BODY/SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA SPECTRUMS NOW SHANGHAI/ 闹海

Transcription

1 /SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA SPECTRUMS URBAN HUMANITIES INITIATIVE Spring 2015 University of California, Los Angeles PROJECT TEAM Lucia Phan Addie Shrodes Di Song SPRING STUDIO NOW SHANGHAI/ 闹海

2 Narrative Film During a trip to Shanghai, project teams captured original footage and created a narrative related to their project site. SHANGHAI BECOMING Video, 14:22 minutes Focusing mainly on smart phone users, the film captures how the screen interfaces between the body and the built environment to shape spatial experiences and alter perceptions of reality. The intrapersonal to interpersonal relationship between the body, screen, and built environment is documented in three parts: Body, Cluster, and City. On an intrapersonal level, the screen is used as a tool for self-cultivation. Interpersonally, the screen is acts as a mode for communication, networking, and sharing via popular social networks such as Wechat. The anonymous, semi-robotic narrator takes the viewer through very distinct locations in Shanghai where screens permeate the landscape: M50, the Bund, and Wujiaochang. Drawing from historical Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi and modern day philosopher Ana Greenspan, the narrator asks the viewer to think about how space is experienced, shared, and internalized in modern cities through bodily practices. Scenes from Shanghai Becoming Buildings and bodies and space in between, the fundamentals of a city. If bodies create buildings and buildings recreate bodies... /SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY

3 PASSION PASSION POWER POWER COPPER COPPER 300 MHZ MHZ MHZ WOOD WOOD METAL METAL COPPER #TheBund#Pudong#Lujia #TheBund #Pudong #Lujiazui /SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY GRAZE GRAZEGRAZE STOP STOP STOP Mapping Urban Intensity through Social Media Spectrums /SCREEN MODIFY MODIFIED MODIFY LUXURY FUTURISM TENDER TEXTURE CONCRETE FUTURISM TEXTURE CONCRETEPERSONAL TENDER TEXTURE TENDER CONCRETE PRIVATE MHZ MHZ TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE PRIVATE PERSONAL PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY STREET DEMAND DEMAND DEMAND STREET STREETFRAME FRAME SHOCK FRAME AMBIGUITY FRAME FRAME AMBIGUITY MYSTERY MYSTERY PRIDE PRIDE COMMAND UNMAPPED UNMAPPED UNKNOWN UNKNOWN CREATIVE CREATIVE INDEPENDENT SPARK CONSTRUCTION INDIVIDUALITY SPARK SPARK GRAVEL LUXERY CONSTRUCTION INDIVIDUALITY CONSTRUCTION GRAVEL LUXERY EMULSION GRAVEL UNKNOWN EMULSION OPTIMISM EMULSION OPTIMISM OPTIMISM STARTLE HIGH-RISE STARTLE HIGH-RISE HIGH-RISE STARTLE EXTREME EXTREME EXTREME MHZ l phones BUOYANT DUBIOUS BUOYANT DUBIOUS BUOYANT LEAVES LEAVES e cel ctiv ion a ill 5.57 b WOOD METAL SHOCK CHANGE SHOCK ULAR ULAR ULAR EARTH EXTERNALEARTH EARTH POWER EXTERNAL EXTERNAL PASSION The Past, the Present, and the Now To complement cinematic representations project teams created densely rendered spatial diagrams and maps. /SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY Thick Map #M50Shanghai Body/Screen 1 The map captures the emerging interface between physical body and digital screen that often shapes spatial experience in Shanghai. CREATIVE INDEPENDENT INDEPENDENT Body/Screen 2 The map employs social media from Weibo, Flickr, Twitter, and Instagram to speculate upon the Body/Screen in the urban environment. Spectrometer of Affect and Material along Cell Phone Frequencies Body/Screen 3 The photo collages map two spatial clusters in Shanghai: M50 and the Bund, Pudong, and Lujiazui. Recurrent colors and associative affective and physical concepts are applied to a spectrometer that spans the electromagnetic frequencies of cell phones. UHI Spring Studio 2015 NOW SHANGHAI 闹海

4 The Past, the Present, and the Now Project teams gave further dimensionality to the urban humanists view of Shanghai through a close reading of their thick map. /SCREEN: MAPPING URBANINTENSITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA SPECTRUMS The body experiences the urban environment on a sensory spectrum. Yet as modes of perception expand into the digital sphere to include cell phone screens, where does the body end and environment begin? We propose the concept Body/Screen to capture the emerging interface between physical body and digital screen that often shapes spatial experience in Shanghai. The screen augments and alters the body and its perception of the city. The Body/Screen generates an alternative cartography for the urban environment. While built screens render an expanse of luminous dashes and dots across Shanghai, the Body/Screen details the intensity of spatial experience that arises at the interface of the digitally embodied. We attend to the bodily scale of photo shares rather than big data to collage surprising and specific connections between Body/Screen and built environment. The map employs social media spectrums to speculate upon the Body/Screen in the urban environment. Urban scholar Anna Greenspan points to the potential for cartography based on the electromagnetic spectrum of light and color, and we draw inspiration from her suggestion to consider social media in the spectrum of urban intensity. The map draws from the photo shares of four social media platforms active in China: Weibo, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram. These platforms represent a spectrum of social media representation, and they are central to the map because they have public content searchable by spatial hashtags. We map two spatial sites in Shanghai: #M50, a creative cluster; and #The Bund #Pudong #Lujiazui, beacons of modernity that bridge the river. We chose M50 as a creative community that spans the digital and physical. Artists and visitors post photos to share their digitally mediated experiences of a highly material space. We consider the Bund, Pudong and Lujiazui to be a singular site centered on the digital. Visitors traverse the luminous space with screen in hand; they click to capture and share online. Body/ Screens panoramically capture built screens across the Bund to Pudong at night. With photo shares in hand, we mapped the data in six spatial collages, three for each site, to generate /SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY

5 The Past, the Present, and the Now Project teams gave further dimensionality to the urban humanists view of Shanghai through a close reading of their thick map. relationships between Body/Screen and urban space. Collage form creates connections, and we collaged photos in degrees of transparency in order to uncover surprising patterns on social media. The top row represents #M50Shanghai, and the far left collage maps the body s fusion with recurrent material and digital urbanscapes of street art and screens. The collage at top center brings out the body to choreograph its movement in the gallery spaces of M50. The top right collage maps the way in which bodies mirror spaces for social media sharing. The map of #TheBund #Pudong #Lujiazui traverses the bottom row, and the left collage maps the clusters of people and buildings on social media. The center examines the bodily perspective of social media sharing to juxtapose perspectives that look up at skyscrapers and those that look down at the body from the skyscrapers height. The last collage maps the contrast between static bodily poses and traffic movement. share content on the electromagnetic spectrum; and it interpretatively qualifies the content users share. The spectrometer draws out dominant colors in photo shares and represents them by approximate rate of recurrence. The map conducts a poetic interpretation of the colors immaterial and material import between both spatial sites, signified in singular words on the spectrometer, to highlight the nuanced perception of urban experience the Body/Screen generates. The spectrometer draws upon the spectrum of social media photo shares to illustrate the range of Body/Screen experiences in built spaces. The map literalizes the spectrum of urban intensity by projecting the collages recurrent colors and associative affective and physical concepts onto a spectrometer that spans the electromagnetic frequencies of cell phones. The spectrometer works on practical and poetic planes: it quantifies the range in which social media users /SCREEN: MAPPING URBAN INTENSITY