now, we're here...

週末畫報 (CITY LIFE: Feb 4, 2012)

2012-02-13T02:58:00.012+08:00

Photo by APPortfolio

當日在視集堅持策動這件裝置藝術，看來是明智的決定。國內的《周末畫報》上星期把它放到了當眼的位置，也因為台灣著明設計師蕭青陽對它作出了不錯的評價：

“內地新生代作品藝術感强烈，藝術力量非常飽滿；而香港新生代作品大多很時尚，並且具有復古感。如嚴瑞芳的作品“說未來的人”（The Future Teller），以亞洲人的共同回憶腳踏單車為載體，結合1950年代的放音機，以現代技術表達時光概念。這個具衝突性的作品引發了我的共鳴，彰顯出強烈的質感；而台灣新生一代一副丟掉包袱的感覺，以極盡自由的方式創作出毫無地域的感覺。這也令人覺得可惜，實際上，地域帶來的是不同的文化底蘊，具有方向感的作品才是真正有魅力的。”

哈，其實之所以用自行車還真有段古，那部開盤式舊唱機是本土七十年代的流行物，前後經過多次補修才得以成為作品的一部分，沒有它的話，這件作品近乎失敗了，也跟原來的構思拉不上半點關係。藝術家後來到北京發展了，沒完成的部分我堅持要造，誠言也是重點來著，不完成怎對得起多日來的心血？我這個當策展的還真惱人，比藝術家更愛作品…

http://www.visualarchive.hk/?p=634

亞洲青年創作集錄 Vol.2

2012-01-30T02:34:00.015+08:00

Photos by Edwin Lau

期盼已久的作品集終於登陸香江，急不及待地致電各三聯查詢，一口氣買了兩本。沒想到其中一位大師“黃偉”竟然點評了我的作品：“風格簡潔，我喜歡做減法的設計。而且，這位年輕設計師也關注一些細節。” 另一份由我策展的作品：嚴瑞芳的“說未來的人”也入選了，與有榮焉！

HKDA Global Design Awards 2011

2012-01-23T14:50:00.005+08:00

http://203.194.204.112/awards2011/website/en/index.html

電郵信箱傳來獲獎的消息，竟有兩個項目之多，有點難以置信之餘，也教我對設計重新振作起來！期待2012年3月6日之頒獎禮及其後兩星期之展覽活動！

2011高雄設計節 Kaohsiung Design Festival

2011-12-28T17:25:00.015+08:00

Facebook詳圖

2008年首次策劃展覽，是在上海；2011年首次參展，是在高雄；實在太感動了！

中港台三地共100位創意人的作品收錄!!

2011-12-20T16:42:00.011+08:00

Photos by APPortfolio

一月七日新書發佈會，沒打算再到高雄一次，不過一定拭目期待香港這邊的出版日。背面有我的名字，有點不可思議...我的作品收錄在26-27頁。

倒數 2011 高雄設計節

2011-12-20T16:37:00.018+08:00

三地／三十位／三十歲以下創作人的展場！高雄設計節我來也！

高雄設計節官網

香港社區設計良品展 COLLECTIVE: Current Community Design Works in HK

2011-12-01T12:23:00.016+08:00

在WVA策動的展覽暫時告一段落，還是首次這樣全面地為一個展覧作形像包裝及設計，好捧的一次經驗！

----------------------

香港社區設計良品展
COLLECTIVE - CURRENT COMMUNITY DESIGN WORKS IN HONG KONG

講創新，學思源。灣仔視集為大家帶來“香港社區設計良品展”，展示一共六組的升級設計概念。當中包括灣仔視集的作品FutureTeller、KaCaMa設計實驗室的LivingPixels、張瑋晉的 Boombottle、Jason Li的Moving Planter、CoLab的café 330 / So...Soap!及李宇軒的木頭車系列。上述設計除以循環物料再生外，更富有濃濃的社區味，概念源自你我最熟識不過的尋常物：鳳凰牌自行車、宣傳海報、膠水桶及電燈泡，更有由老街坊親自操刀的作品，一一打破舊物無所用的陳規，體現共生設計的真義。

展覽開幕當日更找來年輕設計師，親授製作升級設計的獨門秘技，為急速老化的社區盡上綿力。

“COLLECTIVE – current community design works in Hong Kong” features recent upcycling works and concepts from emerging and promising designers, such as KaCaMa Design Lab, Kevin Cheung, Jason Li, together with Brian Lee and Yau Kee’s acclaimed collection of wooden handcrafts, and CoLab’s influential community schemes, “Café 330”and “So…Soap!” Through the lenses of community participatory design, these works implement alternative design strategies, integrating social values and creative values into an organic whole.

Designers and exhibitors will share their design process and thinking in an open demonstration/workshop on Dec 17 at Wan Chai Visual Archive, No. 5-9 Hing Wan Street, Wan Chai.
----------------------
展期 EXHIBITION PERIOD
December 01,2011 - January 21, 2011 (Sat)

酒會及即席示範 RECEPTION + DEMONSTRATION
日期 Date: December 17, 2011 (Sat)
時間 Time: 4:00-7:30pm
地點 Address: 1/F, No.5-9, Hing Wan Street, Wan Chai
----------------------

other curatorial works for WVA:

Inauguration Exhibition

ReIncarnating I: The Lost Scene

ReIncarnating II: Future Teller

People's Theatre: Mid-Autumn Rooftop Screening

Collective: Current Community Design Works in HK

這個點子成嗎？

2011-11-24T17:08:00.000+08:00

PLANET D 案例重塑

2011-10-28T09:24:00.006+08:00

憑誰意行（一）

2011-08-09T14:06:00.003+08:00

正在看梁家麟的《憑誰意行》（基道出版），完成了差不多二分一的內容，很想在此分享一下。

文章開首主力討論普遍基督徒對詮譯何謂「神的旨意」的一些謬誤，例如以結果的好壞判斷那件事是否出於神的心意。他舉了一例：教會中有姊妹失戀了，有人馬上查問關係開始時有否祈禱求問神的心意，姊妹的答案當然是「沒有」，於是那人便定論這段感情因「不合神的心意」才至告終。

梁指出這樣看神的心意造成了沒完沒了的「循環論證」，我們永遠不能確定神的旨意，直到事情的結果出現以後。正如只有直到一對新人離婚後，我們始知道這段關係「不合神意」，這樣的邏輯背後同時有一假設，就是神的旨意只包括「天色常藍」，而不包括任何使人不悅的結果，這樣果真是神的心意嗎？

另外，這亦反映了許多基督徒以「命定主義」的角度理解神的旨意，相信神給每個人的人生都只有唯一一條合法合意的出路，一旦做錯了任何一個決定，都會召致惡果。作者反問：這樣的人生還算自由嗎？若然神給人的選擇只有一個，那我們的人生不正正變成了一場最大的賭博？然而梁指出：儘管理念上我們相信神預定一切，但從生活經驗裡頭，我們是無法得知何為神的安排，所以抉擇與自由本身仍是真實的，神可以在永恆裡預定我今晚會吃些什麼，但卻無礙我抉定到哪一間餐廳用膳。

「基督徒可以相信上帝的預定，卻要在生活裡拒絕機械式的命定主義。」怍者抱持的人生觀是積極的，也不希望基督徒以此作為逃避個人責任的藉口。（待續）

來一點衝擊：從英國青年藝術家（YBA）看展覽作為突破建制的手段（A.M.Post, Sep Issue, 2011）

2011-07-27T17:43:00.013+08:00

1988 - 英國青年藝術家（YBA）第一次聯展「Freeze」在倫敦一廠房內舉行，展示共16組作品

1989 - 北京天安門發生改革開放以來最大規模的學生運動

1997 - 倫敦皇家藝術學院盛大展出「Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection」

1997 - 香港回歸祖國

2003 - 第一屆「七一大遊行」

2004 - 第一屆798藝術節

2011 -「愛未來」展覽於柴灣一工廈展出：香港首個回應社會議題之大型展覽，共計57 組藝術家及詩人作品

---

世界博覽會面世至今，已有一百六十年的歷史。個半世紀裡頭，大型展覽作為展現國力、推動跨領域文化交流，以至促進地方經濟之催化劑地位無可比擬。於藝壇而言，展覽更是藝術家發表、交流及面向國際的唯一途徑。國際藝術雙年展的老大哥要數1895年的威尼斯雙年展，舉辦至今已超過54屆。亞洲的首個國際性藝術雙年展始見於1995年的韓國光州，足足比歐洲大國慢了一個世紀，追本溯源，似乎都跟國家的民主步伐或社會現況密不可分。再看我們中國，全國最大型的民主訴求運動出現於80年代未，天安門一夜間成了史上最大規模的人肉展場。這時，來自中國各省市的「盲流藝術家」漸漸在首都荒廢的東德廠房集結起來，是為798的雛型；為了存留這片福地，一眾光棍藝術家動員了第一屆的北京大山子藝術節，吸引了中外媒體超過二百家，那年是2004，798成了北京的新名片。

據說，英國青年藝術家（YBA）也在這樣的歷史芬圍下孕育而成，八十年代初的英國失業率高企，「鐵娘子」縮減大學資助，倡議公營企業私有化，學院不得不自尋出路，藝術更難以自成一角，逐漸形成與商業糾纏不清的局面。一眾YBA嘗未畢業便聯群結黨辦展覽，由私人發展商資助，沒廣邀傳媒、策展人或藝評家，所以說YBA是媒體造就出來的成名佳模，或許有點偏頗。正如他們的伯樂倫敦金匠教授Michael Craig Martin所言：「大家都以為這班年輕人的成功是計算過的，實情是天時、地利、人和及佳作交會而成的結果罷了。」Michael受Marcel Duchamp的強烈影響，作品朝概念性（conceptual）方向走，大膽破格。除教導學生打破一貫以媒介（media）分類的傳統藝術觀念，他更鼓勵學生運用當年還不怎麼普及的新媒介來創作，如錄像、攝影及裝置等，使作品的可觀性及獨特性大大提高，生活中平凡不過的物件（objects）頓成了創作的泉源，更成為了這批青年藝術家往後創作路上的重要取材：動物、藥丸、床褥、食物、燈泡、木箱，觸手所及，皆能成作。他們的作品面向社會，亦取之於社會。除了學院既定的藝術陳規，這群青年藝術家還挑戰了一貫以博物館（公立）或畫廊（私立）作為展場的展示模式。他們的首個展覽，出現於倫敦東邊一座荒廢了的建築大樓內，取名Freeze，展出了當時共16位同學的作品，主題與個人及社會環環相扣——死亡／性／消費／性別，進行中的事件物件，那一刻，都凝住了。是的，觀眾的目光也凝住了。

問香港為何生不了這樣勇於衝激建制的藝術家？不如問我們提供了一個怎樣的藝術學習環境給下一代？學生自少成了考試機械，藝術音樂體育通通讓路，加上傳統儒家思想提倡的「君君、臣臣、父父、子子」，有多少學生因應父母的要求從商、從醫、從法？聽說香港的藝術發展比西方國家至少慢十年，甚或有廿年之遙。若然以英國青年藝術家作為英國現當代藝術的火車頭，那已是廿三年前的事，傳聞非虛矣。要數本土藝術學生反建制的例子，其實四年前有一個，不來自藝術系，而是設計系，還是工業設計的。2007年畢業的彭健怡，畢業作沒有新潮玩物，反而逆流而上，把逐漸被時代淘汰的舊式電話、電視、衣車化身成一台可供運作的電腦，賦予舊物重新的價值之餘，更邀請觀眾與其互動，讓感受不再停留於懷念逝去的文化符號（舊物）或普遍價值，而是進一步化成可被傳遞或再生的元素，可持續設計的根本不正是這麼一回事？可當年彭健怡的概念及創作模式受到了前所未有的爭議，差點連畢業的門檻都過不了，幸而他的作品於畢業展上受到觀眾熱烈的回響和本地傳媒的垂青，最終順利過關之餘，還獲邀參展2007年度的微波國際新媒體藝術節「形光譜」，一時佳話。香港藝術教育需要的，是更多個彭健怡，更多的衝擊。

2011年五月，香港首次出現反建制的大型展覽「愛未來」，以「藝術公民」的姿態走出來，全由民間發動，回應中國維權藝術家艾未未人間蒸發的事件。57組參展的藝術家或詩人當中，六七八十後的都有，但主力策動的都是來自設計、文化界的教育工作者，未必能成為香港藝壇的新符號，但肯定是一堂很捧的藝術課。

本土良品（一）：針孔照全家福

2011-05-05T23:09:00.027+08:00

相片提供：WVA

“來吧！看著這裡……三、二、一！”在一個中式的影樓佈局前，藝術家與灣仔人一同以自製的針孔相機來了張全家幅，把人氣貫注了這個新落成的藝文空間。

新春期間，二十戶來自灣仔的街坊街里在針孔師張震揚和香港理工大學設計學院的帶領下，參與了一個別開生面的工作坊，舊街坊新朋友不只是藝術的旁觀者，也可成為其中的創作人，從訪談中喜見公公婆婆笑逐顏開，證明藝術並不拒人千里。

試過自製針孔攝影機的人都知道，要造一部影像清晰的針孔機不容易，手工粗疏一點都不成，不單針孔得極度精細（不得大於0.5mm），還需根據拍攝現場的明亮度及底片的感光度，小心計算出暴光時間，更無法像現今數碼相般刪掉重來，所以攝影師的經驗不可或缺。這次工作坊，每個單位大約只需十秒便可完成一張喜氣洋洋的針孔照，影像雖然有點矇矓，卻滿載詩意；操刀的原來是張震揚，當年破格地將燒鴨轉化為針孔相機，於墨爾本唐人街拍下了獨特的概念性作品，一時佳話。看見大人小孩跟著他一步步地完成手上的針孔相機，滿臉愜意，不得不對這個傳統的攝影手法嘖嘖稱奇。

