 Okay, good afternoon, distinguished guests, welcome to the discussions about hearing in the digital realm. So I'm Pan Hui from a chair professor of computational media and art from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, both Guangzhou campus and also the Hong Kong campus. So I'm honored to be the moderator today for the very exciting sessions. So the HKSE Guangzhou campus is a new, funded campus in Guangzhou by HKST and it's probably the biggest interdisciplinary education experiment in the world. So basically there's no traditional department, there's no computer science, no mathematics, no art. So it's just merging of people from different diversity, different background. So the computational media and art first that I'm in is actually have half technology people and half artists, so we work together. So that's why I'm also here today for these sessions. One area of my research that I'm particularly excited about is the Metabus. So also today you will hear a lot more about the Metabus. So the Metabus is a virtual world that merged with the physical to create a new reality we call serility. I invent this world. So my team is using generative AI in the Metabus to create a more dynamic and engaging virtual world that can adopt to users' needs and behavior. So you can, the virtual world will change with the users' behavior and needs. By using AI algorithms to dynamically generate content rather than rely on static design, the Metabus can be made more efficient and responsive to user demand. In addition to this, I'm exploring how AI can support users' creativity and collaborations. For example, AI algorithms could be used to generate virtual objects or things that user can then be modified and remixed, creating a shared environment for creating expressions and collaborations. I believe that the fusion of technology and art has the potential to transform the art world and make it more accessible to the wider audience. So today we are honored to have with us a visionary artist who will share this belief. So Crystal Kim is a widely recognized artist in the world of digital art and a pioneer in the world of NFT art. Actually, we call her the Queen of NFT. Her groundbreaking piece like Masthouse, I don't know, probably you know about Masthouse, sold for a record breaking $500,000 in early 2021, even before the hype of the Metabus. So Crystal is what challenge traditional notion of what art is and can be and she's a vocal advocate for the power of digital art and the technology to transform the art world. So I'm excited to be part of this panel today and I'm looking forward to hear more from Crystal and our other guests from the audience. Thank you. Welcome, Crystal. Thank you so much. Thank you. During a very significant period of my life, spanning three and a half years, I lived in Tokyo. And one of my favorite things to do was to visit Kyoto. And one place in particular that really etched a deep place in my heart is Roanji Temple Garden. Roanji Temple Garden is an eminent Zen garden that dates back 500 years. This is the space. It was within the sacred space that I experienced a profound revelation. An artistic epiphany that still echoes in my work today. This garden with its careful arrangement of rocks and meticulously manicured gravel is not only a sight to behold, it is an immersive Zen experience. The tranquility, the symbolism, the sense of being utterly present in the moment. This is definitely my takeaway from Roanji. This realization sparked a transformative understanding that art is not only a form of self-expression. Art is also a service to humanity. Over 500 years ago, Zen monks created the space of tranquility and introspection, guiding us toward a more profound understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Immersive art experiences can foster unity, heal, inspire, and help us to navigate the complexities of the human experience. I have since been guided by this deep understanding, striving to mirror this experience of Roanji in my own artistic endeavors. During my pursuit of a masters of fine art at Singapore, in Singapore Lassalle College of the Arts, I felt a compelling urge to merge digital and spiritual. My vision was to manifest Zen experiences within the digital expanse of the screen. It became clear to me that my purpose as an artist is to create immersive Zen experiences in the digital realm on the screen and now using the power of AI into the metaverse, to bring ancient wisdom into the digital age. In 2017, I embarked on a deeply personal and transformative journey that led to the creation of Continuum. I had an overwhelming sense of disconnection and loneliness that pervades our modern society, exacerbated by the very devices that are meant to connect us. This pervasive use of the screen has managed to bring us together as algorithms on our devices, but we're not humanly connected. Continuum was born out of a profound desire to bridge this digital human gap, to restore a sense of balance and connectedness. It was not just an artwork, but a mission, an attempt to reintroduce Zen principles into our increasingly digital experience. Drying upon my experiences in the tranquil Roanji Zen garden and my fascination with the vast potential of the digital medium, I set out to create an immersive Zen experience using digital screens. I wanted to challenge our assumption that screens are merely tools for distraction and disconnection. Instead, I saw them as portals, conduits through which we could transport ourselves to a state of tranquility, mindfulness, and deep connection with our inner selves. Creating continuum involved layering subtle gradients and incorporating slow transitions, generating a sense of visual harmony and fluidity. The artwork is designed to subtly shift over time, creating an ever-changing, dynamic Zen landscape that invites viewers to slow down, observe, and be mindful. Connect to the present moment. Many