Mike Wong studied at University of Hong Kong, L’ENTPE in Lyon, France and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The artist has started working quietly on his independent creative works since 2003. He chose visual art as his primary medium to reach the world and chose computation and CGI as his primary creative means.

王健明，畢業於香港大學工程學系，及後於法國里昂L’ENTPE學院取得電腦系碩士學位，亦曾於香港科技大學深造。自2003開始透過電腦運算及電腦圖像作為創作工具，以視覺藝術為平台，開始獨立藝術創作。



Grapheme [2008]



Grapheme is a simple electronic device inspired by the ubiquitous emoticons used in our daily on-line chatting activities. This rapidly evolving visual language is quietly forming a new writing system which challenges the position and effectiveness of traditional languages in digital media. Emoticons which were once simple ASCII glyphs only but they are now slowly replaced by visually rich image bitmaps or animations.

Grapheme comprises of a blank keyboard, two obsolete PalmOS PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) reprogrammed by the artist and some outdated peripherals. It disables completely the use of regular alphabets, it only allows typing emoticons using the blank keyboard. Grapheme displays emoticons as image bitmaps on the color screen and as original ASCII glyphs on the monochrome screen. Grapheme is not meant to be a piece of interactive art, it is a piece of reprogrammed obsolete electronics which the artist created as a response to the evolution of emoticons.

Grapheme is a work from the artist’s Technostalgic project which features electronic and visual art pieces based on obsolete hardware and technologies as critical responses to various social and technological issues.

Grapheme乃一具外型簡單的電子裝置，以我們日常在網上聊天室使用的圖像溝通模式作為靈感。作者相信在數碼媒體中快速增長的圖像語言，正在慢慢建立起一套新的溝通模式，令傳統語言所扮演的角色及其效用備受挑戰。早期的圖像語言由簡單的ASCII電腦代碼組合而成，近年已逐漸被豐富的圖像及動畫所取替。

Grapheme由一個空白鍵盤、兩部經作者改編程式的舊式PalmOS電子手帳及一些過時周邊硬件所組成。裝置摒棄了一貫文字輸入的模式，鍵盤只能直接輸入圖像語言，與此同時兩個不同的畫面會顯示出輸入的圖像及其簡單的ASCII代碼組合。Grapheme並非一件互動展品，它純粹是一件重新編碼的過時電子裝置，代表作者對圖像語言發展的一個回應。

Grapheme屬於作者一個名叫「科懷舊技」項目其中一件作品，此項目主要利用過時電子硬件及科技，創作視覺及電子藝術作品，批評性地回應現今社會及科技的發展。