Moonlight Woven Love: A Contemporary Interpretation of Love Stories Through Digital Installation

Hytree Studio, led by Liu Yu-shu, has been awarded the Gold Prize in the Future Art & Design Award UK 2025 Winter Season for the project Moonlight Woven Love: Fairy Steps in the Garden.

Rooted in Taiwanese folk belief and classical Chinese love narratives, Moonlight Woven Love transforms a historic garden into a living stage where romance, memory, and technology intertwine. By inviting audiences to actively participate through digital interaction, the work challenges the notion of heritage as static and instead proposes cultural sites as emotionally resonant spaces—capable of dialogue with contemporary storytelling, play, and collective experience.

Q: What initially inspired this project? Was there a particular idea, moment, or question that sparked its creation?

Yu-shu:

The inspiration for this project originates from a contemporary reinterpretation of classical Chinese love stories, combined with the cultural symbolism of Yue Lao, the traditional Taiwanese deity of love and marriage. Centered on Taiwan’s local Yue Lao belief, we imagined inviting the god of love into Lin Family Garden to “watch a play,” allowing audiences to experience romance unfolding within a historic space.

Through the integration of digital and technological art, we aim to demonstrate that heritage architecture is not a static relic, but a living space capable of engaging in dialogue with contemporary technology, storytelling, and emotion. This work is not only an artistic installation, but also a proposal for reimagining the future of historical sites—envisioning the garden as a romantic cultural playground where audiences are encouraged to enter, linger, and form new emotional connections with love, memory, and time.

Q: What was the most exciting or most challenging aspect of bringing this work to life?

Yu-shu:

During the creation of this project, we wanted the audience to be more than passive viewers. We designed the experience so that visitors could actively participate using their mobile phones. Through custom-built interactive programs and systems, audiences were able to draw directly onto the historic site, becoming part of the projection and the artwork itself.

This participatory interaction quickly became one of the most beloved aspects of the project. By engaging technology, the audience transforms from spectators into co-creators. As a result, every weekend the garden welcomed large numbers of visitors who came to experience the projection mapping, allowing the historic site to be reactivated, reimagined, and emotionally reconnected with contemporary life.

We believe that integrating interactive technology with cultural heritage spaces—inviting audiences into the creative process—is a key direction for the future of technological and digital art.

Q: How was your experience taking part in the Future Art & Design Award UK?

Yu-shu:

This was my first time participating in the Future Art & Design Award UK, and the overall experience was very smooth and well-organized. I truly appreciated the professionalism of the team and the opportunities for exchange throughout the process.

This experience has been a great encouragement for me, and I hope to continue participating in the future with new works each year. At the same time, I sincerely wish that more creators from Taiwan will become aware of this award and take part, allowing a wider range of Taiwanese creative voices to be seen and heard on the international stage.

We specialize in animation and cultural technology art, focusing on the integration of visual storytelling, interactive technologies, and spatial experiences to explore new ways of engaging with cultural heritage and contemporary narratives.

Our goal is to continuously refine our creative and production capabilities, and to grow into a team that operates at the intersection of culture, technology, and animation, with a strong commitment to artistic depth and an international perspective.

Studio Websitehttps://treemuta.wixsite.com/hytree

Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/liu.yu.shu.386507/?locale=zh_TW