[Video Essay] CONTROL CITY

SITE: DORMITORY

Director: LIN Mengfei

SCENE: LIN Mengfei

SUBTITLE: LIN Mengfei

1. Introduction

Inspiration

This video is a visual presentation of my real life experiences and reflections to the built environment. The initial inspiration mainly comes from a long period self-quarantine in a small bedroom with a huge window on one wall. After having an interview with my classmates, we shared the feeling of having quarantine in the dormitory. It is slightly lonely and we both realised that we were born to love the outdoors. During the quarantine, we tells the time naturally by looking through windows. Pink morning light shines from the outside illustrates the sunrise, while yellow and bright light means the noon comes. The sky turned dark at around 6p.m. When the door is locked, residents were forced to stay in the dormitory, the time is experienced from the changing skylight through the window. As the time i spent in the dormitory increases, I became lazier and sleep more, and thus, I dream more frequently.

Dormitory and Openings

The film scene starts from a traditional dormitory, then it expands to the city scale to regard the city, Hong Kong, as a dormitory for the citizens. We feel safe in the home city, and we are used to staying in the comfort zone. The city shaped our personalities like the way a dormitory affects the residents. The openings includes the door and windows, which relates the inside dormitory and the outside urban city. The door is a symbol that one could own the freedom to come in and go out of the private room, while the window is a media to bring in the urban content including the sound, light, city view etc. We received information of the outdoors, these elements form the living condition to shape the personality. Therefore, I would like to question that if we do not have the freedom to choose our living environment, are we free to become what we expect ourselves to be? Or we are born to have a determined characteristic due to the default environment.

Besides the relationship between architecture and personality, the dormitory also has something to do with human behaviours when people live with other strangers from the beginning. A dormitory it is a private bedroom and study studyroom, however, it is not a private space that one could do everything he wants but to respect others and also naturally hide the dark side of one’s own personality. Under this situation, it is believed that people would behave differently as compared to living alone. Therefore, another question is would this kind of “unreal performance” caused by living in domitory affect one’s personality?

2.Methodology:

2.1 Interview

The director conducted an interview with Miss Wang Qian Hui Sandy on the topic “Share Experience on Having a Quarantine in Hku Domitory for 2 students” for the sake of a better understanding of the quarantine experience in domitory of Hong Kong.

According to the interview, during the forced quarantine, most of students had been left the HKU domitory. Therefore, the domitory for 2 students each room usually becomes one room for each student. This Vedio Essay was looking at the special condition when a single students conducted self quarantine in the domitory of 2 students. In the interview, Miss Wang claimed that there was enough food supply through food delivery. The only feeling was a little bit lonely and became more yearning for the outdoors. Also, the time that she looked through the window inceased comparatively.

2.2 Film scene-1:50 Model 

In the model, the room is made of carton. The domitory is made into a box in terms of its spacial organisation. Though there are lots of design ideas for the building, when it comes to the single room, it eventually becomes identically pre-divided boxes. The only difference across boxes is the view through the window and the residents.

For the materiality, it includes clay, low density form, manmade plants, cotton, paper ect. It aims to present the texture closer to the reality.

2.3 Academic Resources

It had been discussed by other scholars for years on the topic how architecture would affect/shape one’s personality as well as the topic that domitory life would affect residents’ behaviours in relation with the living density of the domitory. As the director is mainly looking at the standard student dormitory in universities in Hong Kong, the major discussion and research is on the effect when one or two person live in a simple box and spend most of time in the room.(e.g. in quarantine).

3. Photography and Filming

3.1 Filming skills and intentions

The domitory is designed as a box in terms of its spacial arrangement. In the film set, it focused on a domitory for 2 students and it aimed to explore the influence caused by a 7-day quarantine of a person in the said room and try to visualize the feeling of “slightly lonely” as well as exploring the reason for more frequently look through the window.

In the part “daydream and nightmares”, it is oriented from real life experiences. For both part, they are edited as if it is unreal. In the daydream, there is a huge tree grow into the window, in contrast to the original urban conditions which is called “concrete forest”. For the nightmare, the scenes are dark and come with loud noise, which is a little bit torture for the viewer. It intends to imitate the feeling of having a nightmare.

3.2 Continuaty across scenes

The film includes real life clips and model photos. To maintain a consistent filming style, the color is turned in black and white. The combination of model and realife scene is placed in the middle part as the transition.

3.3 Sound edition

In the film, it used sound resources mainly from professionally recorded sound track online and also partially street noise recorded by the director. In this way, it restores the original condition but with a clearer sound track.

4. Limitation

As the current quarantine situation in Hong Kong is relatively mild and less challenge in terms of the time period and daily supply, the influence is mild and light as well. Therefore, the error becomes larger and it is hard to see the actual effect of staying alone in a domitory for long time. Also, it is difficult to predict the situation if the time period for quarantine changed to 30 days or even longer.

5. Reflection

I was thinking about how does the room changed or shaped me, when it witness my daydream and nightmare. When I saw a bright window, it mean the long terrible nightmare had gone, I feel safe in my own tiny world and I started relying on this feeling. I would rather staying here forever. But when I breathe the air in outdoor, I feel the real pleasant. To think about this in a larger scale, the roads I travel everyday, they are kind of fixed, the world is as large as where I go. I feel like Hong Kong, is also a “dormitory” for me, where I feel familiar and safe, also seldom leave.

Biography

1. Sound reference from Youtube

BIRDS SOUND-CITYBEND
CONSTRUCTION WORK-LV PEI YING
FIRECREKERS-SOUND SPA
TRAFFIC LIGHT-HONG KONG SOUND MUSIUM
WOOD DOOR SOUND-SHU CHEN YEl
OTHER REALLIFE RECORDINGS-LIN Mengfei

2. Rakhmanov, O., Demir, A., & Dane, S. (2020). The Relationships Between Enneagram Personality Types and Conflict Problems in Male University Students Stayed in Dormitory. Journal of Research in Medical and Dental Science, 8(5), 28-32.

3. Podoshen, J. S. (2018). Home is Where the Horror Is: Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 35(7), 722-729.

4. Weinstein, N. D. (1978). Individual differences in reactions to noise: a longitudinal study in a college dormitory. Journal of applied psychology, 63(4), 458.

5. Cloninger, C. R. (2003). Completing the psychobiological architecture of human personality development: Temperament, character and coherence.

6. Epstein, Y. M. (1981). Crowding stress and human behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 37(1), 126-144.

7. Kharrazi, A. (2019). Influence of Big Five Personality Model on Propensity to Complain–A case of dormitory (Master’s thesis, Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU)-Doğu Akdeniz Üniversitesi (DAÜ)).

8. Heilweil, M. (1973). The influence of dormitory architecture on resident behavior. Environment and behavior, 5(4), 377-412.

 

LIN Mengfei 3035799155

Video Essay:

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