Yesterday I gave a lecture about my work at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong.

Yesterday I gave a (remote) lecture and workshop for the INDA International Program in Design and Architecture at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok

Last weekend I gave an online talk at OFCOURSE in Shanghai. I had the chance to present the “making of” our VR film Kowloon Forest / 靜影九龍.
 
Thank you so much to Jiaqi, Yuzhu, and Paul for the opportunity and for all your hard work!

SCI-Arc Graduation 2021!

Yesterday I gave a presentation at the 2021 Ars Electronica festival, as part of the “Hong Kong Garden” program. I presented some behind the scenes content from our VR film Kowloon Forest / 靜影九龍.
 
Thank you to my co-panelists Theodora Barat, Kattie Fan, Jonathan Kemp, Kingsley Ng, Royce Ng, and Alvaro Cassinelli for the great conversation, and to Ann Mak, Yujia Zhang, Lisa Park SoYoung, Elke Reinhuber and Charlie Yip for the organization!

Excited to share that this year I will be on the jury for the Vancouver International Film Festival, in the VIFF Immersed Competition! Looking forward.

Some photos from last night’s Fiction & Entertainment 2021 final screening at SCI-Arc with Liam Young.
 
🌟 CONGRATULATIONS 🌟 to our students: Vivian Charlesworth, Emma Koh, Tanita Enderes, Chase Janikowski, Attilio Bonelli, Pablo Lorenzana, Jason Rosen, Andrew Hu, Ben Evans, Saleh Jamsheer, Sinew Zhang, and Jinyong Gao – and thank you for all your incredible hard work!
 
Guest list:
Alisa Tager – President of Film & Television at Anonymous Content and Chief Creative officer of the Los Angeles Media Fund
Oliver Scholl – Production designer for Suicide Squad, Edge of Tomorrow, Independence Day, Spiderman: Homecoming, Venom etc.
Finnian MacManus – Concept Artist for Rougue One, Solo, Ad Astra, Pacific Rim etc
Shepherd Frankel – Production designer for AntMan, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Art Director for Magnolia, Terminator 3 etc
Monica Haley – Head of Human Resources and Recruiting For Blur Studio
Andrew Thomas Huang – Artist and director of films and music videos in collaboration with musicians such as Bjork, FKA Twigs, Serpent with Feet etc
Andrew Leung – Concept artist for Black Panther, Captain America Civil War, Ghost in the Shell, Deadpool, Mulan and many more.
Joao Ribas – Executive Director of LA’s REDCAT Gallery
Richard Enriquez – Director or Production for Halon, NEP Virtual Studios
Rebekah Bukhbinder – Set Designer and art Director for The Mandalorian, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, THe Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
John Canning – Executive Producer of New Media and Experimental at Digital Domain Studio
David Wexler – Creative Director and Founder of Strange Loop studios, a production company focused on concert visuals, immersive experiences and music videos.
Rick Farin, Claire Farin – Co Founders of Actual Objects studio
Jordan Long, Matt Glass, Tara Perry – Founders of HCT.media, an Emmy-winning studio focused on feature films, television and documentaries
Ceci Moss – Director and Curator of Gas Gallery, LA
Jen Stein – Designer Researcher with Experimental, Alex Macdowells Worldbuilding Studio
Kevin Dart – Director of Design and Animation studio Chromosphere
Toby Past – Creative Director at Advertising Agency Razorfish

Very happy to announce that I will be a speaker at this year’s Ars Electronica festival, as part of the “Hong Kong Garden” program, on Sep 11 at 2pm HKT/ 8am CET.
 
I will also be screening an excerpt of our VR film Kowloon Forest / 靜影九龍 during the festival.

Over the past week I taught a (remote) workshop with Shih-Yuan Wang and Yu-ting Sheng in Taiwan, a collaboration between 逢甲大學 Feng Chia University, 國立陽明交通大學 National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and 國立雲林科技大學 YunTech.
 
We developed a custom interface between the ROSO COOP robots and Unreal Engine – using the robot as an intuitive input device for realtime control of virtual cameras within the Unreal Engine scene. Controlling not only camera position/rotation but also focal length, speed, etc. The students then used this platform to create their own short films. All in one week!

Excited to announce that I will be on the judging panel for the 2021 DFIAwards in Seoul!

Yesterday I gave a (remote) lecture at NYCU (國立陽明交通大學 National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) in Taiwan!

This week I taught a (remote) visual effects workshop at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan!

