For most people who were at GayBird’s Fragile! Human Inside performance at Tai Kwun in April 2025, it was impossible to anticipate the many twists and turns that would take place. The 70-minute performance started at the Laundry Steps, with an animation projected next to an installation that resembled a human head, constructed using cardboard boxes as building blocks and screens for eyes, with a gap left for its mouth – altogether roughly five metres in height. An anthropomorphic avian creature rambled on in the animation, steeping the audience in its conspiratorial bent:

 “So these organisations aren’t aiming to take away any memory of importance, but just these minor details that are so inconspicuous,” it said. “Nobody even suspects them when something happens.”

What followed was a relocation of the entire audience into JC Cube, the heritage and arts complex’s auditorium, where GayBird awaited on a podium above the seats. He views this migration as the audience’s journey into a virtual space, where he orchestrated a performance of light and sound while wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset, pinching the air to trigger experiences for those standing below, their heads craned.

Another shift took everyone to the auditorium’s seats, and a video showed the crowd standing before its screen just moments before, faces cloaked by an algorithm in the projected output. The performance continued with percussive and electronic music, game controllers, and a live video game-like feed featuring exploding strawberries. It was absurd, the humour was mildly dark and the hour-long experience was meant to bring about a slight sense of instability. Part of the idea, the artist explains, is for participants to produce meaning through their own motions and feelings in different spaces – they need to shift and catch up.

GayBird’s performance at Tai Kwun exemplifies his practice, converging multiple disciplines with high production values and big themes, ready to surprise anyone who commits to spending an hour or two with the artist and his collaborators.

The artistic expression of GayBird – aka Keith Leung, his moniker a play on his name in Cantonese – builds on a career as a record producer, film composer, music director and other roles in Hong Kong’s music industry. But an inflection point for him was earning an MPhil in creative media at City University in 2012. The programme gave GayBird space to blend his passion for electronic music, composition and the desire to move beyond sound by exploring media art and performance.

Those intersections have enabled him to explore hefty ideas, not only in performances but also in art projects, such as the installation Bird Code that was commissioned and shown by the Hong Kong Museum of Art to accompany an exhibition of Joan Miró’s artworks in 2023. GayBird started with elements that the Catalan surrealist included in his paintings – ladders and the sky – and decided that he would develop a project involving birds: specifically, birdsong.

The installation involved eight metal booths. Walk up to one and pick up a receiver, and you heard the vocalisations of a bird that is native to Hong Kong – a different one at each booth. But listen closely and it becomes clear that the chirps, whistles and melodies are Morse code patterns. GayBird explains that the encoded message was generated using ChatGPT – it’s a set of instructions for how to fly, explained to humans by birds.

The surface read of Bird Code is that it’s about nature and the way Hong Kong’s landscape is being encroached upon by humanity. Birdsong is played by a speaker behind a pane of glass – it’s trapped within a manmade structure. The experience of interacting with the installation is meant to mimic some forms of prison visitation, where the confined party can only be seen through glass and heard through a handset. There’s another layer of commentary about the way we exist, here in Hong Kong, and the precariousness of that state.

Yet another work, Music for 9 (2023), is a nine-channel video and sound installation that probes how our sense of reality can be manipulated when another entity presents a selective perspective and limits what the viewer can see. GayBird shows his own hands and feet on the video channels, clapping, knocking, stomping, each forming a musical stem. When merged and heard as a whole, they come together in a familiar beat – the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No 9, more commonly known as Ode to Joy.

But the tune has no tone; it’s simply a percussive track that triggers our memory of a well-known piece of classical music. Something is missing – one taken away from a perfect 10 – both in aural form and in the way GayBird’s hands and feet and the back of his head are presented on screens, without his full body ever being seen. Continuing the theme of fragmentation and incompleteness, a few score drawings are also part of the work, each missing or highlighting specific types of musical notation, never able to individually demonstrate the full musical arrangement.

GayBird makes the point that even though much of his artistic expression invokes his musical professional background, his artistic outlet is more about musicality – a sensitivity and quality that can be expressed beyond audio form. It can be felt when viewing his drawings or in the objects he invents.

GayBird has a penchant for designing his own electronic instruments, which are then fabricated by his collaborators. He describes a fascination with electronic musical instruments that were once out of reach because of their exorbitant price tags. Later, once he was able to acquire vintage instruments and experimented with them, he came to realise they were more than objects that made music. Rather, they were designed to interact with their users.

That sparked his curiosity about the way a human body works in tandem with buttons and knobs to control pitch, rhythm and other elements of sound. This distilled down to a research focus on the architecture of interfaces, which influences a person’s movements to trigger new sounds. It’s a relationship that the artist says is crucial within his practice.

Those motions and postures were perhaps most evident in Fragile! Human Inside, with his orchestration via hand gestures and body movements. It was a mesmerising segment that inspired awe. For those in the audience, it was easy to slip into the alternate world that GayBird and his team had crafted. The artist plays with that willingness to accept our part in a changing reality.

“What might make people think that Earth is a dangerous place?” GayBird said during an interview with Artomity. “It’s that there are plenty of conspiracy theories – dangerous things that are fake but sound real, and also seem like they’re referring to something else entirely. They’re also hard to predict.”

It’s a foreboding feeling that creeps up slowly – but only if you see beyond the spectacle. 

