WONG CHUNG-YU
"Randomation"
Real time digital media work

Curated by Malin Barth

07.10. – 13.11.2011

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Wong Chung Yu’s technique of inserting a sense of time into the medium of painting is his quest of exploring identity and belonging within a Chinese contemporary context. Wong is renown for his fusion of digital media with Chinese traditional ink painting to create his art. With new ideas and new techniques he reworks and modernizes long standing art forms—a quite thorough modernization of Chinese ink paintings. His theory is to utilize all available digital technologies to modernize the ink painting, and thereby revive aspects of traditional art in our time. Wong feels that since an artist absorbs the atmosphere of his era, it stands to reason that when he exhales, it will be in the voice of that same era.

Wong’s artwork is demonstrated through a real-time computer process, an approach which in itself is a breakthrough. “Real-time” here means “using a computer during the exhibition to instantly calculate and show results, thereby directly involving the computer in artwork display.” This technique has revolutionized two art terms: “random” and “interaction”. Since Wong’s visual effect is randomly created, the imagery of his painting cannot be predicted. 

In this exhibition, for example Wong’s Spiritual Water 2 is a work capable of producing unlimited waterfall types by means of a computer process which randomly determines the shade or width of the waterfall, as well as the flow of the water. The shape of waterfalls varies in every scene, which is a way to pursue the goal of “enduring beauty” in the manner of ink art. “Interaction” means that the artwork may change its appearance in response to movement from the audience. Wong believes that generally speaking, art is a one-sided creation. “Interaction”, can therefore be regarded as a unique digital media idiom. By means of “interaction”, the audience is able to create virtual images or sound, and combine them with a real ink painting. In this manner, the audience is enabled to play a major role in the outcome of the ink painting. 

"Memory of Star" is also combining random animation run in real time by computer. The random animated graphics moves on top of images of two ink painting. In “The Metropolis” Wong also attempt to incorporate a metropolitan and futuristic characteristic into the traditional subject matter and medium of ink art. He is inspired by landscape painting, but when combined with his metropolitan imagination it results in unique scenery. 

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Wong Chung-yu is an ink painter and new media artist. He received his Master’s degree in Computer Science from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) where he also studied painting with Hong Kong master ink artist Wucius Wong. He was awarded a scholarship by the British Council to pursue an MFA in Digital Arts at Camberwell College of Arts of The University of Arts London and graduated with Distinction. Wong focuses on the harmonization of digital technology within a Chinese painting context, and his experiments include developing a software system to simulate the infiltration effect of ink in digital works, incorporating painting and projected animation and 3D modeling, among others.

Wong’s work has been exhibited at The Hong Kong Museum of Art and Song Zhuang Art Museum in Beijing, and at Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, and has been extensively exhibited in China and internationally, and is in both public and private collections.

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Memory of Star
- Memory of Star is a combination of two Chinese ink paintings and two projections of digital animations of those paintings. The Chinese paintings always request imaginative power for landscape creations. This piece of work aims at integrating surreal architectural forms with landscape so as to extend the possibility of imagination of Chinese landscape paintings. The use of digital media furthermore enhances the dynamic level and variation of the painting.

This piece of work expresses the feeling that I had when I watched the starry sky at United College of my university when I was going to graduate in 1999. It memorizes my youth ages.

The Metropolis
- The Metropolis follows the form of art that I created for the work of Memory of Stars, which aims at integrating Chinese ink painting with randomized animation. The Metropolis includes one real ink painting and one digital projection of the image of the painting with animated graphics. The animation is driven by program so as to generate random combination of animated graphics. This form of art tries to extend the dimension of Chinese painting from static form to dynamic form and to enhance the imagination and variation level of it.

The Metropolis tries to captures the city lives and expresses the energy of cities by animating different city elements on top of a landscape with certain Chinese ink.

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