Bryan Chung

Last weekend, I visited the A Glow Glow – Microwave Festival exhibition. It rained heavily with strong wind. The UVA one was closed. Only the Teddy Lo’s was shown with some interesting scene of the helpers cleaning the floor.

Chinese version – translated by friends in IFVA

談到香港獨立短片及錄像比賽，首先浮現腦海的就是我過往三年為單螢幕互動媒體組出任評審。它的作用是介定個別作品是否符合參賽標準，同時每年也引發主辦單位和評審多次辯論。下文我將喚起三年來的回憶，概括參賽作品的特色，並分享我的觀後感。

第一個關鍵詞是「螢幕」。它剔除了那些儀器、機械人、機動雕塑和互動裝置等沒有螢幕的藝術作品。但我預計在可見的將來，螢幕可以是任何東西，而甚麼東西都可以當作螢幕，只要看一看那些裝了LED或 OLED條子或顯示板的房間或建築你就會明白。Daniel ROZIN(1)的《木鏡子》是個很好的例子。它是一個具有螢幕功能但本身又不是一個「螢幕」的機動裝置。

第二個有關屏幕的議題是要把在螢幕內看還是螢幕外看。雖然在不少作品中，螢幕並不是唯一的重點，但過往三年的參賽作品中，螢幕內的影像或投影都是焦點所在。螢幕的地位超然，於是它的大小和解像度都很講究。從我的教學經驗而言， 學生大多喜歡採用較大的螢幕作為創作平台，而不太喜歡流動電話或電子手帳(PDA)。我不敢肯定以流動平台創作的參賽作品數量少是不是和大小有關。我相信現時的展覽傾向以「傳統」的螢幕展示媒體藝術，又也許是它有沒有相關的發展工具。

第一年的參賽作品很多元化，同時作品「內容」在這一年是最吃重的。雖然，在討論互動媒體的時候，把內容和形式分開也許不切實際，但在之後的兩年裡，我確切地感受到「內容」的漸次薄弱。第一年的參賽者花了很多心思去發展「舊」媒體的內容，例如插畫、文字和影像，而互動元素只是為作品提供導航的工具，互動的敘述和電影感的體驗在第一年的作品中很常見。

第二年我注意到作品已不太多元化。大部分的參賽作品都採用動作感應作為主要輸入機制。以特製的軟件呼應身體動作，從而製造流動影像，這種作品明顯增多。這個現象跟漸不依賴滑鼠和鍵盤作為互動工具的趨勢不謀而合。電腦不再是互動的唯一重點，它只是把人類的活動和媒體內容連結一起。介面是要隱形的，然而事實並非如此。介面並非與生俱來被設計成隱形的，只是進行互動活動及排演到一個地步，令人感覺不到介面而已。這些作品要求觀者運用身體，按照預先設計的方式與作品進行互動，然後由這些動作所引發的媒體訊息又指示他如何再調整自己的動作。

踏入第三年，「互動桌面」(interactive table) 成為熱潮。在 Jeff HAN的多點接觸研究(2)、微軟的 Surface Computer(3)及蘋果iPhone的影響下，我們收到很多以多點接觸桌面作為互動媒介的作品。而作品的技術成就亦有顯著的提升。這一年，藝術家們不再創作具獨立「內容」的作品，而是藉著Web2.0工具如Flickr或 YouTube等從網上撮取材料。有趣的是，我注意到以互聯網作媒介的藝術品數量相對少，其中一個可能性是好的網絡作品都是由用戶社群建立的，這需要頗長的時間，而且它們的外貌不夠搶眼，很難在傳統的展覽中佔一席位。

這三年來，參賽作品都包括以資訊轉化為影像或聲音的作品。這些作品都是撮取外在的實時資訊， 再把它們轉化成可感知的動畫或聲音。所有數碼資訊都由一連串的零和一數字代表。單看符碼，我們不知道這些訊息是顏色、聲音或器械動作。循著這個思路，我們可以輕易地以數學的方法把數碼資訊由一個媒介轉化到另一個媒介。因此我們得以融合不同的感官。藝術家除了設計方程式把資料符碼轉換媒體外，若能更深入地了解及批判這些媒體的文化含義，就更理想。

互動媒體是新的，但互動本身並不是新鮮事。每一年都有具潛力的參賽作品，我寄望將來會看到更多讓我喜出望外的作品。

1. Daniel ROZIN, 木鏡子,
   http://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html
2. Jeff HAN, 多點互動接觸研究, http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
3. 微軟 Surface Computer, http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

I wrote the following short comments for the Hong Kong Independent Film and Video Award, IFVA about the experience of being juror for the past three years.

The first thing that comes to my mind about the Hong Kong Independent Film and Video Award is the name of the category I serve as a juror for the last three years – Single Screen Based Interactive Media. It functions as a qualifying standard to include and exclude particular submissions. And it also invites numerous discussions and debates among the organizer and the jurors every year. We faced challenges on this definition by those submissions working on the verge of the boundary. And it is good for us to re-think and very often to expand the scope in order to attract more quality artworks.

In the following paragraphs, I recall my memory in the last three years and summarize the characteristics of the submissions and share my experience of viewing them.

The first keyword is Screen. It excludes the media artworks that producing devices, robotics, kinetic sculptures and interactive installations without any screen. That makes perfect sense if we can have a shared understanding about what a screen is. As I anticipate in the near future, if we take a look at those interior and architecture equipped with LED or OLED strips or panels, screen can be anything and everything can be screen. A good example to look at is Daniel Rozin’s Wooden Mirror.

