Exhibition
CINEMA 2.0 Media Arts Exhibition: Illuminating Vacuum
The relationship between the screen and film is always paradoxical. It is a thing that enables us to see a film, but is also something that we normally do not see during the viewing experience. It is an “invisible” medium. The screen functions as a border between the two worlds, the physical / the real and the symbolic / the virtual, constantly reminding the audience what is being displayed on screen is merely a movie and a fantasy.
In the contemporary world, the electronic screens have become a universal interface for everyday life. Social media, being highly image-driven and short clips oriented, has reinforced the screens to serve as the indispensable vehicle of self-construction and self-expression. In this era of the pandemic, the functionality of screens has extended and amplified to an extent that has overflown to conceal its physicality.
In this edition of CINEMA 2.0: Illuminating Vacuum Media Arts Exhibition, with four different artworks, the complex relation of how the screen serves as a medium in the real world is re-examined.
Curator:
Ip Yuk-yiu
Featured Artists:
Joon Moon (South Korea)
Exonemo (Japan)
Akinori Goto (Japan)
Supported by
Curated By
Graphic and Spatial Design
Technical Support
Hello, Shadow! (2018)
Joon Moon
(South Korea)
The work implements mixed reality using a shadow. The audience moves a lighting device to observe the shadow’s shapes generated by computer graphics, then get to understand the virtual world embedded in the shadows. At the boundary between imagination and reality, shadows evoke a unique fantasy and poetic emotion. The audience is allured to make eye contact with the virtual human of the shadow world.
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Hello, Shadow! (2018)
Joon Moon
Kiss, or Dual Monitors (2017)
Exonemo
(Japan)
This work consists of two monitors, both showing a face with eyes closed and arranged in a way that makes them look like they are kissing. The work aims to evoke the sense of tactility, which is looming on the surface of devices in an age where information devices are becoming increasingly physical.
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Kiss, or Dual Monitors (2017)
Exonemo
Rediscovery of Anima (2018)
Akinori Goto
(Japan)
Trajectory of motion is given three-dimensional structure through wood and stone and comes to life when touched by a ray of sunlight. The work explores humankind's craving for the appearance of motion and interest in the presence of an anima, while imagining its relationship to the society and culture of the time. Then, in the present age, in which images are used heavily, the artist returns to our original sense and feeling for the appearance of motion.
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Rediscovery of Anima (2018)
Akinori Goto
Progress (2017)
Akinori Goto
(Japan)
A beam of light projected onto the artwork makes a walking person appear. As the beam of light spreads in a circle, the number of walking people increases. In the work, while the self splits with the passage of time, it continues toward amplification. Of the multiple selves that exist both physically and digitally at the same time, what do we use to establish the "true self" and which self would that be?
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Progress (2017)
Akinori Goto
The 27th ifva Awards
Media Art Category Finalist Exhibition
The pandemic brings tremendous impacts to human activities. In this time of turmoil, with the different works of art, we not only respond to the “new normal” but also continue to return to the perpetual questions on life, technology, time and memories. Ten media art finalist works from Hong Kong and different parts of Asia, in the form of sound installation, video game, cassette tape, autonomous agents, attempt to portray imaginations of the past and the future.
Ether - liquid mirror -
Kaito Sakuma
(Japan)
The circular mirror that vibrates at very high speed is a speaker. It senses the viewer’s heartbeat and synchronises with it to suggest a transformation in self-awareness. The circular shape is influenced by Shintoism, which is unique to Japan. It asks us to question our sense of values in life.
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Ether - liquid mirror -
Kaito Sakuma
Forgetter
Yang Jing, Kwan Tsz-wai Alan
(Hong Kong)
Forgetter is an exploration video game in which the art collection from dslcollection seeps into the narrative. Set in the near future, players take up a job at a technology company as cleaners of dead artists’ brains, identifying and removing traumatic memory blocks in their minds, in order to recycle their brains for newborns. Many memory blocks are constituted by Chinese contemporary artworks.
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Forgetter
Yang Jing, Kwan Tsz-wai Alan
“I am like sea waves, going up and down.”
Tse Chun-sing
(Hong Kong)
My work is about the time that I missed. I tried to recreate the sea of my grandpa and I based on memories and imagination, and a pier that we had never been to together. The audience can look at the sea, listen to the waves, and listen to me humming an old Minnamese song – Sea Waves – that my grandpa would have understood.
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“I am like sea waves, going up and down.”