people asked, why is this not a permanent installation at Times Square in New York for the people, for the well-being of the people, an artwork that is of service to the community like Roanji? How might continuum on a daily basis impact public spaces in your villages, towns, cities around the world? In this way, continuum is more than just a digital artwork. It is a reflection of our collective longing for connection, a beacon of serenity in our frenetic digital experience. Through this piece, I hope to inspire a shift in how we perceive and interact with our digital devices, transforming them from sources of distraction into spaces of reflection, peace, and profound human connection. Public art installations like continuum can indeed play a crucial role in promoting the mental well-being of citizens around the world. They can be used as a tool to enhance community engagement, increase social cohesion, and boost overall mental health. Here are some ways public art and installations can help and how they can be integrated into policy. Number one, promote healing. Art has therapeutic properties and for individuals can process emotions, cope with stress, and express themselves. Public art, especially interactive pieces, can have similar benefits on a community-wide scale. Number two, increasing community engagement. Public art installations can serve as gathering spots for communities, providing a space for social interaction and shared experiences. Regularly interacting with others can help reduce feelings of isolation, a key risk factor for mental health issues. Number three, encouraging reflection and mindfulness. Public art can encourage others to pause and to reflect, as in the case of continuum, art can offer respite from constant commercial messaging and encourage people to take a moment to breathe and be mindful. Mindfulness has been shown to serve many mental health benefits, including reducing anxiety and improving mood. Number four, boosting aesthetics and civic pride. Art can beautify public spaces, making them more pleasant to spend time in. Many show that environments can significantly impact our mental well-being. A well-kept, aesthetically pleasing space can increase happiness and reduce stress. And to turn this into policy, A, partnerships with mental health organizations. Governments can partner with mental health organizations to create public art that specifically focuses on promoting mental well-being. This could include interactive art installations that educate about mental health or provide resources to those who need help most. These policies can be adapted online as well in the metaverse using AI intelligent avatar language models and AI generative art that mitigates anxiety. B, integrating art into urban planning. These can make public art a standard part of urban planning. And development, for example, a percentage for art ordinance can require that a certain percentage of the budget for new development goes toward wellness art installations. C, government funding. Governments can allocate more funding toward public art initiatives, and this could include grants for artists, for community organizations, to commission artwork or money set aside in the budget for public construction projects for integrated artwork. As with any policy initiative, it's important to ensure that these public art installations are accessible and inclusive and represent the diversity of artists so that they ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits of these art installations for societies in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. It brought about a deep introspection on the nature of human connection in my life. I was inspired to create the Mars House. This is not a traditional house in the sense it's actually a digital house that lives in the metaverse that is a place of zen and healing. Mars House carries the distinction of being the first NFT house that was sold for the metaverse in human history to be experienced in extended reality, both virtual and augmented reality. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, represent a groundbreaking technology in the blockchain ecosystem. These digital tokens are unique identifiers on the blockchain that can authenticate and represent ownership of diverse digital assets, including digital art such as the Mars House. It found resonance in the digital community and it sold for record sale 288 Ethereum March of 2021. This digital dwelling created amidst the turbulence of the pandemic, exemplified the potential of the metaverse for providing comfort, connection and commerce. During the lockdown, while I was in Toronto and my business partner was in LA, we found ourselves meeting in the metaverse in the Mars House. What struck me was the realization that the metaverse can foster meaningful human connections. I saw not only in my own interactions but also in the playground of my children during lockdown. They were engaging with their schoolmates, with their friends and cousins on the popular virtual world of Roblox. Roblox is a popular online gaming platform and game creation system that allows us to design and own our own games and play on many other games created by many other users. These kids have digital avatars that are an extension of their own identity. It appears that the younger generations are intuitively embracing digital embodiment for human interaction and connection, signaling an intriguing evolution of how we perceive and how we forge relationships. As we continue to navigate this evolving digital landscape, my hope is that we recognize the power of these new technologies to create profound connections, to facilitate shared experiences and ultimately to reframe our understanding of what it means to have a community in the digital realm. Imagine if we could create healing immersive experiences in urban spaces around the world. This would impact billions of people