Intergenerational Relationships with Public Spaces in China
For my final project, I will be looking at the uses of public spaces in China and generational relationships to these spaces. I have spent the past two summers in China and have collected a variety of related photographs and videos that will be used in my final ethnographic piece.. I intend to divide the content based on regional localities and generational perspectives. The programs I am using to present my ethnographic research will be Adobe Spark which will link to an interactive map.
Post-graduation, I intend to return to China and hopefully pursue human rights/ development economics research. In order to best position myself to engage in this research and communicate with my interlocutors, I am in the process of developing proficiency in Chinese. For this project specifically, I have been connecting and communicating with my research participants primarily in Chinese via WeChat (many of whom I’ve met through my work with Special Olympics or through an ambassadors program I participated in last summer). I also have plans to interview Reed from our class, and I am in the process of arranging more interviews.
I am excited to produce this multimodal piece of work and believe that my topic lends itself well to the use of a variety of multimedia mediums including video, still-photography, sound, and text. I am uncertain if I will need to pull any media from online as I hope to solely use my personal photo, sound, and video clips in assembling the presentation and conducting my participant observations. As I mentioned above, I am in the process of building out the Adobe Spark, interviewing a diverse selection of interlocutors, and translating my interviews in English. I’ve learned and developed so many amazing new research techniques in this class and I am looking forward to sharing this with everyone! I’m finishing some translations now, but I will be posting a link to a draft of my multimodal presentation very soon.
Please click to view a very rough draft of the Adobe Spark portion of my final project:
https://spark.adobe.com/page/RN34ygtcMit9x/
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Alie – this looks like a great start and quite smooth as far as the Adobe Spark interface. My time in China was mainly in the mountains at a research station, but I do remember walks in Xian and how parks and outdoor gym equipment seemed to be quite the bustling multigenerational spaces! Albeit a small sample size, I never saw spaces like the tracks you show in your video in China, but I find myself being curious about when these tracks came into being and if they are mainly related to universities or if these are also community/government managed outdoor fitness spaces. Would like to see a bit of historical/organizational situating for these spaces.
This seems like a really cool project. One thing that struck me when looking through your project was the importance of time. It would be cool to see how these public spaces interact with, are shaped by, and shape different temporalities. It might be especially interesting to see how these temporalities are embodied in the sorts of movements that take place in these spaces (dancing).
I definitely love the strategy here of mixing text chat screenshots, videos, and interviews, so I think you’ve nailed the multimodal aspect. As you continue researching, I think looking choosing an analytical lens would be interesting: so how do these parks relate to gender, socioeconomic status, government programs, etc., all while being rooted in your and others’ personal experiences. I also think the inclusion of more maps could be interesting, depending on what data they have available.
Hi Alie! I really liked your presentation in class. In terms of the multimodal aspect of your project, I think your project is solid. I am not sure where you’re trying to take the project, but I would suggest bringing out the social role of the park (i.e. the role the park plays in shaping social structures or something like that).
Hi Allie, I am super interested in your project and feel personal connected in terms of my cultural background and experience. Maybe place a map to demonstrate different locations of your multi sites would be helpful for someone who are not familiar with China. Feel free to contact me if you want to have more interviews with Chinese. Looking forward to your final project!
I really like the design of your project so far and the way you’re incorporating all of the different elements. The photographs you linked to from Chen ZhiXian make me wonder if there’s a way you could incorporate some historical material into the project, either historical information or archival pictures of the spaces.
I would agree with Theo on this! Your project seems amazing but it might benefit less knowledgeable people like me if you included a little historical information on the spaces to study? Maybe especially to show differences in opinion and behavior of people from different areas but I don’t really know…. just also seems cool
This was an awesome presentation! The Adobe Spark layout is very clean and functional for all the different media you used. My favorite was the screenshots of your conversations/interviews and then the translated portion with an image splitting the page, worked really well! If possible, I think one of those 360 degree images would be super cool to use for the park(s). I’m not sure if there’s any already available online, but since you’re planning on returning post-graduation, someone mentioned there’s an app that can create it fairly easily.
I was very impressed with your presentation and I love the Adobe Spark platform that you used. You were able to integrate a lot of different media, which was very cool. I think it could be very interesting to dive more into the social functioning of the parks for the different age groups and potentially look into different understandings of park space based on whether the park is public or belongs to a private entity like a school or a neighborhood. I really enjoyed getting to see your own personal photos and videos!