linh than portfolio
The theme of this portfolio is personal space vs. public space in urban settings, and how that relationship between one’s existence and the inherent transience of daily things affects one’s experience within a place. I purposely employ interactive maps integrating audio, visuals and contribution from participants as important catalysts for future projects about home, foreign urban and existentialism.
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KONBINI RESTS IN TOKYO
“Konbini Rests in Tokyo” is a personal media-mapping project that selects nine konbini (convenient stores) in Tokyo on a walking route from Temple Japan Campus in Minato-ku, to my share-house in Shimokitazawa station. Each stop at a konbini is attached with a first-hand experience note from the time I was there, and a “love letter” to Tokyo.
Tokyo feels like a metropolis-lover, a one-night stand of some sort more than a partner with whom you settle down. However, as I walked down the busy, foreign streets of the most fetishized city on Earth, I found myself looking forward to stopping at convenient stores as resting points, where my anxiety takes a brief break from the outside crowds. The ubiquity of the often overlooked konbini in Tokyo provides a material and psychological reassurance of one’s existence: time-place, money-consumerism, and basic human interaction. These temporary homes are all similar and simple enough to make one feel comfortable and easy, yet interpersonal and different enough to help add layers to one’s relationship with an urban landscape beyond landmarks and touristy spots.
Our group soundscape project is a smoothie of spontaneous distorted sound bites from three people’s daily lives, accompanied by visual documentation of personalized space versus public space. Daily images like the crate in the house, the playground with railings, the shabby downtown back-alley where nature (birds and squirrels) gets stuck in electric cables,... are shot with 360o camera. Thus, the images are warped into constrained spaces that depict a struggle to balance the life in a human-constructed world and nature. By using distortion of sound and 360o effect to make tangible the metaphoric imprisonment of industrialization, audiences are provided with new planes of perspective to look at and think critically about spaces so familiar that are often overlooked.
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UBER RIDERS
The third project, "UBER riders” is a multimedia mapping experience that is meant to be contributed by multiple users. The map includes 121 markers of locations about which Temple University sent their safety alerts, and a playlist of “soundtracks”: recordings of conversations in Uber rides. This project capitulates the dominant longing for a home while working through struggles to define one’s existence in a temporal and spatial space across different cultural, racial and behavioural borders. The desired safety, the sense of belonging or the connection with people goes beyond rational needs: it’s a progressive emotional journey where participants transform their relationships with urban landscape through altering their transporting means and adopting new perspectives from strangers.