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Immersive installation - Avalanches from Afar | Casino Display Luxembourg This is a site-specific work featuring the sound acoustics of the building with 8-channel spatialised sound composition and installation.

Location: Casino Display, 1, rue de la Loge, L-1945 Luxembourg Opening time: 31.01.2025 21:00 — 01.02.2025 9:00

info: Casino Luxembourg event page (link)

Avalanches from Afar

In Avalanches from Afar, visual artist Serene Hui and composer Lam Lai present a hybrid work on the borderline between immersive installation and soundscape. Described as a ‘non-performance’, the piece is a 12-hour meditation on the subtle tension between speech and silence. Avalanches from Afar has its roots in a reflection on the limits of language and the disruption of direct communication. Drawing on literary references such as Jean-Dominique Bauby's Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, personal stories and Jean-René Toussaint's ‘Stemwerk - Primitive Voice’ method, the two artists explore how words, sounds and silences weave together to create a unique space for sensory experience. The long duration encourages a total letting go, allowing the audience to connect deeply with the fragments of language, sounds and silences that make up the surrounding atmosphere.

Concept: Serene Hui and Lam Lai Text and Libretto: Serene Hui Sound composition and spatialisation: Lam Lai Artwork: Serene Hui Voices by: Jean-René Toussaint (Primitive Voice - Stemwerk, Rotterdam), Xenia Klein, Chloe Sobczyk, Bryan Hui, Serene Hui Videography: Serene Hui, Sean Wong, STOREROOM9 (With thanks to Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong) Video Editing and Color Grading: Lichun Tseng

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Live Electronic performance with Spatialisation | ZKM Karlsruhe Sonic Experiments 2024 Using Analogue synthesizers and effectors, with a pre-programmed spatialisation in Max/MSP patch, and Zirkonium the spatialisation software developed by ZKM. Performance in Kubus, one of the largest sound domes with 43 loudspeakers in ZKM. Location: Kubus Hall, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe Date and Time: 5 December 2024, 7:30pm link: ZKM website (link)

Lam Lai Spotless White, (2024), Spatialized Analog Synthesizers, 14’ 

As the world reshapes itself to accommodate an ever-growing population, access to genuine green spaces is becoming increasingly limited, especially for those bound to cities. Instead of walking among real, living trees and experiencing nature’s vitality firsthand, we construct limitations, creating artificial environments to capture its essence and bring it indoors. But can this crafted illusion of natural beauty truly satisfy our need for connection to the natural world? By creating an artificial nature scene through sound, “Spotless White” reflects the cycle of nature, distilling its essence into a listening experience. It invites us to reconnect with memories of real encounters with nature, encouraging reflection on what may have been overlooked in those moments.

Performed live with analog synthesizers that blend seamlessly into the acoustic structure of the space, this piece celebrates the raw authenticity of analog sound, embracing its warmth, depth, and organic texture in real time. (This piece is developed during the Artist-in-residency programme in ZKM, Nov-Dec 2024.)

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Soundscape for Exhibition | Majalla's Cloak - Frayed edges of the Leiden Cloth

Exhibition by artists Sarah van Lamsweerde, Alicia Hoost, Esther Mugambi, Eugenie Boon, Claire Zandvliet. Location: Musem de Lakenhal Date: 9 November 2024 - 13 April 2025

link: Museum de Lakenhal (link)

Majalla's Cloak - Frayed edges of the Leiden Cloth Museum De Lakenhal presents Majalla's Cloak from 9 November 2024 till 13 April 2025. This participatory art project explores the connections between the historic Leiden cloth industry and the slave trade.

MAJALLA

The name Majalla refers to an enslaved boy mentioned in the correspondence regarding Daniel van Eijs, an 18th-century Leiden cloth merchant and later plantation owner. Historian Sjoerd Ramackers discovered this tragic story while researching Leiden's role in colonial history. The name Majalla symbolizes the countless lives lost on Van Eijs's plantations in Berbice (present-day Guyana), where the average life span of enslaved people was only eight years.

