Is an immersive exhibition that uncovers the  forgotten technological sites and infrastructures shaping Hong Kong ...  Through ghost-hunting devices, lingering signals, archival traces and networked shadowplay. 

hong kong stands as a beacon of economic vitality and strong consumer power, continuously upgrading its technological infrastructure to maintain its competitive edge. yet the relentless pace of renewal has left many facilities obsolete — sites that once thrived are now overlooked. this cycle of rapid replacement creates ruptures between forgotten infrastructures and contemporary urban development, prompting questions around these untold stories. what physical traces have these legacies left? how have they disturbed the present? what energy flows whisper about their current conditions?

the exhibition examines evolving and often neglected technological sites across hong kong and the pearl river delta, archiving a selection of the invisible infrastructures that underpin urban development and impact today’s generative AI systems. beyond researching sites of technological significance through public sources, cyanne navigates selected locations with self-made “ghost-hunting” devices that record environmental parameters, including currents, heat, and network presence, as a symbolic act to sense their continuous lingering presence today.

in a dark room repurposed from a former slaughterhouse, the ghost-hunting devices and their collected "anomalous" noise signals are reactivated in a twenty-one minute shadow play merging travelling scenes fed through vintage equipment, data visualisations, uncatchable spotlights, digital shadow hunting, humming field recordings, archived ghost stories, and generative projections to make the interrelations among facilities across time and space tangible.

the machines wake up and communicate opaquely, sharing clues from interactive place-name prompts from hong kong and guangdong province to imaginative quotations of research pointing to these locations’ significance in technological histories.

the eerie imagery and sound creates a polyphonic collage that is automatically conducted by wireless networked communication between the main interface, sculptural devices and the assembly of other hardware. as a visitor you influence the play by wandering around the 3D environment by triggering text based stories from the archive about the locations causing changes in the exhibition space.
the lantern projections reflect on decision-makers’ faith in advancing intelligence by extracting data and earthly resources to mobilise the "unstoppable hunger” and costs of our need for technological advancement.

the immersive spatial arrangement and controlled sequence of revealed elements recall the phantasmagoria, screen illusion theatre in the late 18th century. designed to immerse audiences in controlled encounters with fear (through ghosts, political specters, corpses and demons) in a believable yet imaginary horror experience. phantasmagoria is characterised by atmospheric settings that involve projections from magic lanterns, sound, and smoke, which rely heavily on technology while intentionally obscuring its mechanisms creating a communal rehearsal space for modern anxieties. as an early commodification of designed experience, the term now describes how capitalism transforms material and social relations into seductive images that appear natural, autonomous, and self-animated.

rather than reproducing fear, this exhibition repurposes the emotionally manipulated space so that ‘ghosts’ illuminate the past (archival information) and the present (environmental parameters) of vanished and newly renovated facilities. considering technology not as seamless progress but as deeply haunted, material, and entangled with histories of (emotional) labour, control and capitalism, the experience calls for critical remembrance and further inquiry.

energy imported from the daya bay nuclear power station, e-waste processing facilities located within WEEE · PARK, the informal repair and repurposing ecosystems in shenzhen’s huaqiangbei and the soon to be opened highly energy consuming largest datacenter sandy ridge facility are woven into a symphony by DIY making and hacking interventions. mapping a partially perceptible spatial diagram of hong kong and its surrounding regions, shaped by the interplay of power, matter, and signal, is a first step away from the passive role of consumerism.

curatorial statement text by: doris poon


sound: ymer marinus, the living void - QTHQ

project developed during a 2 month residency in hong kong at videotage
curated by | 策劃：doris poon 潘韻怡
coordination and execution | 統籌及執行：chung wing shan, stanley ng 鍾詠珊、吳栢榮
visual design | 視覺設計：lokto 
sound design and technical expertise | 聲音設計及技術支援：the living void – ymer marinus
image courtesy of the artist and videotage
photography: felix sc wong
presented by | 主辦：videotage 錄映太奇
supported by | 資助：stimuleringfonds
venue sponsor | 場地支援：V54 

spectral_meters
these handheld devices are used to log environmental data/noise, they consist of different sensors to capture parameters among: temperature, wi-fi networks, current draw, magnitude, electro magnetic frequency, humidity, bluetooth. they are inspired on shenzhen’s DIY 随身充电测试电源 (portable charging test power supply), bricolages of power banks held together by hot-melt glue or electrical tape to measure electrical currents of second hand phones and gadgets. travel log of measuring environmental noise and signals with spectral_meters at first telegraph cable huts on hong kong island, informal repair markets, recycle hubs and more.


toxic_lanterns
3 dwelling cyber sculptures, waking up on their own terms and sharing readings from recordings of networked presence captured by spectral_meters or prompting keywords from research sources: glitch feminism - legacy russel and updating to remain the same - wendy hui kyong chun.

phantasmagoria_index
spatial archive of observations and found background information about locations in pearl river delta of technological infrastructural importance in past and presence in the categories: power, signal and matter. with focus on ecological damage, early communication infrastructure, data harvesting and processing, replication, informal markets and sustaining of current generative AI services. triggered via game environment.

decompression_spine
cybersculpture with local language model (ollama) feedback loop. among procedural animations, within the 21 minutes it takes sentences from research on ghosts and sociological imagination on haunting inspired by the publication ghostly matters of avery gordon, and compresses the meaning in 3 steps to a single word - to then reverse engineer it back into a sentence deriving from its initial meaning. this feedback loop shows how digital ghosts appear, and how data anomalies are closely tied to heuristic filtering, (manual) labelling of data and large scale scraping of online available content.


middle: spectral_meters_log
data visualisation processing the ‘anomalies’ logged by spectral_meters converting them into sigils as reminders for the future.