In 2026, Microwave reaches its 30th anniversary. To arrive at thirty is to look back, but also to recognise anew the contours of one’s own time. Founded in 1996 as a video art festival by Videotage, a Hong Kong media art collective, Microwave began in a city shaped by images, speed, density, signals, languages, and constantly transforming everyday life. Since becoming an independent organisation in 2006, it has expanded with the evolution of technology, media, and society, developing into a long-standing festival platform dedicated to media art.

Over these three decades, media art has never been merely a history of technological progress. It is not simply a sequence of screens, projections, video, computers, sensors, sound, interactive installations, networks, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, or immersive images. More profoundly, it is a perceptual system of its time — one that records how people rediscover the world through technology, and how they recognise themselves amid the world’s transformations.

Festival Grand Opening: 30.10.2026 (Fri 五) 6-9pm

Venue address: Exhibition Hall, Low Block, Hong Kong City Hall, 5 Edinburgh Place, Central