Author: slg522

For our final project, Ashley, Vicky, Theresa, and I worked with the Sapporo Upopo Hozonkai Preservation Society to develop a website that is both functional and sustainable in the long-term. The website is comprised of seven main pages: Home, About, Events, Identity, Culture, Game, and Contact. The Home, About, and Contact pages we deemed necessary for any website. The Events, Identity, Culture, and Game pages were specifically tailored towards the Preservation Society.

The purpose of the project was to produce something functional, which they might continuously use and provide links to, and something sustainable, which they might update in the future without additional help from our class. I assisted with some design elements of the website as well as the titles of the main pages, however my primary role was to produce content for the Identity page based on the interviews we conducted at NYU Shanghai. I created five short videos based on the interviews as well as the provided footage given to us by the group. I also incorporated some relatively trendy music choices into the piece in order to provide a modern feel to the videos. I had a lot of trouble beginning the editing process, as I had to sit with a friend outside of class for about three hours straight to translate each interview. Apart from that, there weren’t a lot of challenges during the editing and post-production processes.

Throughout this project, I realized that communication is key, not only amongst team members, but also amongst those partner organizations that you decide to work with. Translation during the interviews at NYU Shanghai was quite hectic, as Roslynn was the only individual present who spoke fluent Japanese and we had to share amongst both Ainu teams in order to translate what was going on. Apart from that, I think the development of the project went rather smoothly. Not much changed from our initial project proposal, apart from perhaps the titles of our pages. Rather than “Textures of the Ainu” and “Sounds of the Ainu,” we created overarching pages with tabs underneath each of these themes. I edited the interviews down with the preferred content based on in-class feedback, and also ended up incorporating a lot more provided footage in order lessen the serious tone of the videos. I felt the project was quite successful as a result of the changes we made based on feedback. The one thing I would change is the color scheme, but as it was chosen by the Preservation Society, it was necessary to work with their preferences. But overall I think the project worked out very well.

Project Title: Generated Power

Group: Katherine Li, Maike Prewett, Sabrina Goodman

Description: 

GENERATED POWER is a geocinema short film exploring the former Nanshi Power Plant and current Power Station of Art in Shanghai’s Huangpu district. There were many different aspects of this site to consider: its historical significance, its role alleviating inequality, its transition from electrical power to art as an agent of soft power, gentrification, and the model of the post-industrial art gallery and white cube aesthetic. In the end, this proved quite challenging; there were so many different approaches to this narrative, we struggled to find a common thread between all of our ideas.

We visited the location three times after the end of the Shanghai Biennale, when the gallery was in transition. The first time, we collected shots from the front of the building, and the roof, in addition to audio. The second time, we collected footage from the front of the building and distance shots. The third time, I brought a cell phone into the museum and filmed the interior. We also had to collect additional assets, which we took from Youku, surveillance footage live streams, photo archives, etc.

Ultimately, we struggled with the time constraints of this project. While I view our project as a first draft, it would require several more iterations (editing the script and flow of ideas, deepening the analysis) in order to analyze this site as critically as we would have liked. Because we spent a lot of time investigating the history of this site and initially intended to take our project in a slightly different direction, we felt rushed in our analysis of the PSA’s current role. In the end, we felt overwhelmed by the amount of information we had, and I think would have benefited from creating more rules/constraints for ourselves earlier on.

SmartShanghai describes this museum as an “impressive but cumbersome space, a huge building likened by curator Qui Zhijie to London’s Tate Modern. The PSA may have similar hardware to that legendary institution but it doesn’t have the software – the staffing, budgets, etc – to match.” We wanted to highlight how empty most of this museum is, even during exhibits; if the PSA relies on people to generate power, what is its purpose when this space lies empty?

The process of creating a GeoCinema film was quite stressful given the time allotted for this project. Our familiarity with film production in general was limited, as was our technical skill in using video editing software such as Adobe Premiere. In terms of development, it was most difficult to settle on an idea and progress that solidified idea throughout the film. All of these aspects combined made for a hectic production and post-production environment, as we were not especially familiar with the process from the start. The GeoCinema genre itself was quite vague, but I think we eventually found a way for it to translate through the film. While not specifically related to weather, we discuss the concept of power as it evolves through past and present at this one location – the Nanshi Power Plant/ Power Station of Art. Overall I think our project successfully came together in the amount of time we had to complete it.

Link to film: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1imLhXtkBBrVkQRmmQDIdMPmWimZqo-K9/view?usp=sharing

I realized that I did not read the assignment carefully and created a digitally drawn map rather than a hand drawn map but I guess it still works. This week I tracked my time spent with people. I tracked this data based on three variables: personal (time alone), private (time with family/friends), and public (time with greater Shanghai). I visualized this data through bubbles – not sure why, I just felt that the size and color of the bubbles would be a visually appealing and engaging way to understand with whom I spend my time. I used yellow for personal time because I am quite happy when I spend time alone. I used blue for private time because I feel at ease spending time with friends and family in Shanghai. I used red for public time because I am often aggravated when I spend time out and about on the metro and in public places in Shanghai. Below are screenshots of a daily map of my time spent as well as a weekly visual of overlapping circles detailing my time spent with whom this entire week.

Link to slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tc3TucSw2jKgHdzTEGzPqrsV9Z1ezYwosgXMQSvFYsg/edit?usp=sharing

“Ainu Success: the Political and Cultural Achievements of Japan’s Indigenous Minority” reveals the extent to which the Ainu hold agency over and revere their identity as indigenous peoples of Japan. In particular, I found the Marimo Festival to be one poignant instance where the Ainu “took conscious agency and control regarding the relation between modern social and ecological phenomena… [and subsequently] reshape[d] their cultural identity in order to successfully respond to the demands of their contemporary situations” (Wielding Culture). I can imagine some aspect of this festival manifesting into a short documentary style film or informative web game illustrating the Ainu’s cultural negotiations as they engage with the Japanese government. 

“A Four-Century Retrospective of Marine Fauna and Fisheries Around New York City” was particularly interesting in that it provided detailed accounts and histories of particular species within the New York City area. As previously mentioned in class, I could certainly envision a digital inventory of all the menus advertising oysters (pg. 11) during the early-mid 20th century, or perhaps an animation or film featuring a first-person account (from the animal’s perspective) of the six shark sightings mentioned on pg. 14. The content delivered in this report contained a wealth of knowledge on specific species that may serve as a starting point for our projects. 

MARCO’s EFH Highly Migratory Species dataset “provides information on where any EFH life stage occurs for a given species” which may be helpful in further developing a project based on the shark sighting anecdotes found in the above-mentioned report. We might use this data, for instance, to visually contrast the shark species existing during the late 19th through early 20th centuries (based on previous shark literature) with present shark species in similar areas. Using MARCO’s vessel counts data from 2011 through 2017, we might also overlay a map of vessel traffic in the Mid-Atlantic as it relates to and potentially impacts current shark habitats.

Link to past project – BioGraphics, an interactive case study on Chinese identity:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J5eyx1lOdGiS8Xu1pYo19rGvLvrGVoMs/view?usp=sharing