FREEDOM CLOAK

Inspired by stories of resistance to slavery, Hoost and Van Lamsweerde decided to posthumously create a freedom cloak for Majalla and his peers. A symbol of hope and dignity, this cloak represents how Majalla would free himself from a world of inhumane exploitation. (Photo: Claire Zandvliet)

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Sound Design for VR experience | Ars Electronica

Location: JKU MED CAMPUS (MED Campus I) Krankenhausstraße 5, 4020 Linz

Opening time: 4-7/9/2024 10:00-19:00 8/9/2024 10:00-18:00

Info: Ars Electronica 2024 (link)

This project was developed in the context of a hybrid residency at V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam. Seven artists were invited to jointly explore contemporary topics such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Consciousness, Data Privacy and Surveillance, Simulation Theory, Existential Risk and Future of Humanity as they are raised in the 1964 SciFi-novel Simulacron-3. The group reflected on the creation of XR experiences with a strong creative and artistic component to create a collective experience that, in its core, considers the concepts of human interaction, group dynamics and empathy. The outcome of the residency, which utilized open source tools and offered guidance from experts, is Department of Interfaced Dimensions (D.I.D). Work Title: Department of Interfaced Dimensions

Collaboration with: Annika Boll (DE), Eirini Lampiri (GR), Gökay Atabek (TR), Lam Lai (HK), Merve Sahin (TR), Mihai Gui (RO), Silvana Callegari (CO)

You are invited to step into a world of play, interactivity and uncertainty. Observe, follow or collaborate with your fellow participants to navigate your way through alternative realities. Interchange roles and actively engage in a play of surveillance and manipulation.

Department of Interfaced Dimensions (D.I.D) is an interactive, mixed reality experience that combines game mechanics with virtual worlds and the materiality of kinetic props to explore themes of identity, agency and control.

(photo Credit: JKU Linz / Photographer: Andreas Röbl)

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Sounds for Theater | ANGEL by Nele Vereecken

New Performance date: 18 March 2024 Location: CC Kunst en Cultuur Sint-Pieters-Woluwe

Details: Nele Vereecken (link)

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2022

"Macht kommt von machen, etwas tun können" - Angela Merkel

Reverend’s daughter, Angela Kasner grew up in East Germany. Her aunt from West Germany often sent presents such as Levi’s jeans and a Beatles record. When the wall fell, she decided to let go of her scientific career and enter politics. "Whoever has been so positively surprised once in his life, thinks that a lot is possible", she says. Angela Kasner is a woman who exists.

angel is a performance about a woman who does not yet exist but who uses the same words as the real Angela. It’s a woman who, just like Angela, in her search for more and more possibilities, reaches the top of the world. The performance is a fictional portrait based on real speeches.

In angel we unleash the imagination on an important contemporary political figure. How far can you go in that imagination? When does that imagination become a lie? And when does that lie become a logical reality accepted by everyone? By dreaming the impossible, sometimes half of it becomes true.

performance Mieke Verdin en Nele Vereecken | text Joachim Robbrecht, Nele Vereecken en Mieke Verdin, | decor Sven Roofthooft | sound Lam Lai | light and photos Herman Sorgeloos | technique Wim Bernaers, Jeroen Wuyts en Koen De Saeger | production Kunstenwerkplaats | coproduction AGORA theatre Sankt Vith & KAAP | with thanks to arp, ARSENAAL / LAZARUS, De Brakke Grond, GC Nekkersdal, Felix Ensslin en Katja Dreyer | with the support of the Flemish Community, the Flemish Community Commission, Goethe-Institut Brussels, De Auteurs and Ars Vitha

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8ch Electronics Soundscape with Installation | Exhibition "MAKE & BELIEVE" curated by Orlean Lai

Exhibition Date: 12-28 January, 2024 Location: Tai Kwun, central, Hong Kong Music Performance Date: 12, 13, 20 January 2024 Details: No Discipline Limited (Link) Tai Kwun (Link) //

a performative exhibition of no magic - "MAKE & BELIEVE"

Curator / Producer Orlean Lai

in collaboration with Tung Wing-hong Ng Tsz-kwan Ho Sin-tung Human Wu Lam Lai Lau Ming-hang

The notion of “fiction” and “real” is intertwined within the theatre. No matter how verisimilar the play may seem, the audience may not perceive it as real; vice versa, no matter how illusory and surreal a narrative gets to be, one can still exercise their imagination and be fully immersed in the narrative. Once stepped into the theatrical space, the audience gets to suspend their disbelief and be ready to participate in a collective “act” of fabrication – for one becomes an active spectator, the “comrade” to “conspire” an impossible reality.

