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About Kwun Tong (a town in East Kowloon of Hong Kong) will be undergoing the largest urban renewal plan in Hong Kong started in 2009. A Map Of Our Own – Kwun Tong Culture and Histories does not just aim at tracing its 60 years of community history and documenting the urban landscape and its culture that only lives in its unique ways of spatial practices. We also hope to encourage people to do media creations of their own and to raise public attention to the changes in the town in the coming 12 years of time. Briefly, this project is a participatory web-based interactive and locative archive on Kwun Tong culture. It supports multiple contributors and various types of media works (sound, still image and moving image). Visitors can interact with this archive in various ways including search on map/time-line/categories; sharing of media works in other web 2.0 platforms; audio-visual mix and rendering of itineraries for Kwun Tong walk. We believe, Hong Kong needs more projects with artistic, cultural and historical concerns to go with the advancement of technology. We have launched the project in early 2009 and will go on until the end of urban renewal plan in Kwun Tong Town Centre as earliest as in 2021. For information of the renewal plan, please go to URA web site and our buddy-site, Living in Kwun Tong Key words: Kwun Tong, Urban Renewal, Kwun Tong industrial area, Yu Man Square
Concept and Treatment by Anson Mak In the Beginning… When I first started this project, it was not planned for a particular district. I later realized Kwun Tong (a town in East Kowloon of Hong Kong), my hometown, would be undergoing the largest urban renewal plan in Hong Kong (2009-2021). Then, I decided we should focus on a town and should make an effort for a project that lasts for long, until the end of the redevelopment plan. This project started as something out of my very own preference of artistic practices – experimental auto-ethnography and personal concerns, and also that of cultural and political concerns. Briefly, it is a participatory web-based interactive and locative archive on Kwun Tong culture. It supports multiple contributors and various types of media works (sound, still image and moving image). Visitors can interact with this archive in various ways including search on map/time-line/categories; sharing of media works in other web 2.0 platforms; audio-visual mix and rendering of itineraries for Kwun Tong walk. CMS and the Use of Google Map: Technically, we developed the CMS from Lifetype, an open source blogging platform. We embedded the use of google map to the system back end (Google map with data was just launched in Hong Kong in the summer of 2008). Contributors can share marks on map to locate their media works uploaded to the database. This is different from the ways most projects using google map are applying -- either each user creates a map for his/her own, or users create different marks on one map, rather than sharing of marks in one map by different users, as in this project. Novelty of marking is also experimented. A mark on the google map is NOT about the marked space (abstract space or physical space) but shows where the contributors/artists are and how they relate themselves to the place, constructing sense of place (subjective choices of positioning for audio or visual recording and representations). The understanding of marks, and the action of marking, thus is not just factual information but representations of contributors’ personal and aesthetic choices. In other words, a mark also illustrates different perspectives and artistic expressions and of different media formats that different contributors do at different times yet of the same spot. Marks, then, can be connections, be it of private and subjective emotion qualities or of objective factual qualities, of different contributors, of different media works, and of works that different contributors do at different times. From the perspectives of the visitors, this platform technically supports them to realize in their own ways such multiplex relations and connections of the media works and subjectivities of different contributors. Also, when more and more media works are uploaded along the 12 years of time during the course of the urban renewal plan, such relations and connections evolve and change, with deeper and broader possibilities and interpretations. We have added the time-line that provides temporal properties for the media works on top of the geographical indexes. Besides doing screen capture of satellite images of Kwun Tong area twice each year for 12 years of time creating a bird-view photo album as documentation, google map on the web site’s index page is a live-updated satellite image. Urban landscape on the satellite image will be changing along the course of the renewal plan. Yet, marks and their pertinent locative media works stay. Hence, the changing landscapes in live satellite images are not merely factual geographical materials but they make this project work through time across the spatial changes. Such contrasting presentation of altering cityscapes through time on live satellite image with fixed marks demonstrates the actual changes in dynamic ways. It also urges the need to re-examine such dynamic changes in multiple dimension. Hopefully, such a platform can provide more materials for visitors/Hong Kongers to generate various critical point of views to the changes, and the ideas of urban renewal plans in Hong Kong. Existing Materials For sharing of existing literature and other information on Kwun Tong culture and history, we do have a good list of books, urls, academic references, moving images. We also did a list of important events of the community in its contemporary history. These are our research materials and we’d love to share with all. Students, researchers, teachers, social workers, activists are welcome to browse the list. Visitors’ interactions Visitors can interact with the archive in many ways: 1. access to a list of information on Kwun tong – book, local publications, urls, academic references. Thank you for visiting us and please let us know your comments. Crew: We welcome people to join us as contributors. Yet, we have not enough resources to make it fully public. Also, we hope, contributors do not just share virtually but share resources in doing field works and experiences of how we can relate to the place and the local residents. Please contact us if you want to join. EMAIL to sunsound@gmail.com If you agree with the rationales and directions of the project, please support us. We welcome both support in $ and resources (server/hosting). Please contact us at sunsound@gmail.com ALL money donated will be used for the web site ONLY. |
