Since 2020, humanity has embraced web technologies unprecedentedly in adapting to the harsh physical limitations caused by Covid-19 and the ensuing economic fluctuations. As a result, we find ourselves emerging from the pandemic with a slew of new technologies, platforms, and trends that offer new potential for media artists to expand the boundaries of their interventions. In fact, we are supposedly at the doorstep of Web3 - the next generation of the internet.
Amidst heated controversies surrounding the economic, socio-political, and ethical viability of Web3, it remains a curious duty for artists to experiment with and to think through our artful probing of new technologies and their underlying ideologies. In contemplating the potentials and the caveats of a “decentralized” internet as well as what it means for the art-world, FOUNDATION festival began by exploring contemporary works in the fields of NFTs, Artificial Intelligence, and Extended Realities. It is in these overlapping frontiers that we grasp pertinent investigative threads emerging from within concrete artworks, as tangible departure points to embark on as we are propelled into the oncoming future of Web3.
As part of FOUNDATION’s threefold programme, our experimental panel in September 2022 laid down the varied perspectives from renowned art practitioners, theorists, historians, scientists and technologists, to provoke and propel us into action. We have then paired 3 contemporary media artists with 3 academic laboratories that represent the three pillars of our investigation (Blockchain, AI, & XR), the synergy from which will come to bear fruit at our Finale on 17th March 2023.
The festival culminates in an afternoon filled with converging perspectives: A Keynote speech by renowned media scholar Dr. Lev Manovich articulates his personal journey as an artist co-creating with “Artificial Intelligence” in the age of Web3; The 3 Artist x Laboratory collaborations will emerge from behind the veils; followed by the Opening and the guided tour of the 12 inspiring artworks that effectively expand our understanding of how art can critically, ethically, and more fully engage with the Web3 world.
Curated in the spirit of eclecticism to facilitate the rich convergence of diverse reflections from multiple points of enunciation, we invite you to join us in this collective way-finding exercise in the new age of decentralisation.
FOUNDATION: A Web3 Media Art Festival (2022-3)
Commissioned by Videotage, sponsored by HKADC
September 2022~ September 2023
https://distant.gallery/foundation-festival
Role: co-Curator, producer, moderator ++
FOUNDATION was commissioned as a fully online media arts festival focusing on the connectivity between media art praxis and the oncoming futures of Web3. The festival was launched on Distant.Gallery, a sociality-driven experimental exhibition interface that was developed by media artist Constant Dullaart, and supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
As part of FOUNDATION’s threefold programme, our experimental panel in September 2022 laid down the varied perspectives from renowned art practitioners, theorists, historians, scientists and technologists, to provoke and propel us into action. We have then paired 3 contemporary media artists with 3 academic laboratories that represent the three pillars of our investigation (Blockchain, AI, & XR), the synergy from which was presented during the final exhibition opening on 17th march 2023. The exhibition opening was accompanied by a Keynote speech by renouned theorist/artist Dr. Lev Manovich, followed by an exhibition tour. A number of artist talks were also organized, both onsite, and online.
Featured Panelists:
* Dr. Lev Manovich (Media Theorist/ Artist)
* Dr. De Kai (AI Scientist/ AI Ethic specialist)
* Dr. Melentie Pandilovski (Art theorist/historian/ curator)
* Ms. Priscilla Koukoui (Metaverse, Web3 & multisensory designer)
* Dr. Alvaro Cassinelli (Multidisciplinary researcher/inventor/artist)
Moderated by Lisa Park So Young (Scholar-artist/curator)
Laboratory x Artist Duos:
* Extended Reality ：Chloë Cheuk x Liu Chang @Augmented Virtuality Lab, SCM,CityU
* Blockchain: Feaston x Damien Charrieras @Laboratory for Interventions in Speculative Finance, SCM, CityU
* Artificial Intelligence: Liao Jiaming x De Kai i@Human Language Technology Center, HKUST
Featured Artists:
Cesar Jung-Harada, Pamela Pascual, Alvaro Cassinelli, Ni Made Dwidiani;
Carla Chan 卡娜;
Doreen Chan 陳泳因;
Constant Dullaart;
Scott Hessels;
Ho Tzu Nyen 何子彥;
Hui Wai-Keung 許維強;
Elena Knox;
Priscilla Koukoui;
Lawrence Lek 陸明龍;
Lev Manovich;
Kanno So & Kato Akihiro & Watanuki Takemi
Clubhouse Panel: Can AI be as good as Beethoven?
20 October 2021
On Clubhouse
Role: co-organizer & panelist
Continuing the conversation on Culture and AI in collaboration with AI & AI Ethics expert De Kai (HKUST) and Sound artist and composer Ken Ueno (UC Berkeley), we invited music and technology strategist Matthias Röder to speak about his project on completing the Beethoven's unfinished Tenth Symphony during this casual Clubhouse conversation.
