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MICROWAVE 2007

HAPPENINGText: Samantha Culp

Hong Kong’s Microwave Festival has come a long way since its foundation in 1996, and made perhaps its biggest splash yet with 2007’s edition, “Luminous Echo”. As the festival was completely rebranded in 2006, and in 2007 was officially declared an “independent” organization, certain milestones in the development of Microwave could be seen in this year’s edition. However, the annual event is still plagued by the problems endemic to displaying new media art, and by the difficulties of staging any art endeavor in a city like Hong Kong.

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Henry Chu, Sound of Market, 1996

This year’s theme was “Luminous Echo”, and was meant to be a reflection on the sea of audio and visual stimuli that modern urban dwellers (but especially those of HK) are submerged in.

Obviously, most of the “luminous” and “echoing” elements in the city landscape are concerned with consumption – from looming neon billboards to radio advertisements blaring from shop windows. Microwave’s most memorable event this year was one that directly challenged the structure of such commerce-based public spectacle.

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Graffiti Research Lab, City Hack Special: L.A.S.E.R. Tag

American collective Graffiti Research Lab conducted two events entitled “City Hack Special: L.A.S.E.R. Tag”, during which high-powered laser projectors beamed temporary, huge-scale digital graffiti onto public buildings on Kowloon and HK Island. Highly-contested city landmarks such as the Star Ferry Pier and Cultural Center were adorned with laser-tags of symbols, Chinese characters, and cartoon faces, while countless audience-members looked on. Unfortunately the HK police were concerned by crowd-size and often forced the taggers to change their route, leaving other visitors struggling to even follow the event.

Other works and events were more concerned with spectacle itself than with challenging the commercial nature of it—and often didn’t have much common thread beyond sight and sound.

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Yao Bin, Luminescent Rain, 2007

In the main exhibition space of City Hall (as in previous years, a centralized but poorly equipped venue for such a show), the Beijing artist Yao Bin displayed “Luminescent Rain” (an inspiration for Microwave’s title or just a coincidence?): when visitors pass their hands under vertical green laser lines, the sound of raindrops are triggered.

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Kingsley Ng, Musical Loom, 2005

Hong Kong’s Kingsley Ng built a replica of a 250-year-old French weaving loom complete with motion sensors: when visitors pass their hands over the “Musical Loom”, different sounds are produced.

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