Field reconstruction

This project aims to explore the textual and linguistic landscape of Yuyuan Garden, a famous classical garden located in Shanghai, China. The project focuses on the juxtaposition of traditional cultural elements with the modern commercial environment that surrounds the garden. By collecting and reconstructing textual elements observed in the space, the project seeks to highlight the contrast and sometimes the conflict between these two aspects.

Site Selection

Yuyuan Garden was chosen as the site for this project due to its rich historical and cultural significance, as well as its contemporary commercial surroundings. The garden itself is a serene and beautifully designed space, while the adjacent commercial streets are bustling with activity and filled with modern advertisements and brand names.

Data Collection

During the visit to Yuyuan Garden, various types of text were collected, including:

• Permanent Text: Engraved inscriptions on stone tablets, plaques with historical information, and traditional Chinese calligraphy.
• Temporary Text: Posters, banners, and signs related to ongoing events or promotions.
• Commercial Text: Advertisements, brand names, and promotional materials from the surrounding commercial streets.
• For the lanterns and shops, I counted them briefly.

Reconstruction

The reconstruction emphasizes the contrast between the traditional and the modern by replacing commercial texts with generic placeholders, thereby highlighting the phenomenon of commercial homogeneity.

I was trying to builf the text in Rhino and put them into Unity, but failed…

 

So, I just directly construct the text in Unity.

And below is how I represent the space.

This is where a bazaar usually contain, a tent covering the top and has some decorations.

The lights here is those buildings and adverisement plaque. For the shops on the sides, I only typed out some common ones that the mass definetly recognize, and others are just ‘shop’, in this case, we can see the homonization of the commercial norm.

This is where on sale!! 

Fieldwork

• Objective: The goal of this observation was to capture the social dynamics and sound levels at our school’s coffee shop, Magnolia Space, where international students commonly gather. My interest was not only in observing the space objectively but also in representing my personal reaction to the crowd dynamics, as someone who feels nervous in large social groups(due to the nerves, I chose snow mountains to represent my inner emotion).
• Methods: I spent an afternoon observing the activity within the space from a corner seat:
  • Manual Observation: I noticed the current of people in different seating areas, focusing on the crowd density in various parts of the café. I also noted the conversational volume, especially in group settings.
  • Abstraction of Values:
    • Altitude of Peaks: In my visualization, the altitude of each snow mountain represents the number of people in a particular area. Higher peaks correspond to larger groups, while lower peaks signify smaller, more stable gatherings.
    • Snowfall Speed: The speed of snowfall indicates the volume level—faster snowfall represents louder conversations, adding a sense of liveliness (or intensity) to those areas.

Reconstruction

 

• Concept and Metaphor: To express my feelings about the crowd dynamics in Magnolia Space, I translated my observations into a snow mountain landscape. This metaphor captures the tension between social anxiety and the comfort of smaller groups, using natural elements to visualize social presence and energy levels.
• Visualization Details:
  • Mountain Layout:
    • Center Area: The central sofa area, where students gather and chat, is represented by tall mountains with faster snowfall. These peaks stand out as dynamic and active zones.
    • Outer Areas: Along the hallway, where people sit individually or in pairs, the mountains are lower and stable, reflecting a quieter, more focused atmosphere.
  • Snowfall Dynamics: Each mountain has a unique snowfall speed, corresponding to the volume level I observed. Areas with louder conversations are visually “noisier” with rapid snowfall, creating an immersive representation of how crowded and overwhelming these areas felt to me.
• Collider Trigger: I set a collider at the exit, once you step out, large snowflaks will fall off and your world will be silent, revealing that you are out of the Magnolia Space right now and get into a quieter space.

Concept
For this project, I chose to represent the world from the perspective of a cockroach, a resilient yet often overlooked household insect. My goal was to convey how a cockroach senses its surroundings through sound and nearly panoramic vision and experiences vertical and horizontal surfaces in an almost seamless way.

Scene Design Elements

1. Visuals
   • 360-Degree Camera View: The camera setup is adjusted to simulate the nearly 360-degree field of view characteristic of a cockroach’s compound eyes, creating an immersive, wide-angled perspective for the player.
   • Wall-Climbing Ability: The scene allows the cockroach to climb vertical surfaces, simulating the insect’s natural ability to move freely across walls and ceilings, challenging conventional spatial orientations.
   • At night, the cockroach cuold see much clearer.
2. Audio
   • Directional Sound Waves: I placed sound waves within the scene to mimic how a cockroach might rely on vibrations to navigate its environment. This effect is designed to provide spatial audio cues to help the player “hear” and sense objects or entities nearby, compensating for the cockroach’s limited visual detail.
   • There are five spots in total, two for the fridge and the stove but you could only here it when you are at the crack between them. One is the toilet, the water flush kind of sound. One is the TV, where elctricity flows which also means danger somehow. The last is on the bed, where human snores.
3. Interaction with Environment
   The cockroach’s interaction with its surroundings is designed to enhance a sense of vulnerability and cautious exploration. By placing everyday objects (e.g., food crumbs, small obstacles) in the scene, I aimed to capture the cockroach’s constant need for alertness and caution.

