Missing links
A Grandiose Fanfare is one of GayBird's three ongoing exhibitions in Hong Kong, one of these being his tribute to Joan Mir. Part of a major Mir exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Bird Code takes its cue from the 20th-century Spanish master's style of painting birds as imperfect geometric shapes with a few mysterious squiggles thrown into the mix. Using artificial intelligence, GayBird has turned the chirping of birds into a set of sounds and symbols. Visitors can sit down at telephone-booth-style stations to listen to AI readings of bird sounds, even gain some insight into the creative process.
Just last week he won an Asian Cultural Council fellowship that will help support his upcoming field trip to Japan and South Korea. GayBird means to find out about the latest trends involving art and technology in those countries, with a view to developing new creative practices that work best in his own cultural context.
Such pursuits might be just what Hong Kong needs, if artists are to take advantage of the local government's promise to allocate generous funds to support "art tech". A tad skeptical about the art-tech label ("it seems to suggest that it is the technology that's creating such art when technology is just a tool"), GayBird has been applying advanced technology with great ingenuity to make art for at least two decades.
Music for 9, his most-recent multimedia installation, laid out across two rooms on the 17th floor of Central's vertical art gallery hub H Queen's, uses technology to highlight, question and critique its firm grip on our lives. The piece is more abstract, varied, complex and somber in tone compared to the artist's previous works, many of which can be enjoyed for their joyous vibe, lively foot-tapping, or rousing, music and jaw-dropping immersive visuals, without necessarily having to go into the depths of the philosophical ideas behind them. By contrast, Music for 9 demands greater engagement on the part of its audience. The piece holds a very special place in GayBird's oeuvre, standing out in terms of scope, ambition and execution. It could be a career milestone worth celebrating.
