No. 1	No. 3	No. 4

Melting Squares (2005)

A digital collage created from 20 video images
1470cm x 370cm; 4 editions for each version
Lambda print on photo paper framed in wooden case (1.5 inches thick) with glass front
From the "Hong Kong City Space" series

The 1st edition of No. #1 was sold on November 10, 2005 at Para/Site Art Space’s fund-raising auction, Hong Kong. Version #2 was kept by a private collector. No. 1 and 3 were presented at the Asia Hotel Art Fair, Feb 25-27, 2011, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, at Jiang Art Gallery.

The Melting Squares series (2005) is created from a video segment of about 10 seconds from my digital video diaries. By re-arranging selected stills from the segment on a flat surface, I express time spatially, and compress spaces of different moments onto a singular rectangular whole (frame). Smoothly dripping rain water in the original footage was turned ambiguously nightmarish, contemplating the anonymity of the cell-based residential architecture of densely populated Hong Kong.

Creation Process:

From the video segments made on a rainy day, I extracted various still frames, de-interlaced them and saved in jpeg format. I finally chose 20 stills, printed them, and arrange them in two juxtaposed columns of 10 each to form a longitudinal shape of an endlessly soaring building of fractured surfaces and wild self-multiplication. A digital draft of the collage was created, which was then transposed onto Photoshop for treatment of the marks between the stills. The final work was printed on a single-sheet photo paper before framing.

The view:

The original scene was the window view from my home on a typhoon day in 2000. Rain was pouring endlessly.

Exact location: top floor (23rd floor) of Jing Tai Garden, no. 27 Robinson Road, looking on to Block 2 of the Grand Panorama (no. 10, Robinson Road), Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong.

Framed works at Asia Hotel Art Fair 2011

Examples of original component video image used to form the digital collage