Curated by: Ann Mak
Chair: Maurice Benayoun
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. 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.
The Exhibition is accessible on Garden HK Website during festival period and beyond (hkgardens.com).
Video
Théodora Barat (FR): Théodora Barat (b. 1985) lives and works in Pantin, France. Barat’s artistic approach combines film, sculpture and installation. She is working on a practice-based PhD with RADIAN program and will be in residency at Villa Medici (Rome, Italy) during 2021-22. Her work has been shown at Sunken Plaza – K11 MUSEA (Hong Kong), CNEAI= (Paris), Emily Harvey Foundation and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (New York), Nuit Blanche (Paris), La Friche la Belle de Mai (Marseille), Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius, Lithuania), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), as well as in several international film festivals. cargocollective.com/theodorabarat
Alvaro Cassinelli (UY/HK): Born in Uruguay, Alvaro Cassinelli is an equilibrist walking the thin line between Art and Science. He co-founded and led the Meta-Perception group at the Ishikawa-Oku Laboratory, University of Tokyo – a research group specialized on interfaces for expanding the vocabulary of HCI and media arts. He is presently Associate Professor and co-founder of the XRL/AM (Extended Reality Lab, Augmented Materiality Group) at the School of Creative Media in Hong Kong. Awards includes the Grand Prize [Art Division] (9th Japan Media Art Festival), Excellence Prize [Entertainment Division] (13th Japan Media Art Festival), Honorary Mention (Ars Electronica), NISSAN Innovative Award (2010), Jury Grand Prize at Laval Virtual (2011) among others. alvarocassinelli.com
Chan, Ka Chun Joseph (HK): Being a kinetic art artist is an uncommon practice in Hong Kong. Joseph Chan’s works often focuses on three core elements: form, motion, and engineering ingenuity. Subjects of his creations include flying bird automata, orrery, time machines, marble machines, transforming machines, and walking machines. His machines subtly reflect the influences of being lived in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, at a revolutionary time when science, art, and technology are full of discovery, invention, and wonder. JCArt.hk
Marco Donnarumma (DE): Marco Donnarumma is an artist, performer, stage director and scholar weaving together contemporary performance, new media art and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He manipulates bodies, creates choreographies, engineers machines and composes sounds, combining disciplines, media and emerging technologies into an oneiric, sensual, uncompromising aesthetic. He is internationally acknowledged for his solo performances, stage productions and installations that defy genre, in which the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power and technology. marcodonnarumma.com
Tuçe Erel (DE): 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
Kattie Fan (HK): As a double Master’s degree holder with a background in creative media and cultural studies, Kattie Fan is a curator, creative producer, cultural researcher and art manager specialized in media arts and cross-disciplinary arts, with networks and experience in curating and organizing large-scale projects such as ifva Awards and Festival (2009-), Cinema 2.0 (2010-), ifva Everywhere Carnival (2016-2020), Indie is… Hong Kong Independent Short Films 1995 – 2014 (2015), Animation Lab (2012), Bloomberg Emerging Artist Programme and Exhibition (2008), etc. Her recent creative projects include Chroma 11, a virtual reality dance film experience which was selected for the Biennale College Cinema VR under the Venice Film Festival. www.ifva.com
Jeffrey Geiringer (US/HK): Jeffrey Geiringer (they/them) is an artist and technologist working at the forefront of 3D-space generative machine intelligence methods. Their work is centered around questions of iconography, identity, self-reflection, and the dubious value of nationalism. Their current body of work partners with a machine skillset to combine objects into new sculptural icons. A recent immigrant to Hong Kong from New York City, Jeffrey has found their new environment to be a daily source of inspiration. jjeffregeiringer.studio
David Rodriguez Gimeno (ES): David Rodríguez Gimeno was born in Huesca, Spain in 1975. He holds an MA in Fine Arts from Valencia and a Master’s degree in Digital Techniques and Processes. Through video photography and robotic installations, he has developed work from mobile sculpture to expanded cinema.. He has held exhibitions in museums such as Tainan Art Museum, Taiwan; Alcala 31, CDAN, Spain; Pavilion O2, Venice, Italy; KF Gallery, Seoul, Korea. He has received awards and residencies at Antarctica, Cinedans Holland, Madatac Spain, Osmosis Taiwan, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. www.davidrg-art.com
Joanna Hoffmann (PL): Joanna Hoffmann is a Professor at the University of Arts in Poznań, and leader of the Studio for Transdisciplinary Projects and Research (WEAiK/UAP). She is also co-founder and Chair of the Art & Science Node in Berlin. Her artistic works have been widely presented in venues such as the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw; the Science Museum/DANA Centre and MOCA in London; Transmediale Festival and the European Patent Office in Berlin, and MUSE New York. She was the Artist of Honour at the XII Florence Biennale and was awarded the medal Gloria Artis by the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Poland. johoffmann.com
