reface

“Any one of our new media is in a sense a new language, a new codification of experience collectively achieved by new work habits and inclusive collective awareness”.

“The new media are not new ways of relating us to the old ‘real’ world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will “

-Marshall McLuhan (1967, 1969)

Electronic screens have fully penetrated our daily life. We see them everywhere – from the TV at home to the computer screen on the desk, from the security monitors around to the small screen on digital cameras and camcorders. We have got used to seeing the world through the screens. There A structural change has already occurred to the relationship between our existence and images. Very likely there is always an omnipresent electronic eye monitoring our world, whenever and wherever we are excitedly recording every detail of it with our camcorders and cameras, or watching TV for entertainment and news, or chatting or playing games online with someone on the other side of the globe. Through the electronic screen we are seeing and being seen, to such an extent that it can be said that we live in a virtual world of images. Sometimes, the actual existence of things is acknowledged only after the images have been recorded or reproduced. Someone has noted that humans are living both inside and outside a huge screen where these two states coexist.

However, despite how lifelike the image shown on an electronic screen could be, just a single touch will tell us that the screen is but a surface and the image an illusion. It has no substance and we cannot grasp it with our hands. This new way of looking at the world has made a great impact on contemporary life and art.

Artists began to realize the value of screens since the early 60s. Nowadays electronic screens, just as painting canvases, are a common platform used by video artists to express their ideas and emotions. In the initial stages of video art development, it was merely a kind of artistic variation, transferring the trends of visual art to the medium of video, which was employed basically as a tool to discriminate against TV. Video artists gradually developed a new language, whilst continuously exploring and adopting various technologies and gadgets. Today, video art has established its own identity and become an important emerging medium in contemporary art. This unique medium offers flexibility, visual and audio dual effects, allowing ingenuous combinations of sounds and images. It enriches the artistry and sensorial expressions of artworks, creating vast possibilities and a mighty expressional power, thus fostering a variety in the realm of artistic creation that attracts many creatives from different fields. With video, as with any other medium, the artist is able to represent his or her own individualized expression. It has become a new exploration field into which the artists expand their artistic practice, serving also as an extension of their artistic input. They enter into contact with this virtual world, exploring its significance via the images on electronic screens.

This video event includes an exhibition as well as seminars, featuring different artists and their unique works. The participating artists will not only tell us their stories, moods and views by showing their dynamic video works, but will also share and discuss with the audience their creative concepts, procedures and personal experiences. In doing so, we hope to offer the audience a chance to feel the characteristics and unlimited expressing ways of “video” from a multi-angle perspective.

Video is the common language of this activity.

curator  Bianca Lei

Video Art Talks ：

16/11 (Sunday)

Venue ：Ox warehouse

2:30pm – Alice Kock (Macao ) conducted in Cantonese

4:30pm – Tomoko Inagaki (Japan) conducted in English with Cantonese interpretation

23/11 (Sunday)

Venue ：

Macau New Technologies Incubator Centre, 7 floor, The Macau Square, Av. Infante D. Henrique, No. 43-53A

2:00pm – Toh Hun Ping  (Singapore ) conducted in Mandarin

29/11 (Saturday)

Venue ：Second floor, Ox warehouse

2:30pm – Ho Ka Cheng  (Macao ) conducted in Cantonese

4:30pm – Jenny Lu  (Taiwan ) conducted in Mandarin

30/11 ( Sunday)

Venue ：Second floor, Ox warehouse

2:30pm – Jessy Tsang Tsui Shan （Hong Kong ）

conducted in Cantonese