Meet Our Rising Star – Professor Eugene Alexander Birman, School of Creative Arts

 

Professor Eugene Alexander Birman, Associate Professor, Academy of Music, is a composer and creator whose work exists at the intersection of supreme beauty and the world's most pressing social issues. Renowned for pioneering the use of large-scale holography, interactive digital media, and immersive opera environments, Professor Birman has redefined the boundaries of classical music, and his multidisciplinary productions, described by critics as "radical," "ingenious," and "a breakthrough in public art", move regularly beyond the concert hall to engage with major international bodies such as the European Union and the United States Department of State.

 

The Research Office sits down with Professor Birman and looks at his illustrious career and global artistic footprint.

RO: Which projects have been at the forefront of your research and creative agenda in recent months? 

Birman: It has been an incredibly rewarding season, with several major projects reaching fruition. We recently concluded a tour of my opera on the European Convention of Human Rights, commissioned by a prestigious consortium including the Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Grand Théâtre de Genève. It was a profound experience to see the work staged inside the European Parliament in Luxembourg and the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, where the audience literally sat in the delegates’ chairs. 

Earlier this spring, March marked the Asian premiere of my 2022 work, Os dias mais longos e os mais curtos, at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. This was one of the most technologically ambitious performances I’ve ever conceived, pioneering mass holography for the stage in a collaboration between the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and local Hong Kong artists.

Most recently, in May, we premiered my new multimedia work, ARCHE: Where to put the mind?, at the opening weekend of the 2026 Munich Biennale, with the music co-written with the vocalist and sound artist Anandi Bhattacharya. Originally developed with Jeffrey Shaw, this piece explores the art of kung fu through a lens of human-machine interaction. 

Looking ahead, I am already developing projects for 2027 and 2028 that will continue to merge art and science, and I look forward to bringing some exciting international stars to Hong Kong for these future collaborations.

RO: What inspired you to integrate technology into your music compositions? 

Birman: It wasn’t so much an inspiration as it was a necessity. In 2020, in collaboration with Professors Johnny Poon (Chair Professor in Creative Arts, Academy of Music), Kingsley Ng (Associate Professor, Academy of Visual Arts) and Chen Li (Department of Computer Science), we developed a project called ARIA 空氣頌, a work on air pollution and the environment that actually gave Hong Kong audiences a taste of holographic classical music performance in the stunning Forsgate Conservatory. The project ran into the Hong Kong government’s pandemic-era restrictions in 2020 just as we were in the final phase of project development, so we pivoted to what was at that point a complete experiment, filming the Theatre of Voices, a prominent Copenhagen-based vocal ensemble, as holographs, and combining that with live local singers (the Hong Kong Children’s Choir) and dancers. It was a huge success: sixteen performances over two weeks, all sold out within minutes, and featured in the Financial Times as “a Covid-proof opera for our times.” 

RO: How do you see the role of music in addressing contemporary social issues as reflected in your work?

Birman: Music and society are inseparable. I see my work – and, indeed, any artist’s existence – as a privilege, a grant from society in a way, which comes with an inherent trust that what one does remains vital to people. When people hit their lowest point, they turn to music, to film, to art in general to help them through; we have to always keep in mind that art is often one’s companion during one’s most profound happiness, as well as deepest depression. Of course, this approach can also lead to controversy. My work on Russian society and propaganda, Russia : Today (2020) has caused protests and petitions, and made me quite a few enemies, but it’s also given thousands of people – both the participants and the audiences – an outlet and a way for the truth to break free. Some of the greatest cultural shifts have occurred because artists were courageous enough to stand up for a belief or an inherent truth. It’s not enough to enjoy the privilege of creation; we must defend its – and our – existence in our society. That’s why, for me, every work I create is not necessarily something technologically advanced or visually or sonically impressive; it needs to speak to people, and also allow for the audience too to feel heard. 

RO: Of the various initiatives you’ve led at the university, which project are you most proud to have brought to life, and what sets it apart from the rest?

Birman: I’m honestly very proud of all the projects I’ve had the fortune to do at HKBU, and likewise grateful that the university has been involved – and invested – in many of them, sometimes in small ways and other times in very big ways. It’s rare for an academic institution to see creative practice like mine as something to support, but then I’d like to think it’s had a good ROI. The many awards, public performances, press, etc., have also demonstrated internationally that music and multidisciplinary creation can be tremendously impactful as research as well. And that HKBU is at the centre of it. 

For sure, ARIA 空氣頌, as the first project of its kind in Hong Kong and also for the university, was a fantastic success and I’m proud of how our team of artists and computer scientists managed to find a meeting point and make something artistically (and with regard to research) innovative and special. I’m just as proud of every subsequent project, including the latest, coming from a pretty profound exploration of martial arts and intangible cultural heritage, developing into a research collaboration with the Visualization Research Centre, and now a truly cutting-edge theatre experience.  

RO: When looking at the evolution of your work, how has being part of the HKBU community allowed you to expand the scope and depth of your projects?

Birman: The university’s huge investment in facilities, technology, knowledge transfer, and simply the close relationship we have (that’s really only possible in Hong Kong, I feel) with the cultural institutions and public sector, has allowed me personally as well as colleagues (as so much of what I do is collaborative) to create artistic projects that have impacted the creative industry in meaningful ways. It’s not one thing – indeed, it’s the environment and the possibility of a pipeline from idea to finished artistic product, the involvement of the research community as well as government agencies and institutions, that makes it possible to create great things. I’ve also been able to leverage the funding and cultural ecosystems in Hong Kong to create bigger and better projects with international institutions. Everyone wins that way; we get to be part of something ambitious and backed by major cultural institutions, and they gain from the quality of our experience and research contribution. 

RO: What unique qualities of your research team or environment most inspire and support you on your research journey?

Birman: I have really only two rules for my work - it has to be ambitious and it has to be meaningful. And perhaps beyond that, I want to explore territory in the arts that has daunted others in the past. For example, the martial arts are a part of our heritage here in Hong Kong, but to be initiated into this world is not easy, and to find ways of convergence between it and what we would think of as ‘Western’ artistic creation is intimidating. But thanks to some wonderful collaborators – Hing Chao, Jeffrey Shaw, and individuals in the community who have fought to keep it alive – we managed to do it. That sort of breakthrough inspires me, because an important of way of preserving an intangible art is to give it a new life in another context. In that sense, I hope I am also doing something meaningful for Hong Kong, too.  

RO: What do you wish you had known when you first started in research?

Birman: You have to want it, really, really badly. At least in the arts if the entire universe is not at stake for you, if everything is not on the line, please go and do something else. There is just no compromise. I learned that a little later than I should have, in my early 20s. I could have saved some time.