Since Macao established itself as a port in the 16th century, different groups of people have brought their cultures and missions there, transforming the quiet insular town into a panoply of ethnicities, religions, and histories.

They have created new contexts through the intersection of different cultures, constantly painting Macao in new colours. Matteo Ricci’s Memory Palace offers a multifaceted space from a spiritual reconstruction of history, depicting with a non-linear approach an imagined Macao as seen from the perspective of the fictional “Matteo”.

Based on the historical figure but going beyond it, “Matteo” explores a dark room (in the Memory Palace) that has been overlooked by history. The AI-generated 3D images recreate Matteo’s memories of Macao 400 years ago, as “he” travels through time and space to fill in the gaps in history since the 16th century.

Through digital imagination and across time and space, we can follow “Matteo” through Macao’s past, present and future, both as a lone Western missionary and as a representative of the people living in modern Macao. “He” walks through a palace consisted of historical memories and symbols and moves through the eternal and infinite imaginary space and time.
 

Binary Group
Binary Group is a creative team paying attention to art and technology, composed of graduate students from the School of Transmedia, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Based on the philosophy of technology and artistic imagination, Binary Group combines audio-visual art, digital scenography, interactive installations, and AI, among other artistic means, to create experimentalist artworks inspired by such keywords as "interconnection", "intelligence", "system" and "machinicity", exploring current issues in the technological era related to nature and technology and the past and the present.