The Prelude Exhibition of The First Shanghai Graphic Design Biennale – TopoPoster: International Poster Design Exhibition, after six months (June – December, 2025) of planning and preparation, was successfully held from December 13 to December 22, 2025. As one of the larger-scale exhibitions in recent years featuring an international selection of works in China, it showcased over 300 representative poster designs from 153 influential contemporary designers and studios active in the forefront of the field across 28 countries.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOVE

一则极具争议的科学轶事。1966年，美国中央情报局的审讯专家克里夫·巴克斯特（Cleve Backster）尝试将测谎仪链接在一株植物的叶片上，并为它浇水。随后，巴克斯特惊奇的发现测谎仪记录了一大堆锯齿形的图形，这与人类在高兴时皮肤的电阻曲线很相似。后来的生物学家，基本上推翻了巴克斯特关于“植物有感情”的结论，认为其没有足够的科学依据。但这不妨碍我们继续假设植物是有情感的，那么关于“它”的爱的时刻又会是什么呢？我们使用了爱神（Eros）的首字母“E”作为海报的视觉主元素，并在绿色植物缓慢的形态变化中寻找其情感涟漪的细节，完成一种更为普遍的情感表述。

A highly controversial scientific anecdote: In 1966, Cleve Backster, an interrogation specialist for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, attempted to connect a polygraph to the leaf of a plant and water it. To his surprise, the polygraph recorded a series of jagged waveforms, resembling the changes in human skin resistance associated with feelings of happiness. Later, biologists largely refuted Backster’s conclusion that “plants have emotions,” arguing that it lacked sufficient scientific evidence. Yet this does not prevent us from continuing the assumption that plants might possess emotions. If so, what would a moment of love look like for “them”? Taking the initial “E” of Eros, the god of love, as the primary visual element of the poster, we searched for subtle emotional ripples within the slow morphological changes of green plants, aiming to construct a more universal expression of emotion.

KAUKAU

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