一幀幀全家福記載的不只灣仔人的面孔，還有一段段屬於灣仔的口述歷史，是的，這裡充斥了故事：「舊街市最有特色，三幾年起的，以前細個時阿媽成日帶我去買餸⋯另外街邊食白粥油炸鬼、腸粉的大排擋，本來有好多，現在都沒了⋯」陳小姐在灣仔土生土長，多年來見證了這個地區的盛極而衰，不無慨嘆；至於年輕一輩，只是在灣仔上過學的，也能道出這裡的一大特色：「灣仔有許多新舊交錯對立，好有趣⋯」丁丁屬九十後，灣仔舊貌反成了新境點，尋根時不忘發掘奇趣事，才踫上了這個工作坊。

部份的針孔成品將於開幕展展出，用以展示並記錄灣仔人的肖象，是為組成一個社區面貌不可或缺的原素。想起二十世紀德國文化評論家本雅明（WalterBenjamin）曾對在機械複製時代的藝術品提出“靈光”衰退的概念；一件藝術品的真跡之所以比複製品珍貴，在於其“此時此地”——獨一無二地存在於其所在之處，見證時間和歷史的磨煉。

針孔照的一大特色，在於其本有難以被複製的特質，相比現代的數碼相機，試圖用針孔機拍出多張相同的相片近乎零可能，這才構成攝影也可成藝術的有力證據。第一部針孔機（CameraObscura）見證了攝影的誕生，從開初被誤以為攝人靈魂的工具，到今天成為你我手上一日不可無的手機，二百年來，人類的生活經驗了翻天覆地的變化。視集開幕展以針孔照作主打可謂當頭棒喝，正當社會不斷地擁抱現代化的時候，它卻選了灣仔這個老區，並以傳統作招徠，重新肯定原始的價值，喜見舊式的全家幅重現眼前，街坊予以無限的支持。何謂“社區藝術”，不正是這麼一回事？

灣仔有個文化卵巢

2011-05-03T09:40:00.025+08:00

相片提供：WVA

經過石硤尾，數年前辦過展覽的七層大廈，今天是個地盤；轉個街口的美利樓，佇起了即將落成的青年旅舍藍圖，這才發現左鄰的北九龍裁判署，已成了有板有眼的設計藝術學院；一個勁地走上賽馬會藝術中心的頂層眺望，是的，不再一望無際...

經過灣仔，和昌大押成了高級餐廳，舊街市即將變身，利東街給合和二期的圍板封得體無原膚，就連找個觀光梯上去旋轉餐廳，都有保安阿叔告訴我，翻新工程進行中，不得擅闖，是的，這裡不再灣仔...

八十後的我，畢業幾年來埋首工作，著緊的是前途際遇，香港城市規劃一點不上心，加上自身的家庭背景，國內的轉變及發展似乎更具張力，還記得上年首都旅行後猶有餘悸，祖國千年傳統文化的自豪與驕傲通通給一個國際運動會出賣了，走在重鋪過的天安門大街及鳥巢前的廣場上，不禁一凜，偌大的空間淹沒了的不止地靈、不止人傑，還有百物飛騰下的段段辛酸；兩年後，在另一個國際性的博覽會上，更見我國暴發後喉擒展現國力的種種醜陋，看來迫切需要的，是提升國民內在的人文素質，而非單薄的城市面貌。

正當北京上海的整容熱稍稍降溫之際，本土的變身大行動才剛起步。文化人、學者、藝術家紛紛雄據藍屋前後左右，你一個生活館，我一個留屋留人行動，根植唐樓同時將保育知識傳遞，企圖將一個又一個的口述歷史薪火相傳，協力對抗遺忘；然而這種無止境的懷舊（Nostalgia）對政府改變社區／歷史建築用途究竟產生了多大的助力？而對於「香港商場化」這個已然的事實又能構成多大的阻力？筆者無從稽考，只知本土有限的文化符號在不斷地重構與重現的同時，正以光纖極速被消化殆盡，除了擴大咨詢並以藝術反思以至教育之外，我們還有更積極的方法麼？近日給我在藍屋後邊發現了一個文化卵巢，以不溫不和的方式對抗拆樓潮，開幕在即，不曉得會產生多大的震盪。

企業 X 學院 X 社區

藝術團體進駐工業大廈早年如雨後春筍，成功活化了多幢黃昏工廈，成績有目共睹，火炭藝術村和石硤尾的創意藝術中心是為佳模。這次在一快將清拆的唐樓之中開個藝術空間，活化保育之心顯而易見，追問動議的元老何方神聖，竟多了一份意外的誠意，「是我主動提出的，再過兩三年這裡會改建成酒店，與其被動地等待清拆，倒不如將建築物升格轉化，成為這區獨有的藝術創意平台。」業主及總監 Carl Gouw 娓娓道來了「灣仔視集」的誕生原由。這個不到二百平方尺的品字形藝術空間，座落慶雲街5-9號一樓，營運全靠上兩層的出租公寓支撐，自給自足之餘，地面還有個「大龍鳳酒吧」，吸引了眾多文化創意潮人聚集其中，一下子把上百年的老街帶進了廿一世紀。促成美事的除了良心企業，還有來自設計學院的葉長安，上年度策劃的Detour將藝術帶入中區舊警察宿舍，成功動搖了政府原來的活化計劃。「這裡不單純是藝術家的個人展場，而是本土藝術與街坊的互動平台，這裡辦過的數個工作坊，都主動邀請居民一同參與創作。」

只屬於灣仔的文化集散地

開幕當日將展出四個工作坊的部份作品，以「針孔全家福」及「聲畫」最具代表性。在一個中式的影樓佈局前，以自製的針孔相機來張全家幅，成為你與藝術家新年的共同回憶，舊街坊新朋友不只是藝術的旁觀者，而是其中的一份子，甚至是創作人；在「聲畫」中，一眾聾啞人士以手上的LED畫出他們對灣仔的種種，說不出的回憶、感受被轉化成光與影，成為可被記錄及交流的文本，與其坐著消耗這地的文化符號，不如一同製造屬於你、我和灣仔的獨有影像；從訪談中喜見公公婆婆笑逐顏開，證明藝術並不拒人千里。現時社會各界均為未來西九的落成，積極培育及籌組文化軟件，視集卻反其道而行，明以硬件作招來，吸引各方人脈聚集大龍鳳，當中不乏年輕小伙子，齊來飲兩杯吹吹水，為本土文化排卵。

拾眾記：十個公眾參與可持續城市發展的札記

2010-09-09T00:10:00.006+08:00

文學 ARTS（高雄設計節參展作品）

2010-09-08T00:30:00.007+08:00

Photos by Kinson Ma

中文大學文學院入學指南2010-2011

永遠懷念恩師楊國榮

2010-08-23T12:37:00.021+08:00

「有沒有天長地久不是一個有待發現的事實，而是一個待寫的故事。如果你一看見天長地久的愛情就覺得他們很可憐，那我無話可說；可是如果你覺得他們幸福，卻沒勇氣追求的話，那麼你就是一條可憐蟲。」

—《青紅皂白》第五章論愛情──何謂愛情？

“與恩師的十堂課——我的路”

2010-08-23T12:19:00.009+08:00

第一次跟突破合作造書是蔡元雲醫生的著作。

跨越文本的邊界

2010-08-23T12:18:00.002+08:00

book cover design for a professor who digged his life into Greek and Chinese bible study. so here i tried to merge the two characters together to suggest the transgression of both text.

天圓地方

2010-08-23T12:16:00.010+08:00

中大文學院的入學指南，已是三年前的作品。

農圃道的足跡

2010-08-23T10:52:00.012+08:00

中大新亞書院的前身，校友著書緬懷之；我只負責封面設計，內文排式由商務負責。

北京（六）：北京製造

2009-09-12T23:24:00.004+08:00

北京（五）：捕風‧捉影

2009-09-11T23:57:00.011+08:00

童年的風景／嚴培明

“甚麼？你…說…甚麼？我…我聽…不到！”

蒲掀開膠簾，叫人駐足的不是畫作，而是有如置身直昇機底的強勁風聲和氣流。

我和友人相對著豎起大拇指，以身體僅有的語言表達對這件作品的讚嘆，沒錯，這個以畫布出身的藝術家叫你先別用眼睛看，而是以聽覺和觸覺去感受這趟旅程，也請你尊重那一幀幀隨風搖曳的孩童肖像，他們不是國家元首、民族英雄或宗教領袖，但都帶著一份沉甸甸的肅穆，莊嚴地佇立在跑道一樣寬大的空間裡。

“我的作品很大，是為了讓觀眾有進到我的世界裡的感覺。”的確，這裡大得讓我們都忘了它是UCCA內的一部份。嚴培明的首個裝置展，把畫作退到了配角的位置去，想要捕捉肖像的臉容比捕風更難，或許飽歷創傷的臉就是容易被扭曲、遺忘。

還沒看這件裝置前，我構想的童年風景都色彩斑斕。來自不一樣的國度，不一樣的種族，帶著不一樣的故事，相同的是小孩兒生命中應有的色彩和笑容都給剝奪了。人們都說小孩渴望長大，但當他們長大以後又渴想返回童年，那只是假設童年都美麗如詩，若然大家的童年都像這裡的小孩一樣顛沛，任誰都不願回頭。

予其說是“風景”，倒不如說像個“墓園”，更為貼切。“紀念碑意味着久遠和宏大，中國的宣傳畫為了宣揚和造就政治意義上的紀念碑，很有震撼力。”嚴氏一直堅持自己畫的都是真實的人，以記錄歷史、見證歷史，這些小孩又見證了一個怎樣的歷史？世界大同下，他們又即將迎向一個怎樣的未來？

北京（四）：川流不息－解構中國

2009-09-10T10:02:00.003+08:00

正當奧運的餘震還在運動的時候，藝術家們已紛紛就當下的社會問題進行研究和探討。來自四個國家七個地區的藝術家用影像揭示我國的種種現象，不都為人垢病，但絕對值得關注：

消逝中的老北京、老上海；
連綿不斷的爛尾樓；
追求自主的新世代；
漸漸在他邦長大的中國養女；
全球化下的民工；
……

一切都沖積着歲月的演練與變奏，千絲萬縷，渴想一夜光明似是遙不可及的事，但難得在首都看到一個這樣誠實的展覽，進步不少了…

北京（三）：建造／拆毀／再建造 ─ 迎向靈光消逝的北京

2009-09-09T09:30:00.108+08:00

筆者攝

賈樟柯＿城市再生

無論走多遠的路，朋友到北京，非要一睹中央電視台的真貌不成；轉個頭，看見賈樟柯360度一take過拍下的建築工地，又是這條“褲”；看來這個標誌性建築物為首都帶來了不少震盪。

二十世紀德國文化評論家本雅明（Walter Benjamin）曾對在機械複製時代的藝術品提出過“靈光”衰退的概念；一件藝術品的真跡之所以比複製品珍貴，在於其“此時此地”── 獨一無二地存在於其所在之處，見證時間和歷史的考驗，是為其權威所在。複製技術使本來獨一無二的珍品脫離了傳統的領域，“僅此一回”的經驗因此被沖刷、動搖，同時原作之真實性更受到前所未有的質疑和試探。究其原因，離不開對珍品的渴求及崇拜，希望盡可能把它拉近自己，甚至完全的擁有。

“這些方塊一點特色都沒有！”剛抵步時那位的士司機毫不留情地批評沿途的都市化建築。不錯，它們都很相像。

在迎向奧運之際，當北京的真貌必須披露人前的時候，我國元首所珍視的並非自身國度所散發的獨有靈光，而是他國的靈光，一些隨時可被複製的設計及一個所謂國際大都會的基本藍圖。人們到北京一睹的，不是北京的靈光，而是某某建築大師的靈光，這種靈光可以隨時出現於紐約、倫敦、巴黎，不再受時間及地域所限。在把別國的珍品複製到我國的同時，我們正不斷地破壞自家發源的靈光，逐漸向傳統道別。

最後只剩下影像，讓歷史的“靈光”永遠安息。

北京（二）：藝術家明星化

2009-09-08T09:41:00.220+08:00

周松－化蝶 I

290 cm x 300 cm，2007-2008

在今日美術館踫上了周松的首個個人展覽，沒被那栩栩如生的內臟肺腑給嚇怕，倒因年紀輕輕才廿七歲的他已能開辦屬於自己的作品展，覺得不可思議，不是我瞧不起年青藝術家，只是訝異作為館長的竟願意這樣大力提拔後輩，一點不怕影響博物館的形象，也佩服周松能在短時間內完成這麼多高質量的作品，聽說上面這幅蝴蝶便花了他整整一年的時間。

“在國內的確少有…”連周松也承認自己是幸福兒。他坦承現場展出的所有作品都不屬於他，而是自他從天津美術學院畢業後便一直資助他作畫生涯的一家藝廊所持有，為他一手包辦租借工作室、佈展、宣傳到作品銷售，他就像後起之秀給公司簽了賣身契，一定年日內必須作畫有成；但若然嘔不出傑作來又如何？這樣敏感的話題當然點到即止，對於初出茅廬的他，能得此機會夫復何求？

