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Hong Kong Arts Festival is all set to deliver a high-voltage 50th anniversary program where the marriage of art and tech will be much in evidence. Rebecca Lo plugs in to find out more.
Moukarzel believes that digital delivery enriches what theater can be by expanding on how stories are told. He further acknowledges that many theater audiences enjoy the visceral experience of being inside a crowded theater to "not necessarily watch the play but the audience."
"We hope that the uploaded audience still is able to have the pleasure of seeing themselves, seeing others in the audience, still have some kind of communal experience. On the other hand, it is appropriate that there is a melancholy in the fact that no one is really there. The avatar is you, but not you. There is still an experience of loss."
Unfazed by the frequently negative portrayal of bionic men, Moukarzel prefers to see the concept as open to interpretation: "Man as machine, man as animal, man as angel - all of these have utopian and dystopian possibilities. It seems that the metaphor of the current age is to view man as a machine. We can only hope that this does not get abused by those in power: some machines are beautiful; some crash or run out of batteries."
