I was recently sent to Hong Kong to represent the UCLA Arts Software Studio at the Microwave New Media Arts Festival. It was the 16th annual edition of the festival, which has hosted numerous interesting media artists and projects over the years. The festival was held in the theater and exhibition wing of City Hall on Hong Kong island. The opening was well attended; it was well advertised in the Hong Kong university community as there were a number of attendees in media art, design and animation programs.

The UCLA Arts Software Studio was one of six artists and groups invited this year. I installed work by Casey Reas, Jonathan Cecil, Chris Reilly + Rob Ray, Eric Parren, and myself. Photos of the work below:

Casey Reas – Signal to Noise (Software 1, 2)

Jonathan Cecil – Los Angeles Spin

Nicholas Hanna – System #1 (in background)

The other artists exhibiting were:
David Link (DE)
Helen Pritchard + Winnie Soon (UK/HK)
Haru Ji + Graham Wakefield (USA)
Mahir Yavuz (USA)
Ernesto Klar (USA)

David Link – LOVELETTERS_1.0. MUC=RESURRECTION, A MEMORIAL

HARU JI x GRAHAM WAKEFIELD – TIME OF DOUBLES: FLUX

ERNESTO KLAR – CONVERGENZE PARALLELE

EBRU KURBAK x MAHIR M. YAVUZ – NEWS KNITTER

I also had the opportunity to give a talk at the artists symposium the day after the exhibition opening. I presented a cross section of work done by members of the Software Studio over the past few years, including:

David Leonard – FataLAtour
Phoebe Hui – Wordplay
Richard Wheeler – Point of Interest
Su Hyun Kim – More is More
Lauren McCarthy – Inneract
Eric Parren – Synesthesia Glasses
Pete Hawkes – Binary Learning
Tyler Stefanich – The Last 5 Minutes
Chris Reilly – DIYLILCNC
David Wicks + Lauren McCarthy – Overnight
Dennis Rosenfeld – this is it forever
Refik Anadol + Alper Derinbogaz – Augmented Structures v1.0
Kian Peng Ong (Bin) – Font Agent
Matthias Dörfelt – Refaketion
Kevin Haywood – Phase Collection

A day later, I gave a Conditional Drawing workshop, which was a lot of fun.

Conditional Drawing workshop in Hong Kong

–Nicholas Hanna