Haiijaii by CeeKayEllo Limited
Abstract
Haiijaii (meaning “breathe” in Thai) is a light installation fueled by data of air quality index collected from various locations around the world. The lights “breathe” according to the pureness of the air. Some will flicker, emulating us choking from pollution and some will pulse slowly, like steady inhalation and exhalation from a healthy atmosphere.
Description
Haiijaii first came about as 4 creatives, Adulaya Kim Hoontrakul (Curator), Ka Lun Karen Chan (Neon artist and designer), Frederic Bussiere (Architect and Multimedia designer) and Santipab Somboon (Multimedia designer), got together to discuss the notion of air quality and carbon emission.
What is bad air? Is data enough to make people aware and react? Also, is the air quality index weaponised?
Factual as it may be, many richer countries off-set their carbon emission through buying power, leaving poorer countries with a consistent data that categorises them permanently as ‘polluted’ and hardly have good air.
With Haiijaii, we chose to communicate suffocation through the flickering lights of recycled glass neons. Some will have sharp flashes, some will pulsate slower, emulating breathing patterns affected by pollution.
The audience are invited to breathe along with the rhythm of the light to feel the urgency through surrogate.
When the body is used to receive information, we believe the impact is greater. Through the natural act of breathing, the common act of survival, we hope to not only unite but to find that missing link that has created such a polarised world we live in today.
Art x Sustainability
The art installation is made out of recycled used and unwanted materials, Haiijaii aims to give a second life to the preloved, and promotes sustainability in all the materials we use.
Sustainable materials
In this modern single-usage era, we would like to restate the practice of giving a “second life” to our preloved items. Ranging from bamboo woods, commercial neon signs, beach mats. These materials serve as visual stimulations for inspiring cohabitation in the world; the city, the forest and the beach, nourishing them, nourishing us.
Neon – The intangible cultural visual language
We have reconstructed used and unwanted commercial neons, and giving them a new life in terms of visual shape and purpose.
In Haiijaii, our art installation, each set of neon piece represents a country or region.
Traditional commercial use of neon light peaked its height in the 1950s, where it became the inspiration for a lot of futuristic sci-fi movies.
With its downturn due to the rise of commercial LED neons and lightboxes as well as global government regulations, neon became a declining and shrinking scene globally. However in recent years, there has been an artistic revival reformation to bring back the neon, as seen around the world in art works, commercial spaces and signage.
Designer Profiles
CeeKayEllo Limited
We are an art-design studio focused on exhibition and art-related projects, specialised in light art installations.
We are storytellers that collaborate with local artists and designers in our design projects.
We redefine and repurposes technology to provide alternative creative solutions in our projects.
We are also a member under the Hong Kong Design Incubation Programme, supported by the Hong Kong Design Centre.
Our site-specific works have been seen in Wonderfruit Festival in Thailand, Grand Hyatt, EAST Hotel, Tai Kwun, KONG Art Space, Public tram #61 and Kerry Centre in Hong Kong.
Most importantly, we value and respect the wisdom in traditional crafts, and hence we launch non-commercial local craft x art programme every year.
Ka Lun Karen Chan (aka chankalun)
As the Creative Director of CeeKayEllo (CKL), chankalun is also the only female neon artist-designer and practitioner in Hong Kong.
Based in Hong Kong, Netherlands and France, chankalun has a background of set design, visual merchandising and a master degree of Design and Technology at Parsons School of Design.
With her strong background in set design and quality of attentive to designs from her visual merchandising work experience at a luxury brand, Karen is now focused on exhibition design with multimedia and interactive installations, and has been organising and curating different commercial exhibitions and non-profit passion projects such as #BotoxTempleStreet at a clay pot rice restaurant on Temple Street, ``Step Ink Side``, a designed Tilt Brush artwork and VR installation for Chloe Ho's solo exhibition, “Ascendence” at Hong Kong Arts Centre, multimedia installations for Peter Yuill’s solo exhibition, “Absurdity of Meaning” at KONG Art Space, “My Light, My Hood” at KONG Art Space and “Classic Craft, Modern Meaning”, the first public moving tram exhibition in Hong Kong.
Ranged from works that involve ribbon, 3D doodling, and interactive LED neon light, chankalun is expanding into large-scale neon light art installations. Her works have been seen on Wallpaper Magazine, Time Out Bangkok, #Hashtag Legend, SCMP, Goldthread, TVB Sunday Report, etc.
Adulaya Kim Hoontrakul
A Bangkok based art curator whose focus is on curatorial activism. She holds a graduate degree in History of Art and Archaeology with Music from SOAS and a postgraduate from Goldsmiths London in Asian Art Histories.
Kim has worked with multiple artist activists from around Asia Pacific, exhibiting social and politically engaging art.
Frederic Bussiere
Based in Amsterdam, French-Portuguese visual artist, Frederic graduated with a Master in Arts in France before starting an international career in Buenos Aires, Paris, Sydney, and Hong Kong. His rich travel experience has inspired him to have high flexibility in his wide range of artist approaches. Ranged from 2D animation, to fashion video, and visual arts, where he incorporates video projection, installation, new technologies and also handcrafts such as bamboo construction.
His recent works have been shown in Strasbourg, Mauritius, Thailand and Hong Kong.
Santipab Somboon
As a creative technologist based in New York, Santi holds a degree from the Parsons School of Design and the Bartlett School of Architecture.
His projects draw on the use of open-source data as a medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. His practice incorporates a range of artistic strategies: sound installation, photogrammetry, data visualization, and virtual reality.
Website: http://ceekayello.com/