ISEA2016 Selected Artworks
Happy to present to you, the 6 Official Selections and 22 Honorable Mention works as shown throughout May and June 2016!
Please scroll down to find detail including artist statements of each work below.
ISEA2016 Open Sky Project for ICC - 6 Official Selections
ISEA2016 Open Sky Project for ICC - 22 Honorable Mention Category
OFFICIAL SELECTION : City Paths
City path is paced with a rapid rhythm, reflecting the busy atmosphere, sights and sounds of Hong Kong: the scene of busy traffic, with its streets teeming with people and the noise of the traffic buzzing in the air. To represent this unique atmosphere, we transformed the pulsating energies of Hong Kong into geometric lines and flows. With the rhythm of the waves in the foreground, the strong and straight silhouette of ICC tower becomes soft. Therefore the tower becomes a mirror that reflects the flowing waves of Victoria Harbor, and also a corridor that connects the sea and the sky.
OFFICIAL SELECTION : Fly High - Time Flies
Our times are characterized by transience, impermanence and change. For the largest screen in the world, we propose a short sequence composed of a swarm of artificial flies. They slowly appear, propagate and gradually invade the whole ICC Tower, before flying away again. A short text “Fly High – Time Flies” reminds us of the beauty of the current moment.
OFFICIAL SELECTION : Big Moon Hong Kong
The Moon represents many things, from the forefront of scientific exploration to the most ancient of archetypal myths. It inspires love poems and lunacy, influences werewolves and the tides. Big Moon Hong Kong evokes the power, presence, and emotional gravity our Moon commands. Created from archival astronomical data, the photos and sounds are courtesy of the Harvard Observatory, NASA, and the Soviet Space Program. This moon shows us views we can’t ever see from Earth, vistas seen only by probes and the astronauts – and perhaps the greater galaxy.
Sound Design by Angelika von Chamier
OFFICIAL SELECTION : Open Sky Etude
Open Sky Etude celebrates the flux of humans in motion. Each animated sequence has been generated by performers in our interactive film set. Data is gathered and run through our animation generator, recombining it into many different patterns. The possibilities of the program are endless.
OFFICIAL SELECTION : Superluminal
“Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity.”*
The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present new modalities, ruptures in our understanding of time, new paradigms, variant ontologies, recursive action, indefinite progression, endless reiteration. High frequency trading algorithms, twitter feeds, data flow, meme generators, click streams; modernity hums with relentless aetheric data coursing through the veins of our cities.
* Cuboniks, Laboria, “Xenofeminism: A politics for alienation”
OFFICIAL SELECTION : Berlin Calling
At the beginning of the sequence, a connection between two poles is slowly established. As the spark leaps over, the true to scale silhouette of the Berliner Fernsehturm flickers in. The Morse code for "Hi" is cast in circular waves. In a second phase, even more dots on the surface of the ICC are connected before the light is shut off.
The art piece is an invitation for communication—between people, cities and artists. It is intended to bring a message from Berlin to Hong Kong and eventually, to extend a form of messaging across other cities around the globe.
Credits : Lacuna Lab
Honorable Mention : 818 Cubed
818 Cubed uses morphing to change the apparent shape of the ICC into other internationally iconic skyscrapers. The sequence begins by highlighting the natural shape of the ICC. This is next “morphed” into a contour shape representing Taipei 101 (Taiwan). Nine structures are represented in the sequence. Various formal strategies are used for structures that do not conform to the slender, singular shape of ICC. In terms of sequencing, 818 Cubed relates the formal qualities of each structure as well as global economic and political contexts. Accompanying audio comes from airports of various cities where the towers are located.
Honorable Mention : The Bones
Original footage shot in high speed as a 360-degree panorama of a street sculpture. Sound by david fodel.
Honorable Mention : Formal Movement
Formal Movement is concerned with the changing relationships between three dimensional forms. A recording of realtime generative animation the forms movements are choreographed by a randomised algorithm.
