Making big data dance
Editor’s Note: Chinese-British designer Elaine Ng came back to Hong Kong a few years ago to start the Fabrick Lab — a scaled-down textile design and production unit in Kwai Chung. In between readying her installation piece, Nexus, for display at Art Basel Hong Kong next week, Ng spoke to China Daily Hong Kong about using big data to raise environmental awareness through art.
The project developed from a conversation between UBS and me about how art can inform sustainability. I see art and design as informative. The features and abilities of a material — tactility for example — convey a message. One of my previous sculptures created for Hong Kong Stock Exchange demonstrated how numerical values can be very playful and informative. Air pollution data compiled by UBS Evidence Lab serves as an introduction to the entire supply chain of business. My idea was to use this information to help enable people to live smarter.
Data and the internet comprise a network of information and how they are being shared and spread out. (Similarly) sustainability depends on a network of how people collaborate more with each other. My work involves research into how nature behaves like a true forest and the plants share nutrients with each other to allow a balance of ecosystems. When trees are about to die their remaining nutrients get shared among others through underground movement. This is where the shapes and forms I use (in my artworks) come from.
Exactly. Biomimicry has always been a very strong design philosophy and discipline reflected in my design journey, particularly as I felt nature has a smart way of living. Plants can decode when their lives are in danger. And this is something human beings try to hack and mimic. Lilies leave
Elaine Ng started the Fabrick Lab to bring textile manufacturing back to Hong Kong on a micro level.
waxy layers that could be turned into water repellent paint. That’s a technology we’re already using in our daily living, why not use it in artwork?
Visitors to ABHK are going to be very lucky as this is the first time all three sculptures (a new piece plus two more iterations of Nexus, shown at the Greater China Conference, Shanghai and Taipei Dangdai art fair in January) are going to come together. In Hong Kong, the audience will be able to choose two data sets from different cities and compare them visually, represented by the passage of light through both the sculptures simultaneously. Both sets of information will then be in a dialogue with each other in the new sculpture that we made especially for ABHK.
A sculpture from the pollution data analyzing installation, to be shown at Art Basel Hong Kong.
Technology has always been part of weaving. Jacquard weaving makes use of computer technology that can be traced back to the 18th century. The first computer is a jacquard command and it is related to bitmap.
What I really want to represent by bringing together jacquard and the technology UBS has is this: AI is thought of as cold and robotic. I wanted to create a very warm, touch-and-feel representation of AI.
Technology can’t really be utilized until it has been analyzed, until it’s been in good hands (and) unless it helps us to live smarter. For example, the jacquard loom I use is computerized but operated by human hands. So every single piece of textile that you see on the sculpture is actually handwoven.
We don’t want the artwork to come across as pretty or decorative. We want the audience to understand it’s an informative piece of artwork which could be used to translate rather important information. A kiosk will help guide them through information on pollution between 2016 and 2018, across 14 different countries and 72 different cities. Two years of pollution-related information about the cities selected by the audience will be made to pass through the arms of the sculpture, seeping through the LED light embedded in it and form virtual clouds whose composition has been designed by the audience.
The two sculptures will then “talk” to each other and send the results to the bigger sculpture which will create a kinetic movement. We don’t know what it might look like as it’s the result of an accumulative process between (randomly) selected data sets.
For us the Nexus project is more of a prototype solution investigation. We would like to see how we can create this device to provide information to people — to understand that maybe in the future we’ll be able to develop a device to come up with real-time solutions. The light interacting with the pollution data in the sculpture is actually giving out signals and warnings. (Future iterations of) Nexus could be like air-purifying machines, but you could give them the form of an artwork, integrate them into the environment and make them somewhat playful while providing information.
We wanted Nexus to be as human as possible. We used paper, metal, gold leaves, also minerals and natural fibers. Paper because the concept came from the trees and forests and we wanted to make use of their natural tactility.
I think this is exactly why I wanted to move to Hong Kong. In the 1980s and 90s many amazing fashion designers were creating their own fabrics in Hong Kong. I really want to revive the concept that Hong Kong has textiles.
I am a huge fan of and believer in micro manufacturing, the idea being that we downscale everything — have the different departments of a manufacturing unit next to each other like we’re doing in the 1,500-square-foot area in my studio.
The Fabrick Lab is the only weave studio in Hong Kong serving as both a design and sampling space. We’re the only one having a TC2 — a high-spec jacquard prototyping loom from Norway. I have invested a lot in the studio in terms of machinery because I believe Hong Kong should be looked at as part of the Greater Bay Area. Shenzhen, now only a half hour away (by high-speed rail), is a very important place for Hong Kong (designers to forge partnerships with the mainland designers). If you ask me how I am connected to Hong Kong I would say it’s not just Hong Kong but Hong Kong Plus.
Interviewed by Chitralekha Basu