thThe 16 ifva Interactive Media Category Jury Meeting TranscriptJurors in Attendance: Bryan Chung (CHUNG), Ryusuke Ito (ITO), Jamsen Law (LAW), ScottHessels (SCOTT), Winnie Fu (FU)Organizer Representatives: Teresa Kwong ( KWONG), Kattie Fan (FAN)

CHUNG: For me, some of the works exceed the quality mentioned in the proposal, but someof them have discrepancy from what they’d written down in the documentation. In
the first round we went through all the submissions, which is in the form ofdocumentation. Some of them will have DVD, which are video recordings of theirformer exhibitions. Some of them will just have a proposal, which is their ideas andimplementation plans. Actually the works selected are completed over the lastmonth. We went through the materials and isolated some of those that had nochance to be selected. Then we discussed on individual works, and the three of us
gave comments on individual entries and voted the 10 finalists to be included in theexhibition you had just seen.

KWONG:In addition to the 10 finalists, they also gave best concept award, which is not in
the finalist, but they found that the concept needs encouragement.

SCOTT:Can I know the criteria you used? Were there categories, or was it just whether you
liked it or didn’t like it? How did you decide?

CHUNG: In the first round of selection we each had our own evaluation methods. Basically I
stick to independent spirit, content, creativity and the use of media and technology. I
don’t have a weighting scheme that weighs each of those categories more or less.
The grade I use for comparison is the overall sum of all entries.

SCOTT:

I would have done the same thing. How do you define independent spirit?

CHUNG: Most often it’s the form of the work—a lot of them have similarity with commercial
advertising or software technology. For example the tape recorder work has lesssimilarity with commercial work in using interactive media.

SCOTT:

So it’s the freshness of using new media.

LAW:

Or to use it differently. Something personal can be a part of it.

SCOTT:

But it’s how fresh they use the tools?

CHUNG: How far away from the corporate use of those media.

SCOTT:

Another criterion is technical skills or polish?

CHUNG: It is the way they use technology, whether it is professional. In previous years weencounter works that break down quite often.

SCOTT:

Some of these didn’t work for me either. So under “technology” is how well does itfunction? What else do you use for criteria?

CHUNG: I also use the criteria of content, which I don’t know if it is the right term, becausesome works are more playful without delivering any content. Some of the works
have social or cultural content built in.

FU:I would use the term “concept”, like how original the idea and how it is executed,
and whether it is creative in the sense that it is not seen in other works before orcopied from other artists. In the past there have been works that are not socompleted. We also count the degree of completeness, whether it is presented incomplete form.

SCOTT:

Would that fall under technology? Or is that another category, the presentation ofthe work?

FU:

It could be put together with technology, but myself, because of ifva’s title, I always
count interactivity as more significant than others.

SCOTT:Is interactivity a separate concept, or does it fall under content?

CHUNG: I consider them separately.

SCOTT:

So independent spirit, which is the freshness of the idea; technology, which is how
well they use the media; concept, which is the thought behind it and finallyinteractivity, which is the quality of the interaction. Are there more?

FU:

Jamsen, you sometimes put more weight on the aesthetics or poetry of the work?

LAW:

Some works show us how to make use of technology and make it interesting. Someartists use the work as a tool to express some feeling. I try to make a balance
between the use of technology and how to use the visual element to express theirfeelings.

SCOTT:Is that different from concept?

LAW:

Not really, but if a work has this quality I would bring it up in the discussion.

SCOTT:

Each of us understand the word “concept” differently, that’s why there are five of us.
Do the four categories cover what we need to know? You mentioned earlier thatsome works do not deliver what they promised? Do we consider that?

CHUNG: I think in this case you can forget that.

KWONG: Because they have certain information that you don’t have from the proposals.

ITO:

It’s difficult to judge, because some works may not be good enough for prizes, but
we can find in them qualities that have potential, and we should encourage that also.
Sometimes we are attracted by the artist him/herself with their character, not justthe work.

LAW:

If the overall work is not good enough we’ll try to encourage such works with special
mentions. Let’s select our top five works and discuss them.

SCOTT:

It is unfortunate that we cannot measure the body of work. Some artists may have
20 pieces while others only one, but we have no way of knowing, which is too bad.
We do the best we can by judging what’s in the gallery.

FU:

Shall we give an overall score first?

KWONG: It’s up to you. Other jury panels go through the works one by one and reach acommon ground. Then they go to the second round and vote for the top 5. Thenthey will talk about the award winners. That’s the usual practice.

LAW:

I think the first round we can select ten and see how much we overlap. Then westart discussing the works.

FU:

Shall we give marks for each, or line them up according to our preferences?

