Future Cinema Systems: Next Generation Art Technologies is an unprecedented Hong Kong art tech initiative to build the next generation fully interactive and immerse cinematic architecture and applications. The project is led Professor Jeffrey Shaw, Chair Professor of the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, in collaboration with Professor Richard Allen at the Center for Applied Computing and Interactive Media at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and Professor Sarah Kenderdine at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. This pioneering project has been awarded HK$35.4 million in funding from the Innovation and Technology Support Program under the Innovation and Technology Commission of the HKSAR Government. 

Future Cinema Systems will consist of three technical architectures. The first of these is a high resolution, 360 degree, LED panoramic, stereoscopic projection environment, which has been built at HKBU’s new Visualization Research Centre. The second is a human-computer interaction engine—an integrated array of sensing inputs which will identify, correlate, and integrate a wide range of sensory cues from the participating spectators. The third is co-evolutionary narrative engine, which is software that allows inputs to be organized, orchestrated, and variously prioritized, and to ensure that the audio-visual manifold seamlessly reacts and responds to the active and passive sensory inputs of the participants over time. 

To fully utilize these technical frameworks the Future Cinema Systems’ collaborators will develop three applications or demonstrators. The Future Experience of Archive will present novel paradigms, solutions and designs for navigating and experiencing large data sets of digital content, such as photographs, movies, paintings, sculptures, and animations. The Cultural Heritage Demonstrator will develop tools for rendering cultural heritage fully navigable and accessible in an embodied experience of place and space. The Performance demonstrator will facilitate the development of new forms performance art—music, opera, and theatre—by creating intelligent interaction between human and machine agents, and interactive public participation in real-time mixed reality immersive visualizations.

Five CityU faculty are involved in this project— Kening Zhu (SCM), RAY LC (SCM), Miu Ling Lam (SCM), and Rosa Chan (EE)—together with ACIM programmers Leoson Cheong and Sky Suen.