Kingsley Ng is a Hong Kong-based interdisciplinary artist who incorporates new media approaches into his conceptual, site-specific and community-oriented projects. Working in locations as diverse as an old factory district in Hong Kong, a Japanese island village and a Mongolian prairie town, Ng seeks always to craft an authentic relationship between the work and its physical and cultural context, employing formats such as interactive installation, public workshop, sound, spatial design and experiential design. In this interview with Valerie C. Doran, Ng discusses some of the key issues he addresses in his work as well as some of the influences which shaped him.

VCD: One of most striking things about your work is the complexity of its ‘site-specific’ nature. It’s not so much that you create a work for a particular site, but rather that you create work in response to what one might term the ‘being-ness’ of the site. And the site itself often becomes a key element of both the physical and conceptual construct of the work. Can you comment?

KN: It’s certainly true that my creative process always begins with the site, and by extension with the context. I consider everything, and build everything into the work—from who’s funding the project, to the aim of the exhibition, the relationship between the exhibition space and the city, and the reception of the work. The work itself is a mediation, and emerges as one element of the larger situation. And, conversely, the situation becomes part of the work.  

VCD: Many of your installations such as Musical Loom and Record: Light from +22° 16’ 14” +114° 08’ 48, are characterized by a tangible balance between the scientific and the poetic—a type of balance often lacking in new media art, which ironically can seem too bogged down in technical intricacies to get a coherent message across. That’s not to say that the technology in your work is covert or hidden—the audience is at the least aware that some kind of very sophisticated computer programming is involved—yet the technology often has a kind of seamless integration with the physical, built structure. And there is also a kind of simplicity to the installations that almost belies the sophisticated science that goes into creating the effect.

KN:  The simplicity you mention is actually the result of a creative process  that involves multiple levels of problem-solving and negotiation—technical, social and aesthetic--and luckily for me problem-solving is a part of my psyche. It’s not a very spontaneous process: I often use computer modeling to work out issues with the physical environment and the concept for the built structure. But it’s still a long process to distill it all into the kind of visualizations I want. But at the same time, responding to the constraints of the built object is interesting to me. And every situation is different.

       
For example, when I was working on the Musical Loom, my intervention was minimal, because the built object was already in existence and already deeply connected to the site where I created this piece—the city of Lille where the loom was originally made and used. I was appropriating an object that represented a form of ‘new media’ 250 years ago and inserting sound and light technology to bring it to life in a new way. The transformation into sound and light is just the salt, a way of mediating with the site. And of course it is much more powerful to encounter that work in the context of the city where it was created—the sight of of the demolished textile factories, the smell of the city , etc,-- you have all these experiences before you even look at the work.

VCD: Music is an important presence in a number of your works. What role does it play in your creative process?

KN: Despite the painstaking working method, I’m always trying to achieve  a balance between control and chance, between the rational and the emotional. Sometimes the physical presence of the work can feel a little too designed. That is where music comes in. For me music is like free-style brushwork, it allows me to  create an environment that is much more malleable and expressive, counterbalancing the rational and systematic elements of the work. I create all the music myself, both through composition and improvisation, and when the installation is in place the music is often randomly triggered through some kind of interactive device—another way to counterbalance the controlled elements like computer programming.

VCD: Is there a particularly important mentor who helped to influence your decision to become an artist and the distinctive way you approach the creative process?

KN: I think the person who influenced me most, whether as an artist or as a social being, is my grandfather. When he came to Hong Kong from China he had nothing, and he started out selling newspapers on the street. But he was a true philosopher—a kind of self-educated Confucian scholar, and a self-made man. When I was only three or four years old he would use metaphors to teach me philosophical concepts, and his influence laid the foundation for how I see the world. One of the things he always emphasized was the importance of achieving a balance in life between the rational and the emotional, even in art. He had a great appreciation of culture and tradition but he was also very aware that one has to work within the conditions of society, and not just be an artist secluded on a mountaintop. This is a capitalistic world, and we have to work within a set of rules: but art still has a place. In a way my grandfather’s view of the world is reflected in my going quite deeply  into both science and art, and pursuing my practice in a way that is very connected to society. His influence really became clear to me after we moved to Canada and I studied at an arts-oriented high school. Contrary to popular belief, I believed art was the most useful subject because it has a transformative effect on your ways of seeing and your relationship with the world. When I went on to Ryerson University I majored in new media and went deeply into communication theory, in particular the work of the Canadian philosopher Marshall McCluhan and his concept that the ‘medium is the message’. Over time what’s changed for me is my emphasis on reception—the way I rationally analyze how to disseminate an idea, and how it’s received by the audience. This is very different from an artistic process based on the single voice of the artist, where the artist may not really care how it’s received. For me the medium is the message, and the message is also the medium.

(A version of this article first appeared in the exhibition catalogue ‘in:between—works by kingsley ng’  published by Osage Gallery, Hong Kong, 2012)

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