The Missing Link is a research of synchronising Timeliness and Performative into art forms that do not originally exist in time.
About
Curated by composer GayBird and Vanissa Law, The Missing Link consists of three Arts Tech exhibitions, an immersive performance, and a
series of open lectures concerning the current issues in the use of technology in arts. The two composers wish, by add two essential elements—timeliness and performative— into art forms that do not originally exist in time, to inspire new creations and to give more perspective to the existing art forms. Through the creation of multimedia artworks the artists explore ways to use technology to connect di!erent types of media to facilitate storytelling.
Symbiosis of Arts and Technology
Arts and technology develop and in"luence each other through history. Video art from the 70s, interactive installations from the 80s, Net Art from the 90s, algorithmic, generative, and big data art at the present, have witnessed the mutually bene"icial symbiosis of art and technology. The pandemic in 2020 will push artists to think about the relationship between arts and technology even more vigorously.
Characteristic brought by the shortage of land— modular art
Art is the carrier of the culture and history of a city—however the city develops, culture develops, and art develops. Artworks from Hong Kong artists are sometimes involuntarily small, or become modular affected by our living environment. They are usually created in a small space. When a large-scale artwork is to be produced, it often has to be able to be taken apart in order to "it into elevators and trucks during transportation, and then assembled at the exhibition site. The modular nature can be said to be a unique feature of Hong Kong's artworks, and it will also be a feature of the artworks in The Missing Link project.
Time and performance art
Our perception of time used to depend on the rhythm of nature, however, our proximity to technology a!ects our perception of the passage of time. In 1989 David Harvey proposed the concept of "space-time compression,” which states that with the development of technology and globalisation, the time for interpersonal communication and the return of goods is shortened, and hence the world seems to become smaller.
The changes in our perception of time might also a!ect our perception of art, especially for performing arts. To play with this concept, the last multimedia performance of this project will compress the time of the three exhibitions— time-lapse videos taken at the three exhibition venues will have a dialogue with the multimedia performance in the "present" time at the performance venue. The audience will experience time that was captured from di!erent time-space at the same time and have an illusion that “time is not linear.”
