Black-collared Starling 烏領椋鳥 (Hong Kong)

An-Ting e Ian Gallagher

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

Black-collared Starling 烏領椋鳥 (Hong Kong) – Taiwan | United Kingdom

An-Ting blends bird song recordings, experimental electronic music, soundscapes, and driving beats. Ian Gallagher employs cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies to document the duo’s experiences, with live visuals that react in real time to An-Ting’s music.

BIO

An-Ting 安婷 is a versatile artist who moves between piano, electronic compositions, and various other forms of artistic expression. She transforms her life experiences into musical creations, exploring the relationship between humanity, nature, and the spiritual universe.

Ian Gallagher studied Theoretical Physics in Edinburgh before completing a PhD in Complex Systems at the University of Manchester. He has been deeply involved in Manchester’s music scene, working as a sound engineer, show producer, and performer on stage, collaborating with artists such as Daniel Johnston and Neva Dinova.

This work was supported by the British Council and the organization Cryptic Glasgow.

MAHLER

KEN RUSSELL

Russell had long been an admirer of Mahler’s music. He said he based the film on “the rondo form in music where you present the theme and follow it with variations, then return to the theme and so on. My theme was the composer‘s last train journey before he died. During the journey we flash back to incidents in his life, the variations on the theme as it were. They vary from passion to comedy. Like the scherzos from his symphonies some of the scenes are pretty grotesque, too.”
cinema full

canary
Canary (Finnish: kanarialintu) is a bodily fantasy about hypersensitivity. The title alludes to birds that coal miners took down with them to serve as an indicator of the level of toxity in the air. When the bird died, the mine was deemed dangerous for humans as well. In the performance, the bird is replaced by hypersensitive human bodies that celebrate imperfection and confusion.