ifva

Exhibition

CINEMA 2.0 Media Art Exhibition: Hard Cinema

10/2-3/3 / 12nn － 8pm / Pao Galleries / Free Admission / Opening Ceremony on 10/2 6:30pm

Cinema has often been considered as a form of virtual experience: elusive, weightless and immaterial. In the forthcoming edition of CINEMA 2.0, Hard Cinema is interested to explore the physicality, materiality and spatiality of cinema: the “other” dimensions of cinema that are often being systemically neglected under standard film practices and spectatorship. We will re-examine cinema’s material being and survey alternative practices of cinema that address issues of materiality and spatiality. Through this probing, we attempt to unleash cinema’s creative potentials, extending and experimenting cinema as a tangible, sculptural, kinetic and spatial medium.

Curator:
Ip Yuk-yiu

Featured Artists:
Rosa Barba (Italy / Germany)
Gebhard Sengmüller (Austria)
Peter William Holden (United Kingdom)

Supported by

Curated by

Partner

Art Direction and Spatial Design

Technical Support

TV Support

In Collaboration With

Invisible Act

Rosa Barba / Italy / Germany

2010

Invisible Act is one of Rosa Barba’s sculptural orchestrations that ultimately open up into a conceptual practice. These works develop an almost multi-sensorial effect due to their special treatment of material, form, surface, light, and sound. The absence of a projected image causes the focus to shift to the material, thus heightening the sculptural effect.

Stating the Real Sublime

Rosa Barba / Italy / Germany

2009

Suspended from the ceiling by the diaphanous loop of film that spins through its system, casting an anamorphic square of light that stretches across the floor and up the wall. The film it projects has no image, other than the dust scratches that breed on the surface of the celluloid, slowly accumulating over the course of the exhibition. The power cable slumps untidily to the floor beneath the projector in a disorderly coil, as if to contradict the taut rationality of the loops above it, implying the projector is invested with alchemical powers to transform entropy into order unless, of course, it is the other way around.

Color Clocks: Verticals Lean Occasionally Consistently Away from Viewpoints

Rosa Barba / Italy / Germany

2012

The three sculptures Color Clocks: Verticals Lean Occasionally Consistently Away from Viewpoints are “kinetic paintings”: Three big mechanical instruments in which 35 mm strips are constantly moving, each of them reproducing a colour – red, blue and yellow – with a word. These sculptures are reminiscent of the internal mechanism of a clock but they are different in the sense that they do not define time but reverse it in an endless loop. It’s a meditation on colour, time, perception and language, on the meaning of a word when repeated to infinity.

Slide Movie

Gebhard Sengmüller / Austria

2006 - present

A film sequence (35mm motion picture) is cut up and the individual frames are mounted as slides. They are distributed among 12 slide projectors that are all focused on the same screen. Via electronic control of the projectors, individual images are reassembled-in an extremely cumbersome way-into a chronological sequence. The formula “one projector per frame” thus gives rise to something that at least rudimentarily suggests a motion picture. The film soundtrack emerges as a byproduct – the mechanical clattering of the projectors changing slides.

AutoGene

Peter William Holden / UK

2005

Giving a first impression of a simple commodity sculpture, AutoGene lures the viewer into a false sense of security, which is rapidly dispelled when the seemingly mundane umbrellas are transformed into magical, animated objects. The circular arrangement combined with the striking contrast produced as the umbrellas expand and contract engender the formation of abstract ephemeral patterns, which are seemingly governed by the accompanying music. The viewer is obliged to re-evaluate the sculpture, inviting comparisons with dance and animation as the mechanical pixels complete their choreographed movement through time and space.

21/3-22/3 (Sat, Sun) | 2pm － 6pm | McAulay Studio | Free Admission, Conducted in Cantonese

Curated by the founder of art.ware IP Yuk-yiu, the free exhibition at Pao Galleries stages three internationally renowned artists - Rosa Barba, Peter William Holden and Gebhard Sengmüller. With old-fashioned 16mm and 35mm films, retro slide projectors and mechanic umbrellas as media, the 5 artworks hope to explore the physicality, materiality and spatiality of cinema. The exhibition also includes the work of the 20th ifva Awards Media Arts category finalists. These 10 media art pieces come from all over Asia including Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

“Visceral Cinema: VR and Physical Interaction” Workshop

The workshop will focus on the use of VR system and physical interaction in future cinema, video game and virtual world production. Specifically participants will learn to use Unity, Oculus Rift VR system and Leapmotion controller in authoring cinematic scenarios, exploring various forms of cinematic viscerality as enabled with these newly available technologies.