Ryo Ikeshiro (JP/UK/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
Jonathan Kemp (UK/AU): Jonathan Kemp defragments technology in solo/collaborative material-gnostic outputs including workshops and performances, installations, experimental communicative systems, and social software events, executed across Australia, Brazil, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and the US. Media art projects include Psychogeophysics, The Crystal World, and Shift/Register, all explorations of how the earth, technology and the psyche under/overwrite and deviate each other. xxn.org.uk
Tobias Klein (DE/HK): Tobias Klein (簡鳴謙) is a German artist and architect. His work articulates a syncretism of contemporary CAD/CAM technologies with cultural narratives, intuitive non-linear processes and historical references, establishing the practice of Digital Craftsmanship as an operational synthesis between digital and physical materials, methods and tools as poetic (poïesis) and technical (technê) expressions. He is an associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. www.kleintobias.com
Vvzela Kook (HK): Vvzela Kook is a new media artist who mainly works in audiovisual mediums, including performance, theatre, computer graphics and drawing. Kook’s video works combine technology with her artistic practice to reproduce and convert urban cityscapes into an integrated virtual experience, guiding the audience on a cybernetic journey. The condensed textures in her works connect with multiple sensual levels in our perception and reintroduce the unexplored potential of video as a medium. The narrative plays an important role in her work, the transmedia storytelling is part of the artistic concept. The mixing of delicate drawings, 3D printing and video game optics in her videos show the wide range of media and materials the artist uses to visually translate her research-based projects. vvzela.co
Lai Chiu Han Linda (HK): Linda Chiu-han Lai is a research-based interdisciplinary artist. Her videography has been shown in over 20 cities, including solo features at EXIS (Seoul), EXIM (Macau) and C3A (Cordoba, Spain). Her artistic practice concerns the politics of narrativity via montage and experimental historiography. Large-scale and site-specific installations were commissioned for the Shanghai Biennale and Pearl Lam Galleries (Singapore, Hong Kong). Her works are part of Power Station of Art’s permanent collection at Shanghai, and M+’s moving image collection. Twenty-six videos of hers (2005-2014) are archived at Video Bureau (Guangzhou and Beijing). She is a founder of Writing Machine Collective (2004 to date). In 2015, she started her experiments in participatory art as the Floating Projects, with recent published works including Our Manifestos II: Videography, Documentary Impulses (2021) and three video zine issues titled \”D-Normal/V-Essay,\” both ADC-funded. She was the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Artist of the Year in Media Art 2017. http://www.lindalai-floatingsite.com/content
RAY LC (US/HK): RAY LC’s practice creates interactions and environments for building bonds between human beings and between humans and machines by using the nonverbal communication media of movement, sounds, and cinematic storytelling. He studied computer vision at UC Berkeley and neuroscience at UCLA, applying such technologies to performance, media art, and fashion at Tokyo. He held an MFA from Parsons School of Design and a PHD from UCLA before becoming Assistant Professor at City University HK SCM. raylc.org
Lin Pey-Chwen (TW): Pey-Chwen LIN was born in Taiwan in 1959. She received her Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong in Australia in 1995. She served as the professor and former head of the Graduate School of Multimedia and Animation Arts in National Taiwan University of Arts. She is one of the pioneers of digital arts in Taiwan and has received many art awards, including The First Prize of New Media Art in 2019, at the XII Florence Biennial. Her achievements have been documented in many art journals, history books and art archives internationally. linpeychwen.com
Alexey Marfin (US): Alexey Marfin is a film director interested in life in cities, making films between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. His films have screened worldwide, from Busan Film Festival to Brooklyn Film Festival. His VR film Kowloon Forest won Best Live Action VR at the 2020 Vancouver Film Festival. He has been acclaimed by Western and Asian media, including Vice, Nowness, Ming Pao Weekly, City Magazine HK, RTHK, and others. Alexey also teaches the Fiction & Entertainment postgrad program at SCI-Arc in LA. alexeymarfin.com
Cédric Maridet (FR/HK): Cédric Maridet is a research-based artist working in Hong Kong since 1999. His work often explores sound through the act of listening, collecting and archiving with a strong interest in system of knowledge and fiction. His work takes multiple forms such as video, installations, photography, sound compositions and works on paper. Maridet has exhibited, performed and lectured at many international sites, including Tate Modern, Para Site, Tai Kwun Contemporary and Suomenlinna in Helsinki. He has been awarded the Prize of Excellence in the Hong Kong Art Biennial 2005, the Gold Award in Media Arts at the 19th IFVA, and HKADC’s Media Artist of the Year in 2014. Maridet currently holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts of Hong Kong Baptist University. www.moneme.com
