Lip Sync

Lip Sync (2014)
single-channel video installation (HD video with sound, 3’25”, loop)

While reading text fragments in Chinese and German, a camera captured Hui Ye lips movements. Moscow based artists, Ana Kovrigina and Serge Prokofiev provided audio recordings of these silent videos in which they attempt to speak synchronously to the lip movements in languages they are familiar with, like Russian or English.

By following the same concept, both Russian artists have created a silent video of their lip movements while speaking. In turn, these portraits have been overdubbed by Hui Ye via synchronous speaking in Chinese and German.

The original meaning of each original speech remains unknown for all three artists.

Due to a precise concept of exchanging and reinterpreting sound and images in the act of speaking, lip-synch examines and deconstructs the fundamental function of language. While removing the original auditive/linguistic information, the “spoken” images have become a visual notation for performances in which words become a senseless audiovisual expression.

Quick Code Service

In Quick Code Service the artist investigates the relationship between real and virtual spheres of life. The artist (re-)constructs her own identity within the structures of WeChat, one of the most important digital communication tools in contemporary China. Without being physically present in the country, the artist asks her friends there to use the QR code – which represents her person on WeChat platform – in different ways and thereby make her digital identity a part of the Chinese social network. The work is an attempt to reintegrate in a radically changed Chinese society after being absent for fourteen years and to overcome alienation with digital means. Quick Code Service is a fictional video with a documentary character.

Go to Quick Code Service webpage

Hui Ye

Born in Canton (1981), China.

—2004-2011 studied composition and electroacoustic composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, graduated in 2011.
—2010-2017 studied Digital Arts and TransArts (Master Studies) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Her artistic works spans video, graphic, sound performances, sound and video installations, instrumental and electroacoustic compositions.

Having an artistic background as composer and sound performer, exploring the relationship between sound and moving image, along with experimenting with how these time-based media can be transformed in new and challenging ways, is one the main concern of her work.

As a Chinese artist based in Vienna/Europe since years, Hui Ye observes and understand her personal experience and let it influence her artistic work. The question how social identity is shaped in different cultural and political contexts is another vital issue of her artistic research.

Since 2017 Ye works as guest lecturer at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA) in South China.