看得出來他仍在摸索屬於自己的風格，早期作品追求的是畫工的細膩寫實，概念薄弱，單一地結合了美與醜、善與惡，血肉橫流的機關槍跟魚頭組合而成的玉蝶，都在突顯畫家的巧奪天工，要想做到超現實主義的哲學味似乎力有不逮，當被問到為何結合魚屍和蝴蝶時，他也一臉胡疑，只道魚頭的形態跟蝴蝶身上的花紋好不搭配，為要製造遠觀時的錯視效果（讓人誤以為蝴蝶是真的，及至近看時方知是魚頭），魚眼才被選上；我倒覺得兩者結合後有動物死後化蝶的韻味，穩含從“形而下”超脫至“形而上”的過程。

後來的作品加入了中國水墨畫的元素，無疑想樹立別具東方味的風格，須知把血肉畫得出神在國外早有奇才，要吸引外國買家，不得不借助中國熱，可周氏似乎把國畫中所強調的“留白”變成了一種單純的空間佈置，而非“意境”，含混了西方的極簡派藝術風格。水墨畫中本來有水的地方被空白取代，是此處無物勝有物，企圖凝造出“本有”的想像空間，跟“less is more”的返璞歸真不一樣，從多餘的元素中去蕪存菁周氏做到了，但論到意境，相信還需時琢磨。

北京（一）：藝園遊

2009-09-07T00:16:00.159+08:00

第一次走訪祖國首都，沒看長城紫禁城，卻參觀了多個千禧後紅得很的藝術園。

當“老大”的798因知名度高，規劃得特別好，不但交通便利，現場地圖、路標、餐室、精品店一應俱全，絕對是買家遊客至上，諾大的空間盡是修飾整齊的藝術品，像極了商品，卻一點不像工作室；曾聽一內地學者分享，當年的798是真的很有“ART味”，製作材料七零八落，到處都是塗鴉和沒完成的雕塑，是年青藝術家的天堂。後來這裡出了名，引來了國內外的傳媒追訪，中央才成立了一個甚麼建設管理辦公室，把區內設施整頓一番，方便了參觀者，卻失去了原來的實驗精神。現在的798是藝術品銷售的最佳展場，是你消磨一個週日下午的理想好去處，想與藝術家近距離接觸，可能要跑到公交車都不開的宋庄去，岳敏君和一眾藝術家不是都擠到了那裡遠避繁囂？

離798不遠處同樣以舊廠房改建而成的酒廠國際藝術園可沒那麼走運，畫廊外殼還算可以，就是裡頭的作品太少，又因交通不便，訪客極少，為了節省開支，畫廊都習慣在沒觀眾的時候關燈，初時還以為他們都在當天休館（中國人這個“美德”不正是距人千里的另一表徵？）。我們逐家推門踫踫運氣，可唯一接待我們的只有Osage，聽說他們也正準備遷回798，負責人說自金融海潚後只有798或一些外資的國際畫廊存活下來，其餘的不是荒廢了便是搬到更便捷的地區去。另一個草場地藝術區的境況更慘淡，多個畫廊還在施工，處處泥濘，能圍繞全場走上一圈已算難得，但相信過不多時這裡定會重拾熱鬧。

比這三個藝術區更商業的是新開發不久的二十二院街藝術區，商廈之內附設展覽場，多間藝廊經紀除租用辦工室外更為自家發掘的青年藝術家包辦個人展覽及作品營銷，製作精美的作品集長派長有，質量叫人驚喜，參觀當日就踫上了兩個不到三十的藝術家的個展，有幸跟其中一人對談，明日繼續…

"I'd rather do sth I love badly than to feel bad by not doing sth I love."

2009-07-10T10:23:00.000+08:00

Annual Show 2009

2009-06-01T19:19:00.020+08:00

這個應該是離開前辦的最後一個展覽，不是最辛苦的卻是收穫最豐的，規模較前兩次的都大，要應付的單位也特別多，幸好上頭給了100分，不滿的聲音自然石沈大海，爭論最激烈的要算陳列系統，全程 “妹仔大過主人婆”，畢業生的作品淹沒其中，反成了陪襯品；最開心的應該是一眾Year 1 的學生，自家製的設計有幸能派上用場，那種喜悅只有當學生的才會明白。

當代荷蘭交流設計 - 深圳華．美術館

2009-03-04T10:42:00.038+08:00

繼去年底香港的“設計營商周”找來了荷蘭為合作伙伴後，荷蘭設計繼續進軍內陸市場，單一的平面設計展能用上整個博物館作展示，規模之大香港實難比擬，再看展品的多元性，我這個香港設計人也不得不對國內提供的藝展平台嘖嘖稱羨，但同胞們可有把握機會“偷師”則無從得知，現場所見人迹罕至，看來他們都不認為外國的月亮特別圓。

聽國內一唸設計的小弟說道，最少學生選修的便是平面設計，因其專業性不高，容易被取代，再加上薪酬及前景遠不及產品或室內設計，自然沒多少人投資這一門專業，就連跟平面設計分屬兄弟的學科如電腦動畫及網頁設計也都遇上“畢業等於失業”的困境，年青一輩唯有敬而遠之，更別說花時間看設計展。莫怪乎書店裡順手沾來的都是褒揚中國現代建築的書籍，要找當前中國平面設計師的總集，首推由呂敬人設計的“書戲”，我可是在台灣“誠品”找到了，深圳及香港連一點影兒也沒有，看來中國平面設計的展示空間還有待擴展，這個創立印刷術的文明古國，應該懂得珍視活現於紙上的藝術吧？

TBS DigiCon6 Video Festival 2008

2009-02-19T17:31:00.013+08:00

哪裡傳來了這兩套動畫，充滿驚喜；記得設計學院的學生都想做一套本土味 + 人情味十足的動畫，一來是分數的保證，二來是從眾多畢業生中突圍而出的捷徑，可惜綜觀歷屆作品，為人青睞者並不多：蘇敏怡、鍾偉權、淡水...屈指可算，要道理說得顯淺易明又不落俗套，我想這兩個故事做到了。

二等獎: "我阿媽係外星人"

一等獎: "動畫鏗鏘集-隱蔽老人"

Tangible Traces: Dutch Architecture & Design in the making

2008-12-21T16:13:00.005+08:00

這場展覽辦得真趕，不但時間短，經費缺，所有籌備工作基本上都由香港這邊一手包辦，還真沒聽聞過設計師會突然消失，好佩服老闆的臨場應變，最終還是搞得有聲有色，我都以為即食文化為香港獨有，原來歐洲也不賴。第一次到這個由工業中心改建而成的藝術中心，感覺不錯，只是每層的樓底太矮，氣勢遠不及國產798或1933，都怪香港空間少，但不也是我們的獨有特色乎？綜觀現場閃光燈的頻率，好評如潮耶！

失去了這個“專業”，我還剩下甚麼？

2008-12-03T13:42:00.019+08:00

An Evening with Nick Vujicic

2008-11-29T01:18:00.013+08:00

Well for sure it's been a much anticipated event of the month. His story has been around for few years already and i finally got the chance to meet him outside YouTube. What a loss that we couldn't hug him one by one as scheduled. His Hong Kong tour was just a bit too packed. Guess the organizer was making full use of the cost they spent on the event. But judging from Nick's sunshine smile all along, I think he felt complete in this trip. He definitely would not forget this brilliant translator of the night who even made sense of his every single body language which in turn added extra colours to such a formulated seminar. Just not to mention how many times tears had welled up in my eyes, Nick's speech was gorgeous. I've listened to the same content at least more than once online, but the live impact was not at all diminished. He's a true miracle and he creates miracles in others' life. Wish him all the best on the Mainland tour!

a book to share, a thousand look to bear...

2008-11-23T21:38:00.016+08:00

努力了一年的書快將面世，心情有點複雜，兼任設計與助理編輯，更可於PageOne出售，該是樂極了的喜事，可我卻擔心其質量叫人失望。設計過程本來就千奇百怪，有人因一個突如其來的靈感一夜成名，有人十年寒窗為人類帶來無盡的福祉，更有人只為挑起你的物慾而不斷設計廢物... 諷刺地這本探討設計過程的書卻用上了同一個框架來處理六個不同的案例，加上單一的排版，把設計者的個性完全淹沒，造就了一本工具書，卻成不了一本兩者兼備的設計書，可惜。

再談設計一本書時功能上的考慮。近日因工作原故要翻印大量的藝術雙年展年刊，發現不同地方的設計師在構思這樣一本書籍時，往往忽略了我們這一類用家（研究員）。北京上海廣州把年刊的結構規格成有如《論語》一樣的典藏，笨拙得來嚴肅，翻閱時非常不便；新加坡與台灣就把年刊當商業書來設計，俗得很；最恰如其分的要算日本，不單在內容及排版上落足心思來突顯當年的展覽主題，紙質和尺寸亦恰如其分，極方便查閱及翻印；果然，日本的設計特別細心。

You're always on my mind.

2008-10-19T16:49:00.003+08:00

Shanghai Biennale 2008 - Int'l Student Exhibition

2008-09-09T16:29:00.022+08:00

這趟到上海辦展覽，看到國內同胞不一樣的面貌。除了愈見豐裕的生活質素外，還有那好客之道，是以往自由行時難得一遇的，大城市所具備的內涵，似乎漸漸地從她身上散發出來，老實說，我較上一次更愛上海。

友人紛說這是上海人的野心，「禮」是裝出來的。本就勢利的香港人不好說話，難道我們還嫌自己的面具造得不夠肖妙？人家才只不過是大專生，想得單純一點吧！我倒覺得他們有自信、願意交流，一點不怕給外人批評，渴想進步的動力遠超本土學生；這也難怪，國內的大城市本來就由不同省市的人才匯聚而成，兼容性之高難以比擬，自認多元的香港人多久了還容不下自己的同胞，更莫說其他小數族類在港的辛酸故事。也許，吃不到的葡萄總是酸的？

Impossibility in memory forgetting: Atonement (Part II)

2008-08-25T17:37:00.001+08:00

The thin borderline between fantasy and memory was heightened with Briony constantly revisiting her childhood memory, consciously in the form of a letter asking for forgiveness from her sister and a novel draft based on the event she saw by the fountain; unconsciously in the form of day-to-day conversation with other nurses, from which we grasped bit by bit Briony's real feeling towards Robbie, and hence disclosing the part of memory she had screened off and repressed over the years. Lots of mirror shots were used throughout the film to associate the kind of vanity in story telling by exposing the ego in each of the character, if we recall Lacan's mirror stage of "I". Briony has constantly been splitting among her outer self and inner ego. Is not it the same for memory? How could we tell the truthfulness of our memory? Are they only fantasies or more accurately dreams?

In the first part of the story, we might well be thinking that Briony experienced tremendous shock from what she saw happening between Robbie and her sister Cecilia by the fountain. She immediately expressed her shock through the narrative of her play, in which she rhetorically paralleled Robbie to the character of her story and described him as "the most dangerous man in the world", which led to her preconceived "mistake" in accusing Robbie for the molestation after the second shock in the library. Fantasy and memory again intertwined within little Briony's mind. It was through memory that Briony's fantasy got nourished, while from the other way round, it was through fantasy that Briony's memory got revived and relived. As Deleuze described, "writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience." (1) Briony's writing (fantasy) was constantly refining and redefining her personal experience that lived through memory. It was never formed in a chronological and ontological way.

It was not until the flashback of Robbie saving Briony by the river bank were we able to know the true feeling of little Briony. She has been repressing her love towards Robbie whom she regarded as a "crush" when she was 18. By then, it would make full sense to interpret the accusation as repulsion out of jealousy. That "mistake" made in remembering the assault was to a certain extent quasi-deliberative. As Briony watched the incident, we were immediately flashbacked to the actual scene from the perspective of this "two figures by the fountain", learning the true story behind. With a smooth transition from the previous to the present scene, this part of flashback worked as a holistic structure of the story rather than a distinctive intervention. One might realize that it was a flashback very lately if he or she missed a second of attention to the details. It not only brought us back to the past just a moment ago, but at the same time challenged our conventional way of looking at past events. Was it really past or simply living along with our ongoing memory? When we perceived it as something that followed, it might turn out to have happened before. "Memory is of the past" as historians put it but here we could see the linear temporality of memory being broken down and challenged by cinematic approaches.

Impossibility in memory forgetting: Atonement (Part I)

2008-08-24T16:07:00.005+08:00

According to Freud in the Uncanny, the notion of screen memory was defined as one that "owes its value as a memory not to its intrinsic content, but to the relation obtaining between this content and some other, which has been suppressed." (19) When impression of a particular experience is retained in our memory, the content of such an experience may have no meaning to us, yet the content related to it which has been absent so far may be important to us. There are basically two psychical forces involved in producing these memories–one as wanting that experience to be remembered while the other resisting this choice. In this film we shall see how a novelist has been struggling with her memory of the past because of guilt and trying to resist her own forgetfulness of these memories due to physical abnormity conquering her dying body.

