Chi Yung’s work is fascinating. On one hand it evokes something universal. On the other hand it’s a rich sharing of his own personal and deep experience, like the way a composer would do it through music. As a doctor, I wish such experience were given to some patients who need support and care, especially before something stressful.

 

Dr Bernard Delvaux, MD, Department Of Anaesthesiology
Hopital Privé Claude Galien, Quincy-Sous-Sénart, France

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Experience and research teach us that being totally focussed is best practiced with our eyes closed. So when Mr. Wong Chi-Yung asked me about the confrontation of his art with the science of the electrophysiologist, the neuroscientist and the clinical practitioner treating people with anxiety and mood disorders, I thought that would be a real challenge. Maybe it would not directly bring a new treatment in clinical practice, it certainly was worth trying to find new ways in which art and science can fruitfully cooperate. Art-therapy being more and more neglected in the last decades could use an impulse to find new ways and it would help the scientist certainly a great deal if they started looking beyond the list of symptoms checked in a structured interview by a beginning psychology student.
But how to be inspired by the electrophysiological studies, the clinical practice of mindfulness if your creativity mainly focusses on the visual art, the design and composition of light-art?

Chi-Yung took the challenge. He followed neuroscientists, participated in studies, asked the right questions, struggled with many wrong questions, took dead-end streets but eventually found his inspiration.

He created an installation with lots of visuals! He did so in a way that makes the visitor aware of ‘distractions’ and thus enhances general awareness: of what is going on in the installation as well as what is going on in one’s own, the spectator’s, mind. This detour, this way around the problem, is the kind of ‘out of the box’ thinking and creating that characterizes Chi-Yung ’s work.
Some phases in the cycle of the installation clearly resemble the visual experiences with eyes closed, with just a little pressure on the eye balls.
The other fragments imitate the associations of the mind into the outside world. With the multi-directionality of our wandering minds, the four elements of earth, water, air and fire may be experienced. 
The whole experience thus stands for awareness as well as sleep, with different phases as observed on EEG and other electrophysiological techniques.

In a miraculous interaction with the composer Mr. An Ton Tat, a musical dimension was found and added. Although one can easily connect with the meditative aspect of the music, it is far away from the yoga studio or massage salon muzak one might expect. To the contrary: both the visual experience and the music do challenge this kind of expectations and make you readjust to what is really there.

Mindfulness means awareness of what is in the present moment.

The art, inspired by the concept of mindfulness, inspired by the scientific research on mindfulness, is of course ‘just’ the art. But, as always while experiencing art, the awareness of what is, is the experience of the work of art. Not something else. There is no further ‘meaning’ to it, as the artist himself eloquently has put it. Wong Chi-Yung just says: “Hey, here! Look! Listen! I created this for you! Experience it! I hope you enjoy!”

Mindfulness is not a panacea. Yet art may very well be.

 

Jeroen van der Linden, MD
Psychiatrist

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Entering into the physical space of the multi-media artwork, “To See a World in a Grain of Sand” will transcend the sole beholder to a magical moment of peace and equilibrium. Chi Yung is experienced in orchestrating moving images, lighting and sound; however, this time he made one step further as his work ignites the beholder’s imagination through senses, from vision and sound, to touch and smell. It is also a performative work when a larger group of visitors gather around the piece. The pun between Liège and cork plays another level of reading in this piece as beholders walk on the segmented cork which symbolizes sand that provides a poetic metaphor which engages Liège the city for the artistically dream-like encounter.

 

Connie Lam
Executive Director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre

 

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Wong Chi Yung is an art  leader and self starter artist full of entrepreneurial spirit, energy, passion and vision.  He is passionate about integrating his own artistic creation with scientific research and through his arts making created aesthetic places in the community.  The forum that we co-organised in Hong Kong last year opened up many new possibilities, dialogue, issues and difficulties on how arts and science could collaborate.  It is not only scientists doing amazing work in the fields of particle physics, space science, synthetic biology, information technology, agriculture, public health or neuroscience, Artists are also responding to the increasing dominance of science and technology in daily life, and to the growing sense of urgency in the face of climate change and mass species loss.  The interdisciplinary approach of collaboration opens up fields of enquiry to new demographics.

 

Anna C.Y. Chan, Dean of the School of Dance of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
Former Head, Artistic Development (Dance) at West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong
 

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To See a World in a Grain of Sand is literally about contemporary existence. In this performative installation, art offered a new light into the scientific realm of mindfulness. The music and light choreography work like symphony to bring the audience to the NOW. Chi-yung has presented us a converging point where Art and Science could bounce off to countless possibilities.

 

Ian Leung
Programme Manager of the Hong Kong Art Centre

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Chi Yung has the rare ability to span and work across the most different of disciplines, and this work is a testimony to this outstanding ability. Fusing the work and bridging the languages and paradigms of scientists from the neuroimaging field and mindfulness practice into a dazzling work involving arts, lights and music. This installation is an extraordinary achievement, which helps to elevate all of its constituent parts to a new synergistic level. Without any doubt, such impressive co-operation is the result of exceptionally hard work and testimony to a tremendous journey. Managing to make his work accessible and accomplishing full sensory immersive experience for visitors to the installation, where he combines masterfully different constituents of light, music, touch and vision to a single whole, and that conveys his journey and inputs of the original paradigms into something that transports the visitor to the here and now, is something to be proud of.

 

Prof. Dr. Stephan Dahl, FRSA
Santander Chair of Social Sciences, Lisbon New University 

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J’ai eu la chance de découvrir « To See a World in a Grain of Sand » en avant-première et de profiter de l’expérience dans le silence le plus total. On est captivé dès les premières secondes par l’atmosphère étonnante résultant des effets de lumière et du son. On peut parler « d’effets de lumière » dans les tous premiers instants car, évidemment, on ne peut s’empêcher de chercher à comprendre comments les images apparaissent sous nos yeux, glissent le long des murs, se déforment, puis disparaissent dans des dégradés infinis de couleurs. Comme tout enfant ou adulte curieux, j’avais envie de comprendre la technique - l’aspect scientifique - de la chose. Mais, très vite, on se laisse totalement captiver par la lumière elle-même, et on ne cherche plus à comprendre mais seulement à apprécier, à deviner  telle ou telle forme, animal fugace, association de couleur, le tout enveloppé dans un univers sonore rendant l’ensemble hypnotique. Tout est en suggestion - mais rien de flou - plutôt en ombres presque. Chacun y trouvera certainement sa propre interprétation de chaque tableau en fonction de sa propre imagination et de son état d’esprit du moment. J’ai pour ma part passé un moment magique et je suis persuadé qu’il n’y a pas « une » représentation, mais autant de représentations possibles que de spectateurs se laissant glisser dans le très bel univers de Chi-yung Wong. 

 

Frederic Denis, Organiste de Notre Dame de La Croix, Paris - Directeur de collection Éditions Delatour France - Vice President de l’Institut Louis Vienne - Formateur FWA