Cutting-edge and fascinating experimental works can always be found at the Microwave International Media Art Festival, which kicked off last week. The multimedia event, in its seventh year, features works from artists around the world.
It is running at the Hong Kong City Hall, Videotage in To Kwa Wan, Hong Kong Film Archive in Sai Wan Ho and Hong Kong Space Museum until November 30.
The festival, which includes exhibitions on interactive media art installation and internet art, seminars on media art development, video screenings and artist-in-residence workshops, is intended to promote cultural exchange and the appreciation of media art, and shows visitors how arts and technology can be linked.
This year some local tertiary students also joined the event. Highband exhibition, put together by students from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's (PolyU) School of Design, City University's (CityU) Creative Media Studies and the Hong Kong Art Centre's Arts School, is now on at PolyU's SD Gallery until November 21.
A group of students from PolyU's Higher Diploma in Multimedia Design and Technology created an animation on the development of Chinese characters, from the oracle to modern Chinese typography.
'Words are usually on paper and we transformed the two-dimensional words into a three-dimensional animation,' said Karis Lau Ka-yan, 22, one of the developers of the work.
Titled Kanji Forest, the animation opens with an ancient forest formed by different Chinese oracle characters, such as the tree, the bird and the horse. Then the oracle characters in the forest gradually evolve into modern Chinese characters. However, fewer animals exist in the forest after all the changes.