It has been a year cruelly short yet impossibly eventful.

This year began by returning to ‘home’ home in Hong Kong, after four years in LA and six months in Tanzania.

The year has allowed me to live off of money I made by doing the trades I simply enjoyed doing. Thanks to people’s recommendation and appreciation, I was given a great share of opportunities.

The year has also taken me to many new places outside and in Hong Kong, where I thought I knew well. Every fresh piece of land I lay my foot upon gives me a sort of comfort that I am, literally, not stepping on the same ground.

The year has connected me with many friends old and new, whom are often inspiring and uplifting, and without whom to share my life would not be half as interesting.

The year has taught me many humbling lessons and helped steer my direction. I myself am very excited about this coming year.

Thanks to all of my family and friends who have cared about me even I might not have been able to tell you directly how much I care about you too. Thank you, if you are reading this, you know I am saying this to you.

Wish you a happy new year.

First thing first,

_{The emboss on each card is manually done to emphasize the organic, personal and tailored features of my designs. Imperfect as they might be, each one is unique :-)}

I am certainly not original in the use of the three basic shapes as graphical elements – they are used because they are good. At which point did human start using these shapes in works of design I do not konw (likely as soon as they started making shapes), however, in this case I know that I was influenced by 1.) the game we all played when we were babies in which we must fit the shapes into the right holes; 2.) Japanese’s yearning for simplicity, and 3.) the Elementism (a term I learned in Hung Lam’s Elementism 2, about the work of Shinnoske Sugisaki) shared by Chinese and Japanese architecture. Since I started my work (might have caused the heightened registration) I kept stumbling upon logos and graphics that use these shapes dominantly (The Logo of Suntory Museum, for example). Nonetheless, I truly think that they pithily express the aspects of work that I work/(wish to work) on, as well as the essence of my character.

The small texts under the three shapes are:

• Square → Digital
• Triangle → Architectural
• Circle → Physical

Rather self-explanatory, right?

[2009.11.28 update:took+added a few more pictures]

When I look into your eyes
I can see a love restrained
But darlin’ when I hold you
Don’t you know I feel the same
‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it’s hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain

—Guns N Roses

After that, she disappeared for a while. Soon later she walked out from the back of the restaurant, changed into casual clothes, and exited the restaurant speedily. She went right towards her bicycle, which was parked right outside the large window our seat was next to. The bicycle she picked up had a baby seat at the front, and another on the back.

Through the glass, I got to see her closely (also because I was no longer paying attention to the soup). She was exhausted. There was barely a glint in her eyes…

I recall a few years ago, 2006 that was, while I was in LA, I went to a play/musical with a few friends called “The Black Rider – The Casting of the Magic Bullets“. My friend Yankov who, then as a master’s student at the UCLA theatre school, inspired us to all go out to the play. He had warned us about the slightly unusual style in advance, and as I was along with others also in the process of putting together a stage performance then, I paid a lot of attention to the highly stylistic stage design, lighting and directions. Occupied by all the spectacles, I failed comprehensively to appreciate the classic, well-known, (originally german) ingenious story.

Wilhelm, a file clerk, falls in love with a huntsman’s daughter. In order to marry, Wilhelm must prove his worth as a hunter and gain her father’s approval, but, as “a man of pen and ink”, his shot is lousy and his hopes of marriage worsen. That is until he is offered magic bullets by the devil, Pegleg – who assures him that his bullets will always have a sure shot. However, Pegleg stipulates that, while most of the bullets will hit anything Wilhelm pleases, one of the bullets is under Pegleg’s control. Foolish, naive, and overrun with desperate hope, Wilhelm accepts the Faustian pact. On the day of Wilhelm’s wedding, the final bullet strikes his beloved dead. He then goes mad, and joins the previous victims of Satan’s cunning in the Devil’s carnival.

—A Synopsis from our beloved Wikipedia

Ever since my childhood, I have always been curious about where one would actually find the devil to make deals with. Not that I was prepared to make one, but I was genuinely curious, or thinking ‘just in case’. Now that I am not as ingenuous as then, when I was reminded of this story tonight, I suddenly realized the (banal) fact that the deal has always been in place awaiting us to jettison our long upheld values, moral standards and integrity.

Now, who doesn’t want a few magic bullets? Thoughts anyone?

My three months stay in Japan is close to half done. It is very likely that the second half will be twice as short as the first. If that is so, the next two thirds of my entire life will definitely share a similar phenomenon with my ephemeral stay in Osaka.

Being ‘Culture Day’, 2009.11.03 was a public holiday in Japan. I have decided to go to the Nagai Park (長居公園) close by to where we live with my brother and a few other friends and spend our afternoon there. The place was filled with people, mostly kids and parents, exhibiting an unaffected aura of enjoyment. We brought our guitar along, and did some singing, chatting, eating… and that was about it. All was wonderful.

See more pictures at my flickr.

This is my dear brother. The coming to Japan for three months was an idea of his.

