2024 Collaborative Research Initiative between Fine Arts, Architecture, Media and Cultural Studies |

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how do people, space, and technology works together in arts and cultural practice?

In the last few decades, “participation” has emerged as a topic in social science and humanities with growing significance to urban and cultural development. The involvement of the user or audience as active participants has become a common concern in creative production from architecture to arts and culture. Current disciplinary research has yet to address the overlapping scope in theory and practice, where a holistic and interdisciplinary examination can bridge the knowledge gap to create a more significant impact on social sustainability. The advance in technology-enabled participation presents a potential to unpack the dynamics between how architecture and arts engage with the community in physical and virtual spaces. This project will investigate the ecologies of participation through traditional and practice-based research methods to establish the necessary knowledge framework about the role of participation in community arts practice.

The concept of participation is central to our conception of practice-as-research, where knowledge emerges through dynamic processes, where audiences are no longer passive viewers but active participants.

Participants also contribute to the creative process and produce collective forms of knowledge. At the same time, digital technologies enable participation by mediating relationships, acting as platforms for engagement, and contributing to the creative process. Through a post-humanist lens, technologies become another participant alongside humans, where the relationship is not of competition but of collaboration and collective creativity. The EoP research collaboratives focus on artistic practice to study participation in ways that intersect with urban studies, technology and community arts. While traditional academia values authorship, clear outcomes and benefits, creative practice engages in an open-ended and experimental process that cannot be predicted, where outcomes are experienced and sometimes difficult to articulate. We seek to explore the value of such forms of practice-based research to review how research as creative practice is conducted and evaluated. Through the research, we will examine case studies to understand how participation occurs and how knowledge is produced.

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Currently, the collaborative is planning for multiple activities within the scope of two funded research projects:

(1) EoP Panel Dialogue: Three curated public talks with international architecture and cultural practitioners. “Sound as a Medium of Participation” (Nov 2024), on urban mapping (Jan 2025), and on technology-enabled participation (Mar 2025).

(2) Prototype Project: a participatory art experiment in public space involving audience participation and a simple form of interaction with technology (May 2025). 

(1) (2) as part of Prof. Ashley Lee’s research project “A Response to Hong Kong’s Arts Tech Policy: Shifting the Narrative on Art and Technology to Reconsider Cultural Development”, supported by CUHK Faculty of Arts Direct Grant for Research

(3) EoP Reading Group and Public Workshop: bi-monthly reading group to share and discuss concepts and theories related to Practice-as-Research (or Research-by-Design in architecture), focusing on participatory arts and design practices.

(4) Public Forum: as an interim conclusion to the first-year collaborative research effort and to build a regional knowledge exchange network on practice-based research (summer 2025).

(3) (4) as part of the collaborative research project “Practice-as-Research: Producing Knowledge Through Participatory Creative Practice”, supported by the CUHK Faculty of Arts Research Institute for the Humanities

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Project Team:

• Prof. YIM Sui Fong | Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, CUHK
• Prof. WONG Ashley Lee | Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK
• Prof. YIU, Hoi Lam Melody | Research Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, CUHK
• RIH Project Advisor: Prof. Frank VIGNERON | Chair & Professor, Department of Fine Arts, CUHK

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