Kingsley Ng
Encyclopedia
Kingsley Ng is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily on conceptual, site-specific
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...

 and community-oriented projects. Ng crafts relationship between the work and its context through media and formats including interactive installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

, public workshop, sound
Sound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....

, spatial design
Spatial design
Spatial design is a relatively new discipline that crosses the boundaries of traditional design disciplines such as architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and landscape design as well as public art within the Public Realm....

 and experiential design
Experience design
Experience design is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design...

.

Education

Ng first received a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honour) degree in New Media Art
New media art
New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...

 from the Ryerson University
Ryerson University
Ryerson University is a public research university located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its urban campus is adjacent to Yonge-Dundas Square located at the busiest intersection in Downtown Toronto. The majority of its buildings are in the blocks northeast of the square in Toronto's Garden...

 in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, with an exchange
Student exchange program
A student exchange program generally could be defined as a program where students from secondary school or university choose to study abroad in partner institutions...

 semester in Communication Studies
Communication studies
Communication Studies is an academic field that deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time. Hence, communication studies encompasses a wide range of topics and contexts ranging from face-to-face conversation to speeches to mass...

 at Roskilde University
Roskilde University
Roskilde University is a Danish public university founded in 1972 and located in Trekroner in the Eastern part of Roskilde. The university awards bachelor and master's degrees as well as Ph.D...

 in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

. He then was accepted to a two-year training programme at Le Fresnoy – National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, where he obtained his Post-graduate Diploma with les felicitation du jury à l'unanimité. At Le Fresnoy, he studied under the guidance of renowned artists such as - Andrea Cera, Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont is a French film director. To date, he has directed five feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité and...

, Alain Fleischer, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

, Gary Hill
Gary Hill
Gary Hill is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington.One of the pioneers of video art, Gary Hill has exhibited his video and video installations worldwide . He is represented by Donald Young Gallery of Chicago.An anthology on the work of Gary Hill by Robert C...

, Antoni Muntadas
Antoni Muntadas
Antoni Muntadas is a multidisciplinary, media artist, sometimes also referred to as Antonio Muntadas or, simply, Muntadas. Since 1971, he lives and works in New York. Muntadas was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT,1977–1984, and is currently Visiting Professor with...

, Atau Tanaka and Charles Sandison
Charles Sandison
Charles Sandison is a Scottish visual artist who lives and works in Tampere, Finland.-Biography:Sandison was born in Haltwhistle and grew up in Wick, Caithness. He studied art from 1987–1993 and briefly taught there after graduating...

. While in France, he was exposed to the concept of “relational aesthetics
Relational Art
Relational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud...

” by French critic Nicolas Bourriaud
Nicolas Bourriaud
Nicolas Bourriaud is a French curator and art critic. He co-founded, and from 1999 to 2006 was co-director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris together with Jerôme Sans. He was also founder and director of the contemporary art magazine Documents sur l'art , and correspondent in Paris for Flash Art from...

.

Media Art

In 2005, Ng made his career breakthrough with the interactive installation titled “Musical Loom”, where he transformed a 250-year-old antique weaving machine
Loom
A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads...

 into an interactive musical instrument
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

. Participant could weave sound and image shadow by controlling a light beam and generate mechanical sound or malleable musical expression based on their interaction. The work was conceived in the context of Northern France, where the textile industry
Textile industry
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the production of yarn, and cloth and the subsequent design or manufacture of clothing and their distribution. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry....

 has played a very important role in the region’s economic development, recession and regeneration during the last two centuries. While the work referred to its local context, it also made reference to the loom’s role on the global history of new media art. He quoted art historian Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich is an author of new media books, professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, U.S. and European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he teaches new media art and theory, software studies, and digital humanities...

, who cited a remark made by Ada Augusta
Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace , born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine...

, the first computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...

, "the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves..." Manovich continued, “The connection between the Jacquard loom and the Analytical Engine is not something historians of computers make much of, since, for them, computer image synthesis represents just one application of the modern digital computer out of thousands. But for a historian of new media it is full of significance.” The work was touring in exhibitions and festivals in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, including IRCAM
IRCAM
IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...

 – Centre Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...

