The Development of My Research Interest: How Cultural Meaning Is Reconstructed Across Different Media Contexts
This research grows out of my continuing interest in how cultural meanings are transformed and reinterpreted through communication. As a creative practitioner working across both Chinese and Western cultural contexts, I have come to understand culture not as a fixed body of content, but as a dynamic process shaped by different social environments, media forms and relationships with audiences.
Within the context of globalisation and digital media development, traditional cultural resources increasingly enter diverse contemporary contexts, including branding, screen narratives, online cultures and digital creative practices. Rather than simply transferring unchanged from the past, these resources undergo processes of selection, translation and reorganisation, generating new visual expressions, narrative forms and cultural experiences.
In this research, cultural translation refers not only to linguistic translation, but also to the process through which cultural materials are selected, interpreted and transformed when they enter new media and social contexts. Through this process, cultural symbols, stories and values may acquire new meanings through interaction with different audiences and communication environments.
My research interest initially developed through my creative practice and observations. Through reflective practices documented on my UAL MyBlog (https://24046132.myblog.arts.ac.uk/), I explored cultural symbols, visual communication and contemporary media expressions. These reflections gradually shifted my focus from how traditional cultural elements are represented towards how cultural resources are reinterpreted and recreated through media practices.
This process also led me to consider the role of the creative practitioner in cultural translation. Creators do not simply reproduce existing cultural materials; they participate in selecting, framing and transforming meanings, influencing how cultural resources are presented and understood.
Building on these observations, my current research explores the following question:
How can generative AI, guided by a creative practitioner, support the transformation of selected Chinese cultural resources beyond isolated symbolic references and develop them into culturally grounded narrative prototypes across image, text and potentially moving image?
I. From Cultural Symbols to Cultural Translation: Reinterpreting Traditional Culture in Global Brand Communication
My initial exploration of cultural translation began through observing the cultural communication strategies of global luxury brands, particularly how international brands select, reinterpret and present Chinese cultural resources within cross-cultural contexts.
In recent years, the Spring Festival has become an increasingly significant cultural moment within global brand communication. Many international brands have incorporated Chinese cultural resources into their global narratives through limited-edition products, visual campaigns, exhibitions and immersive experiences. Cultural elements such as lanterns, Chinese opera, traditional crafts, zodiac imagery and festival motifs are often redesigned and integrated into brand identities, product design and consumer experiences.
The development of digital media has further expanded the possibilities of cultural expression. Digital content, virtual experiences, interactive platforms and emerging generative visual practices allow traditional cultural materials to be recombined and presented through new technological languages.
However, when cultural elements enter global brand systems, they do not automatically retain their original meanings. Instead, they are selected, simplified and reframed according to brand identities, commercial objectives, communication channels and audience expectations.
For example, a traditional craft may originally be connected to a specific region, community, historical context and social function. However, when incorporated into brand communication, it may be transformed into a visual language associated with refinement, exclusivity or craftsmanship. Similarly, the Spring Festival contains complex meanings related to family reunion, social relationships and cultural rituals, while global brand campaigns may reorganise these meanings into a more universal festive experience for international audiences.
Through observing these cases, I began to recognise that the use of cultural elements in brand communication is itself a process of meaning reconstruction. Brand visual systems, commercial intentions, media formats and audience interpretations collectively influence which cultural aspects are selected and how they are ultimately understood.
This stage of research helped me understand that cultural translation is not a simple transfer of cultural content from one context to another. Rather, it is an ongoing process of selection, negotiation and reinterpretation, in which cultural meanings continue to evolve through interaction with new environments.
At the same time, I gradually became aware of the limitations of visual symbols. Recognisable cultural imagery can quickly establish cultural associations, but the histories, social relationships and values behind these symbols are often difficult to communicate through isolated visual representation alone.
