Joyce Chiou, General and Artistic Director

The Variables of Our Age,
the Constant of Our Humanity

Technology originates in human nature, and human nature can no longer exist apart from it.

When composer HUANG Ruo first told me his idea, I was intrigued instantly. He observed how people are glued to their phones and forget the world around them. So he wondered: what if, instead of resisting this habit, we created a concert where people could remain on their phones and still share an experience together? If an orchestra has ninety-nine musicians, then imagine ninety-nine phones—each carrying a different timbre, a different line of music. Gathered together, they would form a vast, living symphony.

City of Floating Sounds, the opening program of the 2026 Arts NOVA, was born. The mobile phones do more than play music. They guide audiences through the city on five different routes, each revealing its own cityscape and gathering its own circle of fellow walkers. The noise of traffic, the chanting of temples, the rustle of trees and insects, and the quiet exchanges between companions gradually weave themselves into the score. Eventually, all five routes converge inside of the theater, where the full orchestral version unfolds once again. Some may wander freely between the stage and the auditorium or stand among the instrumental sections, listening for how differently music lives when it comes from a phone and when it is breathed into being by musicians onstage.

Beyond our phones, AI has also become one of our closest daily interlocutors. But the "perfect answers" it gives us raise an uneasy question: are they universal truths, or simply responses crafted uniquely for each of us? As One is adapted from a true story: an individual distressed by climate anxiety becomes so immersed in conversations with an AI that he comes to believe self-sacrifice might save the world. The work returns to the human core of the AI debate, probing consciousness, selfhood, and identity, inviting us to reflect on the ethics of what we are creating.

Technology grants freedom, yet it reshapes emotion, behavior, and thought. Is this dependence, or is it a form of symbiosis?

Clic explores a life governed by algorithms. Through brilliant actor-puppet interplay, and within a retro-futuristic world, the production uses some of the least "technological" theatrical methods to reveal a medical system ruled by AI. Dentures, artificial lenses, pacemakers —have they not already become our earliest wearable technologies? The result is a work of puppetry that is darkly humorous yet deeply thought-provoking.

Three works in this year's Arts NOVA contemplate "relationships." Piano piano is the fruit of a twenty-year friendship between two artists: one a celebrated figure in new media arts, the other a luminous voice in contemporary music. Returning to the crystal ball and the piano, they fulfill a youthful dream of performing together. The result is a poetic encounter where illusion and music interlace, a gentle piano-piano universe open to all.

Hikikomori – The Shelter examines family and intimacy through the story of a teenager who locks himself in his room, communicating only through his phone, refusing school, work, and social contact. Families quarrel, each convinced of their own truth, leaving the one caught in between with nowhere to stand. Audience members receive headphones with one of three perspectives: mother, father, or child, hearing the same story unfold through different inner worlds. The creators lead a post-show conversation, piecing together the full picture through mutual listening. It is a work especially resonant for couples and families with teenagers.

"Quand on s'est rencontrés c'était parfait. C'était comme si la Corée du Nord et la Corée du Sud ouvraient leurs frontières et se réunifiaient et que les gens qui avaient été empêchés de se voir pendant des années se retrouvaient." So the original text of La Réunification des deux Corées tells us. The geopolitical reference has nothing to do with politics, yet it gives the work its name. Evoking the image of one people who share a language and a lineage yet remain painfully divided, Joël Pommerat uses twenty short episodes performed by nine actors to invite us to contemplate the fragile architectures of human connection. Widely regarded as one of the master’s signature works, it is performed by Théâtre Louis Brouillard, well-known to NTT audiences, in a space nearly swallowed by darkness, where the faintest glimmer reveals the undercurrents that move between characters.

And finally, we come to the "end of days."
Belgium's Still Life has long circled around mortality. Their new work, Timber, is set in a forest: a place of phytoncides, picnics, adventure, and spiritual retreat. But even the most idyllic nature can turn catastrophic in an instant. Beastosis: Call of the Skull, adapted from Taiwanese novelist CHIOU Charng-ting's Beastosis, combines VR, MR, and live performance to merge audiences with "the spirit of the beasts" and lead them into a world ravaged by an otherworldly epidemic.

In LuxuryLogico's exhibition Cosmic Sketches, the installation Space 201 featured a massive yet supple mechanical hand touching a piece of driftwood. It reminded me of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam: that moment when the spark of life passes from one fingertip to another. If a single touch can initiate life, might the end of life, or its restart, also hinge upon one gesture? The Last Question, a site-specific work created for the National Taichung Theater, is a performance without performers. The light of the earth meets the shadow of the cosmos, speaking of the hidden connections and continuous cycles that bind all things. One cannot help but wonder: is there an unseen hand behind it all?

Are you ready to face the questions that await you?