With the motto of “people doing strange things with electricity”, dorkbot (http://dorkbot.org) as a worldwide network of groups and initiatives facilitates since 10 years ago the exchange of regional as well as international exchange in between active practitioners such as artists, hackers, engineers, inventors, and DIY enthusiasts.

Dorkbot-hk was founded in 2009 as a hotbed for ‘people who do strange things with electricity’ to share and exchange creative ideas in Hong Kong. In the past, Dorkbot-hk hosted a variety of energetic creative people including Johannes Grenzfurthner (co-founder of Austrian avant garde collective monochrom), Karen Marcelo (founder of Dorkbot San Francisco, also a member of Survival Research Lab), Heather Kelley (Canadian game designer whose latest work is an intuitive vibrator interface for an iPhone app), Keith Lam (Hong Kong media artist who led a group of participants to make their own CO1 data collecting device to address our air pollution problem).

On 17 March 2011 (Thu), the third event of dorkbot-hk will be hosted at Videotage inviting three artist units to present their latest creative projects on the night:

Time’s Up, an internationally renowned group of practitioners and theorists with artistic, scientific and technical backgrounds based in the harbour of Linz/Austria, will introduce audiences into their projects of narrative space, a key area pursued by the group, and other recent Time’s Up projects that follows a proto-scientific approach. We are excited to have Time’s Up in Hong Kong again as their work was once presented at the Microwave Festival back in 2002!

Pippa Buchanan, a member of Time’s Up, will introduce – The Peer 2 Peer University’ (P2PU) – an online community of people learning together in an open, collaborative environment. Hong Kong-based artist Marco De Mutiis will show his latest collaborative work with Kenny Wong – Threads of Desire – a sewing machine that translates real-time data of human desire into sewing. Audiences will get to know about the artistic motivation behind the work.

Local artist Kenny Wong will bring us his award-winning (The 16th Hong Kong IFVA 2010/2011 – Interactive Media Category Finalist) installation – 10Hz – which stimulates the viewer’s Alpha Brain Wave by use of poetic light and sound. Kenny Wong will not only explain his artistic concept, but will also present the scientific fact behind the piece and how he uses tuning forks as a trigger of illusion! The three presentations are all very exciting for those who embrace creativity and humanity. Don’t miss the chance to get inspired!

If you look at Time’s Up’s website, you will not see any sections that say ‘artworks’. Time’s Up do not make ‘art’ but ‘objects’ and ‘situations’. Objects and situations produced by Time’s Up are not exhibits of art, but rather publicly accessible experiments. Their main focus of investigation and research lies in full body human-machine interfaces, aspects of human perception and cognition, immersive mixed reality techniques and the machine madness of our time.

One of Time’s Up’s distinct working areas is Physical Narration. After years of development and observation, they understand a large part of their work in the construction of experimental situations that encourage the open-ended exploration of their properties and capacities, allowing and supporting subjective explanations, communication among visitors and multiple models of action and reaction in the strange physics of the space. Pippa Buchanan, a member of Time’s Up, will introduce the audience – The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) – an online community of people learning together in an open, collaborative environment. Entering its second year, P2PU is developing partnerships with Mozilla around the School of Webcraft and exploring how peer assessment could change the way we learn.

In this Time’s Up Australasian Regional Tour 2011, members of Time’s Up will present and exchange projects, ideas and working methods as well as elaborate and define further collaborations with the community in Hong Kong, besides at their other stops in Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Shantou.

Threads of Desire is an installation that creates a tangible representation of desire, in an attempt to translate it from the abstract to the physical world, from the digital to the analog medium, using the Internet and an old sewing machine. Artists Marco De Mutiis and Kenny Wong use real-time data containing the phrase “I wish” fetched from the Internet and convert the data into threads that are automatically sewn by a sewing machine on a piece of cloth. The machine captures the essence of desire, virtual and abstract, but also something innate in men. As the artists say, “Desire is something innate, it shapes the way we live and informs the way we relate to places, objects and others. It is irrational, unstoppable, uncontrollable. It defines us yet it cannot be easily defined.” In this talk, Marco De Mutiis will explain the artistic motivation to realize the work, which will be on display in the gallery space alongside with the talk.

‘Travelling past an avenue of trees on a bus ride, you can feel that sunlight is flickering on your face, projecting vivid colors even with your eyes closed.’

Kenny Wong extends a trivial daily experience into a deep exploration in this piece titled 10Hz, where the device stimulates the viewer’s Alpha Brain Wave by light and sound. Internally, illusionary vision and sound are unleashed in one’s brain. Externally, a computer-programmed camera captures the eyes of the viewer under the 10Hz experience. The work explores the artistic potentialities and the playfulness of Alpha Brain Wave, which research has been commonly limited by therapeutic purposes. In this talk, Kenny Wong will explain my concept and its scientific fact, and how I use tuning forks as a trigger of illusion.