Instructor: Ip Yuk-yiu

Eligibility:
Basic knowledge in computer, experienced in Multi-media software and VR system will be advantage

Application Method:
Send the filled application form to email: nng@hkac.org.hk

Deadline：2/3/2015 (Mon)
Successful applicants will be notified individually by mid March.

21/3-22/3 (Sat, Sun) | 2pm － 6pm | McAulay Studio | Free Admission, Conducted in Cantonese

Instructor

Ip Yuk-yiu

Ip is an experimental filmmaker, media artist, art educator and independent curator. His works, ranging from experimental films to live video performances and media installations, have been showcased extensively at international festivals including European Media Art Festival, New York Film Festival, the Image Festival, VideoBrasil, Hong Kong International Film Festival and Yamagato International Documentary Film Festival. He is the founder of the art.ware project, an independent curatorial initiative focusing on the promotion of new media art in Hong Kong. IP has lectured extensively on film, video and media art. Currently he is Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong where his recent works explore real-time and computational forms of cinema.

The 20th ifva Awards

Media Art Category Finalist

Ten media art pieces ranging from video, sound art to interactive installations illustrate the artists’ imaginations on the ambivalent bonding between human beings and the world they situate in.

10/2-3/3 (Close on 19/2 due to Chinese New Year) | 12nn-8pm | Pao Galleries | Free Admission
Discussion session and exhibition opening on 10/2 4:30pm and 6:30pm respectively

APHASIA

Huang Yin-tzu

(Taiwan)

This video installation consists of four vertical videos side by side, portrays Taiwanese women from four different historical periods in the last 130 years to show the cultural identity crisis in Taiwan.

Autumn Rain

Samuel Yip, Thomas Ip

(Hong Kong)

Social networking platforms have been a catalysing force in the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Autumn Rain is an interactive installation transforming this movement into an immersive environment based on the feeds of the activity timeline.

Particle Waves

Ong Kian-peng

(Singapore)

Particle Waves is a kinetic sound installation that looks at the basic components of sound in the natural world. The installation consists of twelve mechanical sculptures that hold a clear bowl containing small metallic particles.

Surveillance

Zhou Shan, Long Xinru

(China)

Surveillance reveals the relationship between physical interaction of the figures and their virtual "interaction" with news content, reflecting on the notion of information power and data control as widely seen in today's media environment.

Bring To Light

Lai Ka-yiu Ruck, Mau Kai-chau, Chan Chong-tat, Kan Ho-fai, Lam Cheuk-hin, Leung Kin-hung

(Hong Kong)

Bring to Light is an interactive installation about privacy issue with 16 lockers. When people walk past a locker, the door of that locker will be opened.

Flat D

Silas Fong

(Hong Kong)

Someone asks if you want to enter a room alone without your watch, mobile phone and camera. After you enter, the door is locked. You come out when the door is unlocked again.

Pro

Fu Yunxue Snow

(China)

Relating to the vertical framing motif of Chinese traditional landscape painting, Pro invites the viewer into a familiar but also unknown space of digital hyperreality.

The Fading Piece

Lau Ching-wa

(Hong Kong)

This is a duo stop-motion animation. The animation on the right shows a diminishing pastel, while the left animation reveals the development of a line-drawing on the Kwun Tong landscape, simultaneously, line by line. In reality, the animation on the left is drawn by the pastel on the right.

Tree Guitar: The Trees, Our Blood Vessels

Yuto Hasebe

(Japan)

Tree Guitar is a string instrument, which, from the biological perspective, has an interest in formative phenomenon and imitates the growth processes of branching development such as trees and blood vessels.

《The Remnant of My Volition (Force Majeure)》

Morgan Wong

(Hong Kong)

The work follows Wong's meditative act of peeling off over fifty thousands red-flag stickers to reveal empty/white flag as a sarcastic surrendering to patriotism under 'One Country Two Systems' amid 'Chinese Reunification'.