The whole story was basically structured into four main parts:
I) England 1935 – The Tallis House
II) North Western France. Four years later – The Retreat of Dunkirk
III) London. Three weeks earlier – The Hospital of London
IV) An interview of truth

Due to the disclosure of part IV, I am tempted to interpret the first three parts of the story as the mind–memory and creation–of the novelist, Briony Tallis and throughout the film sufficient hints were suggested for audiences to associate to such allegory. As Ian McEwan reminded us in the Making-of Atonement, "what you must never lose touch of, is that this is all being reinvented for us by Briony." The opening frames kicked off with "a kind of dynamism in the camera" which showed us the creative energy and confidence of a 13-year-old bourgeois Briony who had been the subject dragging the camera around the big Tallis House. It should be noted that from then on, a particular background music composed of typewriter clacking sound appeared throughout the story, which not only on one hand expressed the unanimous creativity of little Briony, but on the other hand also suggesting consciously to us that we were indeed going through the creation process of 77-year-old Briony's novel, which had in a sense rendered it impossible to differentiate the truthful part of the memory–things that did happen–and the fantasy part–things that did not happen at all. Was the memory working as part of the plot she created for her new novel? The clacking typewriting sound served as an obvious medium to connect this narrative time of the past with the present reality of the novelist who had been doing her best to record what she did and amend what she did not. The truth was unveiled at the last part of the film in form of an interview that largely enhanced the authenticity of the film by suggesting a sense of present established through first person interaction with the character. As Wright mentioned in the Making-of, "the cinematic equivalent of first person is interview. This is as close as one gets to talking directly to an audience, to remove the veil of fiction."

The intertwining or inseparability of memory and fantasy has been discussed further by Freud in his another essay called The Creative Writer and Daydreaming, from which he tried to associate a writer's creativity with his or her childhood memory. When children enter adolescent, they will cease playing to give up the link with real objects and turn their mind to fantasies, or daydreams. How these fantasies are formed relates so much to the one's memory of the past. (28, Uncanny) If this were the case, the first part of the movie, which focused on the childhood of Briony, has been the crucial source for drafting her fantasies over the other parts of the film. The most obvious content was the one in hospital where nurse Tallis were ordered to comfort a dying French soldier. Based on the story from this hallucinated soldier, Briony responded with her own memory of the past–something about the story between Cecilia and Robbie–intertwining with her current fantasies with this soldier that pointed towards their future marriage. This present experience–encounter with the soldier–has evoked Briony's recollection of childhood memory from which she always desired the love of Robbie but unsuccessful, and so she tried to fantasize a future marriage as an implicated way to fulfill such desire.

DON'T YOU FORGET?

2008-08-06T22:15:00.019+08:00

http://student2.cofa.unsw.edu.au/~z3126120/dyf/

友人的畢業習作，覺得很有意思。

他把廢紙再造並聚疊起來，形成了有如木一樣堅硬的質料，然後將其裁成字母，組成"DON'T YOU FORGET?"的凸版印刷，在懷緬已逝的工藝技術之餘，教人思考現代科技所銷毀的生活質感：一樣的字體、一樣的內容、一樣的產品...我們還會記得那份由人手所造而帶來的驚喜與悸動嗎？

記得有日哥從家附近的市場買來兩個久違了的“菠羅包”，不亦樂乎，我還以為是價廉的原故...“你在美心買不到這麼新鮮的，而且每個都不一樣！”令他開懷的原來是那份漸漸被埋沒的人情味，是多少句“謝謝光臨”都比不上的。透過友人親手的製作，作品被賦予感情，獨一無二之餘，更力證時間的考驗，而值得深思的，是整個資本主義社會的麻木不仁。

"a woman's whole life in a single day..."

2008-07-08T21:43:00.041+08:00

許久沒看過這樣悲的電影，赤祼祼地彰顯了人在面對生命中各種起跌更迭時的無能為力。一本看來平凡不過的小說把三個女人的生命連結在一起，探討的是人與生俱來最根本的問題 — 生命為何？

當付上了一生所愛的人認為你的犧牲微不足道；當註定要跟一個永遠活在自己過去的人共渡餘生；當你再無法與眼前的這個世界溝通時…你，會如何自處？大抵我們都覺得Laura太狠心，也無從理解一個全然活在自己創作世界裡的人的痛苦，但我們或多或少也曾經質疑過自己所做的事情有何意義，這可是花一輩子也想不通的問題，天生的惰性會叫我們把問題擱置一旁，但當其猛然來襲時，卻足以動搖我們生的念頭。

三位女主角分別作了她們的決定，只有一人選擇把生命結束，可說是這部電影至為積極的一環，畢竟我們對生命仍有期盼。很喜歡電影中的氣氛，那一天、那一刻，似是即將來臨，卻又凝結了，並且無限擴張…"a woman's whole life in a single day -- just one day -- and in that day, her whole life." 三個女人的一天，教你思考你的一生。

旁觀者 II

2008-07-03T11:18:00.016+08:00

a piece of sharing in Newsweek which talks about how a youngster looks at his American identity in this "post-Americanism" world. It is not as egoistic as we used to think. And his fleshy cultural experience in Asia could not be more intriguing...

"I've been backpacking through India for the past six months, and one of the most fascinating parts of my travels has been the responses I get when I say I am from America. In villages and smaller towns, people react with either awe or anger. Whether positive or negative, the response is usually so passionate that it is sometimes difficult to answer the barrage of questions about anything from Britney Spears to George W. Bush to Las Vegas. However, when I travel to places like Delhi, Mumbai and Singapore, the response is much different. The jet-setting, speak-five-languages, work-hard, party-hard crowds in these Asian cities are unlike any group of people I've ever met. They're more elegant than the Upper East Side, hipper than Williamsburg and faster than Chelsea. While Americans are disdained for being imperialist consumers in the villages, Americans are simply behind the times in the fancy enclaves of cities. Anti-Americanism is difficult to handle, but apathy toward America might be even more unsettling. As a child of the 1980s, I've never known America to be anything but an unmatched superpower. It's particularly strange to be in the part of the world that is considered the next frontier. Maybe this is why Americans don't travel as much as others around the globe. It's not easy finding out you're not at the center of the universe anymore. That said, it's amazing to be traveling at this moment in history; being out here has given me a humbled perspective to bring home. In the end, that's not such a bad thing."
- Sara Weston at New Delhi, India (Newsweek, Jul 7/ Jul 14, 2008)

"When you're down to nothing, God is up to something."

2008-06-21T09:25:00.005+08:00

a bit of life...

2008-06-11T10:25:00.055+08:00

read this on John Chris Jones' designing designing some time ago. as i revisited it today i was touched again.

I'm driving along on the road
and I always have a sense of gratitude that the road continues

it was an amazing moment for me in my life
driving across America for the first time and realizing that

"I kept going"

that no one

that the road didn't stop because people went to have dinner or
it didn't stop because people got tired of digging and hauling
and living for other people

it just continued

and i was able to follow that
just like that old image of the king
being walking down the path that is unrolled for him
by the servants

the amazing thing about life is that
when it functions best
each of us is a king for all the other servants
and each of us is a servant for all the other kings

it's one of the reasons that I've gotton very sensitive
to the thought that the only goal worth pursuing is to

love people very much

and that requests for new ideas

and new ways of thinking
and new things to make
is just part of breathing
part of my biological process
but that

the thing that isn't part of my biological process

which is most human

and the most difficult to ascertain and to attain
is this feeling of being really loved
being in love
by someone else

with someone else

that most old idea
seemingly of being in love
probably is the newest idea

and not an idea at all

又一年六四

2008-06-05T01:45:00.005+08:00

「中國無數計非正常死亡多半是死於一種制度、一種觀念。中國政治制度維護的是權力和金錢，除了權力和金錢，不存在更需要維護的東西；觀念中缺少一個對生命的尊重和關愛，一個對死亡的敬畏與戒懼。」

-「天安門母親運動」成員徐玨《明報6月5日》

雷聲太大

2008-05-31T14:25:00.003+08:00

Conquering the last terrain of analog - Amazon's Kindle (Part II)

2008-05-24T17:30:00.000+08:00

No windows persuading me to make all sorts of consumption pop up from my book. And no one knows that I am reading at a particular time in a particular place. But once the device is stuck onto your body, you are constantly under tracking by these big brands. Every body is accessible. They learn about your movement, your next stop and your next encounter. They hold the key to your minds. Readers will only be blinded with the ideological excitement of possessing this so-called freedom of connection to the infinite space of knowledge. You think you are now communicating with many more people around the world at any time any space but on the other side of the coin, you are actually being barred from connecting with groups that are less up-to-date. The immediacy of update widens our information lapse from person to person. Information one possesses easily deteriorates. The common ground for discussions is gradually shrinking due to this temporal difference in information reception.

"Book clubs could meet inside of a book." (Newsweek, 70) To a certain extent, yes, readers are no longer confined to a physical space for book salon or discussions but in turn, they are now confined to that virtual space which is highly manipulated by the space administrator, which is Amazon in this case. Instead of "making the entire works of humankind available to all people", they are now only available to those born in the digital age, more affiliated and knowledgeable mass. The rich poor gap is constantly widening, not only between the analog and digital camp, but also among those in the digital net. It is no longer a fair game. Within a global scale, those living in the third world will never get a taste of such technology. Even they are willing to read, their knowledge simply depreciates compared to other parts of the globe. Capital thus flows from around the world to those knowledgeable elites who are now connecting among themselves and sharing all sorts of information at an ever accelerating speed.

The whole evolution from analog to digital is a coercion that builds upon excessive needs and constantly making one feels that he or she is out-of-date. They will not point a gun at your head to force you to buy the new edition. Yet by gradually limiting and finally ceasing to release that previous edition, buyers had no choice but to switch to the newer one. This will certainly happen to the production of books in the near future. Books will not extinct but perhaps not each and every piece of writings will have the chance to release a book version. As Amazon's database expands, fewer and fewer publishers could resist the entire digitization movement.

Conquering the last terrain of analog - Amazon's Kindle (Part I)

2008-05-23T01:00:00.000+08:00

Last Christmas Amazon has released its first electronic book (e-book) which is already the 2nd generation of its kind into the market. Newsweek has devoted a total of 6 pages to cover this story on November 26, making a sound feature on The Future of Reading that might be shaped by the attempt of this device. How revolutionary is this Kindle? Is it really going to "change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish?"

As claimed by the CEO of this online bookstore giant, Jeff Bezos, their mission is to digitize entire libraries of the world, to create "the world's only book" so as to "make the entire works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages, available to all people, all the time." (Newsweek, 70) What he meant by "all the time" refers to their newly developed wireless connectivity which surpasses all its ancestors including Sony Reader, the pioneer of e-book. With just a glimpse, one can hardly tell what makes the device so different from the PDA or mobile phones from which we read our everyday news and documents in transports. And what makes these big corporations so sure that they will be able to conquer this last terrain of analog, the print media which has been the bedrock of our civilization for centuries, but not another fashionable product that roars in the short run?

We were told that the product is in fact no different from an actual book. It can even lead you into the state of ludic reading – the rabbit hole that heavy readers enter when consuming books for pleasure. (Newsweek, 68) What Bezos was trying to convince readers was that it is not the medium that brings one into that hypnotic state. What have been paramount are in fact the ideas of writers. The aura of a book can be substituted by any medium and this time, this device, this machine. Instead of mingling with papers – static and 3-dimensional, now we were told to mingle with all sorts of screens – interactive and 4-dimensional. With their power in the media (they are in fact the media), they stir up noises and create talking points through platforms like blogs and forums, and thus slowly immerse oneself into the need for change. But how could the two mediums be possibly the same?

798的神話

2008-05-22T16:00:00.003+08:00

剛看過今屆的香港國際藝術展，更參與了其中的一場研討會─時移勢易：博物館與文化慾望，沒有太多的驚喜，卻有許多值得思考的地方。

雖說這是一個藝術展，但現場的佈局跟展銷會沒多大分別，參展的畫廊也不介意把售價一併展出，務求盡用那百餘尺的空間。根據官方的資料，現場有來自二十國的畫廊，但在我看來，主要來自歐美及亞洲主要城市，國內的佔上大多數，推介的作品也源自這些發展中的大都會，少有中東甚至非洲等地的作品，不無可借。值得一提的是我國作品滲透率之高叫人訝異，隨處可見岳敏君、焦興濤的作品，還有許多帶有濃厚政治色彩的畫作，中國風吹得還真盛。

就連研討會本身也是面向中國的說，期望從來自世界各地的策展人身上取經，帶動香港與國內的文化工業，說是工業一點不為過，可不都是各國建構自我形象的一個手段？博物館的建築成了國際都市的必然象徵，高傲地佔據着逐漸萎縮的公共空間，扭曲的不止是文化本身的意義，更是人類生活的根本自然，很認同Tate Modern的首席策展人Sheena Wagstaff的一席話：Museum is not built for profit-making。是的，香港的政客就是不大願意去接受這個事實，所以不斷地追問如何經營一個自給自足的博物館，老實點說，還不是當爸爸的不願意負上這沉重的擔子，生下來了，就自己學會獨立吧！難怪做兒女的天天都在鬧，不大長進。北京的798藝術園地卻恰好相反，太獨立了，還闖出了點名氣，老父也就不得不支持，順勢叨點光。

看來，香港還得花上一段頗長的時間，才會學好走路這一課。

"A-Glow-Glow" Interactive Media Arts

2008-05-22T09:07:00.001+08:00

早前看過兩件互動裝置，第一件來自英國的United Visual Artists (UVA)，名為Volume，一眾由LED組成的感應柱因應觀眾的行動作出反應。當觀眾遊走於柱子之間時，聲音的跌踫奏出一陣和諧的共鳴，然而LED的反應卻沒有預期的理想，似是被過多的預設程式操控着，自顧自地發揮；又因現場觀眾太多，反應欠缺即時性；相對地，觀眾得停留較長的時間來觀察裝置的反應，尋找當中的語言，沒多少耐性的或把裝置當作玩意兒的總不得要領，很快便離了場。

同樣的情況亦出現於第二件裝置上─Teddy Lo的《稀孔》，這個的情況更糟，皆因玩法太複雜，需要你手機的藍芽之餘（較落後的可沒份兒了），七條的訊息發放頻道亦未能滿足眾多好奇的觀眾，等待不久便宣佈放棄，就是收到訊號的也搞不懂當中的意思，失望而回的佔了大多數。

相信這仍是創作互動裝置的一大挑戰，得在觀眾失去興趣前引導對方進入與作品自行溝通的狀態，從而進行對話、交流。當然，首要的是觀眾願意進行對話，藝術品不是商品，它不強迫你來簇擁它，而是靜靜地待在那兒，等你來接近，收穫多少，全看你願意在它跟前付上多少的時間。

快啦快啦...

