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Sound Forms 2020@Hong Kong Arts Centre

Venue: McAulay Studio, Hong Kong Arts Centre 
Date: 2020.10.15 - 2020.10.18
Time: 8pm 
Price: Standard: $50. Tickets are available at URBTIX now.  
In between breaths, the world became still. Time once again was measured in sunrises and sunsets, shadows that grew to their terminal length in the confines of our homes. In its third year, this edition of Sound Forms has mutated and grown with the seismic shifts that have affected forms of mutual aid, care, and turmoil. Hong Kong, an international airport hub and transfer node, now finds itself physically isolated. Yet the project of world-building endures.
 
Curated by Remy Siu (Canada), Sound Forms 2020 returns to Hong Kong Arts Centre from 15/10 - 18/10  this year to transmit newly commissioned audiovisual works from international artists, paired with emerging local talent. The sound artists we have invited reflect those who have superseded the usual confines of their medium. What they have to offer is a sensorium of experience created in collaboration with video artists, composers, and choreographers. 
 

Festival Schedule
15/10 (Thu) 8pm  Prog 1: Luke Nikel & Hakgwai
16/10 (Fri) 8pm    Prog 2: So Ho Chi & Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules + Michael Gary Dean
17/10 (Sat) 8pm   Prog 3: Kimberley Road Union & Lam Lai
18/10 (Sun) 8pm  Prog 4: Esther Wu & Maria Takeuchi
 
Audience members are strongly advised to arrive punctually.  Hong Kong Arts Centre reserves the right to refuse admission of latecomers.
 
The following measures will be implemented for Sound Forms 2020@Hong Kong Arts Centre, to combat the prevailing threat of Novel Coronavirus:
• All audience must wear face masks
• Venue staff have the right to deny the admission of any person with temperature higher than 37.5°C 
 
 
BOOK NOW
 
 
Prog 1: Luke Nikel & Hakgwai
Impossible Roller Coaster Tutorials 1-3 / Luke Nickel
Forget everything you know about roller coasters. Forget the idea that roller coasters are made for humans. Forget the idea that roller coasters must be designed and built in a process that takes thousands of hours. Enter a creative state where roller coasters are sculptures of speed, gravity, and potential motion. Enter a creative state where you can create roller coasters as fast as molten metal. Enter a creative state where boundaries, intersections, danger and collisions are productive and empowering goals. Embrace the impossible...

In this three part tutorial series, I will guide you through the concepts and practicalities of designing impossible digital roller coasters using No Limits Coaster 2. In each video, we will practice releasing our minds from the shackles of mortality and gravity and allow ourselves to consider the infinite possibilities that roller coasters might (re)present. I will also provide technical strategies for roller coaster design rooted in my own practice of using simulation software for artmaking. Each video is accompanied by an original electronic soundtrack and contains multiple visual sequences to illustrate the various concepts.
 
These tutorials are suitable for anyone curious about the intersections between roller coaster design, electronic music and impossible thinking. No previous experience is necessary!
 
More about Luke Nickel
 
Untitled / Lau Chun-Ho, Hakgwai
Lau Chun-Ho, Hakgwai is a musician from Hong Kong, who takes part in various types of music performances, concerts, dance, theater, meditation workshops and music education. Good at using different national musical instruments from the world, such as the Australian Didgeridoo, Handpan, Beatboxing, Mongolian Throat Singing, Erhu, Pipa, Guzheng, Qin Xiao, Flute, Matouqin/ Morinhuur , Asalato, Djembe, Guitar, Mouth Harp, various traditional Chinese and international musical instruments. He will be performing a solo performance with various ancient traditional instruments combined with the looper effect to create an electronic style.
 
More about Hakgwai
 
 
Prog 2: So Ho Chi & Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules + Michael Gary Dean
Previz / Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules & Michael Gary Dean
Previz refers to a previsualization: a method artists use to create 3D digital representations of how an artwork will look when installed, often including computer generated people to represent an audience. It subtly reveals how integral the audience is to experiencing art. These images are frequently used to promote and document exhibitions, with the perfect artificial representation being favoured over a real-life photograph of people engaging with the work.

