New media artist Teddy Lo Yeung-man thinks Hong Kong's evening skyline looks good, but something is lacking. 'None of the buildings project any information about the city,' says the 33-year-old, adding that they could do with some lighting design that goes beyond mere aesthetics.
His latest work, which marks his debut in Hong Kong, illustrates how 'informative lighting design' can be achieved. Phaeodaria is a geodesic dome, 8 metres in diameter, built with LED (light-emitting diode) panels as well as transmittable light and sound signals decoded from wireless frequencies.
Installed in front of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the piece is part of the A-Glow-Glow Macro Interactive Media Arts Exhibition, which kicks off this Friday.
Organised by new media arts organisation Microwave and presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the event combines audio and visual elements in large-scale media works.
While the term 'glow' suggests a theme of light, 'A-Glow-Glow' conveys a sense of a rhythmic dynamism that echoes the playful, participatory character of the two interactive pieces on show: Lo's Phaeodaria and acclaimed multimedia piece Volume, by London-based collective UnitedVisualArtists (UVA).
Inspired by Ernst Haeckel's illustrations of marine life forms, Lo created a geodesic dome and named it Phaeodaria - after one of the most primitive species of bacteria in the sea.