Wang Zhiou, visual effects director of the Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony and founder of BLACKBOW, provided examples such as the Long March Cultural Digital Art Museum in Guizhou, which uses digital technology to tell the story of the Long March, allowing people to experience the Long March spirit while walking. In Luoyang, the "Tracing the Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River" project transformed digital museums and traditional performances into a moving performance, becoming an important cultural and tourism project in Luoyang. Wang Zhiou said, "We hope to let people around the world feel the profound cultural heritage of China through digital technology."
"Black Myth: Wukong" collects extensive data on ancient Chinese architecture to create a mysterious Eastern mythological world using digital technology. Baidu's large model "Wenxin Yiyan" developed the "Ancient Texts, Modern Questions" feature, helping overseas Chinese trace their cultural roots by learning from ancient local chronicles and genealogy data. Kuaishou launched the "Keling AI" director co-creation plan, collaborating with nine directors to create AIGC short films generated by large models. At the 2024 Beijing Cultural Forum held from September 19 to 21, several participants shared vivid cases showcasing the new trends and innovations in China's cultural industry empowered by digital technology.
Can generative artificial intelligence technology turn a static work like "Dream of the Red Chamber" into a TV series? Can static works transform into dynamic forms? Can multi-agents interacting in physical space generate complete scene stories, recreating ancient cities and lifestyles? Some of these have already become reality, while others may soon become reality.
Professor Qi Shuyu from the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC (National Academy of Governance) introduced that Zhang Xue, an inheritor of Suzhou Xue's embroidery, collaborated with Tsinghua University's Future Laboratory to create the moving Su embroidery "Magnolia Blossoms" using shape memory alloys and temperature-sensing devices. When sensing body temperature, the memory metal moves, achieving the effect of blooming flowers and dancing butterflies.
According to the "Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of the National Cultural Digitization Strategy," by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China will have basically built cultural digitization infrastructure and service platforms, forming an integrated cultural service supply system that interacts online and offline.
Beijing has issued the "Beijing Action Plan for Promoting 'Artificial Intelligence+' (2024-2025)," promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence with culture and tourism, and advancing the construction of artificial intelligence media innovation laboratories. Shanghai focuses on digital cultural creation and the metaverse track, building the Shanghai Digital Cultural Creation Intelligent Computing Center.
Today, various regions in China are actively creating digital cultural projects and industries with local characteristics. For example, The Old Summer Palace Ruins Park in Beijing provides virtual tour guides for visitors through integrated voice recognition and multimodal interaction technologies. Shanghai creates other-dimensional space scenes on virtual engines, building new immersive cultural and tourism experience spaces that combine virtual and real elements. The immersive drama theme park "Only Henan·Drama Fantasy City" showcases the magnificent history and rich culture of the Central Plains through the close integration of cutting-edge technology and cultural content.
Beijing actively cultivates new cultural formats, allowing the innovative achievements of cultural digitization to benefit more people. For example, in the science fiction industry, Beijing has created a science fiction industry cluster, with about 50% of the country's science fiction film and television products and 40% of science fiction books produced in Beijing over the past five years. Currently, Beijing has over 3,000 high-tech enterprises in the cultural field, accounting for about one-fifth of the national total.
The "Cultural Industry Investment and Financing Research Report" released at the forum shows that the deep integration of new-generation information technology with various sub-sectors of the cultural industry accelerates the formation of new digital cultural industries. Technological innovation is rapidly applied to various links of the cultural industry chain, activating new momentum for industrial development. "With the promotion of digital technology, future cultural formats will present characteristics of intelligence, digitization, scenarization, and gamification," said Qi Shuyu. He emphasized the need to strengthen the integration of the cultural industry with future industries, enhance the cutting-edge technological content of the cultural industry, and reinforce the application of multi-technology integrated innovation in the cultural industry.