Ars Electronica 2021 Garden Hong Kong
During recent decades, technologies collapsed distances and time zones, raised and erased borders, as well as hybridized and segregated cultures. All the while, we have too often remained trapped in a myopic, anthropocentric system of logic and ideals, which were applied in our quests for new teleological aspirations, structures of controls, or even in finding new possibilities for collective participation and agency.
Our capacity to shift our standpoints allow us to figure out the world from the vantage points of our ancestors, aliens, or post-human creatures like algorithms and robots. It is through this re-examination that we can expand our horizon to better accommodate the dynamic complexities at hand. Thanks to the recently acquired artificial intentionalities, artworks are quickly becoming sentient, cognizing, and responsive subjects through which we can improve our understanding of human societies and ecosystems.
Ars Electronica Garden Hong Kong’s curatorial inquiry this year explores various paths to better understand the entanglements that surface in the tectonic interplay of divergent worlds, where robots challenge social models, artworks try to understand each other, and the faraway meets the nearby. We call for a DïaloG of curiosity and speculation, alongside a salutary cocktail of poetry, science, politics and conviviality.
Artificial Intentionalities:
Post-human humanities in the age of the art-subject
8 - 12 September 2021
www.hkgardens.com
Role: Executive Producer + co-Curator
project management, curatorial content, marketing, liaison, events management, emcee
Ars Electronica 2020 Garden Hong Kong
Hong Kong stands at a particularly critical juncture today, poised upon ever-shifting tectonic activities effectuated by historical, socio-cultural, political and economic factors that are unfolding in the present tense. Such dynamism and volatility impel a sense of urgency, to nurture a multifarious array of creative engagements toward engendering meaningful reflections, which can then become a means to intuit, navigate and influence the future as it emerges into reality.
It is in this tumultuous and indeterminate flux of things that both potency and dangers lurk, and thus artists and faculty at School of Creative Media strive to draw new perspectives emerging from the intersections of life, art, science and technology, to better understand our time and its wanderings. The Kepler’s Garden in Hong Kong includes eight programs wherein which the artworks, exhibitions, interviews, a workshop, and a seminar we put together in this framework can be seen as magnifying glasses, distorting mirrors, or time telescopes, that are geared toward re-thinking the World we find ourselves in.
Garden Hong Kong – City in Fusion
9 - 13 September 2020
https://hkgarden.scm.cityu.edu.hk/2020-archive/
Role: Editor-In-Chief
Editorial, SNS management, website, project assistance, event content & emcee
Context: Ars Electronica 2020 was an experimental, de-centralized global affair, in response to the contingencies arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. Envisioning a journey toward measuring the ‘new’ world being realized today, this 2020’s festival extended beyond the customary venue in Linz, Austria, by opening up to additional 120 locations around the world under the theme Kepler’s Gardens. For the Ars Electronica Garden Hong Kong segment, which was one of the largest ‘Kepler’s garden’ projects around the world, we featured programs that are made specifically for the event as well as showcasing various creative forays taken up by the host institution, School of Creative Media at City University Hong Kong. The event took place mostly online, from Wednesday 9th to Sunday 13th September 2020.
Open Sky Project (2014-2016)
OPEN SKY PROJECT took place between 2014 and 2016 as a collaborative project between International Commerce Centre (the tallest skyscraper in HK) and the School of Creative Media (City University of Hong Kong) with a shared goal to further enrich and enliven the urban skyline of Hong Kong.
Comprising of two sub-categories, OPEN SKY GALLERY (for artists) and OPEN SKY CAMPUS (for students), the objective was to transform ICC’s extensive 77,000 square meter LED façade into an international platform and gallery, showcasing specially curated time-based artworks by prominent, international media artists as well as exceptional works by up-and-coming artists. Each piece was envisioned as a site-specific artwork in its unique vertial format, and was showcased to bring about interesting discussions and inspirations for the urban audience.
Read more about Open Sky Project
Yahoo! Purple Hunt Campaign
(Philippines, 2009)
Yahoo! Purple Hunt Campaign
Role: Accounts Executive
Project Management for 3 on-site segments of the campaign in Philippines in collaboration with local partner agency.
Conceptualization, Design coordination, Artist liaison, Venue scouting, Event Design
Experiential Marketing agency, Kult (based in Singapore), was tasked with bringing to life the Yahoo! Brand campaign theme, “It’s easy to find when it’s purple’. An online hunt campaign that engaged the consumers and reinforced the campaign theme and brand values. Supported by an on-ground hunt activity to provide tangible expression of the theme and showcase talent unearthed in Philippines. The Yahoo! Purple Hunt campaign delivered unique, personalized and tangible experiences to an estimated audience of 96,178 during the 51 day campaign period.
The campaign was then followed up by the publication of the "Big Idea Chair" for the 2009 regional Spikes award, showcasing comissioned works of Purple Scape artists.