Our eyes contain two kinds of photoreceptors: rods, which detect dim light and are used for night vision, and cones, which detect colour. If it's bright enough, the three types of cones enable us to perceive blue, green, and red, which - combined - make up thousands of colours. In some people though, this perception of colour is distorted, usually for genetic reasons. Red-green and blue-yellow colour blindness are usually passed down from parents. Roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women are said to be colour blind, a condition that affects more than 363 million people worldwide. But what happens when those affected are visual artists or designers, for whom colour perception may be a vital part of their craft?

In Franz Kafka’s novella “Metamorphosis”, the protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes up in his bed one morning to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect. Inspired by this absurdity and the occasional surrealism of daily life, Leung Mee-ping’s exhibition “Souvenirs de Choses” meaning "memories of things", at Osage Gallery uses seemingly trivial “things” such as insects and dust to ponder the weight of time.

Classix is a newly formed sextet the core members of which are five wind musicians and a pianist. Their repertoire ranges from Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th century classical music to rearrangements of pop songs. They are here right now to tell us about what they have in store for the local audience in their upcoming concert "Wind Madness".

The term AI or artificial intelligence was coined in 1950 when mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing published his work “Computer Machinery and Intelligence”. It referred to a process that used computer systems to analyse data and make predictions. Then came generative AI or AGI, in which the computer system goes a step further by actually creating new data. The technology, once confined to laboratories and accessed by a few, has now entered the mainstream, and is beginning to influence many areas of our lives. The public release of Microsoft’s OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT last November spearheaded the race for wider social application of the technology.

Like Chris Cheung and Victor Wong, Chan Ka-kiu has also been working with AI, in her case for a recently completed two-month artist residency at the de Sarthe gallery. For those two months, Chan used the 10,000 square foot space, which was open to the public during gallery hours, as a studio to create new works. You can see the works produced during that residency in a three-week exhibition that opened on 9th September.

Since his 2018 music production and album project “Lost in Time” and the release of his first original instrumental album “Angel and Demon” in 2020, harmonicist CY Leo has been focusing on composition, arranging, and creating original sounds for the harmonica. He's spent the past two years studying jazz performance in a Masters programme at New York University. Now he's back in Hong Kong. He's planning a concert in October to showcase a whole new set of original compositions.

Chinese opera and traditional music make up the main repertoire of the local ensemble The Gong Strikes One. That includes a range of genres, one of the most significant of which is naamyum, a form of Cantonese narrative singing that originated in Guangdong and was commonly heard in restaurants, tea houses and certain houses of ill repute.

To mark its 10th anniversary, JPS Art Gallery is taking viewers to a journey to the moon. Or is it? In “Moon Lands on Man”, multimedia artist Barminski is using cardboard and other materials to create an environment reflecting on conspiracy theories that the United States' Apollo 11 did not actually go to the moon at all. Barminski creates a fun and interactive environment different from a traditional gallery experience in the hope of provoking viewers to think about topics such as the nature of truth, the influence of media, and the power of conspiracy theories.

Founded in 2009, the Hong Kong Festival Orchestra and Voices is the organisation behind one of the leading orchestra and choir festivals in Hong Kong. It also arranges cross-media performances involving other art forms. This year, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Russian pianist, composer, and eventual exile by choice, Sergei Rachmaninoff, the orchestra is presenting a concert that features some of his best known pieces. Pianist Rhythmie Wong and violinist Terence Lam are here to tell us more.

For several decades now, Chinese consumers have been a major force behind the rise in sales of luxury goods. In fashion in particular, China’s demand for luxury items has contributed considerably to the success of global brands. But high-end luxury goods were unheard of before the nation's economic reforms and opening up.
It was in 1978 that French fashion designer Pierre Cardin's fashion brand entered China. One person key to making that happen was Madame Song.

On show at Ben Brown Fine Arts, “The Floating World” is a group exhibition of work by five Hong Kong artists, Cheng Ting Ting, Vivian Ho, Li Ning, Nicole Wong and Yan Wai Yin. Curated by Andre Chan, the exhibition is inspired by the Japanese art of “ukiyo-e” or "pictures of the floating world", the popular art form that depicted
the everyday life of the flourishing Edo period from the 17th to 19th centuries.

Last Christmas, percussionist Lauren Yuen came to the studio with Alvin Chan to play us a contemporary vibraphone and marimba duet by composer Tim Collins.
Today, she’s here again, this time with more members of her percussion group M.A.R.B.L.E.S as well as other jazz musicians, to tell us about an upcoming concert that combines percussion music and jazz.

Concerts featuring the recorder as the main instrument and early music as the repertoire are rare in Hong Kong. David Tong Shee-yiu has a passion for the instrument and for early music though, and is planning a series of concerts to highlight both. he'll be with us later. Chinese ink calligrapher Chui Pui-chee also takes inspiration for his work from an older art form, but although the forms and technique he adopts - including scrolls, silk screens, and gongbi painting - might be traditional, his subject matter is often very much a reflection of contemporary Hong Kong life.

