Augmented chinatown 2.0

Feb 2020

A CAN Production

Augmented Chinatown 2.0 is a live, immersive audio-visual tour through London’s Chinatown, combining augmented reality sculptures, atmospheric sound, and site-specific audio dramas embedded within the urban environment. The project extends the earlier Augmented Chinatown work, adding narrative complexity through scripted performances woven into a guided, factual tour of the area.

London’s Chinatown and its surrounding streets have been shaped by successive waves of migration, commerce, and cultural negotiation. This project brings fragments of those layered histories into the present, revealing stories that sit behind façades and beneath familiar routes. Through the use of augmented reality, miniature audio dramas, and original music, the work creates an alternative experiential layer that moves between past and present, fact and fiction.

The tour begins at Newport Place and unfolds across approximately one hour, guided via smartphone by writer and narrator Joel Tan. His narration explores the area’s history, architecture, and cultural symbolism, while reflecting on themes of belonging, identity, and migration. Sensory descriptions evoke the textures of Chinatown; its decorations, sounds, tastes, and rhythms; while the route traces key sites, including the four gates, and addresses contested moments such as the demolition of the iconic pagoda in 2015 without community consultation.

At five locations along the route, participants are invited to enter short, immersive audio dramas, offering intimate encounters with characters whose lives intersect with Chinatown. These include Kim, a stripper who once met the Beatles; Anita, a homesick waitress; and a woman whose home is being raided by immigration officials. Together, these narratives foreground personal experience within broader socio-political histories.

Augmented reality works by Donald Shek introduce a further visual dimension, overlaying the physical environment with digital sculptures. Flowers emerge from pavements, lanterns illuminate the streets, and newspaper banners cascade from buildings, reimagining Chinatown as a hybrid space shaped by memory, myth, and mediation. The sound score, composed and directed by An-Ting Chang with DJ QuestionMark, responds dynamically to both the augmented visuals and the audio dramas.

The project was developed by Donald Shek, with UI/UX by RVLV Agency, writing by Joel Tan, and sound design by Michal Kuligowski. The cast includes Mia Foo, Daniel York Loh, Jennifer Lim, David Yip, Shin-Fei Chen, Neil Chang-Clark, and Roger King. With thanks to Jodie Gilliam, Ruth Holdsworth, David Hepburn, Hannah Blamire, Sanddy Wan, Kirsten Komaru, and Nikita Karia. Supported by Arts Council England, London Chinatown, and Westminster Council.