As dusk along the Huangpu River slowly blankets the steel framework of the century-old industrial crane, once a backbone of the historic Hudong Shipyard on Fuxing Island, a new media art installation titled “Rebirth Flying Birds” by artists Wang Zhigang and Sun Yu makes its striking debut at the 2025 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season.

Transforming the towering crane into a luminous light-and-shadow art piece, the dynamic interplay of digital projections revives the silhouette of birds that once flew above the shipyard. On this industrial relic by the riverbank, a mesmerizing fusion of industrial heritage and digital art unfolds, a miraculous rebirth in full flight.

The 2025 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, themed “Quantum City: Revitalizing the Future,” centers its main exhibition on Fuxing Island along the lower Huangpu River. Through a deep integration of technology, art, and spatial design, the event shapes a citywide celebration that steers urban development towards aesthetics imbued with cutting-edge technological sensibility.

Walking into a corner of Fuxing Island’s Shipyard Park, the massive cranes that once echoed the industry’s thunderous past now stand silently.

Today, the light-and-shadow installation “Rebirth Flying Birds” uses the crane’s iconic steel structure as the narrative core. Through dynamic lighting and multimedia technology, the harsh industrial frame is transformed into two vividly animated birds.

As the light flows, the illuminated outlines of birds emerge in succession, animating the heavy machinery as if breaking free from industrial-era bounds, symbolizing a rebirth poised to take flight.

Digital light flows breathe and pulse across the mesh screen, weaving a visual language that fuses natural elegance with technological texture, creating a powerful visual tension. Like industrial heritage awakening from slumber through artistic reconstruction, it radiates a vibrant new life force.

Under the poetic theme of “Rebirth,” the “Rebirth Flying Birds” light art installation shatters the barriers between industrial heritage, nature, and technology, completing a cross-temporal dialogue that marries traditional industrial spirit with futuristic science.

Historically, the real birds that flew over the shipyard skies witnessed the coexistence of nature and industrial production. Now, reimagined through digital technology, they become tangible symbols of rebirth for the old industrial site, harmonizing industrial history with digital art, mechanical forms with natural imagery, within the space.

Strolling amid the installation, visitors can both feel the rough texture of industrial remnants and be immersed in the fluid dance of light and shadow, inspiring imagination of future possibilities.

As industrial heritage sheds its “silent display” role and reenters contemporary life with vibrant vitality, it invites the public not only to appreciate artistic beauty but also to rethink the relationships among industry, nature, and technology, revealing infinite potential where history and future converge.