Lauren Naidoo - interdisciplinary artist, graphic designer & animator
living at the intersection of art and design
naidoolauren18(at)gmail.com

home
cv

“HUMANIZING TECHNOLOGIES: NAVIGATING THE AI ERA”
2025

The following animated works were created during an Undergraduate Research Assistant position in accordance with the University of British Columbia Migration Studies under Dr. Annie Wan. The focus on my work was on empowering migrant communities and aiming to enhance cultural resilience through innovative research and storytelling. Independant research as well as immigrant interviews were used to draw visual references and inspired the distortion/motion design exploration. With an aim to create concept art that told the stories of Hong Kong migrants in a new and immersive way.

NATHAN RD (2025) explores the shifting memories of immigrants’ experiences of one of Hong Kong’s busiest and most iconic streets. Nathan roads dense architecture and visual culture created a site for memory, movement and identity to intersect. Photographic material of the street and its architecture was used to construct a layered digital collage that emphasized its chaotic density. The motion design draws from personal accounts describing the street as overflowing with life, aiming to capture the energy in immersive movement. Memory fading and transforming over time is reflected in the surreal amalgamations and distortions within the work. Rather than pursuing realism, I focus on evoking the emotion or experience of these migrant memories, capturing the sensation of Hong Kong’s street life as it is remembered rather than as it physically exists.

. 

Exhbited in 2026, group exhibition at Next Generation Artists of Alberta (Calgary, AB)
Created by collaging photography of Nathan Road, HK in Photoshop, then animating using Touch Designer, and overlaying in Premiere.

HECTICSIGNS (2025) responds to the rich visual history of Hong Kong’s neon signs and its gradual disappearance. It draws parallels between the physical deterioration of these signs and the fragmentation of migrant memory over time. The work explores this dual loss of the tangible distinct visual culture and the intangible fading of memory that's tied to place and identity. Through animated digital collage, archival images of neon signs are reconfigured into transformed compositions. These shifting forms reflect both the instability of memory and the ongoing transformation of Hong Kong’s urban identity. To create an ever changing landscape that captures a sense of nostalgia and cultural loss. 

Created by collaging photography of Neon Signs in Photoshop, animating using Photoshop & Touch Designer, and video editing in Premiere.

Bibliography

Kwok, Brian Sze-hang. “Vernacular Design: A History of Hong Kong Neon Signs.”
  Journal of Design History, vol. 34, no. 4, 2021, pp. 349–366.

Kwok, Brian Sze-hang. Fading Neon Lights: An Archive of Hong Kong’s Visual Culture.
  City University of Hong Kong Press, 2023.

g-TV. Fading Neon Lights. YouTube,
  https://youtu.be/Yt0O3cRaMLE

Vox. The decline of Hong Kong’s iconic neon glow. YouTube,
  https://youtu.be/DdpEYzvi8pI

South China Morning Post. How Hong Kong lost its neon glow. YouTube,
  https://youtu.be/ECVtKRpX7To

South China Morning Post. [Bamboo scaffolding: why Hong Kong is among the last cities using centuries-old building method]. YouTube,
  https://youtu.be/Hfj-XWgv7Ms

Wang, Ian. “Happy Together: Wong Kar-Wai and the History of Hong Kong Migrant Cinema.”
  The Quietus, 16 Feb. 2021,
  https://thequietus.com/culture/film/film-wong-kar-wai-migrant-cinema/