Kingsley NG (HK): Kingsley Ng is an inter-disciplinary artist and designer with a focus on site-specific and participatory projects. His creative practice isdriven by the belief that art can be socially relevant and transformative. His work has been shown to critical acclaim at prominent international venues such as Guangzhou Triennial, the Shanghai Expo, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial Japan, Milan Design Week and various exhibitions in France, Italy and Australia. He is the recipient of the Hong Kong Arts Development Best Artist Award (Media Arts) in 2013, and a Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Award in 2009. kingsleyng.com
Royce NG (HK): is an artist currently based in Hong Kong working in digital media and performance who deals with the intersections of modern Asian history, trans-national trade, drugs, political economy and aesthetics. His works were featured in the 2019 exhibition ‘Phantom Plane: Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future’ at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong and in 2020, he will have his first solo presentation in Japan with ‘The Death of Manchuria…’ at ASAKUSA in Tokyo. In 2021, his works will feature in the Shanghai Biennale XIII. Opiummuseum.asia
Born in Uruguay, Alvaro CASSINELLI is an equilibrist walking the thin line between Art and Science. He co-founded and led the Meta-Perception group at the Ishikawa-Oku Laboratory, University of Tokyo – a research group specialized on interfaces for expanding the vocabulary of HCI and media arts. He is presently Associate Professor and co-founder of the XRL/AM (Extended Reality Lab, Augmented Materiality Group) at the School of Creative Media in Hong Kong. Awards includes the Grand Prize [Art Division] (9th Japan Media Art Festival), Excellence Prize [Entertainment Division] (13th Japan Media Art Festival), Honorary Mention (Ars Electronica), NISSAN Innovative Award (2010), Jury Grand Prize at Laval Virtual (2011) among others. alvarocassinelli.com
Ellen Pau (HK): Ellen Pau is a video artist, curator and researcher in Hong Kong. Her early works first appeared in local screening clubs and emerged on the international scene in 1987. In 1986, Pau co-founded Videotage, a media art collective aiming at creating an umbrella organization for local media artists, facilitating artistic and cultural exchange and promoting new media arts to the public. She is the founding director-cum-curator of Microwave International New Media Arts Festival. Her single channel videos and video installation works have been extensively exhibited worldwide, including the Hong Kong Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennial. edouardmalingue.com/artists/ellen-pau
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
Yu-Chuan Tseng (TW): An artist, curator, and academic, Yu-Chuan Tseng is a pioneer digital artist who has been pondering the status of human existence in the digital age since 1998. She obtained her PhD at the Graduate Institute of Applied Art, National Chiao Tung University, and is currently a Professor at the Department of Public Relations and Advertising, Shih Hsin University, and a Chairperson of Taiwan Information Design, Art, Technology, Education Association. In 2003 she held the solo exhibition “Let’s Make Art” at the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, staging the first art show that employed instantaneous web-based interaction. In 2012, she participated in the Leonardo Digital Art Initiative. tyuchuan.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”. https://www.instagram.com/Tsuibrothers/
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”. https://www.instagram.com/Tsuibrothers/
Ken Ueno (US): Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winner Ken Ueno is a composer, vocalist and sound artist. Ueno’s collaborators include the Hilliard Ensemble, Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Steve Schick and SFCMP, and Frances-Marie Uitti. As a vocalist, he has performed his concerto with orchestras in Boston, New York, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand, North Carolina, and California. His sound installations have been installed at MUAC, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Art Basel, and at SCI-Arc. Ueno is currently a Professor in Music at UC Berkeley. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. www.kenueno.com
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/DE): 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
CURATOR:
Ann Mak (HK): Ann Mak is a curator based in Hong Kong. Her practice is a search for identity through the ideological exploration of space. Her curatorial projects include Ars Electronica Festival – Hong Kong Garden 2020, On the Road – Young Media Artists in China from 2017 to 2019 and Love Hong Kong for Les Photaumnales 2016, in France. Related projects include Fleeting Light-the Hong Kong Interactive Media Art Exhibition in 2013, and Open Sky Campus from 2014 to 2016. Besides, she had been appointed by Pingyao International Photo Festival in China to curate exhibitions representing Hong Kong from 2013-2016. annmak.com
CURATOR:
Maurice Benayoun (FR/HK) is a media art pioneer, theorist, curator, and professor based in Hong Kong and Paris, whose accolades include the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the SIGGRAPH Award, amongst others. Moving freely between media boundaries, from virtual reality to large-scale public art installations, and from BCI to the blockchain, Benayoun has exhibited across major international museums in about 30 countries. His recent research focuses on urban media art, critical fusion, behavioural design, the blockchain, transactional art, BCI driven neuro-design, and the morphogenesis of human values. www.moben.art