 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, City Sonics Festival in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, Museum of Art
Hong Kong Museum of Art
The Hong Kong Museum of Art is the main art museum of Hong Kong. The museum was established as the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery in the City Hall in Central by the Urban Council in 1962. In 1991, it was moved to the present premises at 10 Salisbury Road, near the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and...

 in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, and Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

 Europe Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010
Expo 2010
Expo 2010, officially Expo 2010 Shanghai China was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in the city of Shanghai, China, from May 1 to October 31, 2010. It was a major World Expo in the tradition of international fairs and expositions, the first since 1992...

.

In 2006, Ng continued to create works which responded to the value of a place. He prepared an ephemeral interactive installation titled “Homage to Tadao Ando” at the Fabrica – The Benetton Group Communication Research Centre in Treviso
Treviso
Treviso is a city and comune in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,854 inhabitants : some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city...

, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. The work, as the title suggested, is his homage to the distinguished Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando
is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field...

, who designed the Centre. Ng extracted a spiral pattern out of the architectural plan by the architect, and rendered it as a musical composition structure. It was in turn projected as a light pattern onto the water pond at night. Participants were invited to send candle-lit paper boats out onto the water; a musical note was generated when a candle-lit boat flowed over the projected lights. As a result, the participants, jointly with nature (water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

, wind
Wind
Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space...

, fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....

), performed the music together.

From 2007-2008, he was commissioned by the Osage Art Foundation to create a large-scale work titled “Musical Wheel”, a rotational wheel
Wheel
A wheel is a device that allows heavy objects to be moved easily through rotating on an axle through its center, facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Common examples found in transport applications. A wheel, together with an axle,...

 six meters in diameter, where participants are invited to sit inside the work. On the rotational ring, there are nine pieces of curved wooden soundboards mounted with hundreds of strings
Strings (music)
A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...

; as the boards turn slowly, the strings create ambient music
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

 from all four sides the wheel. Ng was attracted to the energy of the area in which the gallery was situated, he said “The gallery is nestled in a district which tells an interesting, orchestral tune: on a daily basis, there are men repairing car wheels, people pushing trolleys, forklifts transporting goods, ventilation fans humming, printing drums turning, weaving machines looming. This collective rotational energy of the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 becomes a core essence of the work.” The artist wanted to interrogate the relationship between the gallery space and the location in which it was situated – the Osage Kwun Tong
Kwun Tong
Kwun Tong is an area in Kwun Tong District, situated at the eastern part of the Kowloon Peninsula, and its boundary stretches from Lion Rock in the north to Lei Yue Mun in the south, and from the winding paths of Kowloon Peak in the east to the north coast of the former Kai Tak Airport runway in...

 Gallery, being the largest contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

 space in Hong Kong, and the district, the earliest and most representative industrial
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

 quarter in Hong Kong.

For the annual city-wide visual art
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

 festival in Hong Kong - October Contemporary, Ng presented an art installation titled “Record: Light from +22° 16’ 14” +114° 08’ 48” for the exhibition Site:Seeing. The work was made up of two large video projection screens
Projection screen
A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed, as in a movie theater; painted on the wall; or semi-permanent or mobile, as in a conference room...

, a modern version of the Gramophone
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

, a low coffee table
Coffee table
A coffee table, also called a cocktail table, is a style of long, low table which is designed to be placed in front of a sofa, to support beverages , magazines, books , and other small items to be used while sitting, such as beverage coasters. Coffee tables are usually found in the living room or...

 and sofa
Couch
A couch, also called a sofa, is an item of furniture designed to seat more than one person, and providing support for the back and arms. Typically, it will have an armrest on either side. In homes couches are normally found in the family room, living room, den or the lounge...

. The screens displayed a seemingly tranquil view of Central district
Central, Hong Kong
Central is the central business district of Hong Kong. It is located in Central and Western District, on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, across Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui, the southernmost point of Kowloon Peninsula...

 in Hong Kong at night, including several landmark architectural features that characterize the area. Though it may be seen to resemble Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

’s infamous Empire
Empire (1964 film)
Empire is a silent, black-and-white film made by Andy Warhol. It consists of eight hours and five minutes of continuous slow motion footage of the Empire State Building in New York City. Abridged showings of the film were never allowed, and supposedly the very unwatchability of the film was an...