Make & Believe harkens to the 2023 theatrical-installation performance We are for real, nonetheless, unfolding its narration in an exhibition space instead of a theatrical space. As the narrative context shifts, the previous distinction between “fictive” and “real” is eradicated, projecting alienated expectations and assumptions from the participating audience. In this regard, the collective experiment constructed in the theatre destructs into an individual experience with a deeper introspective focus. It liberates the audience’s unidirectional visual perspectives from the spectator seats into a scattered, all-around spectacle by allowing them to free roam within the exhibition hall. Are these transformations equipping the audience with an omniscient vision that was absent as a theatre spectator? Leaving the narrative-driven theatrical space, can the audience perceive implicit messages between and outside of the lines of the exhibits?

In Make & Believe, we invite you to join the conspiracy again – in an exhibition hall where the performers are absent. The audience is left to conceive and perceive by engaging their senses, rediscovering the idiosyncratic performative qualities of scenery, installations, lighting and soundscapes, collaging fragments of existence, non-existence, reality, “the truth” and imagination, in turn constructing their perceptual landscapes. Can the myriad of sensual stimulations, inspire one to rely on intuition to perceive and conceive, travelling inward to search for meaning and answers?

In collaboration with Tung Wing-hong (Mechanical Installation), Ng Tsz-kwan (Mechanical Installation), Ho Sin-tung (Text / Painting / Installation), Human Wu (Scenography), Lam Lai (Music / Soundscape) and Lau Ming-hang (Lighting), these multi-disciplinary artists excelling in different mediums collectively interweave a rhapsody of Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art) by echoing with one another while preserving each individual’s creative authenticity for the visitors to feast.

During the exhibition period, several curated performances will be presented. A brand-new composition crafted by Lam Lai, brought by three renowned musicians, Nazar Tabachyshyn (accordion), Wilson Chau (French Horn) and Tiffany Au Kai-see (Bassoon), will accompany the soundscape installations to render an illuminating music creation. Creative performers from We are for real, including KT Yau Ka-hei, Anson Chan, Pearlmi Tam and Tung Chung-can, will also be offering a new collaborative performance on-site. Stay tuned for the shows!

We cordially invite you to be mesmerised by the “staged exhibition”, unleashing all your talents and senses to enjoy the meticulously crafted scenography. Come dialogue with the collective creation, challenge yourself and rediscover what are the “real” and “truth” to you.

// Documentation by HKADC:

// Music Performance

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8-ch Sound work for Installation | Sound Forms 2023

Date: 14-15 Nov 2023 Location: Tai Kwun, Central, Hong Kong

Details: Contemporary Musiking (link) //

Through the glass, darkly

Communication is an in between space where two beings enter the risk of being misunderstood. There is a profound truth in the continual effort to find one another.

Through the glass, darkly is a “non-performance” on voice and communication, a single time-intensive event which discusses different positions toward speaking, being silenced, the possibility to find words and to resonate.

The work emerged through reflections on the (im)possibility of language, failure of human voices, disruption of direct utterance, alternative transmission, to form a libretto - manoeuvring the story of “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly”, Monarch butterflies, personal encounters and more - set to a choreography of sound and music.

Through the glass, darkly is made of a cacophony of voices, fleeting sounds, and negative space, wavering between immersive installation and performative sound piece. It is configured as an intimate sonic landscape that unfolds gradually and spatially, representative of one’s psychic conflict with all sorts of emotions prompted by the very act of communication, inviting the audience to search for and invent their own story. It can seem obscure and chaotic, but there is always the possibility for its voices to synchronise and resonate, and create an experience of negotiation or suspension.

A facet of a wider narrative, Through the glass, darkly is the current state of a work in progress.

