The Voyage
慢活旅程

Over the Ocean

Photographer Leong Ka Tai and his wife crossed the Pacific Ocean on a container ship in late October 2013. 35 days without phone and internet were conducive to contemplation. Life on board, the sky, the sea, and the interactions with officers and crew, were recorded photographically. A time-lapse presentation of the view from the porthole in their cabin shows the changes of the environment and container configurations with the passage of time.

Before embarkation, Leong invited artists and friends to participate in a “Message in a Bottle” project, which involved messages being inserted into a bottle, one per day, and thrown into the Pacific Ocean. The idea is to explore the possibility of chance connections. There were 32 messages, hence 32 bottles in total. The date, time and GPS location of each throw, recorded on video, are exhibited simultaneously on the wall of TV monitors as an exploration of the deviations in similar actions.

Miraculously one of the bottles had been picked up – and there was a reply eight months later – by a marine biologist, Carla Crossman, in Vancouver at the Hecate Straits off British Columbia. Her reply to Leong completed the performance of the “send” and “receive” cycle. The meeting between the couple and Carla is shown in another video.

浮瓶

2013年秋末，攝影師梁家泰夫婦乘坐貨櫃輪橫越太平洋。三十五天沒有電話和互聯網的海上旅程，正是思考和沉澱的好時機。不論是船上的生活、頭頂的天空、身旁的大海、船員的工作情況，藝術家都以攝影機記錄下來。船窗外的風景則以間歇慢格移動方式展出，呈現周遭環境和貨櫃，如何跟隨時間流逝變化。

出發前，梁氏邀請了好些朋友和藝術家們參加「瓶中信」計劃。在海上的日子，夫婦二人將訊息放進玻璃瓶，一天一個地拋向太平洋，探討偶遇的可能性。如是者，旅程上共拋出三十二個瓶中信。每次拋瓶過程均記下日期、時間和全球定位位置，並拍成短片，於展覽的電視牆上同時播放，展示重複行為的可變性。

神奇地，其中一個玻璃瓶於八個月後被人拾獲，更收到回覆，由溫哥華海洋生物學家卡拉．哥斯文在赫卡特海峽拾起。她的回應完成了梁家泰整個「投發」與「接收」的演出環。展覽中會播放卡拉與夫婦二人碰面的錄像片段。

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