Project Five . Spaces of the Imagination

_Objective:

I am going to use this film to express the sensuous pleasure in shopping for me, how I experience the spatial quality of movement in the ideal environment and how others (like me) immerse themselves into the ambiance of shopping.

_Inspiration:

Psychogeography (with Theory of the Dérive) "offered a sense of violent emotive possession over the streets. Exotic and exciting treasures were to be found in the city by those drifters able to conquer her, able to overcome the exhaustion and euphoria of the drift." [Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, The MIT Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998), pp.81] "The power of psychogeography, it seemed, lay precisely in its intoxicating combination of subjective and objective - fetishistic and militaristic - approaches to urban exploration. Psychogeography was merely a preparation, a reconnaissance for the day when the city would be seized for real. The drift, Debord explained, 'takes on a double meaning: active observation of present-day urban agglomerations and development of hypotheses on the structure of a situationist city.'" [Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, The MIT Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998), pp.81]

_Idea of Experience:

Along a shopping 'street', different brands of shops are arrayed to show their utmost welcome to you. The space you experience is not only one physical 'street' space, but the juxtaposition of different cities in the world where each shop represents its place of origin. And it is this overwhelming 'augmented' space excites every pedestrian on that street.

'augmented' space of shopping experience

_Important Element:

Apart from the 'products', people is a crucial element in shopping. One could imagine shopping would not be as fun if there was no one on the 'street' to shop with. Having said that, I think every other people on the 'street' are actually the projections of oneself. From them, you see yourself. I discovered a phrase from Marx - "Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive."

_Shopping Representation:

Walking down the 'street' is very much like walking down the runway in my shopping world. People dress to show themselves to others on one hand, and look for new trend from others on the other. (Despite an old saying 'Do not judge men by mere appearance', appearance does mean/signify something, just like the spectacle*.)

_Camera & Sound:

Shopping, to me, is endless and fluid. I decide to use a single continuous shot (representing a disembodied me) to show the flow of drifting among various spaces. Moreover, 2.5D helps to create a freeze-still atmosphere which will happen when one does shopping. The self-consciousness dominates the surrounding busy environment, resulting in a calm atmosphere (with only oneself) is expressed. The sound I use shall represent desire, taking it metaphorically, just like tunes from toys in children's mind.

All of the above are some of the criteria I set for my up-coming film. I would like to extract and express all the essences of shopping in it and find the possibility in turning them into some proposition/programme in the future.

_Note: *Project comes before Thesis, then Thesis pushes the Project. *A lot of drawings should be coming up to go with the text above. *To me, the motivation of drifting comes from the uncanniness and ephemeralness in space.