2008-05-08T01:26:00.000+08:00

一年就這麼過去了

2008-05-07T13:46:00.001+08:00

時間

2008-04-18T10:01:00.001+08:00

美漢24年冤獄獲賠逾百萬
美國佛羅里達州當局因為錯誤作一名男子定罪，令他坐了24年冤獄，向該男子賠償125萬美元。該名現年46歲的男子，在1982年被法庭裁定2項強姦及1項持械行劫罪，被判入獄130年。但到了2006年，透過脫氧核糖核酸（DNA）測試，證實他跟案件無關，當庭釋放。佛州州長克里斯特在簽署賠償令時表示，明白到無論多少錢也不能彌補對方失去的時間。該名男子在獄中修畢一個教育學位，並且擔當園丁，獲得滅蟲牌照。（明報2008/4/18）

今天看到這則新聞，想起了早前在電影節看過一套由周防正行執導的電影《儘管如此我沒做過》，引起了我一些回響。不禁到處問身邊的朋友：作為一位法官，釋放了一名罪犯罪大還是冤枉了一個無辜的人罪大？大部份的答案均是後者，因為大都認為犯罪者脫了罪，有二分一機會不再重犯，但捉了一個無辜的人，罪犯仍舊可以逍遙法外，那為何要多害一人？

對於受害者來說，誤以為罪犯已經繩之以法當然感到安慰，但對於無辜者來說，失去的不單是自由，還有那永遠追不回的時間，是無論多少錢也補償不了的生命。我想，這才是一位法官最罪無可逭的；而可悲的是今天有多少人，不是時間給剝奪了，而是自己甘願捨棄。

Cultural Revolution

2008-04-11T10:20:00.001+08:00

Perhaps it is not so much about hauntology that we had discussed in class but I really wonder why the three films (The Blue Kite, Peacock, The Sun Also Rises) about Cultural Revolution we have discussed so far were structured in such a similar way that each of them was clearly divided into at least three main parts. When I thought it was telling a different story from time to time, it would then hint on me that the story was going on within the same circle of people and both the temporal and spatial settings had intertwined so closely that they actually came together as a holistic piece of work finally. But why it was like a formula that the 5th generation Chinese directors had to split their films in parts?

Each time when a new part began, a different perspective was suggested. For example in Peacock, the story was basically told through the perspectives of two brothers and their sister. Above this layer of three stories was another onionskin made of the memory of the youngest brother who happened to be the narrator to wrap up this entire bluish memory. As the surface slowly peeled off, we not only learnt about the grow-up stories of the three but also the daily trivial life of ordinary Chinese people after the Cultural Revolution, which could only be made objective and significant through multiple points of narrative. Simply no one caught a full picture of the incident and that any single point of view towards such an important traumatic history would be a disregard.

Changes take time. In order to capture the visible, the temporal framework of the films had to be expanded to, say, at least one year in The Sun Also Rises and 10 years in Peacock so as to pick up some diamonds in this spectrum of social change.

美國人心中的第三大敵人

2008-04-07T07:42:00.000+08:00

是有點兒鋒芒太露吧…

Newsweek

Mar24, 2008

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1636_chinadesignnow/

《孔雀》﹣顧長衛

2008-04-02T10:25:00.000+08:00

Readymade Magazine

January/February

2007 Vol.08

千年善禱

2008-04-02T08:17:00.000+08:00

While I was still thinking of the way Ann Hui constructed memory and cultural identity in Song of the Exile, another newly released film by Wayne Wang titled A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which is screened in this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, served as a good reference for me to think out of the box.

Both of the films were about parent-child relationship but instead of using lots of flashbacks, this later film by the director of Joy Luck Club talked about memory basically through dialogues and the acting of the father and daughter only. They were all being told in the present tense, which seemed to convey the fact that past is already past. Though it shaped what we are now, there is no use to be troubled by those bygone memories. Instead, we should think of the better side, just like what the father has said to the old lady in the park.

We used to think that conflicts between generations were mainly created by cultural differences and it is. Yet apart from this aspect, Wang's film has highlighted other aspects that could best parallel to Hui's film. The heroines in both films were situated to receive education abroad which provided a preconceived base of difference between their mindset and that of their last generation. Stuart Hall's idea of "diaspora identity" was mentioned as one "produces and is produced by a specific cultural environment." However, these external social factors are often emphasized to such an extent that other moral or psychological factors have been undermined. These factors had been the main focus in shaping one's memory in another recommended film for discussion–Atonement, in which the heroine's memory is constantly struggling between real and constructed fragments due to her guilt for her sister. The real and unreal interlaces each other in a way that even the heroine is gradually losing hold of her true memory.

Both Hueyin (Song of the Exile) and Yilan (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers) refused to talk to their parents face to face due to their guilt of misconduct in the past (basically their own character), not necessarily about their country, their homeland.

我的復活節假期

2008-03-25T01:48:00.000+08:00

10:08am

我正在工作。

這是復活節假期的最後一天，
得為自私的時間安排作點補償。

腦袋是這般想的

卻是千萬個不情願。

數天下來
時間是怎麼過的？

完成了最磨人的功課，
慶祝了主的復活，
除了電影節
還有《客途秋恨》和《愛、誘、罪》
認識了新朋友，也會了舊的，
沒有真正的休息，

卻在光與影之間

找到了真實。

The 5th paper this year

2008-03-01T05:00:00.001+08:00

I finally came up with the film I want to analyse for the coming paper - The Brave One - with one of my most admired actresses of the day Jodie Foster. Though not many positive reviews were found over this film, it stirred up my mind for quite a while as it's actually justifying, at least trying to, what Amercia has done after the 911 assault. Yet this time my focus will be on its nostalgic sentiments...right, sth that no critics had even mentioned and hopefully I'm not going in a wrong direction for my paper. After all, it's about my persuasion skill, right? Language plays.

HK Film Festival 2008

2008-02-25T10:00:00.000+08:00

it's the annual gathering for all film enthusiasts again. every year there're just too many good films you wanna watch that time crash seems unavoidable. i've tried not to be influenced by those film excerpts but you just can't select one among the pool without a glimpse of the catalog. surprise only happens when you don't have too much knowledge or expectation on the event.

anyway here's my schedule this year, not too much but enough for me already. see if we can bump into each other in any one of the occasions :) see you all~~

18th, 7:15pm 儘管如此我沒做過, p23
21th, 8:00pm 我們的天父, p60
22th, 9:30pm 翠絲的碎片人生, p55
23th, 6:00pm 鐵木真, p10
24th, 6:00pm 警察樂隊來訪時, p62
25th, 7:15pm 千年善禱, p24
27th, 7:15pm 華麗安琪兒, p16
3rd, 7:00pm 出入人口, p22
6th, 8:45pm 電光滾石, p9

More on "Lust, Caution"

2008-02-11T17:00:00.001+08:00

I am not a fan of Eileen Chang, nor am I a student with strong Chinese literary base, but Lust, Caution gave me a feeling that Chang was trying to play down, not to say 'hide', some parts of the content deliberately, particularly the sentiments between Chia-chih and Mr. Yee. The original story was largely narrated from the perspective of the heroine Chia-chih and basically only about an assassination. Other events within the story were part of Chia-chih's memory. We can hardly know the breast of the hero Mr. Yee, except the later fraction which contributed the only hint of his emotions towards Chia-chih. We were told that the two got two meetings before this last one but what has been done besides sex? And what has constituted to their intimacy in the very last scene that even hindered Chia-chih from her long awaited plan? How come such an old hand like Mr. Yee would fall into this trap of femme fatale? What has Chia-chih done to win over his trust? And above all why did Chang choose to omit these episodes? Obviously Ang Lee has tried to fill up the gaps with his own propositions, from which I would say most of them were reasonable and had in turn enriched the original story.

I agree with what Robert Stam mentioned at last in Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation that as critics 'our statements about films based on novels or other sources need to be less moralistic, less panicked, less implicated in unacknowledged hierarchies,' but 'more rooted in contextual and intertextual history,' and above all 'less concerned with inchoate notions of fidelity.' (75) There could always be accuses for being unfaithful to a source text if one has to be picky on every single difference found under direct comparison, not to mention the two mediums are intrinsically different in nature. In fact, I found the cinematic version a more thorough reading and interpretation to Chang's story from the focalization of Ang Lee, which has added more ingredients to the text but of course certain kinds of ideological transformations were suggested at the same time constituting the major difference between the two.

Mr. Yee has been a more humanistic person in the film, at least from the way he reminisced Chia-chih in the final scene. She certainly was not the one and only femme fatale in his life. We did not have such a bad feeling towards traitors–primarily with Tony Leung's long established positive image–which might probably not be the initial idea of Chang. The most controversial of all for sure is the three 'extra' sex scenes supplemented by Lee. They had amplified the fear of Mr. Yee as a traitor, which made the violence of the first sex scene perfectly sensible. He could trust nobody because everyone wants his head off for patriotism. The fear of death has tortured him to such an extent that only through sex could he find his true self, his own existence. Whether the sex scenes were a must is beyond our discussion because it was by and large a personal decision of Lee and what we as audiences have been confronted with is this text–already presented publicly and is now the only base for our criticism.

HK Poster Triennial 2007

2008-02-07T06:00:00.001+08:00

Poster Triennial this year is more or less the same as previous years'. Perhaps the more your database expands, the less surprise you get from 'new' candidates. Who can defy that creativity does not bear the burden of history? Interestingly, I read the following article on a site the time I draft this post, featuring a small exhibition Typo China around two years ago. What this German said was actually phenomenon found in our Chinese design arena for long. For those who haven't been to the show yet, I hope after reading the passage you take another perspective in looking at these all-too-similar artworks and figure out a 'global picture' which is highly obvious if you do pay attention to them holistically. 'A poster is intended first and foremost to be seen, not read.' Perhaps anything analytical is just extra but I do believe a poster possesses its own power. After drawing your first sight, it wants you to walk away with something in mind and that is the enchantment of it.

Typo China - zeitgenössische Schriftplakate aus China, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Plakatraum, 3. Mai - 4. August 2006
Chinese posters had caught our attention some time before, as a satisfying contradiction of ideologically driven rigidity. The development of the poster in Hongkong and Taiwan may be ahead of the People's Republic, but seen overall this is a very recent years. Various international poster competitions have been instituted in China since the late 1990s, and here the designers want to lay themselves open to Western judgment as well. It is striking how frequently their posters focus on the characters, showing their desire to keep up with the times in terms of the unique richness of their own typographical culture. This was not the only reason why it seemed right to us to concentrate on choosing typographical posters. Chinese characters have a visual quality and a semantic complexity that go far beyond the possibilities our alphabet affords.

Our appeal to submit new works met with considerable enthusiasm. This gives a sense of the vitality of a group, small as yet, of young designers who are discovering international competition mechanisms. It is typical that many of the posters shown were produced on the designers' own initiative, because China still lacks clients who are prepared to commission posters; and thus has no real poster culture. So this selection is as welcome as it is provisional, and fits in with our attentively skeptical yet hopeful view of "booming China".It goes without saying that the fascination with Chinese typography we have succumbed to is fed on ignorance. Chinese text often affects us simply as a texture, because we do not have the necessary translations skills to be aware of the posters' expressive quality.

So can we do justice to these posters at all if we submit them to our usual selective scrutiny? Yes, if we are prepared to play by poster competition rules. For there too we make what we should see into what we want to see. And there too every poster operates by taking mutual clichés and expectations into account. Something that is part of the essence of a poster is always the perfect concession to positive misunderstandings: a poster is intended first and foremost to be seen, not read.
Felix Studinka [www.hesign.com]

看過的華語同志電影

2008-02-07T04:15:00.001+08:00

也許是我看的不夠，為什麼同志愛戀都被描述為一種遺憾？從這幾套電影中，我感受到的是一種不確定性，一種把同性戀者視為既值得同情又充滿勇氣的一群的意識形態；只要他們仍然把自己當作受害者、革命家，他們所期望的公平是永遠不會來臨的，更何況這個世界根本沒有絕對的公平？

木顏色盒的一點啟示

2008-01-24T03:43:00.000+08:00

數天前哥從文儀店買來了一盒LUNA的木顏色筆，許久沒用了，驚訝盒面的設計依舊，很有親切感…看着看着，總覺得哪裡不對勁，於是從箱底翻出了舊的一盒求證一下（相信也有十多年的歷史），原來構圖一點都沒變，只是圖像由2D改成了3D的樣式罷了，這叫作與時並進吧？不知從甚麼時候時開始，我們都認為立體的圖像才夠現代化（這下我又想到廸氏的動畫了）圖案為的是簡化人類世界的複雜性，而不是重構現實，要是這樣的話，倒不如把男人／女人的相片直接掛到洗手間門上好了。當影像越趨真實的同時，容讓我們大腦思考和幻想的空間就越見狹隘；當法律不容許的事情都可以從影像上攝取時，人無時無刻都可以犯罪；最後，當虛擬與現實難以被區分時，精神層面的罪行將進一步化作真實行動。

Religious allegory in "I AM LEGEND"

2008-01-18T05:05:00.000+08:00

Not to say entirely but almost, this is an evangelical film. New York City–the most materialistic place that best represents our world at the moment–has turned into a hell due to a devastating plague 'invented' by human in the development of cancer cure. The evil spreads when human beings think that they have conquered the most thrilling threat in life and that they no longer need God.