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Music for Experimental Film | Presence undefined by Lichun Tseng

Japan Screening Date: 28 Oct, 5 Nov 2023 Address: 2 Chome-10-2 Shibuya, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0002, Japan Taipei Screening Date: 3-5 Nov 2023

Presence Undefined / 未定義な。存在

Lichun Tseng & Lam Lai / ゾン・リージュン & リン・リー / 15min.

info: https://www.imageforum.co.jp/cinematheque/1068/index.html

Presence Undefined is a compilation of seven miniature films, intended to be played in any sequence at any screening. This work is an artistic experiment aimed at exploring the components of audiovisual, including layer, colour, harmony, tone, tactile, element and space. The project presents a unique opportunity to examine the intersection of these two creative domains and their shared artistic vocabulary, where the convergence of two artistic worlds stimulates delicate encounters of indeterminacy.

The visual images are created on 16mm using a variety of photochemistry experiments and processes, while the sound composition is derived from field recordings and electronic sound sources.

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24-ch Sound work for Theater Project | We are for Real created by Orlean Lai

Performance: 12-16 Oct 2023 Location: Multimedia Theatre, HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, Hong Kong

Created by : Orlean Lai In Collaboration With：Ng Tsz-kwan 、Ho Sin-tung、Tung Wing-hong、Lam Lai 、Lau Ming-hang、Trista Ma

Creative Performers：KT Yau Ka-hei、Anson Chan、Pearlmi Tam、Tung Chung-can、Pollux Kwok

an installation performance of make-believe

If I speak the truth in an obviously disguised field, will you believe me?  If I fake it in a ‘fake it till you make it’ space, will you also believe me?

You believe/ you don’t believe/ you sort of believe, and you doubt/ you beg yourself to believe/ you refuse to believe/ you cheat yourself into believing it… Can you really fake it till you make it?

When performers present their own self in a performance, are they role-playing? When a performer perfects an audience-preset/ expected ‘self’, can you distinguish the genuine from the acted? It is said that every illusion on the stage is a copy of reality. Are you sure that the so-called authenticity of existence exists? 

Welcome to the creators’ labyrinth of truth and illusion! Light dims, curtain rises, audience and creators entered into an indescribable and unspecified contract to construct an impossible reality together.

As we depart from the theatre, will the reality become more concrete? Does ‘truth’ only exist as a belief?

Multi-art-discipline mastermind Orlean Lai makes her directorial debut and collaborates with media/ visual artists Ng Tsz-kwan and Tung Wing-hong, composer/ sound artist Lam Lai, lighting designer Lau Ming-hang and costume designer Trista Ma. With stories and paintings created by visual artist Ho Sin-tung, the team appropriates kaleidoscopic and boundless theatre elements, and altogether constructs an inconceivable, magical landscape. Multi-talented and highly unique performers KT Yau Ka-hei, Anson Chan, Pearlmi Tam, Tung Chung-can and Pollux Kwok perform themselves with every means of solution, unleashing spectacle and imagination from viewing and performing!

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Soundscape composition in Exhibition | Ventriloquists’ stone 

Exhibition: 01 Mar–30 Jul / 2023 Location: Oi! 油街實現, 12 Oil street, Hong Kong opening hours: Tue-Sun 12:00 - 18:00 Live Music session: 15 Apr 2023 16:00-18:00

Ventriloquists’ stone by Nadim Abbas

About the Exhibition Ventriloquists’ Stone takes as its cue the ‘Magic Art of the Great Humbug’.  It is an exercise in misdirection and misplacement, a secret in plain view, a crucible of ruin and regeneration, a porous theatre of cohabitation.  It owes as much to the ingenuity of mini-golf courses as it does to classical garden designs.  It equates, with a wilful disregard for our everyday sense of scale, urban building typologies with circuit board components, giant monsters with merry munchkins. (https://vntrlq.info/About)

About the Soundscape composition Between now and the end of April, you'll hear the soundscape version I've tailored for it. Duration approximately 25 minutes. If you can stay inside for a while, you'll notice that sound travels between the 3 spaces in an interesting way.

