Videotage is proud to present Hong Kong-based Portuguese artist Joao Vasco Paiva as the first selected artist-in-residence of fuse:: residency program 2010. The objective of fuse:: residency program has always been encouraging individuals interested in the field of new media art, be it art & technology, art & science or art & anything, to create new works. With the support from Videotage, Joao Vasco Paiva will bring the audience a new sculptural sound installation Chirps, through which he creates a score by determining rules.

The prototype of the work (v1) was presented in the Microwave International New Media Art Festival 2009 in which a set of toy birds performed a sequence of calls and movement interfered by the passers-by at the lobby of Langham Hotel, while this time, Vasco has made the toy birds migrate to the raw space of Videotage where they would react to the motion and sound of a new player – a real mynah bird.

This autonomous species, with its amazing imitative abilities, will respond to the sounds and motion of the 120 plastic birds while the electronic songbirds inherit their own kind of copying ability and react to the environment accordingly. The duo combination is a blown-up orchestra inviting visitors to observe both the psychology and intelligence of the natural-born and the computational singers. Together they become a feedback loop system, a true cybernetic nature.

“Every toy bird is built with an audio sample and movements that resemble the real birds, a cheap attempt to emulate the real ones. The mechanical bird is therefore the perfect object to create an artificial output based on the natural conditions of the environment. The sound and motion of the mynah bird will be used as the value that calibrates the amount of voltage sent to control the movement of the bird toys and the playback of the samples. With amazing imitative abilities, the mynah bird will respond to the sounds and motion of the plastic birds. This process will create a feedback loop, the circuit direction will be from the reading of the mynah bird’s behavior to the interference of the work itself with the environment. The orchestra will be divided into several groups and each group will have its own interpretation of the given data. The overall musicality from the bird toys together with the myna bird will be the final product of the piece.” — Joao Vasco Paiva

Joao Vasco Paiva is a Portuguese artist currently living in Hong Kong. His work is based on the exploration of sound and visuals produced through the isolation of physical patterns. He uses digital and analog systems to depict scores in everyday life situations and rearrange them as sound and visual compositions. He presents his work as live performances, single channel videos and audio visual installations. He graduated from a Fine Arts Degree in Porto Art School. (E.S.A.P.) In 2006 he was awarded with a 2 years scholarship from Fundacao Oriente, a Portuguese Foundation that supports young artists in Asia. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Media in the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where he currently teaches. His work has been showed in festivals such as FILE Hypersonica International Festival of Electronic Language, London Exploratory Music Festival, Athens Video Art Festival, CityTransit, 2pi Festival, Hong Kong and Shenzen Architecture and Urbanism Biennial and other venues and locations in Beijing Hong Kong, London, Porto, Hangzhou, Sao Paulo and Vienna.