Hong Kong’s ‘art tech’ push means more AI, VR and NFTs but a lack of creative spark
- Big institutions in Hong Kong have poured millions into fusing art and tech in recent years. While this has brought AI choirs to the city, not everyone’s happy
When she launched the Microwave Video Festival, in 1996, Hong Kong artist and independent curator Ellen Pau had to assure her backers at the city’s municipal council that she would avoid the most sophisticated media art from other parts of the world.
You can tell from the wording of the original press release, in which she was quoted as saying that the festival would bring “simply produced, yet creative” videos that were “relatable” and “inspiring” to local people.
“There was definitely a nervousness about new media and using technology in the arts at the Urban Council,” she says. “For the festival to go ahead, I felt it was safer to reassure officials that we wouldn’t overwhelm the audience with feats of computing and engineering. How things have changed.”
In November 2020, then-Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor devoted a whole section of her policy address to art tech, effectively launching a massive local industry focused on newfangled technology in the arts.
According to Lam, integration of arts and technology was a “new global trend” that Hong Kong had to keep up with.