The hero, Robert Neville, best represents one of the kinds. After three years of lonely and desperate scientific research in search of the cure, he has already defied the existence of God. He treats himself as the only one that can prevent the clan from distinction. An arena is again set to allow the born of a hero and this time to its full limits because, unlike Spiderman or Batman or whatever you can find in patriarchal Hollywood cinema, there is no other helper, no romance, except the company of a dog. Neville not only needs to fight the Infected but also to stand the everyday erosion of loneliness which seems to be the most intolerable of all. What could be more frustrating when dummies are the only one you can talk to and that DVDs become the last memory you can feed on? Not to mention how well Baudrillard's ideas have been illustrated, the self-reflexivity of the story upon our present world is nothing but painstaking. We know that they are not real, simply as fake as a dummy, but we just can't help coming back to them everyday. When Neville cried for his dog in front of those dummies, I wanted to cry too–for the stupidity of our reliance upon consumer products, for the only and pitiful role that women play in our society, and last but never the least, the vulnerability of human nature. We can never live alone.

The image of God reifies as the film progresses. Light is the shield against the devils and it's taking an increasingly imperative role in the live-or-die moment of the hero. 'Where do you live?' perhaps is not so much a question addressing Neville in his coma where heaven and earth is indistinguishable. We as audience had better asked ourselves what a life we are living–where are we now? Can we save ourselves from the dark? Or once again we fell into the trap of the evil, who simply knows what our weaknesses are and what we have long hoped for. The salvation of Jesus Christ is nothing more apparent when Neville sacrifices finally and the formula of cure is hidden in the blood of that infected sample.

Anyone noticed the environment shown in the last scene when Anna arrived at the reservation camp? It's a church. It's worship.

3/1, 7:20pm, 終於有得瞓......

2008-01-04T15:13:00.000+08:00

AWAKENING

2007-12-16T17:00:00.002+08:00

從四方八面收到這位攝影師的個展海報，前天方知道他是朋友口中提到的患病朋友，這個圈子未免太小了，素未謀面，卻已經知道了許多有關他的消息，不知他要喚醒的是什麼訊息？想起了Francois Ozon的Time to Leave，故事描述一位患了末期癌症的攝影師如何渡過他剩餘的日子，一生追求美的他選擇了放棄治療來留住美麗的外表，也沒有把消息告訴任何人，只是到處攝下觸動他的東西…不知 JC 會把什麼留下來？

microwave'07: luminous echo

2007-11-23T10:30:00.002+08:00

Top: Daan Roosegaarde - Dune 4.1
Bottom: Simon Heijdens - Reed

太忙了，本打算錯過今屆的展覽，最後還是抽了點時間到大會堂看了其中一場。

這個名為《形光譜》的展覽共展出了八位藝術家的作品，主題都與聲音有關，作品透過觀眾的反應來產生不同的聲效，從而刺激其感官、神經以至思維；然而許多互動裝置似乎都存在着一共通問題：過分側重於感受層面而忽略了深層的訊息傳遞。

我不是說官能刺激不重要，在互動裝置藝術的領域裡，那是不可或缺的層面，但這些令人躍躍欲試的感受本身為的是要帶領觀眾進入另一層次的思考，而非單純的感官認知，藝術從來要帶出的都是形而上的東西，照顧的是我們的精神，不是肉體；若然一個由互動裝置構成的「符號」只有第一層的denotation，而沒有了第二層的connotation的話，它不應被視為一藝術品，只能說是科技罷了。

為什麼我們都得把藝術品放在安靜的環境來欣賞？因為只有在安靜的環境下我們的大腦才會有足夠的空間去思考、咀嚼它們，要想跟這些「死物」交心的話，觀眾必須先安靜下來；而互動裝置本身就不完全是「死」的，許多都充滿着玩味性，一方面容易吸引觀眾的注意，但同時亦分散了觀眾專一思想作品的能耐，要作深層的思考，或許都是事後的事。加上展覽場地的局限，作品與作品之間的距離接近，所產生的聲音容易與其他作品混雜，觀眾的解讀就更容易受到影響。

展覽中一件由Daan Roosegaarde製作的Dune 4.1，讓我想起了Simon Heijdens的Reed，兩者都嘗試將自然帶到石屎森林之中，不同的是前者由觀眾引發互動，後者則是透過展覽場外的自然風，觀眾只能感受卻未能參與其中，當觀眾完全地以旁觀者的角度去欣賞時，不就更能看「清」一點？試問有多少個陶醉於電玩的人會思考他們與科技的關係？

Decoding "Ratatouille"

2007-11-14T15:50:00.001+08:00

最終選定了這套動畫作為Term Paper的題目，讓人驚訝了，皆因大伙兒挑的都是薄有名氣的電影，內容不乏深度，卡通片？聽來有點兒戲，但過去的經驗都在告訴我，廸氏的動畫背後要說的，從來都不是想當然的事。

The Death of the Author

2007-11-12T15:45:00.000+08:00

Left: Futurism lamp by Tricoire Design;

Right: Maximized lamp by Mike Mak

"...a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash."

- Roland Barthes

《Fetish》攝影展

2007-10-31T14:45:00.001+08:00

這個由法國著名高跟鞋設計師Christian Louboutin和大導David Lynch合作的攝影展聽說會於明年四月到港，在剛過去的米蘭時裝展期間展出，引來不少的話題，有說高跟鞋是女性最得天獨厚的性感武器，單看這輯相片，我想起了我國千年的紮腳文化，女人是更有權力，還是再度被挾制、物化，甚至淪為性幻想的對象？享負盛名的法國時裝攝影師Guy Bourdin的作品集《A MESSAGE FOR YOU》最近出版了，他為Vogue拍的廣告照到今天仍叫人咋舌，法國人看女人，似乎都有他們的一套。

女‧人？

2007-10-31T14:00:00.002+08:00

看每季的時裝特刊，都覺得女人好可憐，一個個模特兒像塑膠玩偶一般，盡是把毫無生命的物質往身上掛，眼神空洞洞的，靈魂哪兒去了？以Barbie做模特兒的廣告，不是新意念，但這張也夠誇張的了，想到女人從小已被灌輸無窮的物慾，還一臉不自覺，不可憐乎？

Jackie Chan vs Naruto

2007-10-25T02:50:00.000+08:00

It's interesting to find the above clips from an artist's blog (http://tamshui.blogspot.com/), juxtaposing the action of "Jackie Chan" with that of "Naruto", a prominent Japanese animation. One simply can't tell their difference!

Though not many people from my generation admire Jackie Chan but simply no one could argue about his popularity worldwide. At least those Japanese animators, when visualizing the fighting scenes, learnt that they could make reference from Jackie's movies. Someone doubted if it's a pastiche, but I think it's just a kind of intertextuality that happens in our day-to-day creation. After all, designer's database is not infinite and that's why research is playing an increasingly essential role in a design process. In a sense, we could never claim our work as original.

One of my MA classmates tried to allegorize Jackie with McDonald's in last lecture. What a great metaphor! You see him everywhere but you know you'll never love him! I remember when McDonald's first launched its "i'm lovin' it!" campaign, one of my design tutors who specialized in branding strategy was so much annoyed by the slogan. It's such a fake emotion imposed upon the public. That is how advertising works! They are inoculating you with concepts that you didn't buy. After persistent bombarding, you'll soon be anaesthetized and kind of accept what they sell no matter how hypocritical their concept sounds.

Ang Lee on "Lust, Caution"

2007-10-19T14:50:00.000+08:00

Well, didn't expect this film to have aroused so many controversies, though almost everyone is talking ONLY about its sex scenes and from the following phone interview by Newsweek, it's perfectly sure that Ang had calculated that result. Right, "they usually are functional"...

What appealed to you about Chang's story?
Very little Chinese literature describes sex. It is one of the few daring ones. It tells us what women get from sex. It scared me for quite a few years, but I decided to do it.

How was making "Brokeback Mountain" different from "Lust, Caution"?
The material if "Brokeback Mountain" is very far away from me. I mean, American gay cowboy, that's as far as you get from my personal experience. I was able to make art out of it. Physically I was very relaxed making it. But with "Lust, Caution", the materials, the characters and the textures are very close to me. It's very intense physically. It reminds me where my culture comes from.

What was the hardest part?
Well, obviously, the sex scenes. You can't just take it easy because people make pornographic films. It's very difficult physically and psychologically. People think you have the framework, and then you decide how deep you want to go with the sex scenes because they usually are functional. But to me how they landed decided how the movie would unfold. So I actually shot them relatively early. Then they served as the anchors to decide how to craft the second half of the story.

Philosophically, what is filmmaking to you?
It's the way I discover myself and understand the world.

(adapted from Newsweek Oct 15, 2007)

《等候董建華發落》

2007-10-17T13:45:00.001+08:00

找來一套還沒看過的電影作為第二份論文的分析文本，似乎有點冒險，告訴教授的時候連片子的英文名也想不起來，幸好身旁一位好心的同學給我道出了導演的名字，選材方能過關，可見邱禮濤（Herman Yau）的電影有質素上的保證。

許久沒看過這樣勇敢的電影，幾幕直接控訴政府官僚及社會體制的場面真是爽極了！不難想像當年此片要經過多少障礙才得以成功發行。基本上它可被界定為一套Docudrama，因大部份內容均由實際發生之事件改編而成，驟看有點《警訊》或《鏗鏘集》的影子。全片剛好一百分鐘，是帶動觀眾進入情緒的標準長度，程度深淺，因人而異，就此片而言，我想我是屬於較深的一類，那不是一般荷里活電影以特技或音效堆砌出來的感傷情緒，明顯地導演也儘量避開了這樣的處理手法，使影片更富真實性，特別是一些解釋現行法例的場面，演員都特意放慢了說話的速度，讓觀眾有充足的時間咀嚼內容，雖然某些對白顯得冗長，含有數據的尤甚，但可見導演冀盼觀眾了解事件的心何其迫切，他也在片中自嘲像拍教育電視一樣，要說教，只好犧牲一點劇情片應有的戲劇性。

青少年罪犯以及內地來港定居人士，都是普遍被社會忽略甚至鄙視的一群，導演嘗試從這些小眾的角度出發，引申多個香港在經濟起飛背後潛藏的社會問題。廿三個頑童的年幼無知，卻反映了成人世界的自相矛盾和腐敗無能──我們一邊歸咎青年人自甘墮落，沒好好潔身自愛，另一邊箱卻在不斷製造各式各樣的試探來誘惑心智未成熟的一群犯罪，讓他們成了資本主義社會下的犧牲品，今天報章的頭條全是天水圍一家三口自殺的新聞，看來七年前的片子映照的是個劃時代的問題。

要是梁議員是本片的Hero的話，那麼Villain一定是政府甚或整個社會。本片的高潮所在，是立會內議員辯論有關條例草案內「酌情終身」的含意一幕，導演巧妙地運用各種鏡頭運動來表達這種小眾與社會的抗衡狀態，傳媒報導臨時立法會成立以及爭取確定刑期的人士靜坐抗議，兩者並置於螢幕上的對角位置，前者以低角度拍攝，後者則全以高角度攝之，壁壘分明；及至後來囚犯打算自殺的一幕，鏡頭由高角度府瞰，隱含了強烈的監測意味，令角色更見弱勢。

另外值得一提的是本片對媒體的批判，導演不斷以傳媒的角度（電視的螢幕效果）看罪案、遊行示威、甚至九七回歸，使事件本身變得異常虛假，亦強化了事件與觀眾之間的距離，我們平日接收的資訊，可會是這麼一回事？選擇性的報導和商業上的考慮窒礙着我們看見事實的全部，一遍喜慶的光與影背後，是真正的繁榮昌盛，還是更可怕的無形的牢獄之苦？那可會比死（死刑）更難受？

全片彌漫着港人對回歸後特區管治的不安，正如主角銘害怕監獄窗外的那座山一樣，因為他永遠不會知道山後是個怎樣的世界，導演試圖安撫我們這種不安的情緒。譽玲替銘去看山後的美景固然是一個「明天會更好」的隱喻，而譽玲與分隔多年的母親和解更意味着香港與中國的復和關係，最後譽玲繼續四出為銘尋找失散的家人，銘亦繼續努力面對那三十年的牢獄生涯。

環境由始至終沒有改變過，變的只是心態，而賴以生存的，是與親人再見的一絲盼望。

Advertising for Advertising

2007-09-28T08:30:00.000+08:00

Newsweek, Sep 24

It sounds awful to me. They will never know how many people lose their job due to advertising. Perhaps half a century of cultural studies had done a good job in blaming them for accelerating consumerism and so they are now fighting back, bold and unconcealed. I'm just wondering what our life would be when there was no advertising. We still live, right?

