Avatars of the Diasporic Plateau, Hongkong Interactive Dome for Public Intelligence.

MANIFESTO

Avatars of the Diasporic Plateau

Hongkong Interactive Dome for public Intelligence

Our experience of the world around us has changed tremendously after the bloom of the social media technology to a degree not seen since the arrival of trains and cars. Our daily interaction with the space in which we inhabit is becoming  less physical and more virtual as a space where our body physically present become more encapsulated with the absent through the world of screens of social media. What traditionally used to be one way communication, for example a façade of a building communicating certain information to us, it’s now mutated into a communal two way communication where the users have the opportunity to response back and give live feedback such as the facebook wall. Thus, the most essential question for the architects today remains how the two spaces we inhabit both physical and virtual could be pulled together. A world where we are all “alone together”.


“Public spaces are always going to be sites of negotiation. They are not places, like your laptop screen, where you can do whatever you want,” David Benjamin, of The Living, has once said. The spaces of the public realm  is different than those of the virtual space that it will always exist under the force of negotiations, meaning that it involves many parties and requires a constant communal communications for its very existence. Hence, if the public spaces around us centered on the notion of two way communication, then the existing conditions of our built environment will need an ultimate intervention. From static building facades that could only communicate information to us therefore serving one way communication to dynamic ones which allow for us to communicate back communally as well as receiving and reconstitute themselves according to our feedbacks. In this way we are no longer experience our world from a divided attention but fully embodied and be encapsulated within this mediated worlds.The project, Avatars of the Diasporic Plateau, explores the notion of Diaspora/exile as political and religious current affair of Tibet and Tibetan people which emphasizes on an act of movement, migration or scattering of people away from an established homeland. The idea of diaspora was explored through the lens of avatar as graphical representation of user or the user’s alter ego or character, this could either take a three dimensional form or a two dimensional representation as an icon. Together the idea of avatar as a graphical representation for Tibet’s diaspora was explored through the mean of anamorphic projection in which the existing commercial urban fabric filled with information surfaces of central Hong Kong were deployed as a design tool for this creation.

FINAL VIDEO PRESENTATION SCRIPT :

(please see the latest post of the final video presentation storyboards as guideline for narrative)

Avatars of the Diasporic Plateau, here but not here Tibetan communicative dome.

Manifesto

The project, Avatars of the Diasporic Plateau, explores the notion of Diaspora/exile as political and religious current affair of Tibet and Tibetan people which emphasizes on an act of movement, migration or scattering of people away from an established homeland. The idea of diaspora was explored through the lens of avatar as graphical representation of user or the user’s alter ego or character, this could either take a three dimensional form or a two dimensional representation as an icon. Together the idea of avatar as a graphical representation for Tibet’s diaspora was explored through the mean of anamorphic projection in which the existing commercial urban fabric filled with information surfaces of central Hong Kong were deployed as a design tool for this creation.

The home of Avatars of the Diasporic Plateau

The home of the avatars of the diasporic plateau is located in the central district of Hongkong, in the center of the crosswalk connected to 2 main arteries, the queen road central and the d’aguillar street. Hongkong’s vibrant streets and its fast peace lifestyle has very much to do with the importance of its economic activities that fill in on every aspects of the fast peace and hetic lifestyle amongst its inhabitants. Hognkong is already clustered with frenzy billboards both static ones and those ones with LED screens and some shops even try to use people as the shop avatars for the those shops that are difficult to find. These shop avatars engages in physical interaction to promote certain shops and to assist  passersby to their hard to find stores location through physically words of mouth and a little bit of hand gestures.  Eventhough Hongkong is clustered with these billboards, they never allow for two way communications where passerby can interact with them not just they giving us informations and as these billboards start to increase the communicative dome is created.

The logic of the controlled view points

The pursuit for my performative architecture begins with the research into a film industry by examine its complex and synchronize choreography of many elements coming to create a film that you have all experienced. The purpose of this preliminary research is to come into a conclusion of how such a complex choreography happened as well as to develop a necessary drawing and diagraming skills that require precision in capturing times and movements. My research of the film industry is centered on the interest of deconstructing a film set and look at how cameras and film crews and actors are working together in a precise choreographies to create a composed shot and sequence out of these complicated storyline. The film set that I focus on is featured in the film called “You Only Live Twice” 1976. The set is an artificial volcano lair created by the famous set designer, Ken Adam. After a detailed study of the film’s camera, crews and casts complex cheography, has resulted into 2 sets of diagrams and 2 animations. The first sets of diagrams explains the overall physical structure of the set with all the important “moving” mechanics specially highlighted, together with a detailed illustration of times and the sequential movements of these mechanics and actors. Another set illustrate detailed study of camera movements in synchronize with the movements of the mechanics and actors simultaneously constructing a film sequence. At this stage a good understanding of the notion of controlled view points and complex choreography is obtained.

