Under the unprecedented, unpredictable, and inhumane disaster caused by the Covid-19 virus, the world has been completely doomed by this apocalypse.
It stops our lives,
It changes our lives.
It takes away our lives.
All of us being the survivor of this catastrophe, how has the pandemic actually modified our daily habits? How has the pandemic redefined the appearance of our home — Hong Kong?
Everyday, since the first step that we have made when we are outdoors, we will be walking on sidewalks right away. Being pieces and pieces of built infrastructure that are scattered around all the corners in our urban built environment, sidewalks possess the function of being a circulatory pathway for pedestrians, facilitating the transportation of humans on foot, moreover framing buildings and blocks in our city. If main roads for vehicles were arteries and veins of our city, sidewalks would be the capillaries that touch the very in-depth components.
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Moreover, this seemingly simple piece of flat surface paved above the ground using cement and bricks, with all kinds of humans and objects walking on it every day and night, to a certain extent, the sidewalk has the significant ability to act as a documentation of pedestrians. With the footprints that are stamped on the sidewalk, the pedestrian density, the walking pace, strength and weight, and or even tire streaks from wheelchairs, footprints of cats and dogs, would have been naturally and neutrally documented. During the pandemic, “#quarantine” and “#stayhome” have been the most widely used hashtags on social media. In parallel, the pedestrian density in outdoor spaces has significantly decreased. In this case, the sideway would automatically be the best place to reflect the level of human activity, and possibly the nature of the activity, the speed of it, the intensity of it, to name a few.
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The imagery of traffic lights has been used throughout the movie, as traffic light itself holds the meaning of the permission of walking, the order given to pedestrians via visual and auditory communication, the state of movement of pedestrians, which perfectly embraces the characteristics of sidewalks and pedestrians.
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Setting our research site in the most crowded place in our city — Causeway Bay, the place itself has served as a useful example to amplify our scope from looking micro-ly on the pedestrians, to how sidewalks are very closely correlated to population distribution and density.
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Lockhart Road, from being one of the busiest pedestrian zones in Hong Kong with tens and hundreds of shops?
Emptied.
People gathering around the orange bin for a small afternoon break?
No more.
Yee Wo Street?
Blanked.
The “Shinjuku-like” crossroad in the middle of the Hennessy Road?
Silent as the grave.
All these kinds of apocalyptic events have been realized by the pandemic, one by one.
As the sirens go off, are we still going to stay at this place all night, waiting for the end of everything?
Or should we set ourselves free?
Wong Ho Wang Caleb
3035740465
very good control of rhythm, and how u used traffic lights as a language to capture the moments in city that expresses the “apocalyptic” city. it is really interesting how the people wiggle across the streets with the sound of traffic lights, shots are taken wisely that creates a dangerous and destructive feeling of the city. Overall, it is really creative and great job!!!