The House Collective Unveils Encounters Across Cultures 2023

5 October 2023, Hong Kong – The House Collective announces the third iteration of its biennial programme, ‘Encounters Across Cultures’, which celebrates the immeasurable creativity fostered through multicultural and multidisciplinary collaboration. This year’s programme explores the intersection of technology and the creative arts through four multi-sensory data sculptures and music tracks, inspired by biometric data captured during journeys across four cities. ‘Encounters Across Cultures’ will open at The Upper House in Hong Kong, travelling to The Middle House in Shanghai, The Temple House in Chengdu and The Opposite House in Beijing.

 “Art and culture are part of The House Collective’s core DNA and values. Since the launch of Encounters Across Cultures in 2019, we’ve worked with global artists to stimulate creativity and showcase the power of collaboration across borders. This programme is not only an extension of The House Collective’s values, but we also hope to invite our guests to explore the beauty of cross-cultural connections, and to be immersed in this unique and sensory art experience together.” – Teresa Muk, Head of Brand and Strategic Marketing at Swire Hotels.

In their first ever collaboration, Hong Kong based artist and music producer Vicky Fung and media artist Keith Lam have created a series of multi-sensory data sculptures that follow four travellers - guitarist Tjoe, erhuist Chu Wan Pin, and themselves - as they tour four cities. Creating a tangible journey for audiences, ‘Encounters Across Cultures’ weaves together all of these stories to create four musical pieces and data sculptures, designed with soundscape recordings of the musicians’ movements and biometric data, such as pulse and skin resistance. The process includes Lam’s representation of this biometric data into emotive graphics, which Fung reshapes into musical tracks; the biometric data is then transformed into data sculptures that embody each traveller’s visceral sense of the city. The four Houses will host the installations, capturing these private journeys into one shared experience for visitors. 

 “I do not see the biometric data that we have collected as cold and lifeless data points – instead each biometric moment is a representation of the traveller’s thoughts and feelings through their movements, and their changing reactions as they enter new environments. We wanted to share our heartbeats, our senses of touch and sight, with everyone through this immersive installation so that they could really feel exactly as we did in each city.” – Keith Lam, Programme Artist.

 “While we may come from very different backgrounds and live in different places, when I studied the biometric data, I found that we were all experiencing similar feelings and emotional journeys. The installation brought us closer together, as I felt totally connected to the person on the other side.” – Vicky Fung, Programme Artist.

 “Earlier this year, we celebrated the brand’s expansion in Tokyo through a cross-disciplinary dance performance that tells the story of honoured tradition, modernity, harmony and new possibilities. For this year’s Encounters Across Cultures, The House Collective continues to tell cross-disciplinary stories, pushing the boundaries of innovation and delving into the dynamic realm of Art Meets Tech. Through these programmes, we aim to share unforgettable experiences with our guests and expose them to locally curated artistic flavours, where we offer the comfort of being Houses not Hotels.” – Dean Winter, Managing Director at Swire Hotels.

Guests are invited to take a seat on the multi-sensory data sculptures, where they can be immersed in the music created from the biometric data. The result is a feast of exploration and interaction with their sense of touch, sight, and sound, thereby transforming the inexpressible into explicable.

Spread across the four Houses, ‘Encounters Across Cultures’ will open at The House Collective throughout October until the beginning of next year.