artist statement
I am interested in the creation of performance apparatuses. Many of these apparatuses are made for a performing arts context and they are made different for each piece: a combination of hardware and software embedded with rules and behaviours, often with human performers.
With each apparatus, I want to create variable and generative structures that reduce the cognitive load on human performers, freeing them to be present and actively making decisions. I want each performance to be meaningfully different every time. I want the audience to understand things are unfolding as they see it.
Recently, the creation of these apparatuses have been driven by game mechanics. What hardware and software is required to drive a mechanic? How does the player / performer interact with it and how can the audience come to understand it over time?
My original training is in acoustic and electroacoustic music composition, but I have worked in many different performing arts contexts. These apparatuses are an attempt to engage with challenges found in the musical score, devised theatre, and task-based movement creation. In my own practice, I am trying to pivot from working with pitch, rhythm, and timbre to the creation of mechanics that can be “functional" in new-found contexts.
These goals are coupled with a renewed interest in speculative fiction.
In this framework, I want to examine the role of human labour, skills, and decision making as the world shifts to automation, and is governed by algorithmic processes of our own creation. Through the use of storytelling, I desire to position these actions as hopeful and humane acts within authoritarian and oppressive systems.
[ updated March 31, 2024 ]
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biography
Remy Siu 蕭逸南 (b.1990) is a composer and new media artist based in Vancouver, BC (located on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nations of the Coast Salish peoples).
Recently, his work has involved the construction of automated and variable performance apparatuses that employ light, sound, software, and the body. He is interested in creating friction and stakes between the performer, the interface, and the system through the use of game mechanics and failure. His output spans chamber music, dance, theatre, installations, and audio-visual work.
He actively creates with Hong Kong Exile, Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien, Vicky Chow, Howie Tsui, Theatre Replacement, and others.
His work has been presented at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), The Music Gallery (Toronto), Centre for New Music (San Francisco), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong), Vancouver Art Gallery, MUTEK Montreal, artsdepot (London), MATA (New York) Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Utrecht), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, The International Symposium On Electronic Art, and more.
Remy studied at Simon Fraser University Contemporary Arts with David MacIntyre, Owen Underhill, and Barry Truax. He has also studied with Rodney Sharman.
In 2021, he founded sunset visitor 斜陽過客, an independent video game studio focused on narrative experiences. He is also currently the Co-Artistic Director of Hong Kong Exile.
He has held other various positions, such as Founder and Manager at the Gold Saucer Studio, Curator-in-Residence at Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, and Composers-in-Residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada). In 2019, he was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award. In 2024, his work on 1000xRESIST (debut video game) was nominated for three Independent Game Festival (IGF) Awards: Excellence In Narrative, the Nuovo Award, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.