Client

Location: Hong Kong, China

Completion date: 2019

Project Team

Concept, visuals, sound and art direction

CHOI Sai-Ho

Technical director for projection setup

Mick YIP

Projection alignment

Jit LAM

System programming

Duo TAM

Technical drawing

Kate YUNG

Wood work

NG Ka-Chun (Hei)

Stage manager

LEUNG Tat-Ming

Assistant stage manager

LEUNG Hei-Wa

Camera and editing of video documentation

TSANG Ming-Kin Kenneth

Overview

Space Within Space takes an astrological perspective as it imagines the night-time sky from a strange, unpopulated world.

If there is no civilization, no light pollution, the planet is not like the Earth nowadays, standing at the same location, looking up the starry sky, what does the space look like? Even in another time and space, or multiverse, the Earth may deviate from the current orbit, or it may not exist at all. What does the space sound like?

Choi Sai-Ho reconstructs time and space by images and sound to create another “space”, as an imagination of parallel time and space as well as multiverse, for the audience to experience the enormous and barren space and universe, and observe the formation and the evolution of nebulas.

The visual is to use the method of dropping colour pigment to create the formation and the evolution of nebulas, film it and make the post production including invert the colours, colour correction and editing, etc.

The sound concept is from using the recording of the percussion – Gong, together with the melody created from an inspiration of the sound information of the Earth’s electromagnetic vibrations, and the soundscape from the field recording of the sound (as like on the Mars) in Devil’s Dyke, UK.

Goals

The work is manifested through 4 projectors projecting images on the screen, two side walls and front ceiling of the Lecture Theatre at Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre. The setting enhances the element of “space” from a 2-dimensional video artwork into a 3-dimensional actual space which let the audience experience the enormous and barren space and universe.

Exhibiting the paper plates with the colour pigment outside the entrance of the Lecture Theatre let people understand the creative process of art making which is the randomness of making the visuals: the result of dropping colour pigment is not totally controllable. As a metaphor, the space and universe is not controllable too.

Process

The visual is ready at first. The technical drawing of the Lecture Theatre is made so the positions and the sizes of the wood works holding the projectors can be decided. The setup and the recording of the percussion is site-specific. The percussion – Gong is recorded on site as the sound materials of the work. The 7 clips are carefully distributed to these 4 areas in order to prevent the same clip appeared on 2 or more areas at the same time.

Additional Information

The exhibition is featured on Hong Kong Museum Festival 2019. The artwork is exhibited at Peer to Peer: UK/HK online exhibition 2020 on video format.