15 December 2022
The desire to create an immersive experience is innate. Kids decorate their bedroom ceilings with star-shaped stickers and imagine themselves enjoying a night under the stars. The artist Claude Monet might have wanted to show you how the light and colour of the water lilies in his garden change at different times of the day, as depicted in his famous painting in the Musée de l’Orangerie. E-game developers yearn to design a truly immersive and interactive e-game experience, enabling you to fend off The Terminator. History teachers wish to virtually bring to life gladiator fights in the Colosseum and the role this form of entertainment played in Roman rule 2,000 years ago. Do these examples sound familiar? Now, thanks to the innovative vision of Professor Jeffrey Shaw, Chair Professor of the Academy of Visual Arts, all these dreams will soon become reality, and he will be creating much more in the future.
In the project “Future Cinema Systems: Next-Generation Art Technologies,” which is being led by HKBU in collaboration with City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, Professor Shaw is not only creating technological breakthroughs, but unprecedented cinematic experiences which will take people’s appreciation of the arts to a new level. We are encouraged that the project was awarded HK$35.4 million in funding by the Innovation and Technology Support Programme (ITSP) under the Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), which is the largest-ever amount it has approved for an art-tech project. It is also another recognition of HKBU’s contribution to the strengthening of the territory’s development of art-tech.
This project is about the future. As the Future Cinema System (FCS) harnesses three integrated technological breakthroughs in the fields of visualisation, human-computer interaction and co-evolutionary narrative with the involvement of our artificial intelligence expert Professor Liu Jiming and his team, Professor Shaw can explore the future experience of archive, place and performance. Such future experiences will transform society’s understanding and experience of future archiving, not only as a repository of existing knowledge, but as a dynamic, evolving generator of new knowledge. The FCS will also create a next-generation cultural heritage experience which encompasses time and space, places and artefacts in a global sense. Besides, it will also innovate a hybrid space which allows intelligent interactions between humans and machines while they enjoy exploring the future of performative media. Yet, what is important is Professor Shaw’s vision of using technology to create unprecedented experiences in terms of how we appreciate art and culture, as well as its boundless applications within the arts world and creative industries. This is what HKBU is about – envisaging the future world, innovating next-generation technologies, and setting future trends.
All in all, the FCS is a visionary endeavour which will revolutionise the cultural and cinematic experience, as the innovative multi-modal frameworks it will create can be widely adopted to suit the requirements of different settings. It will definitely expand the capacity and dimensions of the creative industries, as well as create substantial value for education, sports and even science. It can be a future classroom and a future gaming environment.
Well-known for being a cradle of creativity, HKBU has been actively developing the arts and technology, and we are integrating the arts and science across disciplines to create novel artistic and cultural experiences. Following the success of our art-tech project “Building Platform Technologies for Symbiotic Creativity” and the launch of the world’s first Turing AI Orchestra, the FCS marks another milestone which demonstrates our commitment to sustaining an environment for scholars to envisage the future of arts creation and appreciation, as well as our ambition to nurture the younger generation’s artistic knowledge and innovative thinking.
While this project lasts for only two years, I foresee that its impact will be profound and extensive. I hope that one day you will have a Future Cinema System at home, have your dreams fulfilled, and Begin your Unbounded journey in the future world!