Eastern Fantasy: A Metaverse Sci-Fi Fest 2.0

The Forum "Metaverse: from Digital Bard to Posthuman" is convened by Lucia Luo, Dean of Penglai SF Academy and Ping Yang, Chief sci-fi writer of Penglai SF Academy, and co-organized by Eight Light Minutes Culture. The guest speakers include famous science fiction writer Cixin Liu; Feng Yan, Professor of Fudan University, Di Li, Chief Executive Officer of Xiaoice;  Tongzhou Yu & Qi Duanmu from China Academy of Art;  Anna Borou Yu & Jiajian Min, the principals of MYStudio from Harvard FAS CAMLab; Diego Agulló from University UDK in Berlin; Alfie Bown from Royal Holloway University London; Francesco Verso, Italian science fiction writer and editor; Bo Jiang, a representative of the newer generation of science fiction writers and the original author of the film The Soul.

The famed sci-fi writer Liu Cixin gives a direct response to the buzz going around about his view towards metaverse, saying that the metaverse, due to the limitation of technology, hasn't gone beyond the imagination of sci-fi literature. With new technologies applied to the metaverse in the future, the connection between people and the relationship between human and nature in the metaverse could be even closer than those in the physical world.

Professor Yan Feng believes that the virtual universe created by human through literature, painting, drama and movies at the early stage of civilization has now been empowered by the technological development to the extent that it possesses physical powers. The fusion gives rise to the metaverse that interacts with human in terms of liberty, creation, dimension and identity.

Lucia Luo proposes that the east should be viewed as a pathway. By examining objective realities through the lens of "eastern fantasy", the tradition of "bards" could be revived in a "digital" way in times as the age of Web 3.0 is coming. Yang Ping suggests that human are "embedded" in an e-environment constructed by themselves, which is a new evolutionary journey of the "unity of man and nature" in the information age.

DocuMETA is convened and curated by Lucia Luo, curated by Anna Borou Yu and Jiajian Min, and executed by Tongzhou Yu with the team of China Academy of Art. As a synthesis of physicality, materiality and technology, DocuMETA is beyond the "document" itself. While the Chinese translation derives from an etymological misinterpretation, it turns out to be a creative inspiration for the contemporary Chinese art world. According to Wittgenstein, the limit of one's language is the limit of one's world. The exhibition guides the audience into a land inaccessible in the real world where a non-gravitational polyhedral world. It is combined with the surface (artworks as spaces), the line (paths of conversion between spaces), the point (audience as digital bards) and the core (the central venue for communication), forming compound relations.

The exhibits consist of both sci-fi literature and new media artworks. Sci-fi writers’ works and academic discussions, manuscripts and notes, visualization and multi-media materials, and even items for work or daily use on display bring the audience into the context, serving as both reflections and means for further expansion in an effort to inspire new ideas and new views. Through the metaverse, we create a new "way of seeing" for sci-fi and art, combining circulating, watching, and multi-sensory experiences that essentially transcend the act of seeing. The new spatial art experience and distributed narrative methods blur the boundaries between author and reader identities: the audience enter into the world, approach, understand, accept, and become a part of the world.

A special guest is the collection of personal items of the late British SF “godfather” Brian Wilson Aldiss, in the form of 3D digital model, courtesy of his daughter Ms. Wendy Aldiss, a professional photographer. As the debut of this precious content and also a sample for the proposed future program at Worldcon 2023 in Chengdu, this exhibition will include a digital reconstruction of his full-body figure, scanned a few years before he passed away, as well as his epic “Helliconia” tellurion. Xiao Yang, the first president of Science Fiction World Magazine, learned about the exhibition and offered her many treasured letters that witnessed her friendship with Brian W. Aldiss.

2023 Chengdu Worldcon, an annual event in the sci-fi industry, which will be held in China for the first time in 2023, with leading sci-fi masters and the most imaginative people coming together. The Worldcon emphasises participation and experience, connecting the global communities.

As is introduced in the special exhibition and the sharing session, every attendee is both a participant and an organizer that contributes their creativity and intelligence to the fest, which is perfectly in line with the cross-media distributive narrative strategy of the Metaverse Sci-Fi Fest. Chengdu Science Fiction Association hosts the sharing session. It puts "Silk Punk" as the theme of 2023 Chengdu Worldcon, and shows the long-established and highly participatory format.

Compared with the Fest 1.0, the content and medium diversity of Exhibits are highlighted.  The original music "No One" by Lucia Luo and Yunlong evokes an oriental fantasy worldview; each attendee is a "digital bard", an integral part of world construction and multiple narratives. Francesco Verso, a famous Italian writer and editor, brought a visual exhibit of cover art and illustrations taken by the collection of books and comics published on Future Fiction, including many Chinese sci-fi writers, as well as writers from non-English speaking countries around the world. The Future Affairs Administration has brought an influential Spring Festival themed creative activity, "Chinese New Year Sci-Fi Gala". The short film Hong Mian, which won the gold medal of the best sci-fi video in the Morningstar Cup sci-fi art competition, places Cantonese opera in the world of cyberpunk.

The exhibits includes the animated drama “Core of the Galaxy” adapted from the novel of the same name by Jiang Bo； the comic book “Seven Kingdoms Galaxy” adapted from the work of the same name by science fiction writers Baoshu and Aqui; Yang Ping's Tale of Mountain People; Short film Dancing Plague Diego Agulló from Berlin University of the Arts practicing his concept of "speculative research". The CG video “Correspondence and Distracted” from the workshop "Technology Re-enchantmen" of sci-fi writers Stanley Chan,Lucia Luo, Yang Ping and China Academy of Art; The records of the lecture from Flair Donglai SHI, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, provided a thorough analysis of the relationship between Chinese literature and world literature; Jannis Jizhou Chen, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, proposed that the classical and the science fictional are not two opposing modes of literary representation in the lecture notes.

The Fest is also invited to collaborate with the Blue Planet Science Fiction Film Festival to bring not only sci-fi movies, but also a global sci-fi festival exhibition into the metaverse for the first time. New opportunities, new occupations and new ways of life are ubiquitous here. Sci-fi is not just about visions and predictions; it's more about creating the future, shaping the future, and eventually contributing to its realization.

Blue Planet is China’s first sci-fi-themed film festival and an all-embracing cultural event that crosses boundaries and opens new frontier, and has by far attracted over 1,000 works from more than 30 countries around the world. A number of forums, masterclasses and cross-sector dialogues are held, bringing global sci-fi creators and industry experts to discuss the most cutting-edge and concerned issues ranging from sci-fi filmmaking development to the future of human society. Exhibition and market are also staged on the side of the film festival to provide general public with an opportunity to experience science and technology in film in an immersive and interactive way.