The 26th ifva Festival

Exhibition

CINEMA 2.0 Media Arts Exhibition: Counter Visions

We often say we go to“see" a movie, and ignore other non-visual elements of the cinema. But even in the so-called “silent era" of cinema, live music and lecturers' narration were indispensable to the cinematic experience. The English word “cinema" has a Greek root meaning “to move" or "movement" , and has nothing to do with light or images. Indeed, the interrelationships between cinema, optics and visuality should not be taken for granted; likewise, optical principles should not be taken as the only means of visual perception. CINEMA 2.0: Counter Visions departs from the visual-driven way of experiencing media artworks, imagining differently the relationships between the eye and the media. When our faces are covered and our mouths and noses masked in the pandemic, it may be time to re-think the meaning of our sensory perceptions.

Curator:
Ip Yuk-yiu

Featured Artists:
Cod.Act (Switzerland)
Frederik Duerinck (Netherlands)
Kyle McDonald (United States)

Matt Mets (United States)

Supported By

Curated By

Art Direction and Spatial Design

Technical Support

2/3 (Tue) – 14/3 (Sun) | 12nn - 8pm | Pao Galleries | Free Admission

πTon/2 (2017)

Cod.Act

(Switzerland)

πTon/2 is a sound installation that features a flexible enclosed ring set in motion by the torsional motors inside its body. By twisting and waving on itself, the piece moves in with a natural but unpredictable pattern...

Algorithmic Perfumery (2020)

Frederik Duerinck

(Netherlands)

At Algorithmic Perfumery , participants walk away with a tangible and usable memorabilia of the work. A unique scent is made and compounded on-site, based on a questionnaire to be finished by the participant. The test consists of psychological, sociological, cultural questions and a few focused on scent preference. By experiencing the artwork physically or online, participants contribute to the on-going research to improve the Artificial Intelligence and reinvent the future ofperfumery.

Blind Self Portrait (2012)

Kyle McDonald, Matt Mets

(United States)

Blind Self Portrait uses computer vision algorithms to build a contour drawing of the visitor. While the visitors keep their eyes shut, a moving platform guides a pen in their hands to draw their self-portraits. The result is a machine-aided drawing, a self-portrait they could never draw alone...

Curator’s Guided Tour & Artist Sharing

Curator Ip Yuk-yiu will explain his curatorial concepts and introduce the works in an online guided tour, and artist Frederik Duerinck will talk about his works in an online sharing session.

The 26th ifva Awards

Media Art Category Finalist Exhibition

Machines, data, plants, soundwaves, and plastic products are mere objects. Human beings, by making sense of these objects, create relations to produce meanings, and give birth to unexpected scenery which put our usual understanding to the world into question. Ten media art finalist works from Hong Kong and different parts of Asia, in the form of mechanical and video installation, light sculpture, are all distinct portraits of elements of contemporary everyday life.

2/3 (Tue) – 14/3 (Sun) | 12nn - 8pm | Pao Galleries | Free Admission

Aesthetics and Freedom of Human Beings

Chan Kwan-chi

(Hong Kong)

Could art set human beings free from social turmoil? In Aesthetics and Freedom of Human Beings the only spectator in the installation is trapped inside a particular space for 31 minutes while having complete “freedom" to create their own artistic experience. Once the button is pressed, no two spectators would walk on the same journey.

Awakening

Hu Ching-chuan

(Taiwan)

Can robots with humanity and morality have a social identity and the right to control their own freedom? Have our own levels of social status become blurry and unstable? In this project, Augmented Reality (AR) images and machines interact with one another where humans can only observe and feel, losing the identity of being the“controller".

Give No Words but Mum

Lo Lai Lai Natalie

(Hong Kong)

Personal private underground TV station“Slow-so TV: Give No Words but Mum＂continues to serve distracted audiences and provides them with programmes to pass time. Thoughts that are uprooted together with the plants and fine debris which are serenely scattered calmly reveal the long-suppressed desires and obsessions. When the audience touches the aluminium foil attached to the plants, TV programmes will be played.