Will Hurt (b. 1984) uses generative programming techniques, random number generators and 3d graphics engines to create digital prints, animations and live performances exploring the nature of 3d forms in digital space.
Honorable Mention : Inevitable Death of the Universe
The future of the universe is uncertain, but there are many theories on how it may end. The history of mankind is very short and we are just a small chapter in the timespan of the world's journey across time and space. Against the backdrop of this eternal flow of time towards our end, it is strangely comforting to know that our own human struggles on this pale blue dot are but small and temporary in the scale of the larger scheme of things. We are but specks of dust against the repeating cycles of creation and destruction.
Collaborators - Hilhil Chow & Fate Lo
Honorable Mention : Lisa
It is a common practice to associate and add human like characteristics when representing inanimate objects. In this project I was curious if reverse was possible. Could a building become person like. One of the challenges of this project was to make a projection that made sense from different angles. For this reason, Lisa has two faces and two expressions, depending on which corner of the building you view her from.
Honorable Mention : Counterpolis
Counterpolis is a visual and sonic commentary on the urban forces that shape the inhabitants of the 21st century city. Staging a two-minute countdown across the surfaces of the ICC, relationships of exchange, play, movement, stillness, fluidity and friction build into a sonic-visual frenzy embodying our new urban norm. This regime of animated people, spaces and things seems to run on its own logic. Yet, as our bodies navigate the global city, the order that frames this industrious ecology is time; an order that clocks the flows of the metropolis and dates, by the second, the longevity of all things.
Honorable Mention : Dancing Ellipses
The video project depicts ellipses (one for each facade) moving vertically up and down the building. At first the objects are in synch but over time they change phases allowing for syncopated visual movements.
As an interdisciplinary media artist I explore contemporary techniques for integrating diverse communication forms into a cohesive whole. My belief is that intermedia art represents collective imagination, knowledge, and skills that can generate limitless innovation.
Honorable Mention : The Vultures
The Vultures is a hand drawn animation of birds flying and gliding, observing their next target. I use paper and video in order to create a body of works and installations to comment on society. With drawing, collage, photo, animation, video and installation, I tell stories in series searching to transcend mediums and dimensions. With a dark humor, I comment History, environment and current events mixing a naïve aesthetic with troubling subjects.
Honorable Mention : If you are happy, clap your hands
A simple gesture of hand clapping – flickering big and small on the ICC building – creates a mechanical texture of light and is accompanied by sounds of both clapping hands and electronic beats. In the age of overflowing electronic gadgets and sophisticated technologies, even a straightforward expression becomes overcomplicated. All the same, we still become enraptured in the glowing moments of the city and lights.
Honorable Mention : Immersed
“Immersed” is a video installation specifically created for the Open Sky Project in Hong Kong. This project transforms the ICC LED Façade to a huge water tank where color inks create nice swirling patterns while they get mixed in the water. Audience may feel immersed and relaxed from the dynamic movements of water. We acknowledge immersion as a primary aesthetic phenomenon because the immersive experience is fundamental to our senses, realized through bodily interaction in its wholeness. Immersion in this project means that mind, body and environment interweave and communicate with each other through the technically mediated and illusionary space.
Collaborator : Annie Sungkajun
Honorable Mention : Tentative
The video shows gestural interaction with a building. A human figure explores the contours and surfaces of the architecture surrounding it. The tentativeness of touch contrasts with the massiveness of the highrise on which these images are being displayed. The figure plays with the boundaries of the architectural space to create and comprehend it as a space for the human body. The work alludes to the rise of touch as primary means of our interaction with media, and to the tentativeness of our grasp of how contemporary media architectures transform our existence.
Collaborator : Jan Tretschok
Honorable Mention : Untitled
The Japanese concept of Ma describes the gap, empty space or pause between two forms that allows for intensification of vision.
Honorable Mention : Blurred Lines
Blurred Lines is a meditation on the ebbs and flows of the city and the blurred lines that we negotiate everyday.
