M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, will present Legible City Hong Kong, the latest iteration of the pioneering media artwork Legible City (1989–1991) by Jeffrey Shaw (born 1944), made in collaboration with Hong Kong fiction writer Dung Kai-cheung (born 1967). In this work, visitors are invited to ride a stationary bicycle, which is connected to a large screen that displays a digital landscape of Hong Kong, where the rider roams freely. The interactive installation will open to the public free of charge at M+’s Found Space from Friday, 19 July to Sunday, 6 October 2024. On Friday nights during the exhibition period, the M+ Facade will livestream directly from the installation, showing visitors’ journeys in real time. On other nights, the facade will show a video recording of the work.

Legible City Hong Kong presents a digital landscape based on the Central, Sheung Wan, and Sai Ying Pun neighbourhoods in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The buildings are replaced by 3D bold text adapted from the third part of Dung’s novel Hong Kong Type: A Love Letter Late for One Hundred and Fifty Years, a tragic love story set in nineteenth-century Hong Kong. As visitors journey through this city of words, they encounter Dung’s text, rendered in Hong Kong Type, a movable typeface invented in the city more than a hundred years ago. Legible City Hong Kong is Shaw’s tribute to the city, its remarkable topography, and the many stories that have unfolded here.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says, ‘We are thrilled to unveil a new addition to Jeffrey Shaw’s iconic interactive work at M+. This commissioned work will be presented at M+ Found Space and on the M+ Facade, two distinct and versatile spaces that speak to the museum’s role of inspiring and engaging the public through visual culture. The unprecedented collaboration between Jeffrey Shaw and Dung Kai-cheung on Legible City Hong Kong will bring a unique art experience, enriched with elements of our city to our audience from Hong Kong and abroad.’

Kate Gu, Associate Curator, Digital Special Projects, M+, says, ‘In the original Legible City, created between 1989 and 1991, the utilisation of 3D computer graphics and real-time interactive technology attached to a bicycle was groundbreaking. This allowed for a more participatory and bodily experience, in contrast to the common use of computer mice and joysticks in artworks at the time. Visitors could embark on a physical, psychological, and aesthetic journey when navigating a 3D text-based digital cityscape. Thirty-five years since its inception, the work continues to prompt interest in meaning-making and interaction in a hybrid world of the physical and the virtual, the real and the imagined, mediated by screens.’

Jeffrey Shaw says, ‘It is a great pleasure to present a new version of Legible City at M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture. A milestone in my artistic practice, this work is a new iteration of Legible City, with its urban architecture of re-combinatory narrative representations that are now located in Hong Kong and formed by Chinese characters. As such, the work also expresses my appreciation for the profound influence this city has had on my life and art practice. And I am very grateful to Dung Kai-cheung, whose intriguing love story enlivens Legible City Hong Kong with such literary ingenuity.’

Dung Kai-cheung says, ‘I am delighted to co-create Legible City Hong Kong with Jeffrey Shaw for M+. This innovative and immersive work offers me the opportunity to incorporate storytelling while representing the city through a typeface deeply connected to its history. The unique experience provided by this work allows us to travel not only through space but also through time, to the heart of our beloved city. It is a moving love letter in both the metaphorical and literal senses. Thanks to Jeffrey Shaw for making it possible.’

For more information about the installation at Found Space and the screening on M+ Facade, please refer to the M+ website.

About Jeffrey Shaw

Jeffrey Shaw (born 1944, Australia) has been a leading figure in new media art since its emergence from the performance, expanded cinema, and installation paradigms of the 1960s to their technologised and virtualised forms in the present day. He has pioneered the creative use of digital media technologies in the fields of expanded cinema, virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualisation environments, navigable cinematic systems, and interactive narratives. Shaw’s artworks are milestones of technological and cultural innovation that have had a seminal impact on the theory, design, and application of digital media in art, society, and industry, and his artistic achievements are among the most cited in new media literature. These include Corpocinema (1969), Viewpoint (1975), the laser and slideshows for the world tours of British rock band Genesis in the mid-1970s, Points of View (1983), Narrative Landscape (1985), Inventer la Terre (1986), Heavens Gate (1987), Legible City (1989), The Virtual Museum (1991), EVE (1993), Golden Calf (1995), conFiguring the CAVE (1997), The Web of Life (2000), PLACE-Hampi (2006), T_Visionarium (2008), Pure Land (2012), The Infinite Line (2014), Recombinatory Poetry Wheel (2018), and WYSIWYG (2019). His works have been presented at various galleries and institutions, including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kunsthalle Bern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Hayward Gallery in London.

About Dung Kai-cheung

Dung Kai-cheung (born 1967, Hong Kong) is one of the most prominent writers in Hong Kong. His work explores the possibilities of literary genres and forms and encompasses subject matter from historical recreation to futuristic imagination. He began writing in the early 1990s and has published more than thirty titles in Chinese. Among them, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, Cantonese Love Stories, The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera, and A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On have been translated into English, and a number of Dung’s shorter pieces have been translated into English, French, Dutch, Swedish, Macedonian, and Japanese. Since winning the Unitas Fiction Award for New Writers in 1994, Dung has received numerous literary awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan, including the Jury Awards from the Dream of the Red Chamber Award: The World’s Distinguished Novel in Chinese (2006, 2008, 2020); the Hong Kong Book Prize (2011, 2017, 2018, 2020); Artist of the Year (Literary Arts) from the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards (2008); Writer of the Year at Hong Kong Book Fair (2014); and Grand Prize (Fiction) at the Taipei International Book Exhibition (2019). Dung graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Philosophy degree in comparative literature.

About M+

M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, it is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. M+ is a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District

The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.