Experience the extremes, jarring notes... and the silences

On the increasing co-dependence between technology and art

It's only in the last 100 years that entertainment began taking precedence and grew so huge that a sort of line was drawn between technology and art, assuming something too technology-driven could not be a serious form of art.

Earlier, art was at the center and entertainment was an offshoot of art. Now of course entertainment is the focus and art is increasingly peripheral. Hence people don't see the obvious and fundamental connection between art and technology. Technology impacts the form of art and also affects the relationship between the audience, creator, and the artists involved.

On the synthesis of form and content in the Freespace Tech Lab shows

The sound and kinetic installation shows in the Freespace Tech Lab series (presented under the aegis of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority) are like a complete synthesis of form and content. The show is what one experiences and each viewer experiences it differently.

The reason why I picked Wittgenstein (sketches by the Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, appear like a leitmotif in the show) is because of his idea of the language game. It's about how our language affects the way we define our world. Wittgenstein's idea of language is so aligned with what we today call fake news. We live in a time when increasingly things do not mean what they seemed at first.

On creating a performance space boxed in by mirrors

Buddhists used mirrors in a meditation space. Medieval churches were built in a way to provide the best acoustics for choir singing, as they did not have electric amplifiers. The Buddha sculptures in Thailand were painted gold to illuminate the space.

Over time, entertainment has taken the place of religion in people's lives. Often there is a lot of violence built into entertainment.

On drawing the audience's attention to the basic features of a stage production

As artists, how we deal with technology, how we use it for creative ends and try to find meaning from the relationships between art and technology can be very challenging. So for this project we focused on the basic elements used on a stage - sound, lights, images, props, and space. We are not doing "nice" here. We experiment with frequency - ultra-sonic and sub-sonic sounds. We explore possibilities of structuring super high-pitch sounds to create different experiences.

On the idea behind putting the audience inside a soundbox

Nowadays most people use headphones. These have some limitations. So putting people inside a resonating box is somewhat manipulative. It's not real.

In this soundscape space, the use of speaker phones is an attempt to create a total environment. That's how you create depth of sound. In a cinema theater, the audience sits still, but in this show you are allowed to move around.

Because this is a black box theater, with mirror walls, every bit of the experience is multiplied several times over. The effect is enhanced. It's quite an immersive experience. You are not wearing virtual reality glasses but you are surrounded by a similar effect.

The interesting thing is that the mirror too is simulated. But the image you see is more real than reality.

Sound is about vibration. The mirror vibrates with the sound and one gets to visualize the sound. During the digital image projections, the effect of vibrations came through especially well.

On getting a regular theater-goer interested in the technical side of a production

The Freespace Tech Lab series is an experimental project which does not allow for caring about a possible audience. If I cared about audience response, that would be for entertainment, which I would expect to sell. It's alright if people are able to share what we create, but I am not looking to produce the perfect product for the consumer market.

Here I'm more like a scientist or an academic doing research. So the shows are short, like a fragment.

On whether the use of infinite reflections on mirrored walls is a comment on our increasing tendency to be self-referential

The mirror is not just a mirror. These days our vision is fixated on a palm-sized illuminated rectangle. In that sense, I'm opening up the range of our vision, surrounded by giant mirrors. The mirror has been a very potent metaphor since time immemorial. It was the earliest technology used to create images before the camera came along. It's my way of competing with the little illuminated rectangle that seems fitted to our palms.

On why he does not see theater as therapy

It's not as if you go in and come out cleansed of your toxicity, but you experience the extremes, jarring notes, what light and sound can do. You have an intense experience, including experiencing the silences.