Cosmic. Fable. The Virtual
Author: Yan Wai Yin
Introduction
Is it possible to pave a path from us to the cosmos? Perhaps the genre commonly known as science fiction has been illuminating multiple trajectories for us to invent ways to propose possible futures. With the aid of drastic advancing of technology to further our ever expanding curiosity in exploring alternative space and other beings, it is not surprising that what might have initially appeared grotesque during the Industrial Revolution in Mary Shelley’s literary work Frankenstein (1818), or as a pie in the sky in Georges Méliès’s film A Trip to the Moon (1902), have now become familiar subjects today in the field of bioengineering and space technology.
Arthur Hacker. Sketch, Tiger Balm Gardens, Hong Kong Sits and Legends poster, 1970s–1980s
As the basis of depicting hybrid environmnts that intersect speculations and wonders, these cosmic fables not only construct a possible timeline of human desires and reactions towards the future. They emerge in response to the surge of different technological implications, including the expansive consumption of electricity, followed by the appearance of diverse mechanical apparatuses such as airplanes, radio, cinema and beyond. These mind-bending narratives that deal with ideas and concepts such as time travel, extraterrestrial lifeforms, cyborgs, and multiverse also propose stimulating prototypes and hypothetical situations that contemplate the contemporary society and its cultural practices by suggesting a distanced viewing from alien perspectives.
Cosmic. Fable. The Virtual. highlights works from the M+ Collections that project visual inquiries towards the relationship between individual and the cosmic, some of which delves into the fundamental perception of time and memory, while others propose varying utopian ideologies with mixed realities into furthering our reflection towards the future beyond physical constraints.
Back in 1997, scholar Darko Suvin presented the concept of cognitive estrangement in the studies of science fiction. As the term suggests, by developing ‘a realistic irreality’, this genre estranges readers from preconceptions with a degree of alienation from the contemporary reality.
Drawn by English designer Arthur Hacker, the former artistic director of the Information Services Department (ISD) who has contributed to numerous iconic Hong Kong government campaigns, the totem-like illustration of Hacker’s Tiger Balm Gardens offers a striking impression of a fearless tiger and the Tiger Pagoda. Not only was it regarded as one of the ‘Eight Views of Hong Kong’ before its demolition, but the tower also featured a grand macabre wall panel portraying the haunting fable of The Ten Courts of Hell.
The Tiger Balm Gardens and the neighbouring Haw Par Mansion were built in 1935 by business magnate Aw Boon Haw. Located in the mid-north of Hong Kong Island, the garden is designed to serve as a recreational open space with cultural references and an advertising site for Tiger Balm products. Though the architectural complex in Chinese Renaissance style coincides with a traditional garden, the narrative begins to unfold once stepped into the labyrinth filled with a mass of three-dimensional murals, large-scale caricature sculptures of the Immortals, and other characters with references to Buddhism, Daoism, and various Chinese folklore.
To Aw, the fantastical environment filled with characters reflects the Confucian principle that art is fundamentally a pathway to comprehend morality. Though one might be intimidated by such an eerie display of fantasies, the experience undoubtedly presented a stinging interpretation of the spiritual journey on life and death through the twisting paths and coloured rocks.
Though we have no ways to conclude whether one will experience any of these haunting scenarios in the afterlife, what the Tiger Balm Gardens demonstrates is an impressive example of how imagination and fantasy can be interwoven into an immersive experience and routes of thoughts with a certain degree of realistic foundation and a slight tweak towards our common perception of daily situations.
Len Lye. Particles in Space, 1979
Close your eyes. What if you are to be relocated to a new planet once you open your eyes? What will you first notice? Where is the closest water source? Where are your friends? Can you still breathe? What if you will never get back to where you are from? Who am I now? Is this even real?
Some beginnings of wonders, particularly in the field of science and technology, often start with a ‘what if’ question as the foundation of constructing an unfamiliar setting. To New Zealand filmmaker and kinetic sculptor Len Lye, Particles in Space (1979) unfolds an eccentric monochromatic journey of light play using an analogue medium. Released in the last year of the artist’s life, he returned to the ‘direct film technique, in which visual elements are composed through painting, scratching, or stencilling directly on the celluloid film without a camera. Following such an approach first explored in his earlier works A Colour Box (1935) and Free Radicals (1979), Particles in Space continues to embark on a flocking arrangement of white, simulating the vivid experience of cosmic rays colliding with particles, by allowing projection light to pass through the scratched space on film in forms of dots, lines, and shapes along the movement.
As the title, or its previous tentative aliases Sun Particles, Galaxy Particles, or Rays in Space might suggest, Lye choreographs the piece into an almost meditative enquiry on motion, rhythm and a pure fascination towards light. While the piece is interweaved by the sound of Lye’s kinetic sculptures and the drumming tracks from the Bahamas and the Yoruba of Nigeria as a musical counterpoint, it depicts ‘particles in space that spin and change momentum and speed and go “thrang thrup” between galaxies’. The incessantly vibrating dots vividly intensify the opaque darkness into a vast quest into the unknown, how can one relate with the space in an interscalar way? Such almost bodily calligraphic actions continue to flow as to convey Lye’s astonishment and fascination towards the vigorous nature and the boundlessness of the cosmos.
Chen Zhe. The Only Question is How to Endure (Viewing), 2017
To imagine the different dimensions of time and space, and the attempts to interpret them, is conclusively a continuous act of sequencing in arranging and rearranging networks and fragments of thoughts and visions. Though the concept of time has always been a fascinating subject across different fields, the approaches to document time and its transition remain to evolve along the way.