Excited to share the work from my “VR Film Sets” seminar at SCI-Arc! The students created VR (virtual reality) environments inspired by movie scenes.
 
Films have always used architecture to tell stories. The worlds, cities, and spaces of cinema are responsible for creating the social, cultural, and political contexts of its screenplays. This year, all the movies we explored share a common design idea: the space and the setting represent a conflict/hierarchy/tension – from “Parasite” (2019) and its socially and physically stratified urban environment – to “Hollywood Hong Kong” (2001) and its literally and figuratively overshadowing tower complexes.

Over the past few weeks I taught a (remote) workshop for the School Of Creative Media MFA program at City University of Hong Kong

Join us at SCI-Arc tonight and tomorrow for VR Film Sets II – an interactive exhibition of VR work by my seminar students. The projects take five scenes from period/historical movies, and reimagine them as a series of fully-digital virtual reality (VR) environments.

Some frames from the projects of our 2018-19 Fiction & Entertainment graduates at SCI-Arc…

While I was at Tsinghua, I gave a public lecture about my work and research interests…

Last week I was a visiting tutor at Tsinghua University (清華大学) in Beijing. I taught a course as part of the “2019 Parametric Design Workshop”…

I will be teaching a workshop at Tsinghua University in Beijing on 13 – 19 July, about designing worlds for cinema and science fiction – invited by Professor Xu Weigo of the Digital Architecture Design Association (DADA).

The work of our Post-Industrial Landscapes CityU visiting school last summer is showing at Sónar Hong Kong 2019, amongst a fantastic lineup of other artists and performers…

 
Our 2017/18 graduates’ showreel has been featured in WIRED magazine, written up by the fantastic Bruce Sterling…

Launching the 2017/18 graduates showreel from our Fiction and Entertainment Masters program at SCI-Arc!

Join us this weekend at SCI-Arc for ‘VR Film Sets’ – an exhibition of VR environments re-imagining movies from the pre-digital age.

 
I will be giving a talk at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, on Friday 23 November at 4pm, about how cinema shapes our perception of our own world.
 
11月23日星期五下午四點，我將於香港城市大學創意媒體學院舉辦一個關於電影如何塑造我們對世界認知的講座。

Join us on Friday August 31st at 7pm for the final screening of our Fiction & Entertainment MA programme at SCI-Arc. We’ll be premiering short films, music videos, interactive installations, and more – the culmination of a year of hard work by our students.
 
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with guests including: Ane Crabtree, costume designer for Handmaid’s Tale; Alex McDowell, worldbuilder and production designer for Fight Club and Minority Report; Claire Evans, artist and lead singer of the band Yacht; Andrew Thomas Huang, artist and director of Bjork’s music videos; Jamin Warren, cofounder of videogame arts and culture company Kill Screen; Brian Merchant, author and editor at VICE Motherboard; Patti Podesta, production designer for American Gods; Ben West, creative director at Framestore LA; Timothy Williams, designer and animator for games film and music videos, and more. See you there!

What does ‘the future’ look like? You could be forgiven for thinking of a neon-lit dense cityscape somewhere in Japan or Hong Kong, during a perpetual rainy night. But why do we have these associations?
 
Join us at SCI-Arc for Visions of the Future’ – an interactive exhibition of new ideas for visions of the future.

Last week I taught at the Post-Industrial Landscapes AA Visiting School in Hong Kong. We created experimental VR scenes, video game environments, and 360° panoramic prints, from 3D scans of Hong Kong…

Join us at SCI-Arc for ‘CGI Film Sets’ – an exhibition of CGI rendered scenes, inspired by six movies from the pre-digital era…

Join us on Friday 1st August at 7pm for the final screening of our Fiction & Entertainment MA programme, followed by a panel discussion with guests from Framestore, Sundance, Disney Imagineering, Digital Domain and many others…

This week I taught a 2-day VFX & compositing workshop at UCLA, for Benjamin Ennemoser & Guvenc Ozel’s s postgraduate students. Photos from day 2 – compositing live action footage filmed in the Atacama desert.

Check out our Visual Studies student works exhibition on April 10th and 11th at SCI-Arc!

Check out our Visual Studies student work exhibition on December 10th and 11th at SCI-Arc!

Full house for last night’s outdoor screening of our students’ films, at SCI-Arc in downtown Los Angeles.

I’ll be giving a guest lecture at the Royal College of Art on March 4th 2015 at 6pm, for their Design Interactions MA programme.