Therefore, my research interest moved from the visual translation of cultural symbols towards narrative media. I became interested in how characters, settings, short texts and story concepts could provide cultural resources with richer contexts, allowing them to develop into contemporary narratives with emotional and interpretive depth. This shift encouraged me to explore how cultural meanings can be communicated not only through what an image represents, but also through the relationships, situations and narrative possibilities surrounding it.
II. From Cultural Resources to Narrative Forms: Reimagining Culture Through Screen and Digital Media
After examining cultural translation in global brand communication, I expanded my research into screen and digital narratives. While branding often creates cultural associations through visual systems, products and consumer experiences, narrative media provide cultural resources with richer contexts through character relationships, conflicts, narrative structures and evolving situations.
Within this process, cultural elements no longer function only as recognisable symbols. Instead, they can become active parts of a narrative system, shaping character relationships, influencing conflicts and contributing to the construction of fictional environments.
My interest in European and American fantasy and horror works further developed my understanding of this transformation. These works often draw on mythology, religious traditions, folklore, historical events and collective memories, reorganising these cultural materials through contemporary narrative structures and placing them into new fictional contexts.
For example, Supernatural brings angels, demons, mythological beings and folktales from different cultural traditions into a continuing supernatural narrative. Within this system, cultural materials are not simply decorative references; they influence character relationships, create conflicts and contribute to the construction of the fictional environment. Audiences encounter these cultural elements not as isolated symbols, but through the experiences, choices and emotional relationships of the characters.
Similarly, American Horror Story connects American history, regional legends, social memories and horror imagery with contemporary concerns such as identity, family, power and collective anxiety. It demonstrates how cultural memories can be reorganised through genre storytelling and transformed into narratives that respond to present-day social experiences.
These examples helped me recognise that the continuing relevance of cultural resources in contemporary media depends not only on their original meanings, but also on how they are transformed into narrative structures with internal relationships and emotional connections. Character design, narrative structures and visual environments allow cultural memories to move beyond static references and become experiences that audiences can engage with.
At the same time, I became interested in how media can create new cultural imaginaries through speculative futures. Unlike the previous examples, Black Mirror is not based on the adaptation of traditional cultural resources. Instead, it provides a reference for understanding how technology, narrative and social imagination interact. Through fictional scenarios involving artificial intelligence, digital identity, virtual relationships and technological development, the series transforms abstract social and ethical questions into experiences that audiences can understand through characters and stories.
This further expanded my understanding of media narratives: media can not only reinterpret existing cultural resources, but also create new ways of imagining the relationship between humans, technology and society. Therefore, emerging technologies should not be understood only as production tools, but also as mediums that influence how narratives and cultural meanings are generated.
From these works, I identified several approaches that are relevant to my later practice:
- using characters, objects or visual forms to carry cultural meanings;
- using settings and narrative structures to organise cultural materials;
- using relationships between images, texts and potential moving images to create emotional and interpretive connections.
These observations led me back to the Chinese cultural context and encouraged me to consider how traditional Chinese cultural resources might be transformed through contemporary media practices, including visual storytelling, digital content and futuristic visual languages.s with continuity and internal logic through contemporary screen media, online literature and futuristic visual languages.
IV. From Cultural Translation to AI-Assisted Cultural Narrative Experiments
After observing how Western screen narratives reorganise cultural materials through characters, narrative structures and fictional environments, I turned my attention to the expression of Chinese traditional culture within contemporary media.
Chinese cultural traditions contain rich mythological, literary, historical and folkloric resources. These materials are not only visually distinctive, but also contain complex character relationships, imagined spaces, systems of value and understandings of life, death and the relationship between humans and the wider world.
For example, the creatures, deities and imagined geographies in Shan Hai Jing provide possibilities for character and environment design. Liaozhai Zhiyi explores emotion, desire, ethics and social relationships through encounters between humans and supernatural beings. Journey to the West and Fengshen Yanyi present complex mythological systems involving humans, gods, immortals, spirits and demons across different realms.
