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From Coding to Reading: KPL to Hold the 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival with the Theme of “Now Loading”
Date:2024-11-08
:多元文化部
The 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival will be held for three weeks, from November 9 to 24. By incorporating the concept of sensory reading into its activities, the event will use the citizens’ senses of hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste to create new immersive experiences.
The 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival will be held for three weeks, from November 9 to 24. By incorporating the concept of sensory reading into its activities, the event will use the citizens’ senses of hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste to create new immersive experiences.

【Kaohsiung】Kaohsiung City is about to welcome the arrival of the third “Kaohsiung Reading Festival.” This year (2024), the event will be pivoted around “Now Loading” as its central theme. “Now Loading” expresses the importance of “processing multiple modalities of words” and the necessity to “download and update different forms of reading for the future.”

 

The Kaohsiung Reading Festival coincides with the 10th anniversary of Kaohsiung Public Library’s (KPL) Main Library and Kaohsiung City’s centennial celebrations. Moreover, the 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival will incorporate the concept of sensory reading into its activities, marking a new dawn of innovations that is bound to change the citizens’ reading habits. Sensory reading creates new immersive experiences through the citizens' senses of hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. The 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival will undoubtedly take Kaohsiung citizens by storm with new possibilities and changes for reading from November 9 to 24, 2024.

 

Kaohsiung City Mayor Chi-Mai Chen remarked that Kaohsiung citizens’ high reading tendency demonstrates the city’s competitiveness. Results of the “2023 Report on Excellent Reading Performances of Counties and Cities” show that the particular municipality of Kaohsiung has successively earned high scores in overall reading performance. Kaohsiung’s reading performance scores hit record highs on all fronts, from the average number of books borrowed per person to the total number of books read and borrowed. In addition, the number of books possessed per citizen has also increased dramatically, showcasing the continuous growth of reading habits and tendencies in Kaohsiung.

 

The first Kaohsiung Reading Festival was held in 2022 as the city’s response to high reading demands among the citizens. Since then, the event has only grown and expanded. When remarking upon the passing of an entire century since what is now known as “Kaohsiung City” was established in 1924, Mayor Chi-Mai Chen expressed that Kaohsiung has continuously developed itself as a smart city in response to new technological advancements. When combined with reading, such developments will ignite the sparks of unique experiences and transform people’s perspectives toward reading. KPL sincerely invites readers to visit the Kaohsiung Public Library and participate in this grand celebration of reading.

 

According to Director Wen-Tsui Wang from the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, this year’s Kaohsiung Reading Festival consists of three characteristic activities: Open, Unzip, and More+. These activities will incorporate sensory technologies with reading to launch various activities related to comics, reading dramas, stage performances, and music to showcase contemporary forms of reading while establishing a connection between reading and the city.

 

Members of the VM Theatre Company, YouTuber I’m Serious, and B.L. Walk have been invited as special guests. Other items penned into the agenda include speeches by Ito Ogawa, a Japanese author whose writings are both enlightening and therapeutic, and Gyung-Ho Kang, a famous Korean manhwa artist. Director Wen-Tsui Wang remarked that despite being held on local grounds, the 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival has an international vision. The 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival will formally begin on November 9, and the Director reminded all citizens to participate in the event’s rich and beautiful activities.

 

According to KPL Director Lee Chin-Yang, KPL has specially invited Wei Liao, once a designer behind the main visuals at the Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival, to share his expertise in formatting, bookbinding and layout arrangements, and event visual designs.

 

The visual inspiration behind the 2024 “Now Loading” Kaohsiung Reading Festival is the “mouth of a book,” a term used to describe a state when a book is slightly opened while lying horizontally on one side. The sight forms the silhouette of the Chinese character for “hundred” (百), symbolizing the 100-year history of Kaohsiung and the diverse forms of reading forms that have found home in the city, building Kaohsiung’s unique culture brick by brick while making use of geometrics and illustrations, further integrating reading into the city’s cultural highlights.

 

“The 2024 Kaohsiung Reading Festival” will officially begin on November 9, 2024. Citizens can start browsing information on exciting events on the Kaohsiung Reading Festival’s official website starting from October 16. The opening ceremony of the Kaohsiung Reading Festival will include a performance from Daxien the Illusionist; a discussion between singer Ariel Sha and author Sharky Chen; stage performances from NibunChorus, Our Theatre, and VM Theatre Company; and a speech from artist Yu Han Lien. KPL welcomes all reading-loving citizens to visit the Main Library and take part in the grand festivities of the Kaohsiung Reading Festival from November 9 to 24.

 

For more information on the Kaohsiung Reading Festival, please visit the official website at https://2024libkrf.ksml.edu.tw/.

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Updated2024-11-07 AM 09:18:08
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