SCU’s 2nd AR Arts Festival Features Virtual Museum with Students’ Original Works

Thirty-seven original works, mostly created by Soochow University’s students, have begun to be showcased at SCU’s two campuses, as the school unveiled its second augmented reality (AR) arts festival starting September 25, 2018. And the organizer SCU Tomorrow Hub (T Hub) has connected this year’s event as one of the exhibition sites of Taipei’s street art show “Nuit Blanche Taipei” (白晝之夜).

In the opening ceremony, the event curator Chao-Sheng Hu, Soochow President Wei-Ta Pan and Vice President Wei-Liang Chao, along with five artists, were invited to “see” the exhibits through mobile devices to explore the University’s campuses in a new way.

There are two innovations in this year’s AR festival, pointed out the Chief Cultural Officer of T Hub Wei-Kong Liu, associate professor of SCU’s Sociology Department. One is that the festival added more than 20 artworks, all of which were created by Soochow students’ original ideas to present Soochow’s cultural and architectural features. And the other is that the inclusion of students’ creations indicated the T Hub had endeavored to cultivate interdisciplinary talents.

President Pan praised T Hub as a talent cradle for Soochow students to prepare themselves to be individuals with implementation, integration and problem-solving skills. He also recognized T Hub’s continuous effort in bringing technology into the campus, as evidenced by this year’s virtual museum.

Following last year’s AR festival, which focused on landscape arts and featured an app “In-Between” (方寸之間) to present 11 artworks created by 9 artists, T Hub released another app “A New Journey to the Heart” (心之旅) for this year’s event, which can be downloaded to enjoy Soochow’s campus views in a unique perspective.