All contents related to 2019 CCHU course are placed and archive here.

Category: 2019 Blog

Cat Links Workshop 2

Workshop 2: Interviewing Miggy Cheng

Posted on Casey Yip

Question (Casey): The selection of texture, pattern, and palette is often regarded as a supplementary offset of the architecture or environment in the settings… Response (Miggy): Arghhh… not really… it may have been perceived as a secondary complementary, but that’s interesting, what makes you think that? Question (continued): Oh, cause I’ve noticed you mentioned in your presentation that the colorway, or saturation of the costumes should always merge with the background of the set in order to convey a sense of visual harmony and conformity to the audience. For example, in the 2012 movie Floating City, shads of navy blue is

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Cat Links Sci-Fi Technoscapes, Uncategorized

Fieldtrip 3: Minimalistic Ring (Yee Wo Street)

Posted on Sum Yuet Faustine

Different from the movie, the circular bridge I picture in my mind is minimalistic and bright. My inspiration comes from the idea of retro futurism which can be seen in Blade Runner 2049 and Ex Machina. In order to remove time and space, the circular bridge is floating in the sky in which time and space are unknown. To illustrate a sense of futurism, the materials I chose are plainer and lighter in appearance. This can be achieved by two qualities – transparent (e.g. glass) and reflective (e.g. polished metal). I also apply a grey colour tone. Cool colours make

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Cat Links Sci-Fi Technoscapes

[Field Trip III] Mood Board: Lai Tak Estate

Posted on Saima

Hong Kong is home to many unique and distinct pieces of architecture; the four spiral blocks located in Lai Tak Estate, Tai Hang is just one example of this. The peculiarity of this estate is highlighted through its hollow courtyard, found in each of the four buildings. Looking up from the centre of the courtyard, all you see is spirals among spirals of corridors. In my mood board, I have attempted to focus on the colours that accentuate this estate: soft shades of pink and blue, colours I find very warm and homely. I also included three shots from a

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Cat Links Sci-Fi Technoscapes

Reading Response 2- Migratory City

Posted on Lok Yan

In the reading, ‘Migratory Cities’, the author Carl Abbott investigated in a fictional idea of a “moving city”. The major question is, what is the implication of a migrating city that is not grounded. As there is not a single moving city in real life, the author guided could only the readers through a chain of imaginations from related creative works from different fields such as film, architectural ideas and novels. By citing these imaginations from various authors, a collective idea on how a moving city would be like is formed in the reading. The mystery of a moving city

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Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City

Moodboard: Des Voeux Road, Noisy Central

Posted on Yuhui

What comes to your mind when thinking of Central? Noise, crowds, luxury, commercial center, skyscrapers, lights…… In my eyes, it is a crowded space both horizontally and vertically. Looking up, the sky is blocked with all those glass curtain wall, reflecting all the lights from another skyscraper. Looking down, you feel dizzy with all the street light, brand logo, crowds, vehicles and graffiti. it is a contrast but also a uniformity — a contrast of tidy and messy, a uniformity to show the NOISE (visually and aurally).

Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City, Sci-Fi Technoscapes

Reading Response 2: Technology and Ethnic Otherness

Posted on Jieming

  Ghost in the Shell (1995) In his article “Technology and (Chinese) Ethnicity”, Darrell William Davis asks this question: why has Chinatown become an essential visual motif for dystopic future in cyberpunk classics such as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell (1995)?   A simple (yet valid) explanation would be Orientalism, or the use of the East as a signifier of “other”. To represent the mysterious and unknown future, a future that seems so “alien” to us, films have to employ the visual strategy of “otherness” to create a defamiliarizing effect. This otherness could be gendered, as there are

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Cat Links Monsters, Materials + Skyscrapers

Evolve through the reality and the fiction

Posted on Lan

  In his essay, ‘Technology and (Chinese) Ethnicity,’ Professor Darrell William Davis tries to reveal the relationship between by analyzing the surreal cyberpunk setting and the imaginary Chinatown space in three science fictional animations, Blade Runner (1982), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Innocence (2004). In general, he illustrates that “imaginary Chinatown spaces are appropriated to model claustrophobic hyper-realities.” in both visual expression and social context. Moreover, he believes that among the inter-mediation of the literary works and its ethical background, “Chinatown feels familiar in these animated environments, yet it pushes toward defamiliarized, alien, life-like zones of informational identity.” He

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Cat Links Sci-Fi Technoscapes

[Reading Response II] Moving Cities

Posted on Saima

In the piece ‘Migratory Cities’ by Carl Abbott, the author proposes the questions “what if a city could move?” and “what is gained and what is lost when a city pulls up stakes?” This raises the issue of what purpose a city has, which led me to think about what defines a city: is it the land it lies on? Or is it the inhabitants that make the state? I think that though we can distinguish cities from others by determining the piece of land it has, a city is defined through its people and their ways of living. It

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Cat Links Monsters, Materials + Skyscrapers

THE JAPANESE “doom-laden dreams”

Posted on Ziquan

 Japanese Literature, “After the quake” by Haruki Murakami and it was then filmed in 2007. In the book: Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City, chapter 5, “Oh No, There goes Tokyo: Recreational Apocalypse and the city in postwar Japanese Popular Culture”, the writer Tsutsui describes Japanese films and anime as “tragic”, “apocalyptic”, “ironic”, “speculative”, while still captivating our audiences in a sense of its thoroughness. Among these monster and imaginative films, Tokyo is the city of imagery which has been destroyed and annihilated by means of human weapons, natural disasters,  alien mutation or even unknown supernatural powers. All

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Cat Links Monsters, Materials + Skyscrapers

Reading Response 2: Chinatown identity crisis

Posted on Hae Jin

Darrell William Davis observes in his Technology and (Chinese) Ethnicity that Chinatowns in films have long been serving as stock backgrounds through which ‘jaded white heroes gather clues and chase villains,’ layered with unnoticeable Chinese niceties, of being mysterious and extraordinarily colorful. Chinatowns are also commonplace setting in cyberpunk films, as they were born with the Chinese culture and urban cyberculture. Locales are significant to the rendition of such cyberpunk films because they are powerful imageries that galvanize sentiments for both the protagonists and supporting characters. The modern, glitzy enclave of post-industrial disarray depicted in Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the

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