張愛玲──《鬱金香》

2007-09-21T14:05:00.001+08:00

昨天翻箱倒篋，把長年積聚卻又沒甚用處的文件一個勁地清理了，期間給我找到了一件寶貝，可沒想到自己還留著她的一份剪報（明報 2005.10.2），短短兩年的時間已發黃了不少。

說來慚愧，這位才女的文采，我著實從沒見識過，或許接觸過一些節錄，但卻沒有好好地讀過一篇。今天，終於碰面。

是一篇很短的愛情故事，聽說佚失了五十八年之久，在她逝世十週年後才正式公開。故事巧妙地交代了主要人物的過去、現在與將來，一點沒有因篇幅所限而草草收筆，很完滿。開始時我心裡還在狐疑：「這麼短的小說，幹麼還著墨在那些沒要緊的人物背景上？」也許我給好萊塢的電影荼毒得過甚了，總想情節推進得快一點，須知這是上世紀中葉的文學作品，那時人們的生活還沒被媒體支配，有多一點的空間觀察周遭的人情世故，自然描述得較為深刻。每個人物的個性都很立體，彷彿腦袋裡已有某某的影子浮現出來了，怪不得文人都崇拜她，字裡行間盡是魅力。

Ground Zero

2007-09-12T08:51:00.001+08:00

Time flashes.

It's been six years already.
still remember
the moment I watched the news on TV

I froze.
I breathed.

thinking

the Day of Judgment would be coming
very soon

found an interview on TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/8
with David Rockwell
a prominent architect in NY
talking about how they came up with the idea at
Ground Zero

not too memorial

Serene.

大娛樂家

2007-09-08T14:00:00.001+08:00

在今期《瞄》看到一篇分析詹瑞文效應的文章，讓我想起早前的亞洲文化合作論壇，最後一場正是請來了這位劇場巨星來一起討論有關「越界」及「流行文化」的問題。重看舊文（7月25日的貼文），驚覺只一個多月的時間，對他的看法竟已截然不同。

文章嘗試拋出多個問題讓讀者思考，概括多位藝評人及藝術工作者的看法，沒有刻意偏袒或貶低詹氏的作風，那是本地媒體報道應該借鏡的。當中提到一點，大大改變了我對這位笑匠的觀感，那是所有藝術工作者都趨之若鶩的「接觸點」，我不認為票房或資金數目會比這個來得更令一位藝術工作者興奮，不管是甚麼方法，只要開拓了「接觸點」讓觀眾走進劇場，再慢慢來教育他們還不遲，雖然有人質疑當中有多少看過詹氏作品的人會嘗試觀看其他的劇場創作，甚至成為他們恆常的藝術活動？我想就算只有一個又何妨？難得的是那決定性的第一步，許多觀眾或許是首次踏進劇場，要是每每都得計算成效來決定行動與否，藝術普及的一天相信永遠也不會來臨。

不少行內人都怕劇場創作將成另一種服務性行業，只會迎合大眾口味，而這種口味不見得會高尚到哪裡去，藝術只會愈見低俗化。是觀眾造就了詹瑞文還是詹瑞文製造了市場這類先有雞還是蛋的問題已然不重要，沒人會比詹瑞文更早想到低俗化的問題，難道他不擔心長期被定形為喜劇之王，只能賣笑卻未能發展其他類型的劇場創作？但當看到他對劇場教育的熱誠時，也許是大家過慮了。更何況藝術一直都不是主流，又何懼一試？最壞也只不過停留於流而不行的階段罷了，林奕華說的好：He has an ability to click with different people. Because of his high visibility and popularity he has the ear of the people, which not many other artists in Hong Kong do. 藝術家有時也得走出象牙塔，進到人群當中聽聽他們的聲音…讓我們都拭目以待，看看這位大娛樂家怎樣運用他的影響力。

北京呀北京...

2007-09-07T01:00:00.003+08:00

北京呀北京，這陣子你真是紅透了頂！

上至國際雜誌，下至星斗市民，無不討論你近日的鋒芒，世界頂尖的建築師雲集到你這裡來，打算在黃土上留下永遠的烙印，是的，上百億元的投資，不會是短暫的，這些建築物將永遠成為你的一部份，日後每當人家想起你的時候，不再是天安門紫禁城，而是令人目眩的玻璃窗。

你將逐漸失去安藤忠雄所說的「異稟」，那種「人類的味道」，在你身上都快嗅不出來了，為的是要跟「世界」看齊嗎？但哪裡是「世界」？為什麼你不是那個「世界」？難道除了Norman Foster之外，沒人會設計機場？為何巴黎可以成功地將高樓大廈限制在市內的邊緣地區，甚至可以做到像羅浮宮那樣完美地結合新與舊，你卻忍心移平整個滿有中國特色的胡同？

這是城市化的必經階段還是你一時之間，被虛名沖昏了頭？

開學日

2007-09-03T22:56:00.001+08:00

今天正式開始我的半工讀生涯，有點擔心熬不過來...

不管了，死就死吧！

比較文學系，我來也!!!

2007-08-24T10:50:00.000+08:00

昨天39度高燒下仍堅持上班，我想必是瘋了...

今晨燒退了，以為快要康復的時候，卻又突然暈倒了，嚇得家人差點要叫白車...

期間發生了甚麼呢？不太懂，只隱約感到有人把我抱起來了...

醒來的時候全身都是冷汗，醫生說我血壓過低，身體虛弱所致...

得好好調理身子了... 謝謝各位的來電及SMS，很窩心...

穿越時空的少女

2007-08-21T10:44:00.001+08:00

在沒有任何概念或背景資料的情況下去觀賞一套電影，這是第二次，上一次是《浮花》，這樣以沒被污染過的腦袋去欣賞一套電影，感覺特別好，亦自覺是對導演的一份尊重，好奇怪的想法吧？

上星期看的是優先場，正式公映要到8月23日，比日本版遲了足足一年。說的是老生常談的主題──時間，但故事情節卻充滿時代感，一點不覺得土氣。人生都有太多的遺憾，要是可以重來的話該有多好？當然，這都是我們一廂情願的想法，大概不會想到再來一次的話，可能比原來的情況更糟，主角真琴當然沒想到這一點，自顧自地穿梭於時空長廊裡，開心來着卻一點沒考慮身邊人的感受，前部份的「任性」使後來的「痛悔」更具震撼力，雖然早有心理準備，還是看得我酸溜溜的。畢竟這是一套動畫，總得有個美麗的結局，不管多麼牽強。

友人說日本的平面設計都很講究美，但不都能使人明白，要是指着這套電影說的話，是成立的，因為要是理性一點思考的話，兩位主角最終是不可能踫面的，但當我離開影院的時候，腦子裡憧憬的，盡是美麗的畫面…

Design Critics

2007-08-21T08:45:00.001+08:00

這段時間被Rick Poynor的一本書“Design Without Boundaries”攝去了很多時間，當中一篇題為Cultural Apartheid的文章恰好點出了設計多年來的尷尬位置，亦與我早前在亞洲文化合作論壇聽到的一些內容很是呼應。

“Art is high and Design is low”

這是我們設計人大都知道的，Design從來都被視作依附商業而生的一種工具，為的是提高人類的生活質素（正確一點，是我們的消費意欲），它最多只能被稱為 Commercial Art，與所謂的Popular Culture密不可分，但想要走進藝術正典的殿堂，相信還有一段距離，而這段距離是怎樣形成的呢？那篇文章提到了一個值得深思的現象：為何我們從來沒有在媒體當中看過一個正正經經的Design Critics專欄？我這才想起每期的Newsweek都會把設計產品放在一個名為“The Good Life”的欄目，跟所有消費品沒兩樣，就是在文化博物館看到的設計展，也不會找來甚麼設計評論家（還不肯定有沒有這樣的頭銜）跟大家解說解說，似乎設計品本身就不值得評論。

然而我們不難發現設計師的地位已較十多二十年前提升了不少，在“How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul”一書中便提到今天的美國，當你告訴人家你是一名設計師，已不會再有人視你為脫衣舞孃一樣。我們多多少少會聽過這些名字：Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, Paula Scher；本土的也有Alan Chan, Tommi Li, Hung Lam, Sandy Choi…設計界有無數粒明星，每天佔據媒體的篇幅也不少，但卻無助設計獲得與藝術同等的尊重及認同，而重災區更是平面設計。

與大家分享兩個很好的設計評論網，不妨定期上去看看，你的設計視野會變得不一樣，就讓我們一起來提高設計的地位。

1) UnderConsideration – a growing network and enterprise dedicated to the progress of the graphic design profession and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts.
http://www.underconsideration.com/

2) DesignObserver – writings on design and culture
http://www.designobserver.com/

NIKE vs Adidas Transformer

2007-08-16T04:39:00.001+08:00

早前看過 Steven Spielburg 的 "Tranformer"，總覺特技賣弄得有點過了火，這隻NIKE鞋算是變形得合理一點...

對手的另一種 transformation，也很不錯...

The First Digital Play in Theatre

2007-08-12T17:00:00.000+08:00

Newsweek, Aug 6, 2007

While we are pretty sure that the scenario in Minority Report will possibly realize much earlier than 2054 with Jeff Han's marvelous invention of multi-touch interface (or so-called surface computer), no one seems to be stunned by the first digital play that finally comes on stage this summer, which sounds really a bit too late for interactive art in other media has been developed for decades.

What strike me most is not how groundbreaking the news is but that electronic media finally intrude theatre, one of the most fundamental forms of art in human history. Theatre, when compared to other art forms, always deals with the 'present'. No play is prerecorded. If John Chris Jones, pioneer in the design methods movement in 60s, identified the main point of difference between art and design is that of timing, theatre is undoubtedly a place for an artist to manipulate a medium that exists at the same time as his actions. (Design Methods, p11) He acts in 'real time'. Every performance is therefore unique and cannot be replicated apple to apple. That on one hand hides the most valuable virtue of art, while on the other, implies the inevasible presence of uncertainty in each performance. And now this kind of uncertainty may well be intensified by the spontaneous reaction from the spectators.

In spite of clear instructions from the actors, the choice to participate or not still belongs to the floor. A few contingency plans may have to be prepared in case of no response or technical instabilities. On behalf of audience, as mentioned in the article, it becomes more and more difficult to comprehend the play, which now requires additional amount of patience and attention to follow the plot. As more and more personalized experience is allowed with all these advance technologies, I begin to worry that discussion of views among audiences will become increasingly difficult due to a lack of common ground. We can discuss on a film because we have watched the 'same' film. If 'what we hear depends on where we sit', we can only 'share' our unique experience but not 'discuss' or even 'criticize' on a particular part.

I suddenly got a weird thought: what would happen if I forgot to bring my cell phone when attending such kind of digital play in the future? No matter what, one aspect may be well received by Hong Kong audiences: they no longer have to switch off their cell phones before a performance starts!

"habitus" closing down

2007-08-10T01:47:00.002+08:00

It's really sad to receive the following mail this morning. I still remember the rooftop where I took courses of "月光暗室". What a memorable gathering with all the movie maniac! Hope that one day, we'll see it reopen somewhere, in Hong Kong.

Last week, we were notified by our landlord that we had to move out by the end of this month from the third floor of the Western Market, to make way for a marriage registry-related business.

Sad but not surprising, the news came with an "offer" from the depth of a well-oiled mercenary spirit. We may like to rent a ground floor unit next to the dessert store in the same historical building for HK$60,000/ month, a unit of around 600 square feet. For those of you interested, please contact the landlord directly. We sensed major tenancy shuffling is in place there. The unit is way beyond what we could afford, mentally, emotionally, and financially.

"ALL MUST GO" SALE NOW ON.

Aug 9 and 16 (Thurs) 1-6pm
Aug 10-12 & Aug 17-19 (Fri to Sun) 11am-7pm

Aug 19 will be our last day at where we are now. We don't know what will happen next.

終於開幕啦！

2007-08-09T14:11:00.001+08:00

Untitled

2007-07-27T14:25:00.000+08:00

亞洲文化合作論壇2007

2007-07-26T03:12:00.001+08:00

與一位做企業形象／品牌設計的朋友來了場很「爽」的討論。

源於前兩天參加的亞洲文化合作論壇，當中提到了許多值得思考的議題，特別是最後一場由詹瑞文和歐陽應霽負責主講有關「越界」(Cross-over) 的討論，讓我再次思考到「藝術」與「商業藝術」的分野，顯然中間只剩那點點的虛線了。

過去藝術家不屑與商家合作，以防自己的作品沾上銅臭，有損名節，大底我們印象中的偉大藝術家，都如Vincent van Gogh那樣至死不得溫飽，又或像電影《鐵達尼號》裏的Jack Dawson，沒錢買船票之餘，還得睡在三等艙，畫的都是被主流社會唾棄的妓女；然而正因着這種堅持與傲骨，尋常百姓對藝術家總會有種莫名的欣賞與佩服，他們流露的“氣質”，大概也源於此。記得以前許多唸設計的同學原意唸藝術，奈何擔心畢業後難找工作，才選擇設計，所以藝術系又名「渣兜」系，意指進去後便註定要托缽討飯。

沒想到討論會上發出的第一道問題便是Can professional artists secure their future? 為何時至今日，還在討論這個問題？是否告訴我們只有極少數成了名（在流行文化當中佔上一席位）的藝術家的未來才有保障？現在不少藝術家都願意與商界合作，做品牌代言人、拍廣告，不但不會被指出賣藝術，還被視為跨媒體創作人，知名度提高的同時，亦不用再擔心資金來源，“創作”一詞似是把背後所有互惠互利的關係過濾得一乾二淨。

詹氏指他們嘗試把劇場帶到群眾當中，用他們的語言來跟他們對話，發掘這門藝術新的可能性，在劇團成立之始，他們便構想到劇場需要一位明星，觀眾才會走進去。這不正是在運用資本主義社會的運作模式去讓藝術生存下來嗎？是在用他們的語言說話還是迎合公眾口味？我當然不贊成藝術永遠都高高在上，望塵莫及，但也值得思考為何我們會視那些為藝術？影視藝人也被喚作Artist，但我們不會把他們視為藝術家，只怕我們都在濫用「藝術」或「創作」一詞，正如會上有講者認為我們都在濫用Creative一字，就連會計師也被形容為 creative，是怎麼一回事？

很喜歡著名實驗電影導演及學者Maya Deren所形容的「藝術家」，在其著作An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film中，她提到：For the serious artist the esthetic problem of form is, essentially, and simultaneously, a moral problem. Nothing can account for the devoted dedication of the giants of human history to art form save the understanding that, for them, the moral and esthetic problems were one and the same: that the form of a work of art is the physical manifestation of its moral structure.

