Category: Events

Event: Symposium: Evolutions of Cinematic Virtual Reality

Date: May 18-19, 2026 (Monday-Tuesday)

Time: 9:00 – 18:00

Venue: Room 4.36, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

Registration link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/vNYcP6ugpj

Abstract

Just over a decade ago, the arrival of consumer-grade VR head mounted displays (HMDs) enabled the development of a new form of linear storytelling in digital virtual reality. In industrial and academic settings, this new narrative medium has been referred to as Cinematic Virtual Reality (Dooley 2021; Mateer 2017; Ross and Munt 2018), a label that recognises the adaptation of cinematic conventions and tropes within virtual spaces. The CVR medium continues to be well represented as an important filmic category within programs at major film and XR festivals around the world and has seen significant investments by leading media companies in the past. This symposium takes stock of recent developments in immersive linear storytelling.

Event: Workshop with Alexander Beyer: Color Grading for VR Film

Date: May 5, 2026 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00 – 6:00 pm

Venue: CPD 2.24, Centennial Campus

Registration required

Abstract

This workshop introduces the foundations of color grading through three sections: 1. Intro to Color Science, 2. Color Management, 3. Color Grading. Mr. Beyer will also demonstrate basic color grading at the example of 8K 180° VR footage in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Speaker

Mr Alexander Beyer has 20+ years experience in post production with a prolific track record in German and international cinema and television. In the past ten years, he has focused on DIT including data management, image pipeline and color grading.

For registration, please contact:

Tim Gruenewald at tgruene at hku.hk

Event: VR Workshop with Dr. Marty Miller: Reframing

Date: April 16, 2026 (Thursday)

Time: 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Venue: Art Tech Lab, RRST 4.35, Centennial Campus

Registration required

Abstract

Reframing is a multiplayer VR experience, in which participants collaboratively reimagine a curated series of 360-degree heritage photographs of Hong Kong using generative AI. The images span several sites where the tension between a place and its representation is subtle and embedded, to sites where it is explicit and top-down, like tourist infrastructure. In each site there is a representation of Hong Kong buildings or items visible with the actual object or building.

Participants move through these images together while modifying them through voice and text prompts, and their generative choices become the basis for the reflection session that follows.

Speaker

Dr. Marty Miller’s work focuses on collaborations with imaging communities across East Asia, examining how shared sites are engaged independently. Trained in ethnographic methods, he has conducted field work in the United States, Guatemala, and Sweden. He holds MAs in Visual Culture (Lund University) and Adult Learning (Linköping University), a PhD in Philosophy of Design (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media at the City University of Hong Kong.

For registration, please contact:
Tim Gruenewald at tgruene at hku.hk

Augmenting the Scene: The Role of Digital/Analog Interfaces in the Platformization of the Hong Kong Independent Music Scene

Date: April 13, 2026 (Monday)

Time: 6:00 – 7:00 pm

Venue: Arts Tech Lab (Room 4.35), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

Abstract
Digital platforms have become central to virtually all aspects of the production, circulation and promotion of musical activities worldwide. In many contexts of music production, musical content has become optimized for online circulation and discovery, while new music and social aesthetics as well as new music career strategies and intermediaries continue to emerge in relation to platform mediations of music. At the same time, offline or ‘analog’ activities continues to be a fundamental part of all forms and stages of musical activities for producers and fans alike. Bridging insights from scene studies, music industry studies and platform studies, this talk introduces the concept of scene interfaces as a new type of music intermediaries that connect, translate and distribute elements of music cultures and activities across media in the Hong Kong independent music scene. Taking the cases of the Zenegeist and Mansion collectives and their various online and offline activities as scene interface case studies, the talk specifically argues that they are at the core of processes of ‘music scene augmentation’ understood as the qualitative co-constitution of analog and digital practices and aesthetics that enable the renewal, expansion, and preservation of music scenes. In turn, this talk makes the case that scene interfaces and strategies of scene augmentation in Hong Kong and in other fragile contexts of music production both respond and provide an alternative to globalized processes of music platform optimization and diversify contemporary music platform imaginaries.

About the Speaker
Dr. François Mouillot holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies in the Academy of Languages and Culture at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He researches cultural scenes, the music industries and independent music practices in industrialized minority contexts, with a focus on the digital and analog infrastructures that make music practice possible. He has extensive ethnographic experience in Hong Kong S.A.R., the province of Québec in Canada, and the Basque region of France and Spain. In Hong Kong, he led the Hong Kong Live Music Study, the first survey of the cultural and social value of the live music sector and of its infrastructures (venues, concert organizations, promotional agencies and digital platforms) across all music genres in Hong Kong. He has co-edited the book Fractured Scenes Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), and his work appears in Convergence, Popular Communication, Perfect Beat, Organised Sound, Perfect Beat, Cinéma & Cie. and Critical Studies in Improvisation among other academic journals and anthologies.