Belgium has a long tradition with World Expos, both as exhibitor as well as host. A World Expo is an iconic moment to gather nations and celebrate innovation, knowledge and progress.
This year in Osaka our creative talents will bloom on the “Belgian Digital Creativity day”: join us with the digital creativity ecosystem wake! to push away boundaries and explore the new territories of digital creativity!
Immersive experiences and videomapping, digital arts, 2D-3D movies, VFX productions, AI & comics: further than a hotspot for surrealism, Belgium is a central European hub for tradition blended with innovation!
How immersive storytelling makes unforgettable experiences? How digital creativity shapes augmented global events? What future avenues exist for the image industry and the comics in the age of generative AI?
Program
Introduction of the day by Minister President Elisabeth Degryse (Federation Wallonia Brussels of Belgium) & facilitation by KIKK / wake! (Gilles Bazelaire, Delphine Jenart)
Panel 1: The Image Industry in the Age of AI & Digital Creativity: Challenges & Opportunities
Dreamwall (Alice Gorissen, CEO)
Wallimage Entreprises (Virginie Nouvelle, CEO)
Ilan Manouach, artist (Comics in the era of AI)
In the presence of TIKAL, content creator author of “Le dit du Gaijin” (RTBF Ixpé, Youtube)
Panel 2: Immersive storytelling makes it unforgettable: towards augmented major events
Dirty Monitor (Arnaud de Meulemeester, international business director)
Laser System Europe (Laurent Rossion, account manager)
KIKK (Gilles Bazelaire, CEO)
Dragone (Filippo Ferraresi, CEO)
Panel 3: Digital creativity as a new key to reading the world: from wonder to empathy
Yann Deval, XR designer (Chronica, Atlas, Immersio)
Laura Colmenares, visual artist (Reverse)
Drop the Spoon (Radjiny Schiltz)
“The future of Comics” by Echo Chamber
Conceptual Comics Archives by Sebastien Conard
Synthetic Comics by Ilan Manouach
Experimental comics and federated publishing by Laurent de Sutter
DIGITAL ART PERFORMANCES
CHRONICA (Yann Deval & Barbara Mydlak)
CHRONICA is an immersive experience that links millennia-old papermaking techniques and contemporary augmented reality technologies to explore themes of illness and healing processes.
Through the trajectory of a memory that the spectator extracts from his or her head, we will experience an introspective, tactile and sonic journey.
The graphic vocabulary of the experience is the page.
A page represents the memory of a moment in a day.
The paper page and its fibers as a metaphor for the process of memory consolidation.
The page that can be zoomed in and out until you lose yourself.
R€¥€R$€ (Laura Colmenares Guerra)
R€¥€R$€ is a 30' VR piece that addresses pressing socio-environmental challenges in the Amazon Basin, critically examining deforestation and the exploitation of natural resources. Combining scientific research with immersive storytelling, it transforms complex ecological data into a virtual journey. Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas remain central, revealing tensions where cultural, environmental, and human dimensions rub against power, economics, and multinational interests in a climate-stressed context.
ALSO ON THE MENU
Networking sessions
Digital creativity demos
Guided tour of the Belgian Pavilion and its scenography
wake! by KIKK is the label for digital creativity in Wallonia uniting, promoting and energizing South Belgium digital creativity players from various sectors, including content creators, and product and service providers.
The Belgian Creativity Day powered by wake! by Digital Wallonia is organised in the context of the Wallonia-Brussels Week powered by AWEX and Wallonia Brussels International.