We check out what’s in store at the annual new media arts festival this weekend.

Ever wanted to sms a fish? Or wrestle a rhinoceros beetle? Those are just two of the activities visitors can expect to get up to at this year’s Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, November 13-14. The festival aims to bring the latest combinations of cutting-edge art and technology from around the world to Hong Kong. This year’s event is themed “Nature Transformers,” and the exhibitions and activities on offer should appeal to both anyone with a general interest in green issues as well as art aficionados.

The “Microwave” in the festival’s title refers to a transfer of energy between local and foreign artists, and this year sees creative personalities from the USA, Canada, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Japan come to share their ideas. A number of them collaborated closely with scientists to produce their work. Each will deliver their own take on the various ways in which humans interact with their environment, displaying their works at the main exhibition and discussing the key concepts involved at a series of seminars.

According to project manager Joel Kwong, Microwave originally started life in 1996 purely as a video art festival. But as a greater range of media became increasingly available over the years, it soon came to encompass much more. In a first for the festival this year, the opening will feature a live show from electronic musicians who rely heavily on visuals in their performances. The festival will also run a side exhibition of installations at the Langham Place Hotel, including a piece by local Portuguese artist Joao Vasco Paiva. And finally, for those inspired to create something of their own, workshops will be conducted by overseas visitors in which, among other things, you’ll get to engage in DIY “ecotech” and create sculptures that respond to sunlight.

Here are some of the key speakers who will be discussing their own work and other issues at this year’s festival.

Tiffany Holmes
Holmes’ exhibit darkSky seeks to raise audiences awareness of their everyday usage of resources such as electricity, and, more importantly, of the fact that they are directly in control of how much electricity they use. She will be present to discuss just how much “eco-visualization” works such as hers can contribute to public understanding and lead to more ethical behavior.

Natalie Jeremijenko
Natalie Jeremijenko has a background in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Her installment Rhinoceros Beetle lets audiences go head to head in battle with its namesake creature through a special magnifying headset. Her experimental design works explore the capacity of new technologies to allow for non-violent social change.

Victoria Vesna
Vesna’s interests concern the ways in which sound influences human thought and behavior. Her works such as Water Bowls, at this year’s event, aim to shift audience awareness away from the regular,
material realm of experience to an invisible, quantum level.

Koert van Mensvoort
Mensvoort’s seminar and workshop get straight to the heart of this year’s festival theme: how humans transform nature. In addition, he will be exploring the way in which our technological world has grown so complex as to become a realm of nature unto itself. In Mensvoort’s own words, “there may even come a moment that our connection with an industrially manufactured coke bottle may be richer and more mythical than our relation with a genetically analyzed and manipulated rabbit in the woods.”

Find more information and a festival schedule at  www.microwavefest.net.

“Body and Soul”

“Re-tribalizing communication technology”

“Water Bowl”

“Real Nature is not Green”