LAW:

Giving marks is difficult. Maybe we can select the top 5 and talk about them?

SCOTT:My top ones are Blackout,10Hz, Sycamore (dancing poetry) , on the street,
Device Playing - Cassette Recorder. To be honest those are the only ones I like.

CHUNG: Mine are Device Playing - Cassette Recorder, Sycamore, 10Hz,Blackoutand
Surveil_land.

LAW:

Repeat as Bryan.

FU:

Device Playing - Cassette Recorder, Sycamore, 10Hz, Blackout and BodyHack.

ITO:

Surveil_land, 10Hz, Sycamore, Device Playing - Cassette Recorder. Only four.

KWONG: Shall we cross out Delight, Peacemax tree, Do you dare? and Where’s theChicken? We have six works left.

SCOTT:

Some only have one vote.

FU:

I voted for Body Hack because it is among the most interactive of the ten. Maybebecause I saw Eric’s other works of the same theme and I appreciate the artist’s
continual exploration of the same concept.

SCOTT:

I also know Eric’s work, but I don’t think this is a very good piece. I never saw
anyone successfully work the system. I saw a lot of people try to get it to work andline themselves up. The interaction is not very clear: you don’t know what you’re
supposed to do. I understand what you’re saying and I like Eric’s work a lot. I
appreciate the idea of putting yourself in classic cinema, but I don’t think it’s very
successful. We all voted for the Cassette Recorder but I couldn’t get it to work—I
couldn’t record my voice and hear it back. It didn’t successfully work 100%.

AlsoSurveil_land didn’t work for me.

FU:

I agree that there were quite a lot of similar works to Surveil_land from the sameauthor before. There’s not a lot of add-on. The fabrication is also more primitive
than his previous works. As a result this piece’s interactivity was impaired.

SCOTT:

I agree.

FU:

In that case Body Hack, Surveil_land and even Cassette Recorder can go?

SCOTT:

But we all voted for Cassette Recorder, even though it didn’t work. You’d think
we’d be more angry! It’s such a cool object and I love the feel of it. I wish it’d work,
because it would have been amazing.

FU:

I liked it because it’s very physical. I like the feeling of walking around, like agrinding machine. By comparison 10Hz is more stagnant.

SCOTT:

But I still loved it. People like to watch the people that were in it, so there areinterior/exterior elements to it. You have to stay in it at least a minute to feel theeffect, but once you did you really get the sensation. I also like its inspiration, which
is sunlight coming through trees while you’re in a car, that flicker, which is really
beautiful start.

FU:

I travel a lot on trains, so I immediately sync with his visual intention.

SCOTT:

I thought it’s one of the freshest pieces. I’ve never seen tuning forks used in asculpture. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. We did not all agree on Blackout,but I thought was a really beautiful installation, I like how you walk into this curtain ofbulbs. When I was sitting in it, because I’m so big, the other person has his backagainst me. Every time you typed the same letter the light bulb went off, you kind ofsmiled because you both typed the same letter at that moment, which is kind ofsweet. I’m not sure what it meant, but I really like the feeling it gave, I thought it wasvery beautiful.

ITO:

Many works use light bulbs. Is it a trend in Hong Kong?

LAW:

If it’s a trend, it’s a trend of a school.

SCOTT:

It’s inexpensive and easy to work with. I don’t mind that.

ITO:

In my generation, fluorescent light was just started to use, and nowadays kids growup with fluorescent lights. I wonder if there is any meaning, or a natural kind of taste
to use tungsten light bulbs.

CHUNG: It’s also nostalgic to use light bulbs instead of LED bulbs.

SCOTT:

Does the poetry that Sycamore generate have a meaning? Or just nonsense?

FU:

You choose from an archive of Chinese characters that keeps appearing randomly,
so there are hundreds of characters from which you can form into lines. Chinese
poetry is usually in the form of seven or five characters a sentence. The maximum
number of characters you can choose is 9, which lined up as a sentence along thefloor.

In terms of the poetics of the work, I like this even more than Blackout. It’squite simple, but it’s fun to play with. And it works quite well.

LAW:

I like the typography.

SCOTT:

It’s beautiful to look at, plus I like black and white imagery of it. It’s cinematic andgraphic at the same time.

LAW:

It’s interesting to capture the words on the ground.

SCOTT:Of all the works, it’s the only one that’s localized and specific to Hong Kong. I don’t
understand it, but I like the fact that the artist goes into the environment and works
with it.

CHUNG: It’s related to the social and cultural context of Hong Kong at this point in time. We
have urban renewal, and those places and streets are being demolished. They arecollecting texts or characters that are going to be demolished and removed.

