JEFFREY SHAW

Legible City Hong Kong presents a digital landscape based on the Central, Sheung Wan, and Sai Ying Pun neighbourhoods in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The buildings are replaced by 3D bold text adapted from the third part of Dung’s novel Hong Kong Type: A Love Letter Late for One Hundred and Fifty Years, a tragic love story set in nineteenth-century Hong Kong. As visitors journey through this city of words, they encounter Dung’s text rendered in Hong Kong Type, a movable typeface invented in the city more than a hundred years ago. Legible City Hong Kong is Shaw’s tribute to the city, its remarkable topography, and the many stories that have unfolded here.

Jeffrey Shaw (b. 1944, Australia) has been a leading figure in new media art since its emergence from the performance, expanded cinema, and installation paradigms of the 1960s to their technologised and virtualised forms in the present day. His artworks are milestones of technological and cultural innovation that have had a seminal impact on the theory, design, and application of digital media in art, society, and industry, and his artistic achievements are among the most cited in new media literature. He has exhibited at various galleries and institutions, including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kunsthalle Bern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Hayward Gallery in London.