The Moment
瞬间
An Encounter with Passers-by on the Street
街头与行人的邂逅
2020
Introduction
The Moment An Encounter with Passers-by on the Street
Individual Work 2020 Summer, Chongqing
Content
“Oop! The Moment on the streets! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”
“Street photography is not documentary, but intuition, a Poetic Experience.”
“To me, photography is the Simultaneous Recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a Precise Organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Street Photographer
“Montage is an editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information, which is always a literary, musical, or artistic composite of juxtaposed more or less heterogeneous elements.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
[1] From Continuous Spacetime to Instaneous Spacetime - Deconstruct Pedestrians’ Perception of Existence
In early June, when people finally came back to normal life after the pandemic quarantine, I got a good chance to record people’s public life after quarantine in Chongqing. When I used my camera to record what was happening and capture moments on the street as a absolute observer, I had a completely different feeling from what I had felt before. When I saw the smile of that little girl, I made a direct view connection with her at that moment and I finally figured out what was the situation.
People keep crossing bidirectionally on the sidewalks every day. In this continuous process, most people do not have a persistant focus of this physical environment, and they usually observe the streets in a moving frame of reference, which finally leads to few memory and a vague feeling about the street space and related pedestrians. To be more specific, most of time, in the continuous and moving spactime on the streets, these pedestrians are not able to perceive the existence of any other individuals, let alone further communication.
Different from normal pedestrians on the streets, street photographers always would like to observe the street space “in a fraction of a second”. The observation of moments on the streets provide them an absolute viewpoint to understand the spacetime and the world. Compared with walking people, it is always much easier for a street photographer to have a strong feeling of surrounding environment including people.
Observing the world in a continous or instaneous perspective will bring pedestrians different feelings and recognition of the street space and other people there. Creating more moments on the street is a good way not only to reconstruct individuals’ feelings about public space like streets, but also to bring more public communication and benefits.
[2] Montage of Moments - Reconstruct Pedestrians’ Experience through Narranology
This project explores to build a process on the streets, which could reconstruct pedestrians’ experience and make them transfer from a continuous perspective to a instaneous one, creating moments, connecting strangers together and constructing a good public space.
Montage, the filmmaking technique, is used in this project as an important method to sequence the moments and build a poetic experience for pedestrians. Three phases are designed for a narrative experience: Capture, Focus and The Moment, which lead pedestrians to construct view relations with other people walking in the same direction or in the opposite direction on the other side of the device. Many other public functions like street landscape, shops and small paths could also fit into the device prototype quite well, building a complete public space.
引言
瞬间 街头与行人的邂逅
个人作品 2020 年夏，重庆
内容
“噢！街头上的瞬间！一旦错过，便永远消逝。”
“街头摄影不是纪实，而是直觉，一种诗意的体验。”
“对我而言，摄影是在一瞬间同时认出事件的意义，以及赋予该事件恰当表达的形式的精确组织。”
Henri Cartier-Bresson，街头摄影师
“蒙太奇是一种剪辑技法，将一系列短镜头按序组合以压缩空间、时间与信息，通常是对并列的、或多或少异质元素的文学、音乐或艺术综合。”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
[1] 从连续时空到瞬间时空——解构行人对存在的感知
六月初，人们在疫情隔离后终于回归正常生活，我得以记录重庆隔离后公共生活的景象。当我用相机记录街头发生的一切、捕捉瞬间时，作为绝对观察者，我获得了与此前截然不同的感受。当我看见那个小女孩的微笑，在那一刻与她建立了直接的视觉连接，我终于明白了那是一种怎样的情境。
人们每天在人行道上双向穿行。在这一连续过程中，大多数人并未持续关注这一物理环境，通常以运动参考系观察街道，最终导致对街道空间及相关行人的记忆寥寥、感受模糊。更具体地说，在街头连续而流动的时空中，行人往往无法感知任何其他个体的存在，更谈不上进一步交流。
与街头普通行人不同，街头摄影师总愿在”一瞬间”观察街道空间。对街头瞬间的观察为他们提供了理解时空与世界的绝对视点。与行走中的人相比，街头摄影师往往更容易对包括人在内的周边环境产生强烈感受。
以连续或瞬间的视角观察世界，会给行人带来对街道空间及在场他人不同的感受与认知。在街头创造更多瞬间，不仅是重构个体对街道等公共空间感受的好方法，也能带来更多公共交流与益处。
[2] 瞬间蒙太奇——通过叙事学重构行人体验
本项目探索在街头建立一种流程，以重构行人体验，使其从连续视角转向瞬间视角，创造瞬间、联结陌生人并营造良好的公共空间。
蒙太奇这一电影技法在本项目中作为串联瞬间、为行人营造诗意体验的重要方法。叙事体验设计为三个阶段：捕捉、聚焦与瞬间，引导行人与同向或设备另一侧相向而行的他人建立视觉关系。街道景观、商铺与小径等许多其他公共功能亦可很好地融入装置原型，构成完整的公共空间。