13 December 2017
On the afternoon of 10 December 2017, the "Creative Futurology" exchange event organized by the Academic and Research Department of the STA Student Union was held successfully in Classroom 208 of the Red Building. The guest speakers were two postgraduate students, Gao Xiang and Chen Xingyang from the Shanghai University and two postgraduate students, Bao Manhua and Xu Shipeng from the Tongji University.
The event was divided into four parts in which the four guest speakers talked on their respective topics separately and communicated with the students present. Focusing on the theme of "being creative" and in the light of their own innovative experimental projects in literature writing, film directing and media technology, they talked about how to go beyond the routine and inspire creativity in the era of creative economy and made bold prediction about the future trend of art and new media, which brought a collision between thinking and reality to the audience.
The first part was the talk by Bao Manhua on the topic of “Watch a Film like Playing a Game: The Creative Experiment of Interactive Documentary”. On the basis of her master degree thesis, she introduced her views about “interactive documentary” to the audience. She brought many examples of “interactive documentary” and explained them to the audience so that they got a general understanding of this relatively new concept. Then, she went on to talk about the social functionality of “interactive documentaries” and the differences between “interactive documentary” and “linear documentary”, and emphasized on the open-ending as a feature of “interactive documentary”.
The second part was the talk by Gao Xiang on the topic of “Let the Robot Write the Script: The Research in Creative Writing at the Leading Edge”. Gao Xiang’s area of research is creative writing. The robot summarizes the routines first and then creates the writing on that basis. What Gao Xiang wanted to talk about was the irreplaceability of human as the main body of writing. Gao Xiang also put forward his views on the trend of writing in the future, which is “interactive”.
The third part was the talk by Chen Xingyang on the topic of “Explore the Mind: How to Make a Creative Breakthrough in Pure Literature”. He mainly compared the difference between today's serious literature and popular literature, introduced the predicament of serious literature and, accordingly, put forward his personal ways to “break through” in the three aspects of language, topic and theme.
The forth part was the talk by Xu Shipeng on the topic of “Media Revolution: Medi-Go Creative Project of Man-Machine Cooperation”. He used a short video to introduce how to operate this man-machine cooperation and smart wear project as well as its applicable areas. He sincerely hoped that interested students from the audience could also join his project.
This event showed to the audience a variety of possibilities of creativity with technology in the future and brought them a different and future-oriented “brainstorming”, which was highly praised by the audience. The event concluded successfully in the warm applause.
