As in the Hong Kong piece, the basic structure of each was modelled on the local street map and all the buildings were replaced by text.
These earlier works have no geographical markers – all three urban areas are pretty flat, after all – but the text gives a sense of place.
Players could try to follow their narratives by pedalling on a bicycle similar to the one at M+, with each city revealing itself through the words of people who know them.
The Hong Kong version, which is set in the Central, Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun neighbourhoods during the 19th century, has been created more than three decades after its predecessors, and some technological advances are evident.
The resolution is much higher and there is a semblance of the city’s topography, with the navigable area delineated by Victoria Harbour and the hilly backdrop of Hong Kong Island.
The words, which appear in terracotta orange (the colour of traditional Canton tiles), are better modelled, with realistic shadows of the player seen as they cycle past them.
And players can burn a few calories, too, as the stationary bicycle adjusts to the gradient of the route and makes pedalling harder when going uphill.
What Shaw, who is chair professor of Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts, describes as “a kinaesthetic conjunction of the active body in the virtual domain” is quite remarkable and perhaps too easily taken for granted in an age of touch screens and virtual reality.
Riding through the virtual streets, one can appreciate the sense of space and control as if one were on a real bicycle, without being encumbered by specialist equipment.
But it is the text and the font used to display it that really sets this work apart from the previous versions.
In 2021, Hong Kong novelist Dung Kai-cheung published Hong Kong Type: A Love Letter 150 Years Late.
It was inspired by his visit to a 2020 exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, in Sha Tin, where he discovered Hong Kong Type, a set of typefaces designed by British missionaries in the 19th century for the mass production of Chinese-language bibles in the then-new colony.
The second part sees her communing with spirits who give her lively, first-hand accounts of historical figures such as Robert Morrison, founder of the first Anglo-Chinese school in Hong Kong and one of the first to translate the Bible into Chinese.
I would like to have a love story in this work, because it is a work which is presented to Hong Kong [via the M+ facade]
The third part – from which the text in Legible City is taken – consists largely of an imagined love letter written by Dai’s late great-grandfather.
It is addressed to a biracial woman born from the rape of a Chinese woman shortly after the British took over Hong Kong in 1842. Written after she died, the letter records the tragic circumstances of a short life and, like other parts of the novel, is brimming with historical references that reflect Dung’s desire to record his home city’s life story.
Dung explained at the M+ project’s opening reception that he immediately picked this text when, at the suggestion of Osage Gallery director Agnes Lin, Shaw approached him about collaborating on it.
“I would like to have a love story in this work, because it is a work which is presented to Hong Kong [via the M+ facade],” he said.
Dung was deeply involved in working with designers to create 3D characters modelled on Hong Kong Type and helped pick out a section of the story set in Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun.
Conceptually there is something seductive about a city defined only by its stories. The title of Shaw’s series suggests the influence of Italo Calvino’s allegorical novel Invisible Cities, in which Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan about all the cities he saw on his travels. Dung mentioned at the facade’s unveiling that Calvino is one of his favourite writers.
Despite the name of Shaw’s work, his Hong Kong is not easily legible – sentences are truncated by the many sharp turns in one of the oldest parts of the city – although Dung and Shaw see artistic value in experiencing the text in this haphazard, piecemeal manner because it denies the authority of a single narrative and allows the players to focus on the shape of each word.
In so doing, they may notice the subtle differences between Hong Kong Type and what we are accustomed to today. This will also encourage people to read Dung’s novel, the pair reason.
As a piece of public art its jumbled phrases, appearing without context, are bound to be baffling even for those who read Chinese.
Fortunately, a pre-recorded demo version of this “game”, which is screened on the facade every evening except Fridays when there is a live stream directly from the bicycle station, carries a clearer message.
Some sections of the demo are shown with an overlay of what those Hong Kong streets are like today. These expose the city as a palimpsest of histories, memories and stories.
Shrouding with familiar 21st century buildings and shop signs words used in the 19th century to express a man’s love for a woman lends the work poignancy.
As Dung said of the choice of text, the best love stories should always be tragic. When it comes to the love story between Hongkongers and their home, the tragedy is how much we have forgotten.
“Jeffrey Shaw: Legible City Hong Kong” is shown on the M+ facade from 7-9pm every evening until October 6, 2024. The installation with the stationary bike is in the Found Space area of M+ and is open for public participation free of charge from 10am-10pm every Friday, with visitors’ journeys live-streamed on the facade.