AI may simulate creatures wandering in the deep ocean, picture a metropolis of flying cars, or imagine life and civilization on Mars, but can we challenge AI to create meaningful reinterpretation of cultural heritage?

If we enrich AI with arts, humanities, and thoughtful reflections, it may extend its technical spectacle into a realm of moral depth. This digital humanities website showcases AI films and 3D reconstruction based on historical art and literature. They are produced by Lingnan University students as part of their final projects for my Spring 2026 course CLA9033 Art Confronts AI and FVA3009 Transmission of East Asian Art.

Each student selects a historical figure, event, a piece of artwork, or literature to research. Then they engage multiple AI video, text, 3D models, and image generation apps, ranging from Tencent Hunyuan 3D, Google’s Nano Banana, Veo3, to Minimax’s Hailuo AI and Bytedance’s Doubao AI and Seedance 2.0, to co-create a short film or a 3D reconstruction of the historical artwork.  

All the original works are hailed as some of the greatest examples of cultural heritage and human sensibility to time, space, and life. Can we confront AI to tell emotionally charged stories of humanity? Can we use AI to challenge temporal, geographical, and cultural boundaries?

I invite you to observe how history reveals the promise and limitation of AI. Let’s explore new avenues together.    

Acknowledgement: This project is generously supported by the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries at Lingnan University. We are grateful for the 3D model and AI video resources provided by teams at Tencent and Minimax.

Course Instructor: 

Prof. Wang Gerui is an Assistant Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She studies media, art, and AI, as well as the intersection of art and ecology. Wang leads a digital humanities project: Storytelling with AI, archived by Stanford Libraries. Her first book, Sustaining Landscapes: Governance and Ecology in Chinese Visual Culture, 960-1368 CE (Hong Kong University Press, 2025), has received publication grants from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and the Liberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. The book unveils the rich debates on natural resource management in flourishing landscape imagery and policy documents in pre-industrial China. It illustrates the representations, contestations, and expressions of the tension between economic growth and the long-term well-being of the environment through the lens of visual culture.

Gerui has published in the Journal of Chinese History, AsiaScape: Digital Asia, and Journal of Visual Art Practice. Gerui contributes regularly on topics such as AI, media, society, and culture. Her articles appear in Alan Turing Institute’s AI & Arts Forum, Australian National University’s Center on China in the World, Asia Times, The Wire China, South China Morning Post, and Forbes, and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and French.

Creator of this website: Kristy Zhang is a second-year ADA student with a background in Fine Arts; her mediums include oil painting, gouache, and mixed media. Her digital artworks are more focused on experimenting with mixed media and stop-motion.