Development Process

• Research and Observation: I explored details about cockroach biology, particularly their vision and hearing mechanisms. 
  • Compound Eyes: Cockroaches have compound eyes made up of thousands of small units called ommatidia. Each ommatidium captures light from a slightly different angle, allowing the cockroach to achieve a very wide field of view—nearly 360 degrees. This setup prioritizes detecting motion over clarity, giving cockroaches an almost panoramic view that’s ideal for spotting quick movements, though with a blurred, mosaic-like quality.
  • Low-Light Sensitivity: As nocturnal creatures, cockroaches have evolved to see well in dimly lit environments. Their eyes are highly sensitive to low light, allowing them to navigate in darkness by amplifying minimal light sources. This adaptation is crucial for their survival, as it lets them avoid predators and find food at night.
  • Vibration Detection: Cockroaches don’t have traditional ears but are extremely sensitive to vibrations. They rely on specialized sensory structures, or mechanoreceptors, located on their legs and body, which can detect subtle changes in the environment, like ground vibrations or air currents. This ability helps them detect approaching threats quickly, even without seeing them.
  • Wall-Climbing and Surface Adhesion: Cockroaches can climb smooth and rough surfaces due to tiny, sticky pads and claws on their feet, enabling them to maneuver vertically. This wall-climbing ability opens up more space and escape routes, making them highly adaptable to various environments, including homes.

            

• Audio Design: For the sound waves, I experimented with spatial audio settings, ensuring that players would feel audio cues from various directions, which is crucial for recreating the insect’s heightened awareness of environmental vibrations.

For this Unity project, I reconstructed an alien desert habitat populated by five speculative creatures: deformed crabs, floating aliens, stone people, gigantic unidentified flying creatures, and slime. These creatures were inspired by sounds I recorded from the human body’s clothing using various techniques such as friction, plucking, and scraping. Each creature embodies a sound that was spatially placed according to the origin on the clothing and modified to reflect the creature’s personality.

Creature Selection & Intent

1. Deformed Crabs
   The crabs are small yet agile creatures with sharp, precise movements. I chose a scraping sound for them, derived from scraping a piece of fabric. The sharp, slightly abrasive noise mirrors the sound of the crab’s claws dragging across the desert sand. This sound encapsulates the crab’s subtle but persistent presence in the environment.
2. Floating Aliens
   These ethereal creatures hover gracefully above the ground, giving them an air of mystery and wonder. I used a small bell accessory from the clothing, adjusting the pitch to create a more otherworldly, mystical sound. The bell’s delicate yet haunting resonance conveys the aliens’ enigmatic nature and otherworldly origin, as if their every movement is surrounded by an aura of curiosity and intrigue.
3. Stone People
   For the stone people, I wanted to capture the sound of weight and power. I recorded the sound of plucking fabric, which was transformed to simulate the heavy, deliberate stomping of stone feet on sandy ground. The deep, resonant tones reflect the stone people’s massive, imposing presence as they slowly move through the desert, as though they are ancient guardians of this desolate world.
4. Gigantic Unidentified Flying Creatures
   These colossal beings soar through the sky, dominating the upper atmosphere of the desert habitat. The sound for them needed to evoke grandeur and mystery. Their sound comes from a mix of manipulated clothing recordings, layered to simulate the whooshing of wings and the subtle echoes of a vast creature moving through space. This reflects their dominance and the awe they inspire in anyone who witnesses their flight.
5. Slime
   The slime creatures are amorphous and ever-changing, sliding across the desert in a slow, methodical manner. Their sound is derived from the friction of cloth being dragged across a surface. I transformed this sound to feel wet and squelching, emphasizing the creature’s viscous, sticky movement across the landscape.

Process & Sound Collection

The sound recordings were made by interacting with various pieces of clothing on a human body, utilizing friction, plucking, and scraping to create unique auditory experiences. Each sound was carefully matched to the personality and movement of the creatures. By adjusting pitch, tone, and spatial placement within Unity, I aimed to seamlessly integrate the creatures into their environment, giving each its own distinct sound profile that enhances the immersive experience of exploring the habitat.

Habitat & Spatial Design

The habitat itself is a vast, expansive alien desert, where the terrain is exaggerated to allow each creature space to exist within its own territory. The deformed crabs scuttle along the ground in the low sandy dunes, while the floating aliens glide mysteriously above. The stone people roam near rocky outcroppings, and the giant flying creatures cast long shadows as they soar across the sky. Slime slowly traverses the desert floor, leaving behind shimmering trails.

A first-person character controller was added for the viewer to explore this strange world, providing an immersive experience to interact with the creatures and hear the sounds in their natural positions.

This project allowed me to explore the transformation of everyday sounds into a fantastical alien landscape. Each speculative creature was designed to express a distinct personality, with its sound enhancing the narrative of its existence. By using sounds from clothing and modifying them, I created an otherworldly ambiance that invites players to explore and engage with a speculative world full of mystery and imagination.

 

“He is the sphere. He is the universe.” This is a sentence from the reading. 

