 ast May, At the opening of the Legation Quarter Arts Center in Beijing, a hilarious animated film about everyday life in Beijing captured the imagination of many visitors. (Click to watch Pisan's work: Day Dream )
The animated film, Day Dream, full of humor, features eccentric characters having their hair done, traveling on the subway and driving cars through the streets of Beijing.
The artist behind this work is 36-year-old Wang Bo (also known as Pisan) a rising star in the world of animation art. His work has appeared on national television in China and even in the films of Jia Zhangke. He is even considered one of the pioneers in flash animation in China.
But only now is he thinking about selling his animated works as art pieces, even though he has a job that pays him well enough to keep him out of the  art market.
Wang now works in Beijing as the owner of a cyber animation company. He was born in 1971 and grew up near a large copper mine in northern Shanxi province. Later he studied art and graduated from Fine Arts Department of Shanxi University. Not long after the graduation, he soon got bored with painting.
"There's trouble between me and painting; I didn't feel happy," He said. And then something good happened. In 1999, his wife and friends introduced him to animation software, which he soon considered a miracle.
His first work, "D Version of Out-and Out" was produced and put on the web that year. The rapid, convenient and extensive cyber communication offered him a first pleasure in the Cyber Age.
Later, came one of his most popular works, "Zha Xuexiao," or "blow up the school," a funny and naughty film with a catchy song that became famous in the world of flash animation, and also annoyed censors, who tried to erase it from web sites because of its racy song and fun filled play about not liking a school.
Flash animation began to boom at the turn of the 21st century. But at that time the mainstream was still dominated by the single technology, and the notion of cyber art had not yet taken shape.
After his first work, Wang, established himself with talented "flashers" like Lao Jiang and Xiao Xiao. He did not produce any popular animations like MV or Three Kingdoms, but turned his eyes to cyber space: interaction. Then his creation of "Pisan's Seven Days" and "Interlinked Dreams" were in-depth explorations into the interactive nature of the cyber world and animation.
"With older art forms viewers were passive, while popularized Flash can allow common people to master it, and it's more suitable for interactions," he says.
At the time, Wang took part in various exhibitions, held solo exhibitions and his flash animation works even exhibited in 2002 Guangzhou triennial and Shanghai Biennale, bringing into full play the potential of the petty Flash animation as an art form.
However, he realized that traditional art exhibitions were by no means the stage for animation art, In an exhibition environment where animation art coexists with other forms of art, viewers can only get a transient glance of animation or video works that nevertheless need more time to experience, leaving them with just a glimpse of the art form,
"Few people can spare time to further study your work in such exhibitions," he says.
 Then, after producing a lengthy 200-minute interactive Flash animation, Wang stopped creating this sort of work. He sensed that such explorations had come to a dead end; moreover, animation works need a new exhibition carrier.
"Perhaps art websites should take on the task of exhibiting animation art works," Wang said with a smile.
In 2004, CCTV brought out China's first TV animation program, "Happy Stage", and Wang was one of its general planners. As one of the practices of developing a new style for Flash animation, Wang had planned "Happy Stage," "Love Painting Movie" and other animated TV programs.
The shows were well received by viewers. As a help to friends he made since childhood, he created animations for Jia Zhangke, the award-winning Chinese filmmaker.
Meng Jinghui, another filmmaker, also sought his cooperation. Then, the opening of new areas – TV and movie – offered Wang opportunities to create very impressive animation works, and his cooperation with Lao Jiang won him support from industry leaders.
Nevertheless, the working atmosphere in the System prevented him from sticking to it long, he says.
"There the power buys over creative ideas," Wang said. The absolute powerful TV media could easily appropriate individual intellectual fruit to itself; when the imposed system could not offer timely help to the newly emerging art forms,
Wang had to give up that transient midway diversion of course. To secure a freer and more comfortable environment, Wang says he needed to forge a platform of his own.
Now the cyber environment is changing dramatically, Web 2.0 has sneaked into our horizon. Younger and more capable animation professionals have come to compete in cyber space. And Wang has also returned to the cyber world that had once brought him primitive passions. Years of rich experience have cultivated in him an awareness that home-developed animation and its supporting environment are still far from maturity, that there are still many non-standard practices, and that traditional media's attack and suppression can not promote the development of web and animation art.
The traditional animation art industry is still dominated by mainstream ideology and profit-making operations, while Wang would go a way of obscuring the line between business operations and cyber arts, so he has created his own cyber animation company – The Interactive Image. Soon, he brought out his own animation symbol – "Kuang, Kuang, Kuang" and the two animation movies "Blowing Up The School" and "The Ten Cents" of his "Kuang" series.  These two animation movies brimming with campus vitality and youth passions easily secured over a million clicks on his website;
Meanwhile, to no one's surprise the violent scenes in these animations also drew passionate criticisms from conservatives on the web.
"I just want to start with a blockbuster." Wang said he was actually very simple-minded. Further, in current cyber environment, neither artists nor website owners could control their website visitors. He never expected these two animation movies that describe the 70s generation's childhood years could have been received so well by the 80s generation and even the 90s generation.
"Violence is nothing but a means of representation," he said.
Wang even mentioned the descriptions of violence in "All Men Are Brothers," which could not be accepted after they were represented in animations.
"We don't have a sense of religion," he said. So many people lack a moral bottom line."
Wang has a penetrating and rational understanding of this situation.
"I've done nothing but turn the violent scenes described in our books into animated scenes; it's actually a language experiment and I love language experiments," he said.
With regard to his "Kuang, Kuang, Kuang", a popular symbol he would vigorously promote in the following years, it won't do to gauge its whole value system only from the current two short animation movies.
His next animation movie will describe love, and information technology, according to him it will represent mild and tender feelings. Then, "Kuang, Kuang, Kuang" will be a system, a popular culture symbol, and Wang's nostalgia and digestion of his own childhood.
Ms. Victoria Lu , a distinguished curator, believes "the popularization of Flash is of unique significance to China. Though there is still no mature cyber art in current China, as a more open channel for communication in future, Flash will enjoy a brighter prospect." Since the whole cyber arts in the future are open and tolerant, we expect to see the whole picture of Wang's system in future, and only then it is reasonable to give a complete evaluation of his system.
Obviously, Wang has devoted his true love to his "Kuang, Kuang, Kuang" series. But it's not an easy thing to do one's favored thing and achieve a balance directly between art and business.
 While the Chinese art is hot, Wang has never sold any of his animation film work to any collectors. No one has showed interest in this kind of art work, he says.
The market appears to be not ready for animation works yet. Wang Bo said he doesn't count on selling works and he feels happy and lucky that his animation film company can support his passion on.
Just as Mr. Huang Zhuan, director of OCT contemporary art center, says: "The Cyber Age is a double-edged sword; as a product of technological democratic times it does have capacities to expand the area of art on the one hand, and it also weakens its critical power due to its infection with popular cultures on the other; but it also depends on artists themselves to a larger extent."
Wang is one of those who are "doing better in combining one's self-conceptual wisdom with technology". The contemporary art fever can readily fluctuate prices of various art forms along with market changes, but when the disguising dust settles, you would probably find that what deserves your effort is the things you began with.
Next, Wang will create a website full of interactive elements that features his "Kuang, Kuang, Kuang" themes. He seems to believe that Pisan is still, waiting patiently for his visitors in the cyber space.
Click to watch Pisan's work: Day Dream -> click to watch
Click to watch Pisan's work: Who sets the yard -> click to watch 。
Tanslated by Hu Zhu
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