Flows

Hongkong has one of the most interesting street life and flows of people. Serving as a home for the avatars of the diasporic plateau centered on the crosswalk between the famous shopping streets and soaring high rise buildings as the main business area in central district hongkong, the queen road central and also connected through the d’aguilar street which leads to the most popular night clubs and dining place in town known as Lan Kwai Fong. The home for this energetic beast never sleeps and has witnessed all types of users throughout a daily basis. By morning, busy crowds of business people flooded through the street since the crosswalk is close to the MTR central station toward to south side facing toward the bay. During late afternoon, shoppers and tourists stroll around the streets crossing over from one to another looking for the big red discount sign. In the evening, the street light and lighting from the billboards have transformed the atmosphere of the place and get the night strollers exited for their ultimate night out around the Lan Kwai fong area just a little toward to north end of the d’aguilar streets.

The spaces around the crosswalk are a resemblance of something similar to the spatial configuration of the Hemis monastery, the famous Tibetan monastery in the exile community in Ladakh India. The ceremonial space around the monastery is primarily constituted based on the invisible axis by 2 objects, one being the front portal and the other is the scared pole which marked the center of the performance space in the middle of the open courtyard together mark an invisible axis where the Cham performance or the scared dance take place.

The ceremony (Cham performace)

The cham performance or the sacred dance takes place every year during the summer, this used to be perform during the winter months but changed to fit with the demand of the tourism. The ceremonial dance involves up to 12 or more dancers who participate in the so called meditative state as the performance starts and ends this dancers will undergo transformative meditation practice from human being state of mind into the gods’ through the process of visualization. Prior to the performance, the avatars perform a transformative meditation practice by visualizing themselves as deities and deities looking back at them, therefore completing this transformative practice and fully embodied the notion of avatar. This process of transformative visualization also use masking as another technique to help the dancers to create a character from the mind visualizing his body as deities, speech as mantra, mind as clarity, emptiness and luminousity. The entire dance and chanting performance takes place around the scared pole with in a strict circular rotation clock wise marking a space of a mandala, a sacred circular diagram in Buddhism.

Linked to house of the avatars for the diasporic plateau

Similar the spaces around the house of avatars if the diaporic plateau, where the wifi antenna marked the center space of the crosswalk. While the d’aguilar street serves as the virtual portal and together marked the axis for the performance.

Actors taxonomy

Then every objects and surfaces which are already used as a information sign were analyzed and studied in order to incorporate it in the project. Since the project is on the edge of political censorship, these already existing functional street elements and building facades were essential for the very existence of the project to be in certain extent camouflaged.

Ephemeral congregation

Avatars of the diasporic plateau will be the house of ephemeral congregation amongst the street strollers. It embraces the existing ephemeral conditions of the crosswalk and sidewalks adjacent. The transience pedestrian patterns that consisted of high and low flux and flow of passerby rushing to cross the road as well as a sudden stop and wait when the traffic light turn red and the very act of crossing the road itself became the moment of congregation. Asides of the existing pattern of ephemeral congregation, there are often be the pedestrians that take a pause around the fringe of the dome regularly during certain times of day spotted with their cellphones and some with tablets on hands serious looking and stand firmy holding their grounds for a while. From a first glance these serious mobile phone addicts can be seen everywhere in on the street that it may look like a normal activity but if you look closer the very spot in which these seriously mobile phone addicts were all standing in a scattered but still contained within a few meters radiating from the center of the crosswalk where a strange looking antenna hang down toward the crosswalk almost at the center. In fact, to be precise, those who know the this place well call it a wifi scepter that transmit a small microwaves covering up an radius around these addicted users. During a special occasion, there could be seen these addicted users walking around in a circle in the middle of the crosswalk holding their iphone or ipad as if they are worshiping their gadgets. In fact, they are following the ceremonial instruction given by them through wifi connection from the wifi scepter. Afterfall, they are free you should try it sometimes if you happen to walk pass it.

Belief in Tibetan Buddhism

In Tibetan Buddhism the core belief is that everything comes and goes and that everything is impermanent. The path to enlightenment then focused on the awaken mind that realize the universal truth that our life and everything in it is based on the belief in the so called “four sight” namely, the cycle of life, we born, age, sickness and we die. As so does our illusion of ever changing desires to have and to hold something we did not have. But eventually desires die with us but usually before it dies it makes our life a suffering hell by chasing after something endlessly because our desires also change as we physically and mentally changed as we aged. Therefore the path to enlightenment is to end this suffering of desires and by become awake and fully realize the four noble truths of suffering.