Honorable Mention : Spectrum Manners ii
This is the animated version of the performance art light painting series by Teddy Lo. Spectrum Manners series is an abstract expression and exploration of programmable LED fixtures and body motions of the artist and long exposure photography by the photographer. For ICC Open Sky project, the artist reverse engineered the still photography into a motion graphic sequence for the media façade projection on the building.
Collaborator : Vahn Wan
Sound by : DJ Gie
Honorable Mention : Food Chain
Combing minimal animation with the unique shape of the ICC building, ‘Food Chain’ is a series of whimsical incidents about predator and prey. Jay hopes to bring a moment of humor to this highly dense concrete jungle by using the power of imagination.
Honorable Mention : Flight
A short looping film of animated technical aeroplane drawings describing flying either horizontally or vertically. I can adjust colours and axis according to the project surface. The aeroplanes appear to be moving their wings in enabling them to fly. This could be challenging but also provoke thoughts about the global and unstable times in which we live.
Honorable Mention : Antarctica Underwater
Antarctica Underwater is largely constructed from incidental footage collected in icy cold Antarctic waters, hundreds of meters below the surface, as a seal bumped into an underwater camera and a serene jellyfish floated by, as did a ctenophore. Woven into these videos are the microscopic plankton comprising the primary focus of the Oceanographic researchers: barely visible shrimp-like krill, (food for seals, penguins and whales), and the microscopic plankton that produce half the oxygen in our environment. This work is intended as a subtle reminder that Antarctica is part of our world and life there is essential for our survival.
Collaborator : Susanne Menden-Deuer; additional researchers in M-D lab, U of Rhode Island
Sound credit : Bob Gluck
Honorable Mention : Awakening
This art piece visualises the amount of known orbiting exoplanets in habitable zone and gives hope that an amazing discovery is just around the corner. First exoplanet was discovered in 1996. At the end of 2015 astronomers have found over 2000 confirmed exoplanets with escalating speed. Over 250 planets were known to be in a habitable zone orbiting around their mother stars. Now we know what to look for and from where. Discovering extraterrestrial life forms would most likely have profound impacts on mankind and change the way in which we view ourselves among the stars and on Earth.
Awakening.
Collaborator : Tuomas Kämppi / Composer
Honorable Mention : Beholder
Beholder is a witness to everything happening below.
Beholder cheers you on when you are down.
Beholder gives credit where it's due.
Beholder lends moral support.
Beholder helps you carry on.
Beholder says keep going,
You're doing great,
I believe in you,
You’re a star,
That’s right,
Super,
Yes.
Honorable Mention : Following Bees
The existence of bees and humans are very interdependent. According to Albert Einstein: "If the bees disappear, the human being has only four more years to live; no more bees, no plants, no animals, no more humans." As pollinators they have a huge value, insustituible for people and nature. From a monetary standpoint, the work of these small insects reaches (only in Europe) 14 billions euros per year! All the huge diversity of bee species has one thing in common: the passion for flowers.
soundtrack : Peachonfuse - ”I'm free, I'm not free”
Honorable Mention : CONNECT
While using the Nasa's star map and celestial scientific datas(which comes from coordinates of the building), we also will blend topographical data with it and prepare an Audio/Visual performance formed with this informations. The inspiration comes from Hong Kong?s terrain, star pattern map above the International Commerce Center Tower and NASA?s set of star maps was created by plotting the position, brightness, and color of just over 100 million stars from the Bright Star, Tycho-2, and UCAC3 star catalogs.
Honorable Mention : Wonderland
Space takes on multiple definitions. For me, I understand space as the sum of cultural and social forces that act on me. Through the space, my body feels all changes around me instantly and intimately. When I move from Korea to the United States, my body became a gauge that felt my displacement and recognized not only the conformity inflicted on me in the United States, but it also allowed me to deconstruct the rule from my hometown that I had taken for granted as normal. In my video piece, I attempt to convey the feeling of displacement by acting of walking backward and playing reversely.