Neo Bus Map
2022.7 -2022.9
KEYWORDS: Documentary, Pshychogeography
FEATURE: Personal Project
About:
The project’s inspiration began during the epidemic in Shanghai, where I was concerned about the increasing sense of alienation between the youths and the city.
During a design thinking and practice workshop, I discovered that this sense of subliminal disconnection also appeared in Shanghai’s long bus wait time. So I choose bus stops as a medium to reconnect the intimacy of the city with people by co-designing bus stop maps.
Starting Point.
Ethnographic Research
Contextual Inquiry
User interview
My exploration commenced amidst the city's pulse, aboard its buses. I enjoy this slow-paced mode of transport, as the bus leisurely weaves through the beautiful streets day and night. However, I've noticed that many people don't care about the scenery outside the window. While waiting for the bus, they seem indifferent to the landscapes beyond the windows, engrossed in their smartphones while waiting, or hastily opting for taxis if impatient.
Interviews with several young residents revealed their lack of enthusiasm for the slow-moving transport, perceiving them merely as standard means of commuting.
This led me to think:
How can we rebuild the attractiveness of buses to Shanghai's busy workers and create a way for them to roam the city?
Psycho-geography.
"The Situationists wanted to wake people up from the hypnotic brainwashing of the spectacle. To make people aware of the city and spaces that they inhabit by treating everyday life as an amazing, spontaneous, continuous, exciting, playful experience."
Guy Debord, Guide Pychogéographique de Paris
Psychogeography serves as the theoretical framework.
Shanghai bus stops could be reconceived as points on a psychogeographic map, turning buses into a way for people to roam Shanghai.
Inspiration.
Tom Finkelpearl discusses in "Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation"
"Social practice is art that's socially engaged, where the social interaction is, at some level, the art itself."
This concept inspired the view that individuals participating in the bus-stop mapping project are themselves part of an artwork.
"Towards a Digital Age Psychogeography and the hybrid flâneur" by Stella Sylaiou, Maria Chountasi, Elena Lagoudi
"Exploring both physical and virtual spaces can generate new experiences through storytelling and 'movement'."
This led to the idea of integrating digital touchpoints to maintain the map and illustrate user movements.
Research Process.
Documentary.
Through filming and recording, I combine the researched paths and the possible paths of times and stops in Shanghai to create a new mapping artwork.
Reflection.
For Debord the dérive is a spontaneous voyage in the urban space, where aesthetics and the wider ambiences subconsciously lead the participants/voyagers into a whole new and emotive experience of re-appropriating the human environment. In this context, Internet constitutes a new type of dérive … …
since the outcome of browsing both in existing and virtual places creates new experiences through narration and “movement”.
—Guy Debord (Towards a Digital Age Psychogeography and the hybrid flâneur)
Guy Debord’s text enhances the significance of my project. I see public transport as a bridge between the interdependence of people and the city, and it made me think about whether people could use the bus system to start a new 'flânerie' in the city, evoking intense feelings of life and comprehension of a particular space rather than just having Bus as a slow vehicle for commuting.