In a recent interview, Guia Fest! curators Matthew Ho and Steven Ng talked about their series of events this year featuring experimental music which engages and interacts with their audience on different levels.

The exclusive interview with The Macau Post Daily was held at Pin-to Livros & Música near Camões Garden last week.

The festival started last Saturday and will continue until the end of month separated into four programmes with different genres of experimental music in each.

Ng said that last year at the 1^st Guia Fest! they held music performances which were packed into one session with artistes performing one after the other during the festival. This time, for the 2^nd Guia Fest!, they wanted to narrow down the experience to one group of artistes and their collaborators at a time.

Installation experiment

According to Ng, the opening, which was last Saturday, was a programme about experimental music created by Guangzhou multimedia artiste “mafmadmaf” which involved installing more than 10 devices playing pre-recorded sounds at Pin-to Livros & Música. Ng said that after the installation, the devices will stay in the bookshop for two weeks for the audience to join and listen to the sounds on the devices. “It is interactive music: because based on your positioning inside the room, you will hear different dynamics and combinations of sound according to the distance the listener is from the devices,” Ho said.

Ho said that mafmadmaf taped sounds in different field-like environments, synthesised and installed them, and the programmes and devices are running according to his settings. “madmadmaf freely placed the devices and expected the audience to feel different sensations at different spots based on their choices – an interaction between the environment, the audience and the devices,” Ho said.

Visual experiment

The second programme will be held at the Oriental Foundation (FO) from Saturday to Sunday, Ho said, adding that three groups of artistes are working on it. “‘Shelf-Index’, a Hong Kong VJ [Visual Jockey], DJ and noise artist, will place projectors in various places of the performance room and play certain images around the room; a local artist, R.U.I. is making use of data bending for his experimental music; and two Swiss groups of artistes, INFLUUT and Robert Turner Collective, who specialise in ambient music and digital arts respectively and are cooperating to create a mixture of visual and sound.

Ng said that ambient music is usually without a concrete structure – almost like a mood. “The Swiss artists use stereo quadraphonic [four sound systems] to intensify the dynamics and the interaction of the ambient music with space,” Ho said.

Ho and Ng said that they preferred to use “sound” to describe the production of the artistes instead of music. “The definition of music is relatively narrow. Perhaps I like to listen to the sound of the car engine, can I call it music? We think that the production of Shelf-Index belongs to sound more than music,” Ho said.

Sound experiment & documentary experiment

Local artiste Sou Yan Ting and “e:ch’’ will present their programme at Pin-to on October 23, Ng said, adding that the live performance involves using sound to “create expansions” in space. “The audience will be moving around constantly, while Sou will be playing digital and non-traditional synthetic music. For e:ch, we prefer not to spoil it too much, but you can think of him playing noises on instruments in a ‘special’ way,” Ng and Ho said.

The last programme will feature Lei Cheok Mei and “Faslane”, also at Pin-to, an experimental project formed by Ho and Sou. “Lei jam packs a lot of scenes from online sources and bombards the audience with them visually, while I shall be there and add some improvised sounds to the scenes. To be honest, I am not sure what Lei’s artwork will be. Let us see on October 29 and 30,” Ho said.

For more information about the programme, visit: https://t.ly/ZfyM.

This undated photo shows local artiste Sou Yan Ting posing.
– Photos provided by Guia Fest!

These undated photos show Swiss artiste groups INFLUUT and Robert Turner Collective.

Curators Matthew Ho (left) and Steven Ng (centre-right), organiser Pal Lok (centre-left), and artist mafmadmaf pose during last week’s interview at Pin-to Livros & Música near Camões Garden. – Photo: William Chan