Image: Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook by Adam Frampto How is a city conceptualized, drawn, and read? The city in the map is conceptualised through its main modes of transport, such as corridors, escalators, roads and tunnels are represented in the map with only labels and vague boundaries and shapes to represent the area’s buildings. The map is read as a 2D isometric drawing, with a parallel projected view of the spaces, the different levels are represented by its colour codes. The map can be read from left to right, or top to bottom, all the information needed to traverse

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In “Spatial Stories”, the term ‘story’ implies a narrative that is both personal and culturally based. Certeau clarified a distinction between space and place – in which space can become place and place can become space as in the act of the transformation of a place, object take part in the space. The author tried to examine how the role of maps and tour narratives facilitating these transformations. Moreover, boundaries are created – the iterative power of narrative makes out boundaries that ‘have the function of founding and articulating spaces’. As for me, the word ‘boundaries’ are to be explained

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This reading by Pamela Wojcik presented a different perspective about the Apartment Plot. I was convinced that apartment as a setting can leave an undeniable impact to the movie. First, the character. In an apartment plot, the character is often limited by the historical content of the setting. For example, the characters in the mid-1900s apartment plot could be limited to white, middle-class man who lives in a rather small city. The setting helps to understand the general action and ethnicity of the characters. Second, the plot. By the nature of the apartment, the plot of the movie included encounter

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Wojcik dissects the complexity of the apartment plot itself and its ability to engage urban social issues related to apartment dwelling, such as issues of wealth and poverty that contribute the difference between tenants in the plot itself. Though the porousness of apartment dwelling takes away the secrecy that is often utilized in most horror films, the apartment plot can be seen in the 2013 local film Rigor Mortis, a horror film regarding public housing estates, necromancy, and supernatural elements that eventually turn out to be a figment of the protagonist’s imagination as rigor mortis sets in. The film explores

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‘Apartment’ itself as space contains ‘spatial stories’ depending on the relationship of each floor or rooms that differentiates the narratives. Here, I’ve asked; is the apartment the major factor for spatial stories rather than just a place/setting? The author answers ‘the apartment plot in the film is a genre’, by participating in the beginning/end of the film, character identification, and urban gaze.  Beyond familiarity, the ability is expanded as a factor of urbanism which transforms domestic spaces horribly. A movie <Hide and Seek 2013> was praised well-constructed tension in the apartment scene. Crimes in a hidden passageway, front door, and

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The reading delves into the definition of spaces and places, and the boundaries marked out for spaces. In short, space is a practised place. And it is possible to transform a place into space or vice versa. To me, the transformations are stories worth to tell. We gather our experiences and keep them as journals, as stories. Just as what Michel said, “ everyday stories tell us what one can do in it and make out of it. They are treatments of space.” .Speaking of boundaries, they are ambiguous and changeable that can only be found at present or from

Continue reading[Reading Response: Michel de Certeau]

In the paragraph of spatial stories, the writer explains the idea of place and space, maps and tours, and the boundary. Firstly, he conveys that place is physical location or position, and when mobile elements appear in the place, the practiced place becomes the space. Secondly, the author explains why New York narrators prefer tours to maps. Mapping fabricates the geographical elements, and tours are the dominant prescribing actions on the maps. Thirdly, the writer wrote about the basic definition of boundaries. Instead of the physical boundaries on the google map, the frontiers emphasize more on the metaphorical meanings, which

Continue readingReading Response: Michel de Certeau