ECHOES, Art x Technologies Experimentation: A Collaboration of Media Art 2022

New Normal has now a different meaning in the context of the current situations. We need maintaining in stabilities as a balance of life and it has become more vital issues in the contemporary world. The project is focused on the reflections of Art and the eco-system and it is a response to technology that infiltrates our daily life.

The project will redefine the connection of digital culture and human life in the nature surrounding us, and to know “how we should be reliable in this media & technology era after 2020 pandemic. In Myanmar, media art is still rare, being a narrow field that is a lack of experimental practices in art, but some of creative motivations of everyday global phenomena effectively stimulates to new generation’s interests with these experiments such as using videos or sounds to create art. The technol ogy gives the easy accessible information to us and so, we are familiar in social media.

At present, the resources of environments provide the utmost insight into the knowl edge required for creative living and its possibilities. This program will give more time to criticize with the artists who have been working intensely with technology matters by artistic responses to it. The program included the online workshop and discussions in various ways of communication in between 2021-2022 and in the moments under many crisis and difficulties of time.

The paper man (Still from video) 2022, by Han Lynn, Thura Aung Swe

Art has a sense of resonance from one person to anoth er and a direct echo from one situation to another, for example intermediate object, period of time and it can also affect indirectly through location and appearance. When a voice is too loud to be heard, we will be deaf. The present time of Epidemic is for mankind for instant chal lenges. When war-mongering and doubt-and-anxiety become loud and clear, a negative space has quietly appeared along with the trauma of grief.

Silence is not meant to be present in peace. Loss of human life denotes disappearances and breakdowns both physically and mentally, and then the nega tive space appears in our mind when it hits on it. That space is something that does not exist materially, but possesses its own space. Something removed replac es that thing in situ. From the Buddha, we learn the grace of absence and it has been a negative space dissolving the material world and the other side for us, and provides alternative perspectives. What reso nances will be left in the wake of the collapses?

In the history of art, with the emergence of the Fluxus movement since the 1950s, it has put its influences on the minimal art and conceptual ideas. Fluxus started from various fields such as methodology, independent testing and movement rather than art theories. It is a kind of revolution in the conceptual era, especially the dominance of materialism in art. Against the influence of bourgeois ideas, it is the acceptance and response to new industrial technologies.

Last October 2013, MoMA in New York organized a major art exhibition titled “There Will Never Be Silence*”. The first experimental works of 54 prominent Fluxus, Minimal Art and Conceptual artists are presented with an archive collection. In particular, it is based on an original score of the 4’33” piece of music that was created by John Cage in 1952. John Cage’s 4 minutes and 33 seconds (Silent piece) is a musical experiment without sound that was Media Art in the 60s. It is an example of the visual arts that influenced Parfum and Minimalism. His idea is that silence is the sound of the negative space. Silence is his ambient music. Later Minimalism’s concept of negative space was based on this concept.

ECHOES: Art x Technology Experimentation project is based on this negative space ideology and we per ceive it through our surroundings rather than directly heard impacts. Those resonances are the destruc tions between the post-apocalyptic future and the present. It is the echoes of resilience and empathy that leave us with scars of loss and pains. The shape of these echoes can be realities, imaginary objects and it may reveal as surrealistic dreams or sci-fiction imaginations.

Moreover, their realm is free from natural existence and it is a disappearance disappears from the out side world we have ever lived and things that may don’t not really exist.

* https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1386?

LOST IN THE HELL FIRE STORM

by Siang Pi and Musica Htet

Stopmotion-animation video, 12 mins, color, sound, Digital

Concept Description

History repeats around the world as we speak about good and evil. War, power struggle, pandemic and coup around the world show us earth is not wor thy for humans to live. I wish the multiverse really existed and I would love to live in another mulit-verse of Myan mar.

Sometimes we wish time machines could work based on our fantasy of science fiction movies. Can we travel back to the past to stop evil before its reach to full potential. It’s been two year, working on everything with depression. The story behind the animation is based on the current failed state situation. So many good friends and family left us to believe in justice and gave moral support to deal with this current situation. The energy from the animation artist and the experimental music will take you to the journey of cosmic nightmare.

Artwork Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14-N9iZQ-IP70FDl1yqG c2PTTOs9ZZ1od/view?usp=sharing

Art by Siang Pi Music by Musica Htet, collective Trio, Synth - Sammy Ivory, Violin - Kam Seng Aung, Double Bass - Musica Htet

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

LOST IN THE HELL FIRE STORM (Still from video) 2022, by Siang Pi, Kyaw Zin Htat(Musica Htet)

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

Han Lynn (Poem)/ Thura Aung Swe (3D animation)

Concept Description

Paper tiger, which is commonly used as a metaphor/ symbol in origami tradition and paper figures is already known as not only the art world but also to the hobbies. we thought it should be said that in Burmese, there is only gesture/imitations but neither actions nor real taste. As an audience, we think you will see a hence of Paper Man from this word “Paper Tiger’s depth.

We think that the country is facing a different form of loss of human identity of the modern era. Under a specific system, we are nothing either in type of paper (symbol) or paper people(imagination). Speaking as a personal feelings, just we noticed that our wounds and traumas remain like scars. It was a piece of paper full of folds and breaks like in the last stanza of the poem.

Similarly, our country is a sheet of paper full of wrinkled and crushed.