Note that my UCLA shorts’ color match surprisingly well with the curtains of my room

Best Contact, still: joe@liao.cz

If, seriously, you want to send me good stuff:

Rm. 213 J&F Plaza
4-7-16 Kire-nishi Hirano-ku, Osaka-shi
Osaka, Japan 547-0026

Here for three months, hope to learn Japanese with alacrity and become a polyglot(and they say you should use your GRE words so to bolster your learning.) The fixed schooling schedule and the pleasant bonhomie of the common room in this building is an anodyne to my inchoate, indolent life in Hong Kong.

Spent over 60% of my time last week working on the website for Match&Fusion. Soon to be released. Everything besides sushi and gogo-no-koucha (午後の紅茶) is very expensive.

Enough of being verbose. More update to come.

Frankly, XLIEUX could not be considered highly technical, but it is precisely the simple and direct concept that gave rise to all the possible ways of interacting with it, and interpreting it. Even between Wendy and I, I think we have always agreed on the main direction it was going to be, and listened to each other for suggestions on many details, but were never 100% in sync with each others’ interpretation of the project. Through the process, under resource and time pressure, and consideration of differing impact on viewers by adjusting certain aspects of the piece, we have arrived at the version that was open to public for two weeks at experimenta during late June to early July this year.

I have always introduced people to the piece in slightly different ways from Wendy’s, possibly also due to our different sets of diction. Wendy has written her account of the piece in detail on her blog. In my own words, “XLIEUX is a section of the infinitely small distance between people that internet has made possible.”

Internet, the increasingly dominating media of our time, has brought long distances to nil, rendered space ‘non-existent’. The reaction to such a pervasive phenomenon is seen on so many different levels, social networking, for example. In the essay Seattle Central Library: Civic Architecture in the Age of Media, Koolhaas and the OMA’s effort in creating a space that harnesses the classical concept of a library while reacting to the new realm of social interaction, gives a great example of how architecture is also influenced by humanity’s changing media. The coexistence of virtual and the real, in terms of space, is a common theme shared by the Seattle Central Library and XLIEUX.

As mentioned, XLIEUX is a section of an infinitely small ’space’ – i.e. a plane, or better yet, an ‘interface’, a virtual space. The section itself, however, is a space, a physical space, an ‘art’ space. It is somewhat a spatial oxymoron. It became an unusual context for participants to explore and experience the concept of space.

A thorough encounter with XLIEUX begins with arriving at the gallery, and immediately confronted by a large ‘X’ constructed with black rubber, standing in the way to the depths of the gallery. As in an architectural plan, an X implies a void. We used this symbolism in our space (and publications) to convey the idea that this gallery space could, to some, be a ‘void’: By having two persons from somewhere else talking to two projections on two gallery walls via their own internet video chat setup, both of their experience would be hardly distinguishable from a normal, directly connected video chat, hence naturally being unaware of the space, considering it non-existent, a void. The difference is that the sound of their conversation would fill the space, and all sounds within the gallery, including visitors’ chatter, would be taken in as well; Their face would be seen on the walls, and participants who venture pass the X ‘barrier’ would even be able to further engage into the conversation i.e. intrude others’ conversations, by simply standing in front of the projections. The action of entering into the ‘void’ physically gives the two conversing nodes from afar a revelation of the ‘medium’ – a space – through which they were connected. Afterall, the awareness AND unawareness of space, physical and virtual, remains to be the super theme of this project, just as Wendy’s use of the (borrowed) words ‘place’ and ‘non-place’ (Have I mentioned that LIEUX is the french word for ‘place’?). Essentially, such psychological relationship with space is also the emotional words, or more like prepositions, that helps make up the language of architecture, in my humble opinion.

XLIEUX has been a straightforward experiment for me to witness the interaction between virtual and physical space, and people’s reaction to it. I genuinely believe that architecture, as a combination of art and science, is the reflection as well as the product of a particular time in history, and hence the pursuit of a ‘timeless’ design, is in itself anther oxymoron. In this day and age, embracing the influence of digital media, how it has reshaped our society and people’s relationship with each other and its surrounding environment, seems to be the greatest revelation of architecture.

Stephen Greenwood left the place about 30 hours ago. This place is quiet without his itunes library.

He has been a close friend, a colleague, a peer. His influence on me has been noticeable. I wish he had a good and inspiring time here.

As for myself, the to-do list is never ending. It’s been months since I last finished every item I listed for any single day. Like Mary said, we’re only paying back the interest…. and I am not even at that stage yet.

Leaving for Japan in 12 days, staying there for 3 months. I shall speak the language, and likely meet some people.

Applying to Architecture school. Preparing for the GRE. Then, look for a Design office to work at, Shanghai maybe?

Want to sing out loud something in the public, but muffled by shyness. Still waiting for that someone to come out inside me.

Want to finish the film. Want to pour my hearts and brains and sweats into it, and show it to people. Want to make it my work that concludes, for now at least, my endeavor in films.

Should travel on foot, with a backpack and a pocket knife. How do one gather mass while rolling? Has technology made this possible yet?

它大概有十多歲吧。