Image from http://www.smoothware.com/danny/

It is a mechanical device functions as a screen but it is not a ‘screen’ by itself.

Another issue related to the screen is whether to look inside or outside of the screen. Although in many installation artworks, the screen is often not the only focus of the pieces. In most submissions over the last three years, what happening inside the screen, whether it is a display or projection, is still where the limelight spots. The screen is so important that its physical characteristics, like size, resolution, matter. From my teaching experience, students often prefer to work on platforms with a bigger screen. Choosing the mobile environment, e.g. cell phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) is often not their first priority. I cannot speculate if the screen size explains the relatively few submissions in the mobile platform. I believe that the way exhibitions display and present media artworks may favor the use of ‘conventional’ screen. And the second reason may be the availability of development tools.

In the first year, the submissions came with different varieties. It was also the year where ‘content’ ruled. Although it may sound out of place to separate form and content in discussing interactive media, I could, however, experience the diminishing richness of ‘content’ in subsequent years. In the first year, participants invested lots of efforts to develop content material in ‘old’ media like illustration, text, moving images and interactivity was introduced to provide navigational facilities, as added value. The approach of production references the existing video production and publication models. Interactive narratives and cinematic experience were common in this year’s works.

In the second year, I noted of the narrowing of diversity. Majority of the submissions employed motion detection as the main input mechanism. There was a significant increase in using custom software to generate the moving images in response to the bodily interaction. It worked with the trend that claimed to free interactivity from the use of mouse and keyboard. Computer is not the sole focus of the interactive work. It just couples the human behavior and media content. Interface wants to be invisible. Nevertheless, it is often not the case. Interface is not designed to be invisible. Interaction is practiced and rehearsed to a certain state that it becomes invisible. The works demanded the audience to orient their bodies to participate in the designed interaction and which in turn produced media content to instruct the audience to further realign their bodily movements.

In the third year, interactive table was the new trend. Under the influence of Jeff Han’s multi-touch research,

  
Images from http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/

Microsoft’s Surface Computer and Apple’s iPhone, we received a number of submissions using a multi-touch table as the main interaction device. There was also a remarkable improvement in technical competence. In this year, artists no longer created ‘content’ material on their own. They sampled content from external sources in the Internet, with the use of Web 2.0 applications like Flickr and YouTube. Network became the medium. One interesting point I observe is that the number of web based artworks is relatively low, even though the Internet is a great source of content. I do not know of a simple explanation. One possible reason may be that many good web based artworks are often community based, which take time to build up. They may not be spectacular enough to find a place in traditional exhibition venues.

In these three years, there was a project type which appeared every year. It was the information visualization or information sonification work, depending on whether the main medium of delivery was visual or audio. These projects often took real time information from other sources, like the stock market index or weather information from the Internet and transformed it into perceivable material like animation or sound. All digital information is number represented by a string of zero and one. Judging from inside, we cannot tell if this string is colour, sound or mechanical movement. Along this line of thinking, we can easily transform or ‘transcode’ a piece of digital information from one medium type into another through mathematical means. We achieve a mixing of senses, i.e. synesthesia. In Shannon’s classical theory of communication, information is measured purely in syntactic form without looking at the semantic aspect. It can reflect in many of the information visualization artworks where one piece of information is taken out from its first context of use and placed into the second. Such actions often produce unexpected outcomes and thus attract artistic indulgence. It would be nicer for artists to look deeper and critically into the cultural implications of the two contexts besides working out the formula to transform a representation code from one medium into another.

Interactive media is new but interactivity is not. Promising artworks emerge every year in the competition. I shall look forward to seeing more breath-taking ones in the future.

There will be an exhibition and conference organized by the Dutch V2 in Taipei next month at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The artists/artworks are very impressive:
- PainStation, Enhanced Dueling Artifact, 2001 – 2004 by ////////fur//// art entertainment interfaces (Tillman Reiff, Volker Morawe)
- G-Player 4 by Jens Brand
- Logo.Hallucination by Christophe Bruno
- Feed by Shane Cooper
- Synthia-Stock Ticker by Lynn Hershman Leeson
- Purple Rain Joyce Hinterding, David Haines
- data.tron by Ryoji Ikeda
- Pockets Full of Memories by George Legrady
- Drawn by Zachary Lieberman
- Beijing Accelerator by Marnix de Nijs
- Cheap Imitation by David Rokeby
- YOKOMONO by Staalplaat Soundsystem
- Exactitudes by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek
- Amazon Noir by UBERMORGEN.COM, Alessandro Ludovico, Paolo Cirio
- Google Will Eat Itself by UBERMORGEN.COM, Alessandro Ludovico, Paolo Cirio
- zgodlocator/version zII by Herwig Weiser
- Chinese Portraiture by Zhou Hongxiang
- ‘In the Event of Amnesia the City Will Recall ‘ directed by Denis Beaubois
- ‘All is Full of Love’ directed by Chris Cunningham
- ‘Safe Distance’ by New Media Center_kuda.org
- ‘The Catalogue’ directed by Chris Oakley

I find this event from a mailing list. It includes most of the major players in Live Coding practice. More information for Live Coding can be located in the TOPLAP wiki.

Got this video link from Stella and Justin’s web.

From http://plastichk.blogspot.com/

七一上街慶回歸，終極登場。
古有袁木，今有馬力。
做愛國港人之四：木馬沒有屠城記。

Original image from the Troy movie website

俾幾多，有幾多。
齊歡唱，各界好慶 回歸，原地轉，壓軸大貢獻。
做愛國港人之三：紅色童子軍，
劇目七，芭蕾唔識，改跳彈床。
Scout Dance

Original image from LCSD