Project Description:
Large-scale immersive high-tech live-action drama Town of Lu Social Theater is a large-scale cultural tourism project built by the Keqiao District of Shaoxing City, China, after three years of careful preparation and hundreds of millions of dollars to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Lu Xun. As Shaoxing first shadow painting drama, a new breakthrough in the integration of cultural tourism, pioneering the first high-tech shadow painting performance in Shaoxing. As a familiar figure to the public, Mr. Lu Xun has a great influence and contribution to the Chinese literature. Blackbow uses sound and light to highly restore and integrate the unique landscape of Jiangnan water town, so that Lu Xun's words created in the town of Lu, more real than the real reality.In the landmark custom-made theater of "Ji mountain and Jian lake, white wall and black tiles ", Town of Lu Social Theater presents a panoramic view of the unique appearance of the water town of Lu 100 years ago, such as the architecture of town of Lu, the Xianheng Hotel, the opera stage, the black-cover boats and the culture of yellow wine, which deeply restores Lu Xun's spiritual home and further strengthens the uniqueness and irreproducibility of the idea of Town of Lu Social Theater. The story is based on the background of Lu Xun's novel Town of Lu and its characters, with a light-hearted film and television shooting scene as the tone, and the story of a schoolboy who accidentally crosses the century-old town of Lu and wants to escape but cannot find a way out. The play nakedly shows all kinds of human nature and artistically presents the fate trajectory of Lu Xun's classic characters, allowing the audience to sit in the arms of a giant and see the scene of the world.Blackbow perfectly integrates advanced stage machinery, 56 custom high-definition shaped LED screens, panoramic sound engineering, Unreal UE4 engine, laser tracking, infrared scanning, VR virtual real-time modeling, aerosol projection, colorful computer lights, multimedia video and other black technology tools, with professional actors’ dance, drama, opera and other live performances, forming a perfect match. The multi-level viewing space creates the artistic effect of coexistence of reality and fantasy, bringing the audience an unprecedented immersive artistic feast.In the interactive part with the audience, Blackbow adopts advanced real-time interactive technology infrared scanning and shooting the image of the audience on site, which is transmitted to the server for AI image processing or AR virtual synthesis in real time, and then instantly back-projected to the LED screen on site through wireless transmission. By experiencing the filming process of the movie and drama and participating in the performance personally, the audience will once again come into contact with Mr. Lu Xun, the great literary master in China's modern history, and feel the story of town of Lu depicted in his literary works through watching, participating and experiencing.
What Speical:
As the first large-scale immersive high-tech live-action drama in Shaoxing, Town of Lu Social Theater has pioneered the high-tech shadow painting performance in Shaoxing and achieved a new breakthrough in the integration of culture and tourism. Mr. Lu Xun is an extremely important representative figure in modern times, and the spirit of Lu Xun is also very representative in the whole history of literature. His specific characters, the specific events experienced by the characters, the meaning behind the characters, etc., we first need to reflect to the audience truthfully. After 100 years, as creators, how to express our attitude to the contemporary society with new contents and forms is the most essential creative concept and the most important question for us to think about.As a large-scale live-action shadow-painting drama, Town of Lu Social Theater makes an appearance of the characters with a panoramic view of town of Lu, and extends the understanding of Lu Xun's articles. While pursuing innovative forms of stage expression and multiple experience patterns, it focuses on the content itself with deep cultural connotation and rich emotional expression, and comprehensively interprets the spirit of Lu Xun from contemporary society. The biggest feature of the stage of Town of Lu Social Opera is done through various modularity, the visual design needs to fit 44 screens, the biggest challenge in visual design is that not only to deal with the state of the screens 'closed and divided', but also to accurately deal with the relationship between the screens divided and closed, including the visual elements expressed in the whole transition. These large moving screens move freely in the longitudinal dimension of the stage, forming an overlapping and staggered space, as if leading the audience back to town of Lu 100 years ago, with panoramic sound engineering, Unreal UE4 engine, laser tracking, infrared scanning, VR virtual real-time modeling, multimedia video and other technological means, and live performances to achieve a perfect match. The final ingenious part of the show was the way the audience left, as the actors led the audience through Lu Xun's "body" and his powerful literary works, towards a road full of light at the back of the stage.
Commercial or Social Value:
Contemporary audiences pursue deeper cultural thinking, and the rapid improvement of the public's cultural quality will be the future trend. The more and more frequent cross-border integration of productions makes it difficult for us to clearly describe which category a production belongs to. The 'large-scale live-action drama' is actually a definition we have explored for the cultural tourism market, and Town of Lu Social Theater is also a brand-new attempt.One of the differences between cultural tourism performance and other performances is that the audience of cultural tourism is continuous, and we can give full play to the cultural value by means of commercial operation. Blackbow uses advanced and appropriate technical toolss to express and deepen the cultural connotation, interpret the Chinese cultural connotation in a form of expression that interests teenagers, so that Chinese teenagers and even the world have a new perspective to re-view Chinese culture and Chinese design language, and get resonance and empathy in these visual wonders we create, creating the collective memory of people all over the world, and achieving the real sense of cultural The dissemination of culture in the true sense. The continuous exploration of innovative interpretation and cross-border integration of culture and tourism has also given us a better understanding of different fields, culture and tourism innovation and cross-border. While creating Chinese cultural memory with digital art, interpreting cultural and tourism integration with technological aesthetics, and constantly pursuing to meet the artistic expression experience that contemporary young people desire, we are also letting more people see the possibility and meaning of cultural and tourism innovation and cross-border integration.
Team Biography:
Blackbow is a Chinese creative cross-media art team founded in 2010 by new-media artist Wang Zhiou. Blackbow is committed to creating cultural experience and memory for the public with cutting-edge artistic，technological innovation and digital translation.Blackbow focuses on shows, events, space, interaction and other major operative segments, with its works covering culture, tourism, real estate, technology and other fields. At present, there are more than 100 talents in this team with interdisciplinary backgrounds, such as stage art, film and television production, interactive development, graphic design, spacial design, literary creation, advertising and marketing. It now has the leading multimedia creative ability to do independent research and development on CG, AR, VR, holographic projection technology, software and hardware interactive system, mechanical device research and development, etc.
The headquarter of Blackbow are located in Beijing, there are studios in Guangzhou、Shanghai and San Francisco.As one of the most well known visual art team in China, Blackbow provides creative support, execution, and production for many international events, such as “Beijing 8-Minute Show” in the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics Games, Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit lighting and firework art show - “A Warm Welcome to Friends from afar”, “Belt and Road” Forum for International Cooperation, the 57th Venice Biennale - Forbidden City Collateral Event - “Memory and Contemporaneity”.
Blackbow pays close attention to cross-border innovation in culture and technology, it provided customized digital art creative solutions for CCTV - "The Nation’s Greatest Treasure" program, National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center, China mobile - Migu virtual idols, Tencent, Baidu - Institute of Deep Learning, Netease and 36KR, as well as several international music festivals and cultural tourism destinations.In terms of shows, Blackbow is good at the new-media stage creativity and performance design. It has participated in the multimedia design and production of many large-scale art performance projects such as The Song of Eternal Show/Everlasting Regret directed by Li Hanzhong (it has become a national standard for live-action performances in China) , 12.12 Xi 'an Incident Immersive Show, Yan’an Nursery, Mao Zedong comes from China, Narrow Escape From Death·The Long March, as well as various modern dance works such as Faded Monologue, Circle·Speeding, and No Dream Without a Dream in Beijing Dance Festival, and Yong II directed by Tian.