Living to Die

Hoi In-wai Kelvin

(Macau)

The unique journey of new data begins once you browse the website. Starting from the local machine, data travels through numerous nodes and reaches its destination, the web server. This journey only takes a few milliseconds, and then the mission of the data is completed. This artwork presents the travelling path of data instantly and visually, which leads us to a new perspective of death.

Modern Body

Katsuki Nogami

(Japan)

The artist records his face every day by scanning his pores because that is also his identity. These days selfies are becoming disconnected from reality, virtual avatars will become the new norm very soon. So what does our body mean today? Scanned faces are limited by technology, and so do human bodies whose hands are attached to smartphones.

The Puzzle I

Angela Yuen

(Hong Kong)

Each plastic object represents the historical development of the city’s manufacturing industries from the 1960s to now. These objects are assembled into a rotating light sculpture, with the silhouettes of objects forming an ever-changing skyline projection on wall. Each diorama is a symbol of the era; each object tells a fascinating story of the factory and local store from where it belonged.

Spectrum

Mari Ohno

(Japan)

Spectrum is a sound installation that explores the visual appearance of inaudible sound. It is composed of visual objects made of nanogratings, which express the soundwaves of ultrasound, and a light source. The audiences can “hear" the inaudible sound waves through the co-composition between natural light reactions and artificially designed nanostructures.

Spirotrope

Witaya Junma

(Thailand)

The work is composed of Spirograph, Stirling engine and an Arduino, three inventions from different eras. Each visitor is invited to draw a pattern using the Spirograph, and place it in a special holder that spins it with a Stirling engine. This engine provides electrical power for the Arduino, allowing it to blink so that the Spirograph pattern will be animated differently at various rates.

Unerasable Characters II

Winnie Soon

(Hong Kong)

The project explores the politics of erasure and the temporality of voices within the context of digital authoritarianism. It presents the sheer scale of unheard voices by technically examining and culturally reflecting the endlessness, and its wider implications, of censorship that is implemented through technological platforms and infrastructure.

What Are You Watching

Zhou Zixuan

(China)

The work reviews the relationship between social reality and artistic expression of privacy leakage from the perspective of psychology, “peeping" and “being peeped at". Live-broadcasting softwares are free and convenient. Behind the peep, it reflects the ethical paradigm, aesthetic pursuit and the value standard of the contemporary.

"The Epoch of Futurescape"

Media Arts Exhibition by Chris Cheung (h0nh1m)

ifva partners with Goethe-Institut Hongkong to present solo exhibitions for Media Art Category local awardees. Following Hui Wai-keung, Kenny Wong and Carla Chan, this year the two parties will present Chris Cheung (h0nh1m)’s first solo media arts exhibition.

“Inheriting unfinished ambitions, embarking on an enlightening journey."

After everything we have been through, we have arrived at the present moment and are now considering our future. We understand that art is a never-ending practice.

Ink, stone and calligraphy descend from Eastern aesthetics. The beauty of the sky, the mountains, the sun, the moon, and the stars was captured by ancient literati in poetry, calligraphy and painting; passed down to this day, unforgotten after more than a thousand years. In the digital age, data has become the carrier of memory which also serves to inject new vigour into artistic creation. But will human memory fall into extinction due to interventions in technology?

Partner

25/2 (Thu) – 20/3 (Sat) ｜9am – 8:30pm (Mon-Fri) / 9:30am – 6pm (Sat)｜Goethe-Gallery & Black Box Studio, Goethe-Institut Hongkong ｜Free Admission

Artist Sharing Session : 25/2 (Thu) | 6:30pm @ifva Facebook Live

Chris Cheung (h0nh1m)

Chris Cheung (h0nh1m), avantgarde audiovisual performance and new media artist. His works have been exhibited in Ars Electronica and ZKM. Chris founded the artist collectives XCEPT and XCEED in 2008.