Art in the Cloud | Panel Discussion I

Protagonists (Artists / Curator presenting):
Tuçe Erel (DE)
Ryo Ikeshiro (JP/UK/HK)
Vincent Ruijters (Nl/JP)
Tsui Ka Hei, Haze (HK)
Elaine Wong (HK)
Viola Yip (HK/GR)

Panel Moderator:
Damien Charrieras (FR/HK)

The development of media art and the online art space are both tightly enmeshed with the technological innovations of their times. Art in the Cloud is curatorial research that explores how the sudden growth of online art spaces contributes to the transformation of the presentation of media artworks. Specifically, we question how inherent characteristics such as interactivity and immersion shift in online exhibitions. How does today’s online space contribute to, or limit, artistic creativity? What are some of the unexpected challenges that artists have encountered? What are some of the new potentials that emerge from the technological impediments we come across?

To facilitate the interfacing of alterities in search of unexpected synergies, we have invited artists and curators born or based in Hong Kong and asked them to recommend one other artist or curator, based on the differences in terms of artistic medium, cultural, or philosophical lineage.

This Panel Discussion is the first session of the series, featuring Tuçe Erel (DE), Ryo Ikeshiro (JP/UK/HK), Vincent Ruijters (NL/JP), Tsui Ka Hei, Haze (HK), Elaine Wong (HK), and Viola Yip (HK/GR), and moderated by Dr. Damien Charrieras (FR/HK).

The 24 artworks will be viewable on our website throughout the festival, and an official screening and sharing of the work will take place on Zoom between September 8th and 11th . Please join us to reflect on how art could be in line with the online.

Video

Moderator:

Damien Charrieras (FR/HK): Damien Charrieras is associate professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His current funded projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in urban setting (media arts; electronic music); the diverse technologies used to conceive 3D real time environment (especially game engines); blockchain in video games and art; discursive approaches to creative software; new pedagogical approaches to critical worldbuilding. He recently co-edited the volume Fractured Scenes – Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) as well as Electronic Cities: Music, Policies and Space in the 21st Century (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021). He authored a public policy report for the Policy Innovation and Co- ordination Office (PICO), Hong Kong S.A.R. Government (The Development of a New Media Expertise in the Creative Economy of Hong Kong, 2019).

Artists:

Tuçe Erel (TR/GR): Tuçe Erel (1981, Ankara) is a curator, art writer and cultural worker based in Berlin. Erel uses her sociology education in her curatorial research, though in her research methodology, she prefers to twist and challenge social science’s conventional methodologies. In the last years, she has explored the concept of hacking as a way to unbox the concept of bio-politics, posthumanism, the Anthropocene, ecological crisis, nature-cultures, non-human agency, artistic speculation and imagination. Since January 2017, she has been a member of TOP Transdisciplinary Project Space and since December 2019, she has been a member of Art Laboratory Berlin, assisting their hybrid-art oriented program. tuceerel.com

Ryo Ikeshiro (JP/HK): Ryo Ikeshiro is an artist, musician and researcher. His work explores the possibilities of meaning and context presented through sound, as well as its materiality with relation to digital audio and audio technologies. He was part of the Asia Culture Center’s inaugural exhibition in Gwangju, South Korea, and he is a contributor to Sound Art: Sound as a Medium of Art (ZKM Karlsruhe/MIT). He is an Assistant Professor and co-director of SoundLab at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. ryoikeshiro.com

Vincent Ruijters (NL/JP): Vincent Ruijters. PhD. Born in 1988 in The Netherlands. Currently based in Tokyo. Ruijters focuses on the phenomenology of intimacy and ethnic identity. Through his art, he explores how contemporaneity shifts and modifies these phenomena. In his work overstimulation, speed and the coldness of contemporary systems clash with the artist’s need to cherish and express what is deeply human. Physicality, materiality, technology, interaction and the sense of touch are fundamental elements of his practice. vincentruijters.com

Tsui Brothers (HK): The twins Haze & Long Tsui grew up in Hong Kong in the 1980s and graduated from the School of Creative Media of City University and the School of Design of Polytechnic University. They started to draw together in childhood and bonded as a creative team since 2006, focusing on cross-media projects, including design, advertising, moving images and artwork creations.
In 2014, they established Milktealogy, a research project on the culture of ‘milk tea’ in Hong Kong and across the world. The team has started to create an award-winning animation series about it: “Teatime Rhapsody” & “TransForMeal”. www.instagram.com/Tsuibrothers/

Wong Suk Yin Elaine (HK): Elaine Wong is based in Hong Kong. She received her Master’s in Fine Art (Creative Media) from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. With a background in fine arts and painting, she regards her practice as an investigation of the potentials of art beyond representation, its relation to sensation, documentation and experience. Her interest in the experiential quality of works leads her to engage in experiments with videography, sound and media installations. miss-wong.com

Viola Yip (HK): A native of Hong Kong, Viola Yip is an experimental composer, performer and sound artist. Her work has been focusing on developing musical instruments and performances that explore materiality, performativity, relationality, affect and the human-machine relationships between the digital and the analog worlds. Yip’s work has been presented in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, England, Portugal, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Beijing and Malaysia. violayip.com

Panel Coordinator:

Sophie Zhang Yujia (HK): Sophie Zhang Yujia is a PhD candidate in School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her current research interests focus on building public self within the art world, and she is also involved with social media studies, image analysis, facial expression detections and emotion studies. Contributing to her research, Zhang does art practices on relative topics, and her artworks have been exhibited in Hong Kong for several times.

Panel Assistant:

Charlie Yip (HK): Charlie Yip obtained her Master Degree in Creative Media from the City University of Hong Kong after completing a Bachelor of Fine Art. Currently a member of the Neuro-Design Lab. Alongside the team members, she has been organizing various curatorial projects and creating interactive artworks. Her research focuses mainly on Curating Art and Media.

Credits

Curator: Ann Mak
Chair: Maurice Benayoun
Panel Coordinator: Sophie Zhang Yujia
Panel Assistant: Charlie Yip