Deren相信美學與道德倫理密不可分，美本身並不單是一種選擇，而是在物質層面上有意識地呈現出來的一種人文精神。

The work of art is skin for an idea. It must also illuminate certain ethical or moral principles as well as comprehend the large facts of its total culture, and, at best, extend them imaginatively.

與友人均有同感的是，每一種藝術本身的可能性已夠一位藝術家窮一生之力去探索，是一段漫長的尋找過程，畢卡索創作了多少幅寫實的畫作才來到立體主義？跨媒體（特別是跨潮流文化的）創作有多少是在搞噱頭（gimmick）多於搞藝術？而又有多少是藝術家本身對原來的發展方向缺乏堅持，因此走到另一領域去尋找新的機會？聽說第一個找藝術家來合作的品牌是Absolute Vodka，跟Andy Warhol的合作可謂空前成功，其後Vodka繼續與不同的插圖家及建築家合作，建立了品牌獨有的個性，今天不知多少品牌都在套用這個點子？

「現在愈來愈難欣賞到純粹的藝術。」是我們都有太多的目的要達到吧！

《清明上河圖》

2007-07-22T12:00:00.001+08:00

生於數位年代的我，的確不大懂得欣賞國寶，但只要回想那個連飛機都沒有的年代，要完成這樣一幅鳥瞰圖著實不易，再考慮到案卷之長，更是寶貴。

早起還是值得。

今年買書特別少...

2007-07-21T14:37:00.001+08:00

愈是習慣於平常日子逛書店，愈不會在書展買書。本來沒打算來的，更不會怎樣開刀，一共才買了三本，最開心的是找到了由著名法國導演杜魯福親自撰寫的影評集The Films in My Life！好想盡快把它吞噬……

If you said yes to abortion...

2007-07-17T08:20:00.001+08:00

正在看由上海奧美(Oglivy & Mather)廣告設計公司為內部員工製作的一本書《Ugly Duckling》，顧名思義，是講解一些本來有如醜小鴨一般的廣告如何搖身一變，成為意念超絕的廣告。

好欣賞當中一個針對墮胎的廣告，雖然全以文字表達，但非常有力；聽說後來有人做了另一個版本，把這個概念再推前一步：將第三條問題改成是一個健全的嬰孩，而答案卻是納粹領袖希特勒，多妙的一筆！

in midair

2007-07-10T12:34:00.001+08:00

作品的展覽場怎麼相隔這麼遠？今回只看了Anson的作品，有點可惜，不過真的好喜歡由Hung Lam設計的場刊，味道十足。

A MESSAGE TO THE FUTURE A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

2007-07-07T14:00:00.002+08:00

真好，在Socially Yours的座談會上踫見黃國才（Kacey Wong）。

就他為Victoria Prison Art Museum所造的黃色小木屋，我說了點自己的看法，他顯然不太認同，但因下半場的節目即將開始，他沒能解釋下去，好可惜，真想聽聽藝術家親自為自己的作品發聲。多年前曾聽一學者說：「一件作品自公開以後，作者便失去了對其作品本身的詮釋權。」畢加索有過類似的話，但是指着觀眾說的：「任何一個人要對一幅畫作出解釋都是找錯了對象。」那麼是否都不要作任何理解呢？你刻意地要傳遞某些訊息，作為接收者的我難道便不能釐清這個訊息是甚麼嗎？我想一件好的作品，值得觀眾一想再想。

他刻意地在一個空間內營造了另一個空間。

先說我第一次的觀後感。我認為他沒有好好地運用現存的室內空間，亦沒有把囚室當囚室般用，觀眾一進去便給那小木屋吸引着，像個小孩看見糖果屋一様，爭相擠進去看個究竟，較比起其他同場的藝術品，囚室這個硬件在黃國才的作品中看似可有可無，要是把小屋獨置在其他地點，效果也不會相差太遠。我有這個想法，似乎是誤把小木屋當作一獨立自存的囚室看待，把它從本來的那個空間分割出來了。

監獄把罪犯與世界隔絕，一間間獨立的囚室再將罪犯們分開，最後這間小屋再邀請犯人把另一個自己分別出來。內心深處總有甚麼話要說吧，請化作文字留給未來那個重獲自由的自己，到那日，看着自己當年初到貴境的留言，不知會是怎樣的心情？觀眾被邀請站在這條時間線上的兩點，然而兩點卻同時並置在同一空間（小木屋）內，這種時間與空間的接軌讓我想起黃國才多年前的另一件作品，多個由大至小的黃色木屋以直線排列而成，從正面的“門口”窺探入內，會形成一點透視的錯覺，當觀眾誤以為可以走進這條長廊時，才發現門口不斷在縮小，限制你繼續前行，這種空間的虛置正正衝擊着我們固有的視覺經驗，你以為它很遙遠嗎？其實只有幾步的路程。黃氏的作品看來都很安靜，卻時刻充滿着令人躍躍欲試的互動性。

後來在其網站內找到以下一段小小的題旨，果然，用心一點看可以更貼近原意：
A philosopher once said the only freedom that ever exists is the freedom to choose whatever to think inside our mind. The memory of our past might not be what really happened. What are the things you wanted to change in your memory? What message do you have for your future? I built a wooden cabin out of recycle wood completed with a garden inside the tiny cell. Inside you can contemplate and reflect quietly then write a postcard addressing to your future self, I will mail it back to you in the future.

Socially Yours - Alternative Design Networking Seminar

2007-07-06T14:05:00.001+08:00

沒想到一個關於Design for the Community的座談會會演變成民間組織控訴政府的大會，正當來自荷蘭的藝術家樂樂地向在場人士介紹他們的意念及創作經歷時，台下觀眾總是把問題聚焦在香港藝術團體所遇到的種種困難及至質詢人家可如何在香港作同類的藝術活動，試問一批來了香港還不到一星期的人能怎樣回答？

當看見人家從老遠帶來的概念和創作經驗時，本地的藝術工作者汲取了些甚麼？正如當中一位有份參與“Blue House”計劃的荷蘭藝術家Jeanne van Heeswijk提到，不論是甚麼活動都有機會遇上未知的困難，他們這個計劃不是也給當地政府起訴過無數次？但重要的是踏出第一步，那最不明朗的一步，光想着前頭諸般的障礙而猶豫不決，結果只會甚麼都做不來，最後分享的香港建築師羅健中先生不是一個活生生的見證嗎？儘管預計到政府很大可能會反對他們的計劃，但依然提交心目中認為最切合該區居民的設計方案，除為他們帶來獎項之餘，更間接地衝擊着大眾對舊區重建與規劃的一些錯誤觀念。

設計不再是一人獨專的產物，而是與大眾互動的成果，Brian Lee的木頭桌雖然不是甚麼大堆頭項目，但在設計的過程中讓老人家重新肯定自己的再生能力和社會意義，那才是真正的Humanistic Design。Design for the Community未必一定合乎經濟效益，但若能使這個是非之都和諧一點，不是已經很有價值了嗎？

珈琲時光 -------東京物語

2007-07-01T04:15:00.001+08:00

正在讀舒明的《平成年代的日本電影》，有一處我不大認同：

在第二輯人物篇“淺野忠信”一節，提到在《珈琲時光》中幾個演員背向觀眾的鏡頭是“…非小津式的侯孝賢風格。小津電影中的人物一定會面向觀眾，…”(p.161) 但明顯地在《東京物語》中，一對老父母在岸邊逕自閒遊交心的一場戲，小津刻意地只拍他們的背面，讓觀眾加陪留意二人對話的內容而非表情動作，這不但令該場戲充滿詩意，更娓娓道來了老人家對時光流逝的無奈與寂寥。所以文中提到的那場母女戲，絕非“侯孝賢拍得比較曖昧不明”(p.162) 的結果，他可是不斷地帶領觀眾緬懷小津，向這一代大師致敬。

Exhibition Day

2007-06-26T11:01:00.003+08:00

原來一日內看三埸展覽這般要命！先是中大藝術系展，繼而是文化博物館的產品設計展，最後一站回到理大設計的畢業展。由於極度疲乏，理大一站已淪為走馬看花，沒半點勁兒，只是Pierre 的作品著實太令人驚喜了，不得不為他花上點時間。老實說，許久沒看過設計系這樣精彩的畢業作，以往數屆的作品不是沒有好的，只是大部份都「包裝」（請容許我用這個帶點商業味的字眼，設計壓根兒就是這麼一回事）得太美輪美奐，跟現實拉得太近，某部分作品的形式與風格更略帶某某名師的影子，多了點虛張的聲勢，少了點個性，要找個有心有力又忠於自己的，好難。

六四成人禮

2007-06-06T14:45:00.002+08:00

今年是我第一年參加六四的燭光晚會。

跟爸爸一起來，特別有意思。記得第一次看見爸哭，便是某一年的六四，大家都在用膳，電視機正播放當年的片段…我不明白，事情有那麼嚴重嗎？爸爸可不是當年的大學生。

「有多少父母就這樣喪掉孩子？」

他忽地吐出那麼一句，這才發現他臉上沾着淚水…

後來六四十週年，學校辦了一個特別週會，播放了一段當時的紀錄片，看着被血紅渲染的畫面，我這才懂得哭，是的，我們應該為他們哭。

每年都有想過到維園走一趟，總是提不起勁，也許我希望有人能陪我壯壯膽。第一年參加七一大遊行也是他先提出的，終於明白甚麼叫“薪火相傳”，需要的不是單純的口號，而是身體力行，這一點爸爸做到了。

還沒到達現場，氣氛已相當濃厚，那些邊抓著飯盒邊往前推進的少年人讓我覺得香港的未來充滿希望，雖然不是每一個到場的都是為了平反六四，可為了讓這點標誌著香港在一國兩制下仍享有言論和集會自由的燭光得以延續下去，出一點綿力又如何？試想一天，連香港也不能悼念六四的時候，會是怎樣的光境？

旁觀者 I

2007-06-03T09:25:00.007+08:00

前文提及概念，早前就收過一位從英國來港修讀設計的交換生的一篇文章，豪不諱言地指出香港的教育制度使學生失掉創作意念，技能一身只為金錢賣命，可沒想過外來客在短短三個月內竟會看得這樣清。
原文載於 NewDesignMagazine HKArticle, 2007 April14：

Opportunities. That is what defines life as a student industrial designer in Hong Kong. Everywhere there are chances, new possibilities and open doors. Young designers are in demand and whilst students in the UK can struggle to find the most mundane of placements, opportunities for talented designers are abundant in Hong Kong.

Our class had only 45 members (compared to the 150 in Coventry) and tutor contact time was twice weekly for each subject. Local students almost lived out of their studios, each work space not only containing piles of work, but dozens of personal possessions. It was no wonder that many of them would often not go home during the week and sleep at their desks.Expectations on students are different in Hong Kong. Whilst in the UK our experience has been one where lecturers are passive and allow students to mature and develop on their own, here the information and technical knowledge is force fed into students, producing young designers who posses immense levels of computer-based design skill but also all share the same design philosophy. This apparent lack of individualism and even creativity is not so much through the teaching at the university, but more through the general education system in Hong Kong.

Indeed, the broadly experienced international lecturers actively encourages in-depth thinking and concentration on a strong concept over superficial aesthetic details, but are constantly fighting the ingrained conformism that seems to be a product of the secondary education in Hong Kong. Consequently, local work was very different to what we knew and we had to make a significant shift in our style to fit into the course. Hong Kong students have a love of technology and anything computer related and this translates into CAD skills that put many UK professionals to shame. Likewise, their presentation skills were initially in a different league to what was expected in Coventry and although this often came at the expense of strong concepts, it is a design approach that suits Hong Kong.

For us, it was a surprise to find so many of the local students taking freelance design work: they would be designing USB sticks and other small products in their spare time, as well as using their significant graphic design skills to create packaging and advertising. This ability to find quick, simple and well paid design work part time was perhaps the biggest shock for us and the most encouraging development of our time in Hong Kong. However, the blurring of the boundary between student and paid designer came at a cost: the local students work so much harder than many of their contemporaries in the UK yet often lacked clear, directed conceptual ability in favour of design for quick, cheap manufacture.The reason for the amount of available work, especially for young designers with fresh ideas is simple: Gunagdong Province of China is just across the border and is the largest manufacturing hub in the world. A product of this is dozens of busy, profitable design consultancies in Hong Kong actively seeking international design staff and students like us were in a perfect position to find experience.There is a strong ex-pat community, many of whom are senior designers in local consultancies and all were looking to hire both local and foreign students.

The compact nature of Hong Kong means that networking is easy and it didn't take long for our names to be passed between designers and for internship interviews to be set up with very little pestering on our behalf. This nurturing, friendly attitude towards young designers is so refreshing to the closed-door policy adopted by firms towards students in the UK and over the next few weeks, we have interviews with several major companies, something undreamt of for inexperienced designers like us.