and move our culture toward greater human connection and in real life community. Integrating healing immersive art experiences into urban environments around the world would be an extraordinary endeavor with potentially profound implications. Art is a universal language and making it a central feature of urban environments can touch billions of lives, enhancing mental well-being, fostering community and transforming cities into more vibrant, compassionate spaces. The potential for human connection in such a world is immense. Art can serve as a conversation starter, an invitation to shared experiences and a bridge across the division of cultures and socioeconomic status. In terms of community experiences, shared public art can provide focal points for community gatherings, spark collaborations and foster a sense of local identity. The process of creating and maintaining public art can also encourage community involvement and collaboration. Beyond the individual and community level, the impact on societal culture could be transformative. Prioritizing art and aesthetics can signal a society's commitment to the well-being of its people, empathy and shared human experience, a move toward a more mindful, compassionate culture. Thank you. Thank you. I'll now invite Dr. Hui to the stage. Okay. So thanks, Krista, for the very exciting talk and, you know, she covered a lot of things about metaphors, well-being, and, you know, from a more scientific point of view. Actually, from the data, we can see that there are a lot of mental health issues among the people, right, like 20 percent in the U.S., maybe 25 percent in Hong Kong. So it's a really important issue. So maybe we can start with some questions. I learned a lot from this talk, so I also have a few questions to ask. So basically the first one is about what I mean, I mean, impressed most is that you want to push this art and mental health to a national level, like a very large scale. So, you know, I can see that creating your project continuum, which was super exciting, but you also take a lot of time, right? So how, you know, what kind of effort or, you know, how can we, you know, push this kind of hearing to a national scale, like large scale? Thank you for the question. You know, I think that right now we have such an incredible opportunity to take advantage of emerging technologies, like AI, Metaverse, and Blockchain, in ways that can allow the creators to scale their message, to scale the work. And really if you want to create a robust scaling model, we need Blockchain. We need Blockchain because what it does is we're able to create a creator's economy. Creators economy, and anyone can contribute to the creation of their work, and then it's in the Blockchain so that it's safe from AI insurgency, IP insurgency. And I think that with AI, we can use it as a tool to really be more productive and create a lot of incredible derivatives of projects that you want to bring out into the world. But with mental health especially, I love the intersection of art and science right now, technology, very exciting. And I think that, you know, we will have more studies showing that art at the intersection of science and health can really mitigate the mental health crisis, which is a growing problem where we need alternate solutions. Great. So I just wonder whether the new generated AI will actually help you to, you know, increase the scale of your creations. Absolutely. Yes, totally. I mean, for myself even, I am using, you know, stable diffusion to learn my art and then to create more. And of course, you know, when you're working with AI, it's an exciting tool that allows you to really streamline your production process and create more work. Right. So probably learn from the DNA of your work and then be able to create something. 100 percent. As an artist, you need a DNA and that takes time. That's something you cannot skip, right? You need to put in the effort and know who you are as an artist and create work that identifies you, that expresses who you are. Right. Great. Thank you. And you also mentioned about the digital identity of the, and also the avatar as a extension of our, you know, our human connection side. So can you see how this digital identity is? The digital identity is going to evolve in the future of Metaverse and, you know, what is the impact is further in this well-being and mental health? Well, as a mother of two teenagers, I learned everything about avatar embodiment from observing my children as they play on Roblox and all these different, we all, we all know video games and Metaverse playing games is everything. And the kids make friends with their avatars on these platforms. So digital embodiment of our identities is going to be the next iteration of our human identity. And so very philosophically as a mother, I really am very, very cognizant of the risks and the importance of integrating ethics and guardrails in the practice of digital embodiment. And that's where blockchain is going to be a very useful tool to allow us to have the embodiment of our identity immutable in the blockchain. It's protected. And then, of course, AI can actually assist us in creating guardrails and protections while we're in the Metaverse as well. Great. So let's move to the final issue you mentioned about the collaboration of the committee, the government, the maybe NGO. So how do you see the role of actually a private company in pushing this agenda? The mental health crisis is such a huge crisis that we cannot leave it to the government or even to ourselves. We have to not only have more self-care and manage that self-care through solutions like this, but governments and companies. Companies play such a major role in our societies. And companies are suffering $1 trillion per year from the mental health crisis around the world. So it is in the vested interest of every company to treat their employees in HR as an extension of