Future on Track: how Hong Kong artist duo Foreseen Agency turns trams and Tamagotchis into ‘living beings’

“There are a lot of intricate details about trams that we simply have been overlooking,” Wong says. “One time, a staff member said to us, ‘Trams used to be painted a different green.’ So what was the green like in the old days? And why did we change it? That one sentence opened up a whole journey of historical discovery.” As it turns out, something as simple as the colour tells a big chapter of the city’s history: in the 1940s, trams were painted using leftover paint from factories that produced it in abundance for military purposes during the Second World War, until it was all used up.

Another detail came from a driver, who said that the tram is the “fastest” transport in the city. “That’s because the tram takes three seconds to brake, so the driver needs to be fast and anticipate when they need to pull the lever” for it to stop at the right time, Wong explains. Another detail came from an examination of historic photo archives, which revealed that the Kennedy Town section of the tram tracks lay right by the waterfront; the tides would occasionally lap onto the tracks, creating small waves when the tram drove past.

Read more: “Hong Kong tram green” becomes an official pantone colour

“We both grew up on Kowloon side,” says Chan. “Looking across to the Island, I used to have this strange notion that the trams go from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan and back every day, like a creature ambling along the waterfront.” This visual inspired the pair to create Ding Lab, a “living” tram, set in 2066; a being that is both machine and humanistic, powered by real memories. The images of old Hong Kong and older tram models shown on the 16 screens were enhanced by AI, as if they were vivid memories of the old days witnessed by the tram.

The video work being screened on the upper deck plays in black and white and shades of red. One of the tram’s recollections is the “grandparent” ruminating on the colour green, and the vehicle itself imagining its own future when it retires. The colour of the video suggests that green—which symbolises a part of Hong Kong history—doesn’t exist in the AI training system and database in 2066, and so is lost to exhibition’s tram.

This blending of speculation and documentation sits at the core of Foreseen Agency’s philosophy. “The name Foreseen already implies looking ahead,” Wong explains. “We imagine possible futures, but they’re not arbitrary sci-fi worlds. They’re grounded in everyday people, memories and materials. This is how heritage can be kept alive: through technology, imagination and empathy.”

Before the tram, Foreseen Agency had already drawn critical attention with Foreseen Property Agents in 2023, a mock estate agent that questioned the commodification of culture. They turned the Fringe Club’s Anita Chan Lai-ling Gallery into a property agent’s reception area and showed visitors 3D-scanned images of “old shops” in the city that were about to be demolished, such as Mido Café, which was established in the 1960s in Yau Ma Tei, or the 1950s homeware store Chu Wing Kee in Sheung Wan. The team used the 3D point-cloud scanning technology—which uses lasers to capture the precise coordinates of objects and places—to “preserve” the different parts and corners of these historic buildings, be that a neon sign or a window.

The move was mischievous and poignant. Each fragment contained millions of coloured data points—a digital ghost of a disappearing Hong Kong storefront. Buyers paid a HK$100 deposit to reserve their chosen fragment. They would only complete the symbolic “purchase” once the real shop physically vanished.

The 2023 project was thought up after Wong had a thought-provoking encounter. She once illustrated Chu Wing Kee for a personal project; a land developer came across her work and expressed an interest in buying it and printing in a sales brochure for a property next to the shop she had drawn. “I was very happy that my art was endorsed at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt conflicted, as my work and the brochure were part of what led to the area’s gentrification and rent increase,” Wong recalls. “Local businesses like rice merchants and noodle houses represented a more soulful Hong Kong [than commercial properties]. We transformed their spaces into data and asked what it means to ‘own’ a memory.”

The project blurred lines between art, commerce and ethics. Representatives from New World Development, intrigued yet uneasy, reportedly visited the show. “They originally wondered if we were mocking them,” Wong says with a laugh. “But as we talked, they opened up and shared that they were working on the State Theatre project and were interested to see how heritage conservation could be done and promoted to different stakeholders in society.” Wong also noted how the show encouraged different people—social workers, curators, local residents—to share their varying perspectives. “We weren’t trying to moralise. We wanted to open a conversation about value, disappearance and participation.”

