TO CALL A HORSE A DEER

IP Yuk-Yiu

Monday 4 - Sunday 10 November, 10:00am - 4:00pm
The Bach
31 Meadowside, Dundee DD1 1DJ

TO CALL A HORSE A DEER is an experimental video game about language, hand-eye coordination, truth-bending and acts of complicity.

The title of the work is an inversion of “to call a deer a horse”, a Chinese idiom that is used to describe the deliberate act of confusing truth with untruth. The idiom originates from a story in the Chinese classical text Shiji (The Records of Grand Historians) in which an ambitious Qin politician tried to identify adversaries and silence dissent by colluding others to confuse a deer with a horse.

This ancient tale resonates with our times in which systematized truth-bending became an everyday political reality and tools of governance. The game, available in multiple languages, is both a mirror and a critique, a training simulator of truth-bending and its resistance.

Game rules
– The player competes by answering rounds of “true or false” questions, following the instructions as given in the game.
– The player will score 1 point by giving the CORRECT answer if he or she is instructed to LIE.
– The player will score 1 point by giving the INCORRECT answer if he or she is instructed to TELL THE TRUTH.
– An answer that does not conform to the given instruction will result in a deduction of 1 point.
– The player can choose not to answer the question. In that case, no point will be added or deducted.

About the Artist

IP Yuk-Yiu is an experimental filmmaker, media artist, art educator and independent curator. His works, ranging from experimental films, live performances, media installations to video games, have been showcased extensively at major international venues and festivals, including European Media Art Festival, New York Film Festival (views from the avant-garde), the Images Festival, FILE Festival, VideoBrasil, Transmediale, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] and WRO media art Bienniale. He is the founder of the art.ware project, an independent curatorial initiative focusing on the promotion of new media art in Hong Kong. IP has over fifteen years of curatorial experience in film, video and media art. Currently, he is Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His recent works explore hybrid creative forms that are informed by cinema, video games and contemporary media art practices.

Photography Kathryn Rattray