Artwork Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19awVDv73dEC ZqyxY-6pfo_i6mWQZFaUv/view?usp=sharing

RITE OF THE OCEAN

by

Pinky Htut Aung (Music) / Zune Htet(3D Environment & Poem) 3D animation video, 12 mins, color, sound, 16:9

of the Ocean’ is an immersive audiovisu al experience, part of ‘Oceans of Sacrifice’ saga which will be in the form of a 3D game environment. The saga chronicles the story of a heroine as she explores un known territories of her environment and her psyche to uncover the hidden depth of her being as she embraces her truth and courage. Bodies adrift across the sands of time. Static crackles, spectres rain, echoing across her heart chambers. Threads infinite tears through the veins. The body erodes Into a thousand shards of selves shimmering... murmuring... birthing... From the ocean, she rises, blooms.

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

ARTIST PROFILES

Musica Htet (Sound artist)

Musica Htet was born in Yangon and works as a recording engineer, experimental music producer, and curator grounded in Southeast Asia. He studied Contra Bass extended technique and experimental noise music under Brian O’Reilly with further studies in noise and sonic texture development in sound art.

Htet began his solo noise practice at Yangon Gallery in 2014 and released his first noise track overseas with other Southeast Asian experimental artists under the album name NOT YOUR WORLD MUSIC.

Htet co-founded Noise in Yangon with Slyne Non (Crazy Eel Society) in 2017, an experimental community of energetic young musicians from different backgrounds that puts on performances, workshops, and other social activities.

Siang Pi (Digital Illustrator)

Siang Pi was born in Tee tain, Chin State in 1996. He arrived in Yangon in 2015, and joined the art class in SPACE ART SCHOOL for his first art learning and practicing. In 2017 he work at Mr.Blue cartoon contents Company and started working as an artist.

His first participation in the art exhibition was “10th Anniversary of SPACE ART Students exhibition on February 7, 2018 in SPACE ART studio.

He Participated in the Comic artist exhibition “Heart For Art” in september 2018. Now, he is working as a comic artist at Mr Blue company and working in digital drawing and illustrations.

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

Thura Aung Swe (CG artist)

Thura Aung Swe is a professional CG artist and 3D creator based in Yangon, Myanmar since 2026. He works many commercial project for computer generated works and 3D modeling works for local TV channels and advertising agencies. He was a self-taught artist in CG art and now based in Yangon.

Han Lynn (Poet and sound artist)

He was born in Yangon in January 1986. He grew up in Kalaw with pine scents. He only writes poetry as a creative work. His poems and translations of international poetry are found in anthologies and periodicals. He is the author of some poetry collections. His poems have been featured in literary magazines in America, Australia, Bangladesh, Chile, The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, Zimbabwe and Taiwan. His poems are translated into German, English, Bengali, Chinese, and Spainish languages. He participated in international literary festivals and completed resendies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Singapore, Germany and Chile to read poetry and papers. He co-founded “Be Untexed,” an online international literary journal featuring the works of local and international writers and visual artists, with his fellow poets. He is currently working as a translator and a guitar teacher.

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

Pinky Htut Aung is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and experimental artist active since 2013. Coming from a family of musicians, playing musical instruments was part of growing up for her. Since she was young, she has been pursuing her dream to be a musician, while painting and crafting as her hobbies, or a kind of therapy to overcome her social anxiety. Pinky’s first multimedium installation in 2018; ‘Cloud are Thoughts’, encouraged her to further explore visual arts, and has been actively painting and composing for social movements and participating in group exhibitions as an emerging transdisciplinary artist ever since. She is also an active member of Noise in Yangon, a small experimental community from Myanmar and a band Bouhinga

https://www.instagram.com/pinkyhtut/ https://soundcloud.com/pinky-htut-aung

Pinky Htut Aung (Artist/Musician)

ZUNE (Thoughtform)

ZUNE also known as Thoughtform is a multidisciplinary designer and visual artist, working across physical and digital media. She graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore with BA (Hons) in Design Communication and has been working as a designer, art director and 3D artist ever since. Immensely inspired by nature, science fiction and mythology, she conjures fantastical landscapes of the unfamiliar and unknown through evocative visual narrative in the form of 3D art, motion graphics, and live projections. Traversing across different mediums, her bodies of work range from graphic art such as album artworks, publications and logo identities to designing spaces in both physical and virtual forms existing as film sets and exhibition spaces. Currently, she is exploring virtual spaces and creative coding, and drawing occasionally.

Instagram: @i.am.zune Website: https://www.iamzune.com/

ECHOES Art x Technologies Experimentation/ Collaboration of Multidisciplinary & Media Art

This electronic catalogue is published on the occasion of the work shop “ECHOES, Art x Technologies Experimentation: A Collabora tion of Media Art 2022 online program supported by The Goethe Institut Yangon, Reconnect program in 2020-2021. Ogranized and planning by SoCA, Contemporary Art Project Myanmar.

ပဲ့တင်ရိုျ်ခတ်ခခင်း

CATALOGUE:

Written by: Aung Myat Htay, Co-written by: Artists and their collaborators, Edited by: Sun Lin Tun, Translated by: SOCA Project Team and Artists-self Design by: SOCA Team

Supported By: Goethe Institut, Yangon, Myanmar

Published by: SOCA contemporary Art Project, Myanmar Publish Date: September, 2022

Special Thanks to: All participants Artists, Collective Trio, Sammy Ivory, Kam Seng Aung with Musica Htet, Moe Myat May Zarchi, Zoncy (Zon Zapal Phyu), Khin Sandar Nyunt.

Copyright c 2022 by SOCA Art Project, Artists and Authors O

ECHOES, Art x Technologies Experimentation: A Collaboration of Media Art 2022