Can you first tell us about your collaboration with Keith Lam and Cong Quartet? 

Chiu: Shuffle Dimensions is my first creative project with Keith. We share similar perspectives and an interest in exploring the vague spaces between reality and illusion, so we hit it off from the beginning. We often discuss when to input "real" (i.e. actual music) or "unreal" data (i.e. the sound of body movements) into the composition. The ambiguity could be confusing to many, but to look at things from an artist's perspective, if everything we thought we knew is not actually true, then anything is possible. Creators then have the perfect conditions to actualise their own truths. 

As for Cong Quartet, we always have a great time playing music; this is already our fourth collaboration. They are not only professionals in classical music, but also open to new experiments in contemporary music. We have such trust in one another that we start our projects a bit cluelessly and figure out things along the way, challenging our creative boundaries and getting out of our comfort zones. 

You have used various sets of data in your composition, for example, the biometric data of the Cong Quartet. Can you explain exactly how data sonification works? 

Chiu: Each piece of data represents a texture. The texture combines different musical elements and weaves everything into a composition. The term "data" makes me sound like a scientist, but I'm not. I start by creating a mapping system, such as correlating certain data (such as temperature, humidity, etc) with a musical note or dynamics.

Keith also gave me atmospheric data of significant historical years in Hong Kong, including 1984, when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed, and the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong. I often ask myself, "What does this data represent?"  or "What does the day mean?" I realised I just needed to use the data to explain inexplicable emotions.