Where tech collides with heritage: Keith Lam brings FIRSTAGE to Macau's Navy Yard

2026-08-05 02:32

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Interview by William Chan

Nestled within the industrial textures of Navy Yard No. 1, Macau’s historic waterfront is currently playing host to a bold fusion of electronic coding, artificial intelligence, sound design, and physical performance.

ProjectPlayaround Macao: FIRSTAGE – curated by Hong Kong media artist Keith Lam (林欣傑)* and hosted by Macao New Media Arts Association –unites 16 multi-disciplinary creatives to present a dynamic exhibition and performance ecosystem. As Lam explains, the initiative reflects a long-standing creative connection to the local art scene, one that began over a decade ago.

Lam’s ties with Macau date back to around 2014 during a four-region exchange exhibition spanning Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and the Chinese mainland, though opportunities for formal exhibition work remained sporadic over the following years. The catalyst for bringing ProjectPlayaround to Macau finally arrived through Summer Ha, who is also a featuring artist at the exhibition. Together, they secured support to launch a series of foundational lectures and workshops over the past year, culminating in the regional debut of FIRSTAGE.

Choosing Navy Yard No. 1 as the primary site was both a practical and conceptual decision, according to Lam. Beyond its functional layout for hosting an exhibition-performance hybrid, the site’s historical legacy as a former shipyard repair facility provides a compelling backdrop. As Lam notes in his curatorial remarks, placing cutting-edge technological art within a heritage space generates an inherent aesthetic tension. This sharp contrast allows the modern digital media to resonate intensely against the historical echoes embedded in the architecture.

At the heart of the project is a commitment to radical cross-disciplinary collaboration. Rather than treating interdisciplinary work as a transactional arrangement – where one artist simply commissions another to provide audio or code – Lam underlined that ProjectPlayaround insists on bringing participants together to co-create a singular vision from scratch. In contemporary practice, cross-disciplinary creation is no longer an anomaly; it is an everyday reality. However, Lam pointed out that the true value of this approach lies in forcing artists out of their comfortable, isolated domains. When creators engage in deep dialogue across unfamiliar disciplines, they unlock unforeseen possibilities, steering media art away from mere displays of slick, high-tech apparatuses and toward richer, more open-ended territory.

This philosophy directly informs the title FIRSTAGE. As Lam noted, the term does not signify a rudimentary beginning, but rather refers to the primary site – the purest, most friction-filled space where different disciplines collide. “The tension generated when artists venture beyond their expertise creates a palpable energy that reshapes how the audience experiences technology.”

Visitors are invited to move past a passive appreciation of glossy tech to confront works that directly engage human vulnerability. In pieces like Under the Gaze, algorithmic cameras strip away facial features to expose existential anxiety, while Damn! transforms the physical act of smashing objects into real-time granular soundscapes, drawing the public directly into the artwork’s conceptual narrative.

ProjectPlayaround Macao: FIRSTAGE runs until August 23 at Navy Yard No. 1, open daily from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. with free admission.

* Keith Lam is the co-founder and artistic director of the arts and technology studio Dimension Plus and an award-winning artist whose internationally celebrated work has been showcased at prestigious venues like the Ars Electronica Festival and the National Art Center in Tokyo

Curator Keith Lam addresses Friday’s opening ceremony at Navy Yard near Barra Square. – All photos were taken on Friday and provided by Macao New Media Arts Association.