Ars Electronica Garden Hong Kong

City in Fusion

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong (HK)

Hong Kong stands at a particularly critical juncture today, poised upon ever-shifting tectonic activities effectuated by historical, socio-cultural, political and economic factors that are unfolding in the present tense. Such dynamism and volatility impel a sense of urgency, to nurture a multifarious array of creative engagements toward engendering meaningful reflections, which can then become a means to intuit, navigate and influence the future as it emerges into reality. It is in this tumultuous and indeterminate flux of things that both potency and dangers lurk, and thus artists and faculty at SCM strive to draw new perspectives emerging from the intersections of life, art, science and technology to better understand our time and its wanderings.

Hong Kong Garden – City in Fusion

The Kepler’s Garden in Hong Kong includes eight programs wherein which the artworks, exhibitions, interviews, a workshop, and a seminar we put together in this framework can be seen as magnifying glasses, distorting mirrors, or time telescopes, that are geared toward re-thinking the World we find ourselves in.

Hong Kong Escape Views, by MoBen. Haunting the picturesque 360 panoramas of Hong Kong, characters in white protective suits are striving to install CCTV cameras. The virus is in the eye of the beholder.

Dialog about DïaloG, by MoBen and Refik Anadol, is a MindSpaces project. As new immigrants, artworks are aliens that don’t understand each other. From Los Angeles and Hong Kong, we observe their behaviour, made of artificial consciousness and memory.

HK media art shows:

WYSIWYG is a retrospective of Jeffrey Shaw’s classic and new artworks, while Tamás Waliczky’s Imaginary Cameras revisits technologies in a non-linear history of the moving image. Value of Values, by Maurice Benayoun, Nicolas Mendoza and Tobias Klein, is a transactional art project on the speculation of value, from BCI to blockchain. Metamorphosis or Confrontation, by Tobias Klein, shows his most recent digital craftsmanship. Receptive Rhythms by Max Hattler plays with repetition and rhythm in different ways. Smile by Tomas Laurenzo and LW24 (2015) by PerMagnus Lindborg show how media art can initiate the interaction with the audience. On the Road: Young Media Artists in China, presents 50 installations by 35 artists, while Algorithmic Art: Shuffling Space & Time’, the Exhibition of “Art Machines” brings machine work and computational thinking into the domain of common knowledge. Leonardo da Vinci: Art & Science. Then & Now is a tribute to Leonardo, incorporating original drawings and contemporary artworks that extend his legacy. ANiMAL is a storytelling exhibition about the animal world seen through the lenses of Art, Science, Nature and Society. In VoV Workshop: Making Art from the Brain to the Blockchain attendees are invited to create their VoV through neurodesign, to then propose a ‘reification’ of their 3D model as an artwork. With an introduction by the Dean, Art in Labs will find SCM faculty staging their latest projects, followed by Art Practices in Hong Kong at the Time of global Seclusion, interviews with the 9 media art practitioners. Why and How Artworks Feel?, a symposium with key contributors to MindSpaces EU and HK, while we speculating the Speculative Speculations on Art and Value in a talk with Benayoun.

Last but not least, the Planetary Wine Tasting Party will close the event, with all Garden participants bringing their best wine for a friendly remote-sensory experience.

City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media

The City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media (SCM, CityU) is recognized as an international centre for discovery and innovation, where creativity is nurtured as a cornerstone of Hong Kong’s social and economic advancement. Our teaching and research facilities are housed in a stunning, one-of-a-kind building designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind. The School of Creative Media has gathered an impressive, internationally renowned faculty of digital media artists, thinkers, and innovators, working in the fields of animation, sound design, gaming, software development, physical computing, film, digital media art, and media theory.

Timetable

Program

Project Credits / Acknowledgements

School of Creative Media / City University of Hong Kong
Program Chair: Prof. Maurice Benayoun
Curatorial Management: Ann Mak
Production: Charlie Yip, NeuroDesign Lab, ACIM, SCM
Production Assistant: Eleanor Benayoun
Editor-in-Chief: Lisa Park SoYoung

Thanks to all artists and researchers who contributed (names on related programs)
and especially:
Prof Richard W. Allen, Dean of the School of Creative Media
Prof. Jeffrey Shaw, Head of ACIM

The project is made possible thanks to the support of:
Osage Art Foundation
MindSpaces, S+T+Arts, Horizon2020, MindSpaces HK
The University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong
Ludwig Museum, Hungary
Guan Shanyue Art Museum
Indra and Harry Banga Gallery of City University of Hong Kong
agogogfilm

School of Creative Media