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So, it is clear that media labs have become the 21st century’s leading technology pioneers. The media lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now in its fourth decade. This lab focuses on how “Humans experience and can be aided by technology.” The MIT lab has been examining the, currently quite primitive, state of VR avatars - which are a potential obstacle to delivering immersive, relatable VR experiences to users. The lab has developed “Bio-signal sensors” that detect the user’s emotional state so it can be communicated via expressive avatars called Emotional Beasts. Through careful iteration and development of Emotional Beasts, the MIT team has pulled the VR avatar out of the uncanny valley and made VR more believable and more relatable.

And now, a new Media Lab is opening at HKDI. What sets the lab at HKDI apart from its peers, is a focus on technology that is down-to-Earth and that will be useful in everyday life. A great example of this ethos is the conductive paint project developed at the HKDI Media Lab by an exchange student from from ECAL (Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne). As its name suggests, conductive paint is able to carry an electrical current and can be applied to almost any surface; wood, metal, fabric, even paper. The project aims to capture all the user’s senses; imagine a menu printed with conductive paint that can bring up a display of nutritional information when you run your finger over a listed item. Or how about a place-mat at an upscale restaurant that, when lightly tapped with a finger, can display a world map complete with information on the provenance of all the ingredients in your mushroom risotto?

The incorporation of all these features in everyday life is not meant to be gimmicky, but rather a real enhancement of your dining experience. This goal reflects a desire expressed by Olivia Yip, HKDI lecturer and the Media Lab’s Associate Director, for her students, “When they’re good enough as a designer, when we place technology in our everyday lives, the goal is for it to become seamless.” The tech should be unseen. She likens this to the invention of the iPhone which, once hailed as a revolutionary device, is now seen as just another smartphone among the many available on the market. Sure, you can use it to shoot a film or write a novel, it can act as your personal assistant and lets you video chat with anyone anywhere in the world at any time. But Yip believes that the smartphone has become so embedded in everyday life that it is no-longer seen as a piece of technology, but as an extension of the self. She adds, “Your iPhone is half your brain. Without it, you wouldn’t even know which class to go to next!”

As part of another project, Media Lab students are researching the application of virtual reality (VR) experiences in cinema. Yip notes that “We have a strong feeling that films are currently such a passive experience; in a world saturated with visual stimuli, movies are not as exciting as they once were. So, finding ways to capture the curiosity of the audience has become a really big and exciting thing for our students to explore.” The project aims to explore the application of VR technology in the future of cinema in order to engage new audiences in immersive environments within a cinematic narrative. The research at HKDI centres around developing cordless technology that will allow multiple VR users to occupy a single virtual environment while interacting with realistic VR objects.

With online streaming services eating away at the market share of traditional cinema, film producers have long looked for ways to entice people back into movie theatres. HKDI Media Lab aims to develop an unpredictable new type of experience that far exceeds that of gimmicky 3D cinema. In its current form, the project allows users to step into scenes from an archive of clips from the Hong Kong movie industry and, rather than passively watch, experience the movie from the point of view of the protagonist. The real challenge for the future is designing this experience to feel as seamless as possible.

Whether this research will result in the development of new technologies that will eventually reach mainstream use remains to be seen. For now, we can only speculate over what will be the next big thing in new media. But there’s a good chance that it will emerge from HKDI’s Media Lab, where the students’ potential is limited only by their imaginations!