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Asia's first digital art fair comes to Hong Kong

By Joyce Yip | HK EDITION | Updated: 2021-09-24 14:02
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Hong Kong artist Tommy Fung likes playing with scale. His manipulated photographs are on show at Digital Art Fair Asia. [PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY]

Immediately after Christie's sold Beeple's non-fungible token collage, Everyday: The First 5,000 Days, for a record-smashing $69 million on March 11, Gillian Howard and Heiman Ng initiated the first of many meetings that would eventually lead to Asia's first digital art fair in a physical space. It opens in Hong Kong next week.

Sprawled out across a 1,858-square-meter space in Central, Digital Art Fair Asia will showcase 200 pieces of art, including NFT, augmented reality and virtual reality experiences, digital photography, interactive installations, animation and "basically anything that requires technology to produce and display," said Howard, co-director of DAFA.

Sponsored by cryptocurrency trading company Genesis Block Hong Kong and Shenzhen-based game developer Fire Rock Holdings, the fair is split into five zones dubbed Immersive, Prestige, Pioneer, New Media and Virtual Reality Art Experience. Highlight pieces include an ultra high-definition immersive art room designed by the Turkish new media artist Refik Anadol, known for his three-dimensional data sculptures beamed on tailor-made display screens.

Aside from NFT-helmed traditional pieces from the likes of Andy Warhol, also to be expected are animated works by Hong Kong-based photographer Derry Ainsworth and photo-manipulator Tommy Fung — better known by his Instagram handle, SurrealHK. Sound artist Henry Chu unveils the world's first blockchain piano which when played conjures up a psychedelic cryptograph on a screen. AI artist Victor Wong reinvents a few of his old installations for the fair. The Virtual Reality Art Experience Zone features works from the DSL Collection VR Art Museum established by Paris-based collectors Sylvian and Dominique Levy.

Most of the exhibits are new works, made exclusively for the fair, where artists and experts from the business and technology industries will be on hand to offer their insights into new media art.

At a time when pandemic-related travel restrictions are still in force, most participating artists had to be from Hong Kong. Howard hopes the fair will help create a sense of community often forgotten in digital spheres.

AI artist Wong said he wanted to highlight the importance of physical presence and interactivity in the digital space through his works, an idea which has assumed an extra layer of meaning since the pandemic began. His Butterflies of Hope installation, seen last November in Lee Tung Avenue, for instance, changes color in sync with background music. Another of his works, Bench over Troubled Water, is an interactive seat which simulates the undulating motions of the ocean, changing color and character in keeping with the user's movements.

"I was getting bored of looking at (traditional) paintings. Inspired by experiences like TeamLab, I thought, 'why don't we do this in Hong Kong?'" Howard said. The DAFA team sought out many of the digital artists featured in the fair, since they are relatively under-represented by the city's art galleries.

"I want people to talk about (digital) artists from Hong Kong. I want to build an ecosystem here," Howard said.

DAFA couldn't have been more timely. In the first quarter of 2021, digital art claimed more than one-third of total global online sales of art. Beeple's headlining sale this March alone accounted for 1 percent of that figure. However, many traditional artists and collectors openly wonder if collecting digital art, particularly NFTs, isn't a sales gimmick and a passing fad.

Both Howard and Wong said such skepticism is a prerequisite to any form of art that's still in the evolution stage.

"People said Van Gogh's works were garbage when they came out. Look at him now. That's the phase digital art and NFTs are going through currently," Wong said. "We look forward to feedback from people who have no idea what an NFT or digital art is. Hopefully, the fair will offer some explanation as to how they can appreciate and/or collect it."

If you go

Digital Art Fair Asia

Dates: Sept 30 to Oct 17

Venue: Ground Floor, Asia Standard Tower, 59-65 Queen's Road, Central

https://www.digitalartfair.io/

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