Hugh Davies, Troy Innocent: Xon Kon
Title:
- Xon Kon
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
- ISEA2016: 22nd International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More artworks from ISEA2016:
Creation Year:
- 2016
Medium:
- Laser cut plywood codes, city model, data projection, website, social media
Artist Statement:
Xon Kon is a street game set in Hong Kong. Featured as part of the 2016 International Symposium of Electronic Art: 香港 Cultural R>evolution, the game results from a collaboration between interdisciplinary artists and game makers: Hugh Davies and Troy Innocent.
Drawing on the rich history of Hong Kong’s development as a global trading port, XonKon invites players to excavate the commercial forces that shaped the city from the tea and opium trade to the technology and finance sectors. Central to the game is the discovery, collection and translation of codes.
Cities are highly coded locations. Unique to Hong Kong is that its symbols and systems have been continually recoded over the past 200 hundred years. Transitioning from Chinese to British rule and back again (with a brief period of Japanese occupation in WW2) Hong Kong has been repeatedly rebooted: linguistically, politically, culturally and geographically. The remains of bi-lingual messages, remixed symbols, and obsolete fragments of code remain scattered at street level throughout the architecture, traditions, food and fashion. Walking around the Central Districts evokes an appreciation of the city’s complex multiculturalism, as well as its mercantile past and present.
Fundamental to Hong Kong’s foundation and continued way of life, is its role as a global trade centre. Established by Britain in the 1840’s, the city has served as a key port-of-trade connecting East and West. Once dealing primarily in tea, silk, opium, gold, cotton, and spices, the city’s more recent exchanges of favour are fashion accessories, consumer electronics and international finance.