These works demonstrate that traditional cultural resources are not only collections of visual symbols. They can also provide foundations for character relationships, narrative conflicts, spatial imagination and systems of meaning. However, this project will not attempt to represent all Chinese cultural traditions. Instead, I will select one or two specific groups of cultural resources for practical experimentation.
Contemporary Chinese screen works also demonstrate how traditional cultural ideas can enter modern narrative environments. The Linghun Baidu (Soul Ferry) series places traditional ideas about ghosts, spirits, life, death, cause and consequence, and folk beliefs within an urban setting. Through relationships between humans and spirits, as well as connections between everyday life and supernatural spaces, the series explores themes of emotion, memory, loss and the meaning of existence.
In Linghun Baidu: Ten Years, I am particularly interested in the combination between recognisable Chinese cultural environments and digitally constructed or futuristic spaces. Rather than viewing cyberpunk as an independent research topic, I consider it as a possible visual and spatial language through which traditional cultural resources can enter speculative futures.
This example suggests that Chinese cultural resources do not need to remain within historical settings or fixed traditional aesthetics. They can also interact with digital technologies, future environments and contemporary visual languages to produce new forms of cultural imagination.
Chinese online literature provides another useful structural reference. In particular, infinite-flow narratives demonstrate how multiple scenarios, rule systems and character development can organise complex cultural materials. Within these structures, mythology, history and folklore can become part of world settings, narrative mechanisms and character experiences rather than remaining as background decoration.
For this research, infinite-flow fiction is not a genre that I intend to reproduce directly. Instead, it provides a method for organising cultural materials. It encourages me to consider how selected cultural resources might be connected through shared visual systems, narrative settings and character relationships.
The examples in this section therefore serve different purposes. Traditional texts provide cultural resources, including symbols, characters, spaces and values. Linghun Baidu demonstrates how traditional ideas can move between contemporary urban environments and futuristic visual contexts. Infinite-flow narratives provide a structural reference for organising multiple settings and developing narrative possibilities.
These observations led me to consider whether generative AI could provide a practical experimental space where selected Chinese cultural resources could be transformed through visual design, character development and narrative exploration.
IV. From Cultural Translation to AI-Assisted Cultural Narrative Experiments
The previous stages of my research moved from the visual translation of cultural symbols towards the narrative organisation of cultural resources. Generative AI now provides a new media Building on the previous research, I will develop an AI-assisted cultural narrative experiment that explores how selected Chinese cultural resources can be transformed into contemporary visual and narrative forms through generative technologies.
The intervention will take the form of an online creative project, producing a series of AI-generated visual narratives that combine images, short texts and experimental storytelling. The aim is to explore how traditional cultural resources can be reinterpreted through the interaction between cultural research, AI generation and creative decision-making.
The project will focus on one specific cultural resource or a small group of related materials rather than attempting to represent Chinese culture as a whole. Possible starting points include mythical creatures and imagined landscapes from Shan Hai Jing, or relationships between humans and supernatural beings in Liaozhai Zhiyi. These resources will be developed into visual narratives through character design, environment creation and short narrative concepts.
A key focus of the experiment will be the relationship between traditional cultural imagination and future-oriented visual languages. By combining Chinese cultural elements with speculative environments, digital spaces and technological aesthetics, I will explore how traditional concepts can generate new meanings when placed within contemporary and future contexts.
The creative process will involve cultural research, visual reference development, prompt experimentation, AI-assisted generation, human selection and refinement, and reflective documentation. Rather than evaluating AI outputs only through visual quality, I will examine how different creative choices influence the transformation of cultural meanings, including which elements are preserved, changed or newly interpreted.
The project will be documented through a dedicated online account that records cultural references, AI experiments, creative decisions and final outcomes. The platform will also provide opportunities to observe audience responses and reflect on how different viewers understand these new forms of cultural expression.
Through this practice-based intervention, I aim to explore the possibilities and limitations of generative AI as a medium of cultural translation, and investigate how selected Chinese cultural resources can develop new narrative possibilities within contemporary digital culture.