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2025年4月，梁基爵的《人類開箱》在大館登場，對大部分觀眾而言，箇中曲折離奇實屬預期之外。這場70分鐘長的表演以洗衣場石階為起點，開場時，在一個貌似人頭、約五米高的裝置旁投影動畫。裝置由紙箱砌成，以屏幕作眼睛，留下一個空隙作嘴巴。人形鳥在動畫中不斷碎碎唸，以陰謀論包圍觀眾： 

牠說：「所以啲組織唔係話要擦除你啲咩重要記憶，真係只係啲細微細眼嘢，咁先無咁顯眼。殺人於無形。」

其後，全體觀眾移步至另一空間，來到大館這座古跡及藝術建築群的賽馬會立方綜藝館。梁基爵已在觀眾席上方的講台靜候。在他眼中，觀眾進場如同遷進虛擬空間，投進他親手編奏的表演：梁氏頭戴Apple  Vision Pro裝置，以空中手勢演繹光影與聲音的交錯，觸動台下仰望而立的觀眾。

接下來的轉折，是全綜藝館觀眾坐下觀看短片，看到自己剛剛站在屏幕前的片段，人臉則被演算法作打格處理。表演繼續伴以敲擊和電子音樂，加上遊戲控制器，和如同電子遊戲的爆炸士多啤梨的直播。情景荒誕，稍帶黑色幽默，而這一小時的體驗，原意是營造輕微不穩感。藝術家解釋當中想法，是希望參與者透過自身在不同空間的動作和感受來產生意義——他們需要轉變，和從後趕上。

梁基爵的大館跨領域演出是他藝術實踐的寫照，既有份量也觸及重大課題，隨時準備為任何樂意花一、兩小時感受他與協作者的觀眾製造驚喜。

梁基爵的英語綽號GayBird是粵語本名的鬼馬譯本，其藝術表達建基於早年的香港音樂事業，他先後擔任過唱片監製、電影配樂師、音樂總監等崗位。但轉捩點卻來自2012年在香港城市大學獲得創意媒體哲學碩士學位。課程為梁氏開拓了更大空間，把其對電子音樂和作曲的熱愛融會超越聲音的想像，走進媒體藝術和表演的領域。

那些交叉點令他有能力在表演甚至藝術作品中探討沉重主題。2023年受香港藝術館委約的裝置作品《鳥語》正是一例。《鳥語》是配合2023年的胡安．米羅展覽創作，梁氏先從這位加泰隆超現實大師的畫作元素入手，在梯子和天空的基礎上發展出與鳥兒相關的作品，以鳥語為主題。

裝置設有8個金屬攤位。只要走進其中一個拿起聽筒，便可以聽到一種香港原生雀鳥的叫聲，每個攤位都是一種不同的鳥類。細心聆聽下，會逐漸領會到那些吱喳、口哨和小曲其實在打著摩斯密碼。梁氏解釋指這些加密訊息由ChatGPT生成，是鳥類向人類發出的指示，教人如何飛翔。

從表面解讀《鳥語》，會覺得作品是關於大自然，還有香港的地貌正被人類入侵。鳥鳴聲經玻璃屏幕後的揚聲器播放，暗喻被人造結構鎖住。與裝置互動的體驗，原意是模仿探監，被囚者只可以在玻璃後亮相，聲音也只能通過話筒送出，從另一層次反映香港人生存狀態的脆弱與不安。

然而，另一作品《九重奏》（2023年）是以九個頻道組成的影音裝置，窺探以選擇性視覺限制觀眾所接收的內容時，如何操控現實感受。梁氏在每個視訊頻道中分別以拍手、敲打、跺腳等手足動作形成音樂根源，合組成為耳熟能詳的節拍——貝多芬的《第九交響曲》，即較人所共知的《快樂頌》。

但該敲擊樂不帶音調，其音軌只勾起古典名曲的記憶。當中若有所失_——九就是十全十美取走其一。缺失不但出現在在聽覺上，屏幕上的梁氏手足同樣只是局部，未見全身。碎片和不完整的主題在裝置中延續，包括幾幅樂譜畫作，各自只有某些特定記譜，沒有一份能夠獨立呈現整體編曲。

梁基爵指出，縱然他的藝術表達很大程度上源於其音樂專業背景，但他的藝術作品卻不止於音樂性，以超越聲音的形態展現感性與特質，觀眾可以透過其畫作和發明中體會這種音樂性。

梁基爵對於設計自家電子音樂器情有獨鍾，這些樂器由協作者製成。他形容自己曾經因為電子樂器的天價卻步。直到他有能力購置古董樂器和進行相關實驗時，才發現它們不只是產生音樂的物件，而是為了與使用者互動而設計。

這種發現引發了他的好奇，想明白人體怎樣與按鍵、按鈕等協同來控制音調、節奏和其他聲音元素，幾經沉澱後，他最終把研究聚焦界面的架構，這些架構可以影響人們產生新聲音的動作。梁氏認為這是他藝術實踐中非常重要的關係。

那些動作和姿勢，在《人類開箱》中尤為突出。梁基爵透過手勢和肢體動作指揮作品，這個迷人的環節令人驚嘆不已。在場觀眾很容易溜進梁氏與團隊營造的另一個世界，而且樂意接受自己在轉變現實中的角色，而這正是梁氏所探索的重點。

梁氏接受《藝源》訪問時表示：「你有乜嘢可以令到大家覺得地球危險呢？即係就好多呢啲咁嘅陰謀啦，即係好多好危險嘅嘢，似假又似真，又好似你講緊第二啲嘢咁，但係其實又有一啲會好鬼馬。」

不祥預感逐步蔓延_——前提是你可以看透奇觀以外的事物。