Tse Chun-sing
(in)visible
Hsu Hsun-hsiang, Huang Yin-hao
(Taiwan)
Like a game of interpreting the messages of this world, (in)visible delves into the nano-scaled field, surpassing the limits within the human conceptions of time and space with the advancement of technological measurements. Through the lens of technology, we can reconsider the future possibilities of the living landscapes for human civilisations.
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(in)visible
Hsu Hsun-hsiang, Huang Yin-hao
Lesson
Tomoya Ishibashi, Kento Niikura
(Japan)
The left monitor shows a famous painting; the middle monitor shows a description of that painting generated by an image description generator; and the right monitor shows an image from text-to-image generator based on the aforementioned description. Lesson presents a series of AI-interpreted processes, questioning subjectivity and contingency of artwork interpretation and the act of creation from a machine’s perspective.
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Lesson
Tomoya Ishibashi, Kento Niikura
N1801
Ning Sen
(Taiwan)
The work is composed of a VR device with no vision function, and an interactive theatre. It is intended to explore Bardo and VR media, history and body perceptions. Viewers need to “shut eyes” and recreate the internal vision through abstract dynamic light stimulation and spatial audio. Through the movement of the body, each experiencer will embark on a personal path in the state of Bardo.
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N1801
Ning Sen
Petri.Vista
Chan Long-fung Lazarus
Hong Kong
Inspired by infection simulation during the pandemic, Petri.Vista is a complex system which simulates human phenomenon with autonomous agents. Those digital creatures are triggered by different events and memories, and then interact with others, resulting in an aerial view of cityscape inside a digital petri dish. The agents begin with one single dot and grow into shapes depending on their DNA, and will explore and learn.
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Petri.Vista
Chan Long-fung Lazarus
The Cave with a Wheeze
Lau Ching-wa
(Hong Kong)
In a stop-motion animation on a 2 x 3 m2 wall, Lau drew one after another carbon-black being with charcoal, walking from edge to centre. Depicted, documented and erased – Lau repeated with each being until the wall was filled in black. She then wiped the charcoal with hands to revert the wall to white. The clock reflects the time in reality, in parallel to the condensed time in the animation.
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The Cave with a Wheeze
Lau Ching-wa
Translated Landscape
Tomoya Ishibashi, Kento Niikura
(Japan)
Through object detection technology used in, for example, autonomous driving, the streets of Tokyo were converted into a landscape of letters. The names of the identified objects were converted into Japanese characters with kanji as the focus. The size of the characters reflects that of the detected object.
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Translated Landscape
Tomoya Ishibashi, Kento Niikura
Uber Existence
Shin Hanagata
(Japan)
Uber Existence is an “existence agency” that provides service of “being there”. When users go to the official website, they see people lined up as products. Then, a user can choose an “actor” to represent him/her, according to where to go and what kind of body to have. The user can then connect with the “actor” through the app and actually “be” there. The catchphrase is: “Let's go outside while staying home.”
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Uber Existence
Shin Hanagata
A Messenger - Passerby in Our Battlefields
Media Arts Exhibition by Lo Lai-lai Natalie
“A Messenger - Passerby in Our Battlefields” Media Arts Exhibition by Lo Lai-lai Natalie and Bird Call Whistle Workshop, which originally held from 18/5 to 11/6/2022, will be cancelled due to health concern of the artist.
ifva partners with Goethe-Institut Hongkong to present solo exhibitions for Media Art Category local awardees. This year the two parties will present the solo media arts exhibition “A Messenger - Passerby in Our Battlefields” of Lo Lai-lai Natalie, the Gold Awardee of the 26th ifva Media Art Category, which explores the conflicts and wrestlings among humans and nature through a collection of new media artworks.
The lonesome spring is approaching. We yearn to sing freely and migrate like birds, but the price of staying alive remains a mystery. Farmers, like their crops, used to live with the land. Some of them, however, are uprooted and rely on their intuition to flow steadily in the sky, just to prevent themselves from falling back onto the soil.
It is an unsettling field in and out. Could nature articulate the true self by provoking our emotions?
Supported by
Partner
Bird Call Whistle Workshop
A little music instrument made with local timber that sings like birds. Memories of birds linger in the deforested nature.
Guest: Chung Wai-ian (MUDWORK)
Language: Cantonese
Quota: 12
Quota: 12
Lo Lai-lai Natalie received her Master of Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a learner at the collective organic farm Sangwoodgoon (Hong Kong) where she also explores, as an artist and a Hongkonger, the lifestyle of “Half-Farming, Half-X”, a practice that seeks alternatives and autonomy. Her works are collected by the Sigg Collection and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (US). Her works were presented in San Francisco, Paris, Dresden, Johannesburg and more.
