City in Fusion

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.

VOV Workshop / Maurice Benayoun, Tobias Klein (HK)
Credit: Tony Zhang, Neuro Design Lab

Hong Kong Escape Views / Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK)
Credit: Neuro Design Lab

Behind the scenes of the Ars Electronica Garden Hong Kong
Credit: Maurice Benayoun, Neuro Design Lab

Hong Kong Escape Views / Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK)
Credit: Neuro Design Lab

City in Fusion: Wine Tasting Party
Credit: Belle Leung, Osage Art Foundation

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.

School of Creative Media / City University of Hong Kong

DïaloG, Refik Anadol (TR/US), MoBen / CityU HK
Credit: MindSpaces / Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK) & Refik Anadol (TR/US)

Hong Kong Escape Views, Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK)
Credit: Ann Mak (HK), Maurice Benayoun (HK/FR)

Leonardo Da Vinci – Art & Science. Then & Now, Isabelle Jennifer Frank (US/HK)
Credit: City University of Hong Kong (HK)

Metamorphosis or Confrontation,Tobias Klein (GE/HK)
Credit: Tobias Klein (GE/HK)

Value of Values (VoV), Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK)
Credit: Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK)

Timetable

Program

Speculative Speculations on Art and Values

How linking the brain to the Blockchain reveals the value of human values (CQC)

Wine Tasting Party

Garden participants bring their best wine for a friendly sensory experience. Each Kepler Garden can invite local artists, scholars, curators and engineers to come with a selected bottle of local wine (according to their origin) and share the experience of ingesting it through their screens and microphones.

Hong Kong Garden

Art Practices in Hong Kong at the Time of Global Seclusion

Nine contributors of artists, curator, lab founder and researcher will share their experiences and insights on the recent challenges in their practices.

Public Symposium: How and Why Artworks Feel?

MindSpaces (EU) and MindSpaces (HK)

Key contributors to MindSpaces EU and MindSpaces HK will present their research in the framework of Horizon2020 MindSpaces/S+T+Arts research project.

Art in Labs

School of Creative Media, CityU. SCM faculty

Art in Labs will be introduced by the Dean of the School of Creative Media, CityU. SCM faculty stage their latest projects.

VoV Workshop: Making Art from the Brain to the Blockchain

Participating “Brain Workers” are invited to create their VoV token by shaping values through neurodesign in the Brain Factory. VoVs are immaterial assets, as well as brain-designed 3D models. Brain Workers propose reifications of the abstract models as artworks. This is how they start to make sense out of a frozen value.

Collective Curated Exhibtions I: On the Road, Young Media Artists in China

A collaborative project between SCm/CityU HK and Guan Shang Yue Museum of Art, Shenzhen, presenting 50 installations by 35 artists; which involved 15 curators, art critics and scholars from China and Hong Kong. It provided an overview of the media art scene across China today, and demonstrated how young Chinese artists are exploring and combining both older and ‘newer’ media to new ends.

Solo Exhibition III: Maurice Benayoun – Introduction to Value of Values

Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK)

Morphogenesis of Values (MOV) video reveals the stakes and objectives of the VoV project and the outcomes for the coming show in 2021. MOV is developed from VoV, transactional neuro-design art project that provokes questions of human values with relation to art, philosophy, poetry, ethics, the environment and surveillance. It resonates with how we will define human goals in a post-pandemic world.

Solo Exhibition IV: Tobias Klein – Metamorphosis or Confrontation

Tobias Klein (GE/HK)

This film is a short documentary of the solo exhibition Metamorphosis or Confrontation of the German artist Tobias Klein at the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery. The documentary is structured as the exhibition in four parts with an introduction. Bones, Masks, Mutations and Forces are the chapters and provide a detailed insight into the various curatorial strategies – making the diversity in the artist’s work visible.

Thematic Curated Exhibtions I: Leonardo Da Vinci – Art & Science. Then & Now

Isabelle Jennifer Frank (US/HK)

To commemorate the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, this exhibition presents original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci from the Pinacoteca and Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The drawings are accompanied by five machines modeled on Leonardo’s designs, and by the works of contemporary artists – most of them faculty at SCM CityU HK – reflecting on Leonardo’s persistent legacy and influence into the digital age.

Solo Exhibition II: Tamás Waliczky – Imaginary Cameras

Tamás Waliczky (HU/HK)

From Hong Kong to the Hungarian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Waliczky revisits technologies in a non-linear history of the moving image.

Solo Exhibition I: Jeffrey Shaw – WYSIWYG

Jeffrey Shaw (AU//HK)

A major retrospective of Shaw’s classic and new artworks. The show spans the prolific career of the Visionary Pioneer of Media Art (Golden Nica 2018).

DïaloG

Refik Anadol (TR/US), MoBen / CityU HK

DïaloG is an urban media art installation developed by Maurice Benayoun (MoBen/CityU HK) and Refik Anadol (AnalogNative). In the public space (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain) two “living” entities face each other. They don’t look like the living beings we know. They don’t speak any language we know. They are aliens, strangers, immigrants. Facing each other they gradually mutate. They seem to react to their environment. Even more, they clearly desperately try to understand each other.