SCOTT:

It has some of the best poetry—not just literally, but also conceptually.

FU:

If you play with it for a long time, you will have a lot of linkage to the words of thatarea, because the texts are taken from that area, like street names and the like.

KWONG: Are you ready to talk about the Gold Award?

SCOTT:

It’s between those three, 10 Hz, Cassette Recorder and Sycamore. If we areincluding technology as one of our criteria, the technology of Sycamore is definitely
the simplest of the three. So I would say either 10 Hz or Cassette Recorder. And
for me because Cassette Recorder didn’t work, 10 Hz wins because it worked. It’s
an interesting experience, and nicely presented. I loved the Device Playing -Cassette Recorder, but I could only hear, I could not record.

FU:For me, Body Hack worked when I visited it.

LAW:

It works, but for me I was not willing to follow those gestures and play with it. I don’tknow the reason why I had to do this and play with it.

CHUNG: The incentive for me to play was not good enough. There isn’t any narrative for meto follow. My two favorites are 10Hz and Sycamore. I still need to decide which isbetter.

ITO:

Cassette Recorder is good-looking. I like the work, but the concept is like
Tape-bow violin by Laurie Anderson, so it’s not very new. The experience with10Hz was really good. Body Hack is not working yet, but it has potential. The idea
is like karaoke with body movement. After watching a gangster movie, audiences
like to impersonate a gangster’s walk when coming out of the theatre. His idea ofimpersonating the movement from cinema is a really good idea. I don’t think it
deserves first or second place, but it has potential.

FU:

My favorites are 10Hz and Sycamore.

SCOTT:

I would have no problem with 10Hzand Sycamore being gold and silver. I think
10Hz has more effort put into it than Sycamore, but Sycamore is a very successful
poetic experience.

ITO:

What do you think of the exterior of 10Hz? It’s just form boards.

SCOTT:

It’s not the prettiest piece. In Blackout, the chairs and keyboards were gorgeous. Interms of presentation it’s the best.

ITO:

For 10Hzhe didn’t need to cover the mechanical things. It would have been more
shocking. The experience we could get would have been more surprising and more
meditative, if it had mechanical, scary looking in contrast.

FU:

For me it’s a fight between these two, between best use of technology and content.
Content-wise I appreciate a work that has such social significance and has more
context with society. In terms of creativity 10Hz wins out.

SCOTT:Sounds like you are voting for 10Hz.

Is it worthy of a gold award? Does it compare

well with past Gold Award winners?

LAW:

We can suggest a Gold Award winner each and see if everyone agrees with it.

KWONG: You don’t have to compare with last year of previous years.

SCOTT:We all loved Sycamore, but recognize that it’s not technically as good as 10Hz.

CHUNG: In the proposal, Sycamore suggested the use of the body as a way to select thetext, rather than the mouse. I talked to the artists, and they told me that the ceilingheight is not enough to do sensitive tracking of the body, so they resorted to using
the mouse.

SCOTT:

That’s the most unfortunate aspect of the work, that the interface was so typical.
That didn’t work with the other components if the piece. Visually it was beautiful.

LAW:

The proposal for 10Hzwas different. It’s walking into a room with a projection
outside.

SCOTT:

Do we agree that gold award goes to 10Hz, and silver to Sycamore?

(All the jury members nod in agreement.)

KWONG: You can choose a maximum of three special mentions, and please state which area
you would like to emphasize.

SCOTT:

I vote for Blackout and Cassette Recorder.

FU:I agree.

KWONG: So only 2 special mentions this year. Can you talk more about why you are giving
special mentions to these two?

SCOTT:

I like the interaction in Blackout, I liked the feeling I got when I typed the same
letter as someone else; I liked having my back against other people. It’s very
cinematic, with the split screen and the couple writing love letters. I loved how you
walked into it, when you push these light bulbs aside. The aesthetic was beautiful, if

a little too Apple computer. It worked, and I saw a lot of people playing with it.

ITO:

The reason I like Cassette Recorder is the movement of going on and going backwith the sound, and you record the sound by moving a heavy stuff, almost like atorture!

CHUNG: I like the way she split the table—on one end there are legs, but the other end issuspended, it looks like it could easily fall down but actually it’s quite solid. I like theintimacy it creates with two people, but they can’t see each other, but they feel eachother’s movement when they are typing.

Interactive Media Category
Gold Award
10Hz
WONG Chi-chuen
Silver Award
Sycamore (dancing poetry), on the street
WONG Yu-hin, LAM Chi-fai
Special Award
Device Playing - Cassette Recorder
Michelle@Dimension+Special Award
blackout
YUEN Sau-ying
Best Concept
PMV [Personalized Music Video]
Millie CHIU