 (1964), this work was more closely related to its urban content than to any idea of meta-level play with viewing conventions. At the centre of the screens, Ng captured the apparently insignificant flashes of tourist photography taken at the Victoria Peak
Victoria Peak
Victoria Peak is a mountain in Hong Kong. It is also known as Mount Austin, and locally as The Peak. The mountain is located in the western half of Hong Kong Island...

. Each flash was then marked and etched into a 12-inch disk
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

. The disk was played on the gramophone, producing light and music. The artist wanted to investigate the contradiction between man’s ideas of “possession” and “appreciation” that revolve around the Hong Kong Harbour
Victoria Harbour
Victoria Harbour is a natural landform harbour situated between Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula in Hong Kong. The harbour's deep, sheltered waters and strategic location on the South China Sea were instrumental in Hong Kong's establishment as a British colony and its subsequent...

, an “attraction” to many for over a hundred years. A special video version was also made for the group exhibition “This is HK” curated by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya of Para/Site Art Space. The group exhibition was toured to cities such as Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...

, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, Taipei
Taipei
Taipei City is the capital of the Republic of China and the central city of the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Situated at the northern tip of the island, Taipei is located on the Tamsui River, and is about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...

 and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

.

Site Specific Art

Ng’s works are very often site-specific to its associated context. In 2009, he further interrogated the notion of site-specific art
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...

 and community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

 engagement through works such as “Wind Chimes”, presented at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial is an international modern art festival held once every three years in the Niigata prefecture, Japan. It was first held in 2000 for a "grand" two-month exhibition in "communities, rice fields, vacant houses, and closed schools across a 760 square kilometer region."...

in Japan, where the artist created wind chimes from metal twigs modeled after the lines on local villagers’ palms and cracks in their houses with the local community; and “Excavation” (in collaboration with Syren Johnstone and Daniel Patzold), presented at the Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, where he staged an archeological dig where an imagined future of the exhibition site is seen partially unearthed. Critic and curator David Spalding called it "a brilliant site-specific intervention ... a parallel spatio-temporal experience that recasts the entire Biennale site as a ruin-in-progress."

Works


  • 2010 Windows of the World II
  • 2009 Distilling Kwun Tong
  • 2009 Wind Chimes
  • 2008 Record: light from +22° 16’ 14” +114° 08’ 48”
  • 2008 Musical Wheel
  • 2006 Homage to Tadao Ando
  • 2005 Musical Loom
  • 2004 Le Passage de Nozomi
  • 2004 La Ville dans la Baguette

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 2010 | Futurotextiles | Shanghai Expo - Lille Europe Pavilion, Shanghai China
  • 2010 | This is Hong Kong (video) | Kunsthalle, Vienna Austria
  • 2010 | New Visions New Colours | Museum of Art, Hong Kong China
  • 2009 | Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture | Hong Kong China
  • 2009 | (Last) Intervention | Osage Kwun Tong Gallery, Hong Kong China
  • 2009 | Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial | Tsunan, Niigata Japan
  • 2009 | HK Sound Station |Para/Site Gallery, Hong Kong China
  • 2008 | Crosscurrent: Ambient Art | Osage Singapore, Old School Singapore
  • 2007 | Microwave International Media Art Festival | City Hall, Hong Kong China
  • 2007 | Territories de l’image | Musé de Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing France
  • 2007 | Les Nuits Electroniques de L’Ososphère | La Laiterie, Strasbourg France
  • 2006 | City Sonics | Les Abattoirs, Mons Belgium
  • 2006 | NIME 06 | Ircam - Centre Pompidou, Paris France
  • 2006 | Site-Specific Installation | Fabrica Research Centre, Treviso Italy
  • 2005 | Casting Stories | Le Fresnoy - National Studio, Tourcoing France
  • 2004 - 2007 | Public Art / Community Art | Roubaix, Tourcoing, SNCF France
  • 2003 | (e)merge/(dis)separate | Interaccess Electronic Arts Centre, Toronto Canada

Prizes and Awards

  • Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards 2009
  • Hong Kong Young Design Talent Awards 2008
  • Hong Kong Independent Short Film & Video Awards (Gold Medal, Interactive Media Category) 2007
  • Canada Council for the Arts – Travel Grants to Media Artists 2006
  • InterAccess Visual Arts Award 2003
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