Using mixed reality to celebrate a little island's heritage in Hong Kong

Yim Tin Tsai's crumbling old pier is given a new purpose by way of a Meta Quest Pro.

This year's Sai Kung Hoi Arts Festival (西貢海藝術節) is already well underway in Hong Kong, and now in its third edition, this is by far the best one yet. My buddy Dr. Chris Chan got even more involved this year, with his "X-ARt" team of four presenting "Through the Years to Touch You"《流穿越》, an augmented reality eco-art performance on Chris’ ancestral island, Yim Tin Tsai (鹽田梓). I was lucky enough to catch the one-day-only show, and for the rest of you, its romantic "Moon Gate"《竹月門》bamboo arch is staying at the end of the island’s old pier until January 12, 2025. Unless some crazy typhoon manages to blow it away beforehand, of course.

The "X-ARt" quartet is compromised of Prof. Tristan Braud (head of HKUST’s XRIM Lab) and Chris (Oxford + Imperial) as the technical experts, along with creative duo Brian Lau (lecturer at HKUST-ISD) and Dominie Chan as the performers. The Moon Gate’s design is also the work of Dominie, who soaked the recycled bamboo sticks in seawater to add a touch of barnacles, before enlisting the help of 4th-generation bamboo scaffolding master Chan Yuk Kwong (陳煜光) for the installation’s construction. (Funnily enough, neither of them are of relation to Yim Tin Tsai’s Chan clan.)