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Hong Kong Concert | Orchestra with Live electronics

New work - There is no place like Home (Beta)

9 March 2023 (Thursday), 8pm (HKT) Concert Hall, Hong Kong City Hall, Central Details:  Hong Kong Sinfonietta (link)

There is no place like Home (Beta) for Orchestra and Live electronics

What do we think of wishes that may not come true in our lifetime? For example, visiting space. In 1989, twelve years after the start of the mission, NASA’s Voyager 2 flew past the ice giant Neptune on its way out of the solar system. It is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune up close. Since the mission began, it has explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and finally encountered the last of the planets in our solar system, Neptune. When you look at the image taken on the Voyager 2 camera, that beautiful, intense bright blue on its atmosphere makes you wonder what life was like on this 12-year journey. We are told that the empty space is not entirely empty, and that occasionally we might encounter asteroids, especially between Mars and Jupiter where most of this ancient space debris can be found, or comets and other tangible objects such as dust, gas, solar wind and cosmic rays. If we were inside that spacecraft, how often would we have to deal with the potential dangers from outer space? What would the view from the windows of our spacecraft look like when we are far away from the main source of light in the solar system?  How visible would that suffused feeble glimmer from countless distant stars and galaxies be? How many days, weeks or months would it take to travel through the almost vacuum of space before we might encounter another space object? Apparently, we are still not sure how far humans can travel in space, not to mention the possibility of obtaining a licence to pilot a spacecraft. We tend to believe that the imagination is unreal, regardless of the emotions it may bring. The composer took the opportunity to compose her own version of the 12-year journey inspired by the Voyager 2 mission, scrutinising the emotions that emerged from her imagination and summing them up in the title.

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Field Recording works at the Former Koncon | Sonic Portraits ACOUSTIC INTERIORS Release online: https://acousticinteriors.cargo.site/homepage

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the acoustic memory of a building

Curated by NEW EMERGENCES, ACOUSTIC INTERIORS creates sonic portraits of the two buildings between which the Royal Conservatoire is currently transitioning: the old one at Juliana van Stolberglaan 1, a building full of stories, and the brand new Amare, an almost empty building at Spuiplein 150.

Which sounds in the old busy building would you like to preserve? Which sounds from Amare would you like to capture before it gets busy there? And after the old building has been abandoned, which spaces would you like to revisit?  The ACOUSTIC INTERIORS project presentation took place in 2022. The final presentation included a digital release, an installation and a website.

BEA 5 (former analog studio) 3'09"

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BEA 6 (former studio for live electronics) 2'56"

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BEA 7 (former studio for wave field) 3'10"

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staircase (alongside the Beatrixlaan from the ground floor to the first floor) 3'00"

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h/AI | human/Artificial Intelligence

Music-theater performance

31 Aug 2022 (Veenproef), Scheltema Leiden 13 Sept 2022 (premiere), Stadsgehoorzaal Leiden 6 Oct 2022, Korzo Den Haag 11 Nov 2022, Musis & Stadstheater Arnhem 19 & 20 Nov 2022, Frascati Amsterdam Details: Veenfabriek (link)

Installation & Direction | A.I., John van Oostrum Text | A.I, Jibbe Willems, Ninke Overbeek Music | A.I., Lam Lai Stage design | Noa Helder Acting | A.I., Anna Schoen, Chandana Sarma, Jeroen van Arkel, Monica Hofman orchestra De Ereprijs | conducted by Gregory Charette Production | Caco Verhees Technique | Vincent Krouwer Publicity | Kelly de Haan, Lies Mensink, Janaï Shibolet, Marcel Vos Campaign image | Studio Miek Uittenhout

human/Artificial Intelligence

What kind of creature is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) anyway? And what is a human? Can AI think, philosophise and even create art with us about this? In h/AI, de Veenfabriek, Orkest De Ereprijs and theatre group ECHO take up the challenge and make superhuman musical theatre together with AI.