In Previz, the latest artwork by audio-visual artists Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules and Michael Gary Dean, this practice is taken to a new space. 3D modelling isn’t just used to represent the work, the 3D modelling is the work. The flat 2D screen on which the visuals would normally be displayed has been placed within a 3D environment. Computer generated characters observe and engage with the screen, sometimes viewing it on their phone or laptop or experiencing it as part of a Zoom meeting.
 
This is an artwork within an artwork, using layers and refractions to emphasize the importance of witnesses in making a work relevant and provoking questions on what the future context may be for media art.
 
More about Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules & Michael Gary Dean
 
Living in Dream / So Ho Chi
“Living in truth” was what Válclav Havel, a Czech dramatist as well as the first President of the Czech Republic, suggested, for the powerless to confront a powerful State’s prescription of a officially mandated culture during the time when the communist regime dominated in Czechoslovakia back in the 70s and 80s. It was a strategy he suggested for people to deal with the manipulation by the State’s propaganda which consolidated the power of the State. Taking this phrase to this particular time and space, where and when the truth is not apparent and evident anymore due to the advancement of technology and the change of lifestyle, it is frustrating to find out what truth is. Not only the truth of what happened and happening, but also the truth of what we believe in, we hope for.

“Since my return to Hong Kong, my perception of the surroundings and emotion changed from delightful to anxious and depressed. I feel no hope living here. If there is, it is just a selfdeceptive propaganda to cheer ourselves up for actions.”

If all the collectively, categorically agreed “hopes” are kitsch, is there a more authentic hope which supports my own action instead of following the Grand March in which denial of the hopes is forbidden? Is that just my cynical elusion towards the reality or is the reality too heavy that there is no room for people to pursue a little bit of lightness, dream?

“I find that looking at the sky daily is essential to me mentally as I did not feel the urge when I was living in the Netherlands; instead, I missed Hong Kong back then. Living in the Netherlands was too light, whereas living in Hong Kong is too heavy; only looking at the sky in Hong Kong, I could find a humble balance which gives me a small motivation to take actions albeit a very tiny, humble action.”

Living in Dream is a video journal displaying the author’s mind through speeches, dialogue between sounds and moving images.
 
More about So Ho Chi
 
 
Prog 3: Kimberley Road Union & Lam Lai
L-H-T-P-T-M / Lam Lai
L-H-T-P-T-M as a short-term for Light Has To Pass Through Me, is a live recording using analog synthesisers, depicting three modes of listening. Mode I embraces the listener in the sound space, Mode II suggests the listener to follow, and Mode III dissolves the sound space as if the listener becomes invisible. The visual part develops from pinhole camera models where the camera aperture is described as a point, the beam of light from that point passes through the pinhole and creates a point of light inside the camera.
 
More about Lam Lai
 
Work / Kimberley Road Union
#AJourneyTowardsTheGuildingLight

Performance, contemporary music, chamber music interactions. Movement between artist and audience will transform the venue into an instrument, and through their interactions, their collective movement will manifest into the band’s performance of music.
 
 
Prog 4: Esther Wu & Maria Takeuchi
Static Ferment II / Esther Wu
The focus of Static Ferment II is based on the perception of time with the application of juxtaposition, correlation of stasis, and ferment.  The piece is an attempt to realise the transformation process from ferment to stasis and its retrograded process through the duration and progression of time. Regarding the usage of visual in Static Ferment, the visual resonates to this agravic state that synchronise with the movement of sounds.
 
More about Esther Wu
 
A Trilogy of Waves / Maria Takeuchi
This piece presents the stream of thoughts which questioning our perceptions and understandings regarding the surroundings and societies that we are living in. Let’s imagine, we – as individuals have been automatically constructed all these palaces of cognition in our mind. However, to what extent could we be sure about the cognitive constructions in our mind would reflect the reality?
 
More about Maria Takeuchi
 
 
 
Tickets are now available at URBTIX.
 
Ticket Price: HK$50
Package discount: 20% off on standard tickets for each purchase of 3 or more prorgammes of Sound Forms 2020@Hong Kong Arts Centre
 
 
Internet booking: www.urbtix.hk
Credit card telephone booking: 2111 5999
Mobile ticketing app: My URBTIX (Android & iPhone versions)
Ticketing enquiries: 3761 6661 (10:00-20:00 Daily)
Programme enquiries: 2582 0248

Co-presenters: Hong Kong Arts Centre and Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong
 
 
 
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