan (first from left), Wang Yi (first from right), Zheng Qi (second from right)
Since 2023, the DigiLab at Communication University of China has received support from Intel Corporation of the United States and established the Intel/Communication University of China Artificial Intelligence Generative Art Creation Practice Center. The laboratory team has deeply cultivated artist-led AI technology. It once created China's first AI ink-wash animation short film Dragon Gate, which was rated by the UK Turing National Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 2025 as one of the 6 most representative AI art works globally from 2023-2025. The stylized CG animation Luoshen currently being created by the laboratory team, as well as the animated series Hutong Also Has Childhood using an independent AI+CG hybrid process, have both been approved as key animation projects by the National Radio and Television Administration and are about to complete creation.
Transcendence: Vitality of Mountain and Water obtaining recognition from UNESCO is another affirmation of our university's long-term cultivation in the field of AI digital art. Using technology as a medium, it enables excellent traditional Chinese culture to gain new contemporary expression on the world stage, demonstrating the pioneering power of Chinese universities in the field of digital cultural innovation.
Looking to the future, under the guidance of the university's "Artificial Intelligence Action Plan", the School of Animation and Digital Art at Communication University of China will continue to deepen its practice and exploration in the dual-wheel drive of "art + science", polish digital art achievements with more Eastern aesthetic flavor, and let traditional culture move toward a broader international stage in new forms.
This article was translated with AI assistance.
Editor: Fang Yiran
