Hong Kong Palace Museum | No Boundaries: Reinterpreting Palace Museum Culture

Waving Script

Designed to resonate with works in “The Making of Masterpieces: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Palace Museum”, on view in Gallery 8 until October 2022, Waving Script is a performative kinetic installation that synthesises the physical and the visual to convey the power of calligraphy. It features an artificial-intelligence engine programmed to create a new way of presenting characters. The robotic arm simulates the exchange of informatics in the human brain and encourages visitors to experience the process of poetic expression in calligraphy.

A Grandiose Fanfare

Inspired by the gilded bell and jade chime on display in “Entering the Forbidden City: Architecture, Collection, and Heritage” (Gallery 1), A Grandiose Fanfare fuses together the atmosphere of Qing court music with contemporary festive performances. Referencing firework displays in Hong Kong, the work is delivered through thirty-one audio channels and a kinetic installation. Expanding the definition of sound, it encourages visitors to experience various sonic “images” and meanings in different contexts.

Visualising the Universe through a Thousand Things

The installation is Hung Keung’s extension and reflection of two spatial concepts in traditional Chinese painting: “three distances” (san yuan) and “portraying the small through the large” (yida guanxiao). Using three sets of devices, each rotating around its own locus, the artist invites visitors to observe uncertainties of convention and distance, and to explore how Chinese culture transfixes across time and space.

Clock of Nature

The work is inspired by timepieces from the collection of the Qing court, several of which are on display in the opening exhibitions. The artist believes that both predetermined order and chaos can be observed in natural systems, such as the cycle of life and death and climate change. Clock of Nature responds to traditional machine design with modern engineering methods, presenting two realms of time—the regular and the irregular, the ordered and the chaotic—simultaneously.

Objectification

The artist is inspired by the multiple layers of heritage and tradition embedded in artefacts from China. Museum contexts often obscure or alter the original meanings of exhibits—through this installation, filled with whitened “antiquities”, the artist trys to re-establish the connection between visitor and object. With lighting effects, the work invites audiences to explore their readings of the Palace Museum collection when it is detached and disengaged from its historical context.

And the Rest is Stardust

This multisensory installation is inspired by traditional Chinese cosmology—specifically the belief that heaven is a dome that covers the square earth (tianyuan difang)—and the long history of the Forbidden City. Visitors are invited to experience a starry night sky reconstructed from archives of Qing astronomical data, which showcase the scientific achievements of the dynasty. Overlooked for hundreds of years, their significance was only recognised in the twentieth century. Within the artist’s oeuvre, it is a continuation of Hui’s exploration into science and the human understanding of the universe.