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Clare Tyrrell

Technology has become so developed that we can now recreate reality.  3D effects in  video allow us to enter virtual worlds of our own making.  But how many people stop to question how we actually see  the world - and realise  that our perspective is rectangular?

A show that opened  earlier this month at the Para/Site art space in Sheung Wan is questioning such  basic assumptions about  how we see the world.

The exhibition, titled Take a ST/Roll: donut fantasies, is a multimedia production of video work and interactive workshops, put together by two master's of fine arts students from the City University of Hong Kong's School of Creative Media and their  curator and supervisor  Linda Lai Chiu-han.

They've spent the past year working with equipment and software that usually is used  to produce 360-degree video.  But they've turned the process inside out.

The result is 'a circular square,' says  Reine Wong  Shun-kit. Her collaborator is  Kong Khong-chang (who's just published his second comic book under the name Kongkee).

'I wanted to misuse the market selling point of the apparatus,' says 24-year-old Wong.   I'm making this circular, doughnut image - so you can experience a different world.'

Many people probably have encountered  the sort of effects usually produced by the sort of lens and software Wong and Kong used, which  allows video footage to be projected around you to recreate 360-degree views.

Wong and Kong  played with the raw  footage,   which  shows the world in a doughnut shape of two concentric rings. The result is a play on 'the hyper reality that people are obsessed with', says  Lai.  'We have all these new media products whose purpose is to make things even more real. So that was the original purpose of this game: to not follow the rules.'

Wong spent a year experimenting with the 360-degree lens, filming  streets, lifts, MTR stations and shopping centres.

The results are eye-like depictions that are strangely beautiful in their play on the ancient Chinese affection for the circular, but in a  modern way. Straight lines are warped into curves,  rendering places virtually unrecognisable. It becomes a challenge to figure out where the film has been shot. 'The most fascinating ones to me are the images in the lift and on the escalator,' says  Wong. 'Those are such normal places for us, but  the perspective is totally different.'

Twenty-seven-year-old Kong  was responsible for adding narrative to the  project.

The Para/Site exhibition   moves through a variety of  scenes captured in this weird doughnut perspective. On the ground  floor is Experimental Drama:  12 Robes/ 4 Couples/ 1 Cycle.  Three projections  are aimed  on to the floor, with narratives interacting between the  moving circles. Viewers are invited to step around them 'like a fish pond', says Wong.

At the back of the gallery is Archival Space, where Wong presents the  research  that makes up much of her master's thesis.

Upstairs  is a five-minute video, Interview with the Queen.   - the queen in this case being the one from Snow White. In this piece, Wong and Kong experiment with the problems of negative space created by the doughnut.

As if to  propel audiences even further away from their normal perspectives, the exhibition  includes the interactive works  of fellow City U student Eric Siu Chi-man  - who has created tools  from everyday objects that distort people's vision.

One example is a helmet  with monitors connected to tiny cameras the viewer wears on  their fingers - the result being  that you see what you touch.   Such works are the subject of  a workshops next Saturday, at which participants can  make their own devices.

The exhibition moves to the Sub-Station art space in Singapore next month.

Take a ST/Roll: donut fantasies, Para/Site Art Space, G/F 4 Po Yan St, Sheung Wan. Ends  Apr 10; workshop Mar  19, 2.30pm-4.30pm. Inquiries: 2517 4620



The unreal world looks like a doughnut - and that's the hole truth