The Only Question is How to Endure (2017) is part of Chinese artist Chen Zhe’s ongoing inquiry titled Towards Evenings: Six Chapters. The work unravels the first chapter with a four-panel novella. Each accompanied by a piece of text, the sequence reflects stages of contemplation towards dusk, namely ‘Immersing’, ‘Resisting’, ‘Seizing the Moment’, and ‘Understanding Eternity’. At first glance, the panels echo Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosity or Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, both create constellations of thoughts that transform a linear reading experience into a unique narrative of one's own, thus reanimating these long existing entities to future dialogues and potential connotations.
The work poses an intimate monologue of dilemmas and tensions evoked from her reading experience and quotidian observation inspired by this recurring astronomical process. With a collection of photographs, archival materials, and literary texts, it presents the subtle turmoil between the varying representations of dusk across discourses and its transience. Time begins to unravel as rays of entry points, be it a burst of fireworks, or a tender walk beside the horizon. As English novelist H. G. Wells illustrates in his body of works that a transition in time could be viewed as a mode of travel, the anticipation in the reading of Chen’s work depicts not only a voyage between textual and visual languages, but also reminiscent of an intimacy between a physical body, the grandiose nature, and the various readings from a distant time.
Hon Chi-fun. Changing Orbit, 1993
A splash, a stroke, a journey—as the artist moves the brush across a canvas, one could also relate the various movements as the eyes travel along the surface. Considering voyage as an act of estrangement, travellers are destined to confront the unknown, yet enable themselves to embark a journey of immersive experience beyond the limits or boundaries in an everyday setting.
Hon Chi-fun’s Changing Orbit (1993) reflects his extending enquiry towards the cosmic through an expressive choreography of brushwork. At first glance, one may first catch the intense motion from the dense layers of saturated reds and blues across the horizontal surface. The glaze then slowly permeates into the shades of white, outlining a luminous silhouette of a distant orbit against an opaque black sky.
Sculptor and critic Hsiung Ping-ming once summarized Hon’s bodies of work as ‘an adventure of light, the life cycle of light’. Known as one of the most prominent visual artists in Hong Kong and the co-founder of the pioneering Modernist Art group Circle Art Group, Hon’s signature gestural abstraction and his ceaseless fascination towards philosophical subjects are expressed throughout his extensive body of works in prints, drawings, and photographs. Particularly in the work Changing Orbit, one might also recall his signature ‘Circle’ series and wonder how the circle, a frequent motif in Hon’s practice since the late 1960s, are portrayed differently across the two, and, more crucially, how this recurring geometric forms articulates his lifelong contemplation of light.
Sorayama Hajime, Doi Toshitada. Sony AIBO entertainment robot, model ERS-110, 1999
While one might be interested in exploring the roots of and differences in robots, androids, cyborgs, and their succeeding iterations, it is also noteworthy to identify how these alternate beings are situated in relation to the different environments and its correlating human conditions, for example, the often-dystopian setting in Philip K. Dick’s fictions or the theme park created in Westworld. How do the different beings interact between one another, and what kind of obstacles and conflicts emerge as the different narratives unfold?
In 1999, the Japanese electronics company SONY introduced a silver consumer robot for home entertainment. Named AIBO, synonymous with the Japanese word for ‘partner’ or ‘companion’, the artificial intelligence robot resembles a pet dog with a futuristic appearance with metallic black screens and exposed joints. It might be hard to believe that the predecessors of AIBO were once rejected due to its uncanny resemblance to a real dog. Designed by Sorayama Hajime and engineered by Toshitada Doi, AIBO targets establishing intimate user bonding through everyday interactions connected with a network of sound and touch sensors.
Unlike task-performing industrial robots with practical applications, AIBO possesses a deep-learning artificial intelligence that allows the robot to simulate personality and behavioural development with adaptive functionalities in response to user habits. After establishing 12 models in 1999, Sony terminated the AIBO project in 2006. It was not until almost a decade later that a significant upgrade re-appeared on the market. With a surge of sensors and actuators availability and advancement, together with the widespread use of broadband and wireless communications, the latest models of AIBO are now equipped with advanced robotic capability, which improves animalistic movement and simulates emotional expression. Though it does not generate human-like responses or assist your daily searches and requests like the modern AI-powered applications, AIBO simulates a sense of bonding with users through learning from the data. Its newly implemented locomotive ability invites users to further interact with the artificial cyborg, posing growing possibilities of the coexistence of humans and cyborgs.
Conclusion
Wouldn’t it be exciting if one considers how any two seemingly polar subjects can always be intertwined under hypothetical circumstances? Foucault once suggested in the concept of heterotopia that sites such as museums, libraries and cinemas withhold layers of meaning in both the reality and the virtual. They are composed with information from different times and yet interrelated to each other within a confined space. Rather than utopias that propose unreal spaces, these heterotopias offer a ‘break’ from the normal flow of time and, thus, evoke a temporary sense-making experience.
Beyond reflecting an intrinsic desire towards the cosmos, the works introduced above could also be seen as time portals towards different visions. Whether through an intimate reflection towards one’s mode of existence, a careful speculation towards the contemporary society, or a bold entry towards unfolding innovative techniques, these works of art pave the path of potentials in widening the definition of possible futures.
‘All of you pioneers of that space/ Which lingers between atom and dream,’ as the Lebanese-American poet and painter Etel Adnan once wrote in her eleven-part poem ‘A Funeral March for the First Cosmonaut’. Perhaps all enquiries towards the cosmic can be foremost seen as a catalyst for deliberate reconsideration on the existing, to rethink the notion of us as a finite being, its reflection towards the augmenting discourses on humanity, and ultimately, to experience, to desire, and to dream, be it as big as a spacecraft base or as tiny as just one tiny particle dancing in the air.