Creative Tomorrow

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The West Kowloon Cultural District (the District) is pleased to announce the launch of “Creative Tomorrow”, a first-of-its-kind arts tech festival exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC). A key highlight of the District’s Performing Arts Season 2022-2023, “Creative Tomorrow” features more than 500 performances and events that blend technology and innovative programming in a display of creativity and encompass xiqu, theatre, music, dance, indoor and outdoor installations. Not only does the festival fully echo the Government’s vision to support arts tech development in Hong Kong, it also reinforces the District’s positioning as an innovative arts and culture hub that provides new and exciting experience to both artists and audiences alike.

Exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club, “Creative Tomorrow” is one of the many initiatives supported by the HKJC’s approved donation of HK$630 million to the Government to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. One of the key highlights, Magic Tea House, presented at the Xiqu Centre’s Tea House Theatre, will be staged regularly throughout the whole performing arts season from 13 August 2022. It is Hong Kong’s first-ever Cantonese opera production to feature robotics and AI technology, with a humanoid robot emulating the facial expressions, voice and body gestures of renowned Cantonese Opera artist Law Ka-ying. The production will combine a live performance with recordings, three-dimensional soundscapes and state- of-the-art technologies to fully immerse the audience in a magical tale that puts Cantonese opera in a new light.

Digital Odyssey, the innovative featured programme of “Creative Tomorrow”, will take place both indoors and outdoors around the District in February and March 2023. Highlights include a series of experimental installations, games and workshops curated by local media art curator and researcher Kyle Chung. Exciting programmes of Digital Odyssey include Borealis by Swiss artist Dan Acher who will bring the first-ever vibrant recreation of the Northern Lights to Hong Kong; petrichor, a constantly changing, dream-like world of projections, soundscapes, and artificial mist by German artist Robert Seidel; and Distributive intelligence | A group mind, an immersive, kinetic light installation by Swiss artist Lukas Truniger. In addition, Hong Kong media artist Chilai Howard will present The Orchestra of Temple Street – a creative visualisation of crowd-sourced streetscape data exploring and reinventing the inherent impression of Temple Street while local artist Enoch Cheng will curate Views from the Grand View Garden (working title), taking elements from Xiqu’s stylised body and costumes to reinterpret classical characters and exploring the complexity of human’s psychology with modern science and language.

Phygital D – an innovative series of programmes under “Creative Tomorrow” that blends dance, live physical performance, film, motion capture and virtual reality experiences – will be staged at Freespace in September and October. Featuring multimedia and movement artists from Hong Kong and Asia, Phygital D features six new creations that transport the audience through a variety of physical and virtual dance worlds. Avant-garde Japanese artist Hiroaki Umeda will present the full-length performance of indivisible substance – the final iteration of the work-in-progress virtual experience presented by Freespace in 2020 and 2021, along with three related installation works by this leading multidisciplinary artist. Emerging Chinese new media artist Lu Yang will premiere a real-time collaboration in a hyper-real shared virtual environment between dancers and virtual avatars in Freespace in West Kowloon and Sydney Opera House. Other creations by local artists include a multisensory interactive dance adventure by Zelia ZZ Tan, an individual imaginary dance experience by Chan Wai-lok and an immersive VR installation by Tsang Tsui-shan, the Best New Director of the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards.

The highly anticipated Freespace Jazz Fest returns for its fourth edition at the end of October on a scale larger than before and will, for the first time, expand to Wonderland, an event space adjacent to the HKPM in the District. Featured artists include Eugene Pao, Joyce Cheung, Daniel Chu and the Patrick Lui Jazz Orchestra. In The Room at Freespace, the Experimental Lab will offer an avant-garde musical experience with local musicians and new media artists improvising live online with artists from around the world, adding excitement to the five days of non-stop great music and cultural activities. In November 2022 and March 2023, the Future of Performance series will blend light and soundscapes to examine the subconscious and explore the performance potential of telepresence techniques through game control programming and first-person game play.