That dialogue is a recurring theme in their practice. For Foreseen Agency, technology is never neutral; it is a tool to imagine new forms of social connection while revealing the contradictions of progress.

The partnership between Wong and Chan traces back to their undergraduate years as creative media at City University of Hong Kong, where both majored in animation. “Storytelling was our foundation,” Chan says. After graduation, they pursued different paths but their shared fascination with how narrative and space can interact through technology kept growing, and both later headed to the UK.

Chan studied interactive architecture at University College London, a discipline that combined robotics, virtual reality and performance, and also worked extensively in animation. Wong, meanwhile, completed a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art and taught at Kingston University, where she began exploring social topics in her drawing.

Their first collaboration was not in a gallery but at a fish market in London’s Canary Wharf district. The market faced redevelopment, so they 3D-scanned fishmongers’ stalls and invited locals to participate in an unusual performance—a live auction of 3D-printed fishing gear signed by the vendors themselves. “It was like documenting a community through trade and humour,” Chan says. “The fish market was moving out, so we turned the process of leaving into an experience. It was about questioning how art, gentrification and social cooperation overlap.”

This early experiment cemented their identity as artists working in extended practice—combining research, performance and speculative design. When they returned to Hong Kong in 2022, Foreseen Agency emerged officially as a partnership driven by both curiosity and critique.

Returning home brought fresh challenges. Compared to the open studio culture in London, where peers constantly exchanged ideas, Hong Kong’s artistic scene felt more fragmented. “It’s a tighter network,” Chan says. “But that also means you must build new communities yourself.” That awareness eventually inspired the duo to establish SATA (Society and Technology Agency), conceived as a long-term initiative to explore collaborations between artists and technologists across Asia. The programme has already hosted workshops with creators from the mainland, Singapore, Indonesia, Mongolia and Korea, forming bridges between contemporary art and social innovation.

This year, Foreseen Agency is expanding its global reach. In Singapore last month, the duo imagined human-machine coexistence in an exhibition inspired by a brand of Taiwanese corn crisps called Guaiguai, superstitiously viewed by Taiwanese engineers as a lucky charm to prevent machines from malfunctioning. “We found it fascinating that a hyper-rational field like technology still clings to superstition,” Wong says with a chuckle. “We followed suit and placed a bag of Guaiguai at the driver’s area on the Ding Lab tram. Strangely, when we reached the snack’s expiration date, the screens didn’t work—that happened twice.”

Despite its humorous premise, Ding Lab is in essence research into superstition and culture in the digital age. “We want to use interactive installation and game design to question why people personify technology,” Wong says. “How can belief systems emerge inside circuits?”

In October, the two have been invited to take part in an artist residence in Saudi Arabia. Hosted in Riyadh’s expanding art hub Diriyah, the project imagines the digital self as a conscious entity born inside a server farm—a being awakening within its coded universe. Through video game engines and immersive spaces, it is intended to reflect on how surveillance, economy and identity intertwine under the desert sun.

For Foreseen Agency, international residencies are not just opportunities for exposure; they are platforms for representing Hong Kong’s evolving artistic dialogue. “Whenever we travel, we’re aware that we carry a piece of Hong Kong with us,” Wong says. “But it doesn’t need to be a literal depiction of the city—it can be the mindset and the negotiation between past and future, chaos and precision.”

Back in Hong Kong, the Ding Lab tram slowly comes to a stop at Belcher Bay Promenade to drop off its passengers, before gliding on and disappearing into the evening’s darkness. “Art is a very charming and romantic way for me to talk about the world without being direct,” says Wong. “That’s why I love making art. I’m not an engineer; I’m not a scientist. As an artist, I present my thoughts and feelings in an alternative way—it’s like writing a poem or song to the world.”

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