The natural world and landscapes are common motifs in Chinese calligraphy and ink painting. They are also dominant themes in ArBlackChris’s current exhibition, “Oneness” at the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden. He uses watercolours, acrylic paints, and wood to remind us of the importance of Hong Kong’s nature and wildlife. To immerse viewers more fully in the natural world, the exhibition also features recordings of nature from Kadoorie Farm made by sound artist AK Kan.

The complexities of the human body have often been expressed and interpreted through metaphor. German science writer and gynaecologist Fritz Khan explained the nature of the human body through visual and textual analogies in his book, “Man and Machine”. Leo Tolstoy called it “a machine for living” in “War and Peace”.
Physically, of all the body parts, it's the hands that are most often associated with the human ability to make and create.

The late Jao Tsung-I, who died at 100 in 2018, was a renowned expert in Chinese culture and classical studies. He was also a historian, calligrapher, and painter. On show at the University Museum and Art Gallery, “Embracing Landscapes” showcases 20 paintings and calligraphic works based on Jao’s travels from the 1960s onwards, as well as 50 vintage photos.

Kenneth Tse is a classical saxophonist. In 1996, his career got off to an impressive start with an award from the New York Artists International Competition, which led to his Carnegie Hall debut. Since then, he's performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world. He’s currently a professor of saxophone at the University of Iowa. After a long break from Hong Kong, he's retuned to the city of his birth for two concerts with the organisation he founded in 2009, the Hong Kong International Saxophone Symposium.

Last summer, when the chamber ensemble Sea Island & Ferry came to our studio, they played us a new piece of music they'd composed for the exhibition, “In-Between” organised by the Hong Kong Museum of Art. This year, three members of the group have ventured into scoring a documentary and are currently preparing for an upcoming concert. The idea of the Museum of Art's “In-Between” exhibition I just mentioned was to show lesser-known works by well-known artists from the museum’s four core collections. This year the museum has again delved into its collections, this time to put together an exhibition based on four personality types.

Tradition and innovation are at the heart of the Hong Kong Design Institute’s annual Emerging Design Talents exhibition. This year, centred on the theme of “embrace”, there are over 500 pieces on display. Created by graduates from disciplines including architecture, interior and product design, communication design, digital media, fashion and jewellery arts, the focus of the exhibits is on using technology to promote social sustainability.

In the late 1980s, a style of rock music began to develop that was, and still is, recognised for its rhythmic variety and complex time signatures. Some listeners began to describe the music as mathematical: the term "math rock" was born. It's popular with some bands in Hong Kong too. One of them is milos. They'll be with us later. Like math rock, which experiments with alternative ways to create musical constructions, Hong Kong's art platform “Project 21st” also encourages experimentation and research.
This year, “Project 21st” is focusing on the musical experience and the concept of music performance itself.

First introduced to Hong Kong in the 1920s, neon signs became prominent in our streets from the 1950s through the 1980s. In recent years they've been replaced by cheaper LED lights, but for decades they were an instantly recognisable symbol of the city around the world. “Vital Signs”, on show at Tai Kwun, celebrates the craftsmanship and characteristics of Hong Kong’s neon signs.

Instrumental math rock band, milos, released their first piece of music, “Potato Flower” in 2016. Two years later, they expanded from a trio to a quartet. This month, they've released a vinyl and a CD that contain all the music they’ve created so far, and they are here right now to tell us more.

Traditional Japanese puppetry dates back to ancient times when it was often part of shamanic religious services. By the17th century, during the Edo period, three main forms of puppet performance had developed and the art had become highly popular. In June, a century old Japanese puppetry troupe came to Hong Kong for the first time to introduce their artistry.

Artists Christian Schwarzwald and Kurt Chan have a common interest in words, and that interest is featured in a current exhibition “To Paint the Written World” at Hanart TZ Gallery. For Schwarzwald, the writing of words is an act of drawing and a gestural practice. Chan takes a more abstract approach, concentrating on Chinese ideographs.
The exhibition features not only their individual works, but also a painting created on site that involves the collaboration of the two artists and the public.

With an academic background in music composition, Ron Ng plays the guitar. A versatile musician, he performs with different groups and in different styles, including jazz, blues, rock, funk, classical and contemporary music, but jazz is closest to his heart. He teaches jazz ensemble improvisation at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He’s here with the other members of his trio to tell us more.

Younger audiences may know Rebecca Pan best through her appearances in the movies of Wong Kar-wai or Hou Hsiao-hsien. But her career spans many genres, and her life as a cultural pioneer is the focus of a current exhibition in The Mills.

One cultural icon that crossed paths with Rebecca Pan was the martial arts star, Bruce Lee. To mark the 50th anniversary of Lee’s death, the Hong Kong Fringe Club is presenting an exhibition of illustrations of the actor by painter Tsui Shing-on. Now based in Canada, Tsui is perhaps best known for the comic drawings and illustrations for films and the media that he created in the 1970s.

Colour is the theme of the upcoming annual concerts at the beginning of August by the Hong Kong Youth Saxophone Choir. In the show, "United Colors of Sax", they'll be performing several pieces of music related to colour, including a work by the French composer Philippe Geiss.