Artificial intelligence has become part of our humanity. It supports our thought processes, influences our choices and takes over more and more tasks from us. Unnoticed, "AI" is already in our devices and systems. Just a little longer and AI will take over our heads. According to supporters, this promises much good, but critics point to future dangers. Will AI help us rise above ourselves? Or will it make us fall to earth with our pride?

h/AI is a superhuman manifestation featuring four actors, a 14-piece orchestra, AI and the audience. How big is AI's influence on the play, the music and what does the audience notice? We will experience it in h/AI, human/Artificial Intelligence: musical theatre by creators, actors, musicians and audiences who, together with AI, enter the future.

foto @ Bart Grietens

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Exhibition | In the pause of a gesture there might be an echo #3

11-25 June 2022, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam opening hours: Tue-Sun 12:00 - 18:00

SIGHTLESS SEEING #5: REMEMBER BY HEART by Sarah van Lamsweerde

Immersed in the video-installation Sightless Seeing #5: Remember by Heart, we follow performer LEROY DE BÖCK deep into the collection of the former Theater Instituut Nederland (TIN). Guided by his physical memory, his senses, and by the careful keepers of the collection, we discover small openings in the closeted memories of generations of theatre makers and lovers. Remember by Heart allows us to explore stories of the past and future with our entire bodies. Concept and creation: SARAH VAN LAMSWEERDE, development and performance: LEROY DE BÖCK, camera and editing: ALINA OZEROVA. The tactile projection screen and costumes are created or assembled by JANNEKE RAAPHORST and textile design assistant TZVIKA GUTTER. The soundtrack is composed by LAM LAI, with additional recordings by MARTIJN TELLINGA. The tactile scale model in the film was designed by MARJOCA DE GREEF, SARAH VAN LAMSWEERDE, and ANASTASIJA PANDILOVSKA. Remember by Heart was filmed on location at IWO Boekendepot and Allard Pierson Museum. Many thanks to Gonneke Janssen, Hans van Keulen, Rogier Rompen and Martine Lunshof. For this work of art, no theatre heritage was handled directly or taken outside the archive. more info: https://www.arti.nl/tentoonstelling/in-the-pause-of-a-gesture-there-might-be-an-echo/?fbclid=IwAR1QQ44r-kYdheONpdsxZL-4JH7sqEuaOgXSn0z4QPdQ5D2p08jRnxs_7ws

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Unheard Records | Compilation004: 귀신소리 "Ghost Sound"

Released on 18/11/2021

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Exhibition | Collaboration project with Artist Lo Lai Lai The Unexpected Guest

27 Mar - 10 Apr 2021 Lung Fu Shan Environmental Education Centre Hong Kong

The Unexpected Guest

Artist Lo Lai Lai Natalie collaborated with composer Lam Lai to discuss what the ideal relationship between man and nature should be, and the paradox of the coexistence between man and urban wildlife.

“Is it restlessness or an undercurrent that is behind the romantic and charming façade of the countryside?  The English cottages have always been a secret garden for visitors. With the old inhabitants on the pondside gone far with their laughters, the place is now enlivened by pairs and pairs of bright eyes of the wild boars who are regular guests in the dark.  Farmers from all over Hong Kong suffered serious losses. As both the people and boars had to sustain their own living, ideas for solutions sprouted, including "death threats" against the wild boars that wandered in the city, playing in water pools and shopping malls and rummaging through recycling bins to find food. “Who is the unexpected guest,” citizens debated on and off the Internet. Yet, the farmers still had no choice but to continue dealing with the wild boars in the field day and night.  Desires are, perhaps, like a flowing stream—it goes on and on. “

The Unexpected Guest Single Channel Video, Mixed Media and Installation Size Variable Lam Lai, Lo Lai Lai Natalie 

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Sonic Anchor Special Series: Sound Forms 2020 – A Festival of Sound

17 Oct, 2020 Hong Kong Arts Centre

details: Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong (link)

L-H-T-P-T-M for video and sound L-H-T-P-T-M as a short-term for Light Has To Pass Through Me, is a live recording using analog synthesisers, depicting three modes of listening. Mode I embraces the listener in the sound space, Mode II suggests the listener to follow, and Mode III dissolves the sound space as if the listener becomes invisible.

The visual part develops from pinhole camera models where the camera aperture is described as a point, the beam of light from that point passes through the pinhole and creates a point of light inside the camera.

(photo:HKAC)