We were talking about the sounds/acoustics inside or outside, which might be literally refer to indoor or outdoor sound. However, the sentence above provided me with another thinking, what about our heart? Inside or outside our heart?

Let’s define a place in another way. Somewhere makes you feel comfortable, soothing and relaxed is ‘inside’, because it calms your heart. Somewhere makes you feel alone and always remember back to the scene in your heart is ‘outside’, because it’s just the background for your

nostalgia. I went back to my hometown during this vacation, and had the chance to get the inspiration.

I scanned part of my bedroom in my dorm in homework3. It seems to be a great ‘inside’ place to heal, however, it’s just a simple place to sleep. Ever since I left my hometown, I feel numb about where to live, because my loved ones are not with me. So, it’s more of a outside for me, where I decorated to be warmer and killed time by reading.

Home is the place where is inside my heart, especially the kitchen, the sounds inside are familiar and calming. Me and my family all like cooking, so we three always cook together in teh kitchen, where I peeling off the garlic, my mom cutting the vegetables and my dad washing the dishes. No matter when I am outside or inside the kitchen, whenever I hear the knife hitting the wood  board, the water drops hitting the bawls, I feel warm and love. So I scanned the two parts and shed warm lights on.

I recorded all the sounds in my home, 40 in total. I only chose 6 though. One is cutting the vegetable(cardboard hitting the table), one is washing the dishes(saparated into water, dishes and chopsticks), one is ringing the stove(small spoon hitting the bowl), one is reading the book and on the outrange is the highway(right outside the window, from tall building).

The sound of knife and the meat is next to each other, so when you are close enough, you can hear both, they are isolated but somehow layered. While the volume of the meat is much lower due to its own setting.  The water itself is in a separated scene, so it’s isolated. These are all like ASMR, smooth and comforting.

The sound of the book is actually an ‘inside’ in the ‘outside’, where I escape from the longliness, and the ringing of the stove is my seekness for peace and calm(kind of Buddhism). So the sound of the book is totally isolated from others as it’s more private and more self.

And as you have notice in the birdview of my scene, I have sounds(highways) in circular motion, and if you move in circular motion, you will hear sounds fading and enhancing. Just like getting into chaos, drowning, but get clear for a short period of time, and dive into chaos again. Basically what I am trying to do is, whan you walk on the outside and face inside at the same time, you are like watching the struggles and dream-like unrealistic nostalgia. 

Is outside really outside, is inside really inside? They could be each other when you filp reality upside down. 

 

For me, light represents the feeling of vibe. Especially the spotlight, which could illuminate the place where I focus on and would love to dive in. When the warm color is applied, it creates a feeling of myself sitting in a sofy couch, drinking hot chocolate, reading my favourite book and receiving the warmth of the stove. How cozy!

When night comes, everthing is quiet, the surroundings are dark except my own lamp giving off its vibe. I like to sit on the bay window, enjoying the lonely night.

So, I scanned my bed and my bay window, shed the spotlight on the mini table I decorated and a book beside. At the same time, illuminating the flower and the butterfly, which carries the most memories in my life.

 

If you would raise your head, you will find there are some glowing books and a perfumed medicine pouch. In the vibe, my smell become sensitive, smell in some perfumed medicine would help calm myself down and fall asleep. Also, I set the texture of unlit spaces transparent and a little bit mosaic, because when I immerse myself in the vibe, nothing unlit will be noticed and even myself become a vague fog.

 

And definitely, it’s quite different in the reality, the white light provides no vibe but plain and busy visual elements. While in Unity, it changes.

After all, when the light is on, it becomes the lonely space in imagination where my soul could rest in peace.

The site we chose was along the west bund of Huangpu River, specifically Xuhui Riverside Greenbelt. It is a place where highly connected with the urban city, but could be also regarded as somewhere to escape from the concrete. It is a paradox in combining technology and nature which triggered our thinking towards what we have done right or wrong in shaping the city.

Below are photos and videos we took.

Some Cyberpunk elements, natural elements and modern metalish elements gave us great inspirations. We humans want to create a paradise in industrialized city, but are what we doing right? Are we just seem to be trapped ourslves in the dream and ignoring the essence of life? Unban city itself is a place where peace contains chaos, is our desicion going on the right path or the wrong one? What seem to be true is false, and what seem to be false is true. 

In this case, we choose quote 9.

“In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false.” Are we doing the right things to make the world a better place? 

We create a double-sided tunnel, one head leading to a screen playing video, elaborating on the truth of life and time, the other head lead to the broken roads, invisioned into our fragile world. It seems that we use our hands to support everthing firmly, but always comes to the end of collapse.

The damaged road represents the fractured reality we traverse, whilethe neon light, an artificial and unnatural source of illumination, reflects how society oftenrelies on distorted or superficial truths to guide us. The hands supporting the roads symbolizes the forces attempting to hold up or mask this broken system.
In a topsy-turvy world, the neon light could be seen as a false illumination, creating a facade of progress while the roads (reality) are visibly deteriorating.

Our sculpture embodies this inversion, where what appears to be support (the hands and light) is actually holding up afragile, damaged reality, echoing the essence of this quote.