A 3-D MODEL OF Mongkok streets hangs on the wall. Across it flits a constantly changing shape, always different colours, always occupying new areas of the model. Like some sort of creature from a science fiction novel, disturbing and fascinating, appearing and vanishing over and over again.
But this virtual parasite turns out to be Italian architect Cristiano Ceccato's pet project, on show until the end of the month at Para/Site Art Space in Sheung Wan. 'Space in Hong Kong is about very dense living, vertical buildings, but there's a lot of unused space in between which is something we don't often realise,' says Ceccato. 'There's unused space between buildings, on top of them . . . If you think about colonising that space, it gives us a very different view of the city.'
So his artificial lifeform does the colonising, showing how infinitely varied our living space actually is. Stand close to the wall and you see how the virtual creature fills up vertical spaces, stretches across roof tops and into nooks and crannies. There's a lot of room out there between those skyscrapers, believe it or not.
The computer animation offers a form that evolves and regenerates, constantly seeking new solutions. 'It's creative architecture, a way of creating spaces that's both physical and virtual.
'This is all very abstract and the question is how you externalise that. How do you map it to the city. It's a very big challenge to actually make use of these things, to manufacture the zones,' Ceccato says.
The architect, who also lectures at the Polytechnic University and who has worked all over the world including on the rebuilding of Berlin, has been using animation this way for some time but it does, he admits, throw up the challenge of how to use computer science applied in a creative, abstract context to create something far more concrete. How do you put all this to practical use, to find solutions to Hong Kong's increasingly cramped conditions? It's the sort of questioning typical of this whole fascinating exhibition: Personal Skyscraper is a look at how people might find a way to redefine living here, at how we can personalise our skyscrapers. If you had unlimited money and resources to construct a building for yourself, what would it look like?
Eleven artists are taking part in the group exhibition of sculptures, an installation, architecture and art, curated by Kacey Wong.