Metaverse well-being as well, create solutions. I was just at the conference for KPMG symposium last week. And we were discussing bringing their neurodiverse communities into the Metaverse for guided professional programming. We're collaborating with Dr. Serini Pillay, who's a collaborative mind. He is a Harvard neuroscientist and psychiatrist. So programming is essential. And you can bring your employees into immersive experiences that mitigate anxiety through science. Great. Thank you. So I think we have another five minutes left. So we open the fall to the audience. Yes. And if you think about the creative process for digital art versus physical art, how do you think it differs fundamentally from the lens of an artist? I think that with the creative process of any art form, there really is no difference in how you approach the expression of what you do. It's just a different medium. So I would no sooner paint and work on a computer. It's your preference. And I don't like to pigeon myself as a digital artist. I'm a contemporary artist, which gives me the freedom to expand into other things, sculpture, painting, you name it. For continuum itself, the gradients that you see were actually images of light that I collected while living in Singapore. And what I was experimenting with was how can you capture the radiance and the beauty of the light, the LED light. And for me, it was really about stripping down what you see on the screen to the very zen minimalist experience of color and then sound. So I like a Rothko. When people look at a Rothko, I think the feedback is that is a very visceral experience to the color. And that is a kind of experience that I'm trying to evoke, whether it's a James Turrell or a Rothko. These are the artists that really influence me as an artist as well. Thank you, Ramesh. It's a great presentation. Do I have a question? Have you been using concepts from environmental psychology? That's one. And design strategies like the golden ratio, etc., etc. to create that zen-like experience. Because you do have a good amount of data to actually show that in environmental psychology. I mean, the right lumens, the right wavelengths, do have a good impact on your mood and emotions and things like that. Thank you for that question. Yes, I did, actually. I did study color psychology in approaching the artwork, being very mindful of how people react. And this science is also very, it's there. And so I want to delve more into it and actually have like, what are the epigenetic studies of people's reaction to the work as well. There's a lot of scientific studies to be done. And I would say that I'm still very early in that stage, but thank you for asking. I work with the Golden Ratio for Banachi series, you know, design. Not so much a golden ratio. I approach it more as an abstract expressionist. So I'm more of a Rothko than a Da Vinci, if you will. Thank you. Thank you, good question. Any other questions? Yes, this side, yeah. Yeah, you talked about connecting through art in the digital world and also through gaming. But there are some studies that raise concerns about social media interactions, especially for girls. And so I'm wondering when we're interacting within the digital world. I mean, are there forms of interaction within the digital world that you think are preferred, or do you think we're just kind of overblowing the social media thing? I mean, what are your thoughts on that? You know, that's a wonderful question. Thank you so much. I am really, you know, as a mother of a daughter, very concerned with the negative effects of social media on young girls. And they are the highest demographic that are committing suicide right now. Very, very high rates. More than the boys. And I think that it's a direct correlation to social media. And body image issues and all of this, and what we're teaching them and showing them, I think that with the metaverse, you can control that. And you can actually create immersive experiences that are meant for their well-being. Right now, it's not. Social media is not meant for a well-being. It's not designed for that. It's meant for eyes are real estate, and we are the product. And so now you have an entire generation of children who are truly lost and negatively affected. So I believe that with Web3 immersive experiences, we can actually teach and mentor young girls, especially on positive ways of moving forward with their, you know, not just focusing on the exterior, focusing on the spirit, focusing on the beauty within. And there are coaches out there that we can actually train the coaches and train the language models in the IP and the know-how of therapists so that that information can scale to children in an accessible way. So if they're feeling bad about themselves, why not go to an AI therapist and say, I don't feel good about how I look? And then this therapist is going to talk you out of that frame of reference and change that paradigm of how you think. Now, this is where therapeutic should go. And in fact, my startup, Zero Studio, we're collaborating with therapists on that very, very issue. A female coach who's gone through bulimia anorexia, Katia Cohen, and she has clients with these body image issues and eating disorders. And she knows exactly what to say. This is her profession. Why not teach the AI these models and have it scale? I want scalable solutions. We're also working with Deepak Chopra. Why not scale the corpus of his incredible knowledge and his work and his wisdom to bring it into AI? With AI, we have the ability to bring wisdom into the current time right now for people to tap into it, because people don't read anymore. And so we can do it through experiences, conversation. And that's how the future will learn, wisdom, experience, knowledge. Okay, so thanks, thanks everyone. Thanks, Krista. So I think our time is up, so we're very good to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you.