Model No. 2: YAOX and Bright Ideas
Whereas Franz successfully built a bridge between east and west, other creative firms have established a foothold on the mainland through their familiarity with digital technology. These companies have made nimble use of their technical prowess and taken advantage of China's rise by bidding for contracts associated with major international events such as the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. They have taken a cultural heritage rooted in the distant past and brought it to life for modern people, establishing a new creative industry in the process.
During the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, River of Wisdom employed multimedia to recreate what it would have been like to visit Kaifeng when it was the capital of Song-Dynasty China. River, created by the Taiwanese firm YAOX Edutainment, was the most popular feature of the China Pavilion, and when the Shanghai Expo closed, it was moved to Taipei and Hong Kong, where it likewise was a big hit.
The husband and wife that own YAOX, Crayon Yao and Wu Ju, originally worked shooting television commercials. In 1994, holding a dream to build their own brand, they established YAOX, which has a focus on animation. Yet because the Taiwan market was too small, the firm shifted its focus 10 years ago to become one of the first firms in Taiwan to produce 3D films for theme parks. As technology advanced, YAOX entered the world of 4D video, creating several dozen well-received animated films with science-education or science-fiction themes for museums in Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
The skills that YAOX had accumulated by designing hardware for 3D and 4D multimedia theaters allowed it to reap impressive contracts at the Shanghai Expo, including those for general creative supervision and engineering of a multimedia theater for the China Pavilion. YAOX also designed and constructed a 4D theater with a 720-degree spherical screen for the Taiwan Pavilion. With those prestigious commissions, the firm was able to make big strides in the mainland museum and theme-park markets.
Another example of a Taiwanese multimedia firm that has met with success on the mainland is Bright Ideas Design, a company with only five employees that has been established for only a decade. Bright Ideas excels in giving traditional cultural products a "technological feel" via digital technology. It has helped the National Palace Museum in Taipei with multimedia shows, and its representative works include the multimedia paintings and calligraphies in the museum's 201 exhibition room.
Bright Ideas' Chairman Kuo Cheng-hsiung notes that the company first smelled the possibility of mainland museum work when it went to the China Beijing International Cultural & Creative Industry Expo five years ago. The mainland had been actively developing cultural sites in recent years. But many of those sites, including the Qing-era Yuanmingyuan imperial gardens, are places where physical traces of history remain but there is little sense of the historical context. Consequently, Bright Ideas suggested using digital technology to bring those sites to life.
The firm made a proposal to Yuanmingyuan Park, and after four years of negotiations, the two sides reached an agreement this year to create a "digitial Yuanmingyuan."
Bright Ideas has made photographs of Qing-Dynasty court paintings, historical documents, and prints of paintings made by western artists in order to shoot Yuanmingyuan Tells Its History, which is a work of 3D virtual reality. Visitors will be able to use "binoculars" to survey the original park scenery before it was burned down during the Second Opium War. They will be able to look at Dashuifa, where Emperor Qianlong and his concubine Xiangfei would observe water dance performances; or Fangwaiguan, a mosque erected in a western architectural style, where Xiangfei would go to pray; or Wuzhuting, a pavilion where Qianlong would rest.
In recent years Shanghai's economy has been growing by leaps and bounds, providing opportunities for cultural and creative firms to flourish. The photo shows Hongfang, a converted steel factory complex in Shanghai that is now devoted to cultural and creative industries.