A Creative Dialogue between David Clarke and Chan Hing-yan
A Creative Dialogue between David Clarke and Chan Hing-yan
PORTRAITS OF THINGS: PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRUIT AND FLOWERS BY DAVID CLARKE
Period: March to September 2014
This exhibition consists of a series of photographic images depicting flowers and fruit that were previously shown at the University Museum and Art Gallery in November and December 2013 as part of a collaboration with composer Chan Hing-yan titled From Photography to Music: A Creative Dialogue between David Clarke and Chan Hing-yan. All the images except one were originally generated using Polaroid instant film, with the resultant images then being scanned at high resolution and printed at a larger scale as giclee (high quality ink-jet) prints on a suitable artist paper. No digital manipulation took place after scanning - the images that were printed were simply records of the impact on film chemicals of whatever light was allowed through the lens during exposure.
From Photography to Music: a Creative Dialogue between David Clarke and Chan Hing-yan
Professor David Clarke and Dr Chan Hing-yan
An earlier exhibition ran from 12 November to 1 December 2013 at the University Museum and Art Gallery.
Music live performances on November 12 at 6:30 pm and November 23 at 11:00 am.
The exhibition consisted of a series of photographic images depicting flowers and fruit. Photographer David Clarke originally generated these pictures using Polaroid instant film, with the resultant images then being scanned at high resolution and printed at a larger scale as giclée (high quality ink-jet) prints on a suitable artist paper. No digital manipulation took place after scanning - the images that were printed were simply records of the impact on film chemicals of whatever light was allowed through the lens during exposure. These photographs all received their first public showing at the exhibition, at a point in time when the visual world of Polaroid instant film has disappeared definitively into the past.
The photos were presented as part of a creative dialogue with the composer Chan Hing-yan, who has produced a new musical composition entitled Adieu Sequence in response to this body of works. Since the works themselves were produced by a migration from one medium to another (Polaroid film to digital print) they were already open to the idea that creativity might come from the shift between mediums, and thus were ready for an engagement of this kind, but of course a shift from photography to musical sound is an altogether more radical jump, and exciting for that very reason. Drawing on Clarke's images as a point of departure, Chan endows his Adieu Sequence with delicate sonic fragments and bids a musical farewell to a vanishing medium.
Click HERE to see the Exhibition Booklet
Click HERE to listen to Adieu Sequence
Click HERE to view the Score
Inspired by the performance on November 12, Dr Esther Cheung of the Department of Comparative Literature composed a poem which was subsequently read during the performance on November 23.
Moving Stillness
--Dedicated to David and Hing-yan