I spent quite a long time to think about how I could present all the information included by ArchiWenzhou up to now.
New Insight: The Importance of External Promotion in this Project
As I mentioned in the earlier log, the most important finding I got through the operation of the social media account was people’s interest in engaging in problem-solving interactions. To be more specific in this case, the active exploration of city culture might be empowered by citizens’ desire to present the charm of their city to the outsiders. This must not be the only facilitator, but I think it is interesting enough to investigate more.
Even tracing back to the first phase intervention which I conducted face-to-face conversations with 32 citizens, I find such discussions were all hidden in the transcripts with thoughts on some questions. For example, what makes Wenzhou distinguish from other cities? What are the cultural assets in Wenzhou you lament the loss of? I did not realize it at that time.
I still remember I viewed the enhancement of city image to outsiders as a potential by-product six months ago, which was good to achieve but did not really matter. However, this new insight makes me realize that it is important to incorporate the external promotion into the key discussions in this project.
Mapping for ArchiWenzhou
Even though I am fully aware that the focus in the final stage should be evaluation, it is still necessary for me to invest some time to produce something as a periodical outcome, because the accumulation of the knowledge in this project should be attributed to all those Wenzhou citizens who have been involved. I hope to do something for them to help voice out their pride and passion toward Wenzhou, as a reward for their support as well as a continuous iteration of the intervention.
Consequently, I view the Festival as a window to carry out this final intervention (final to the course but not to the project :)))) that links the co-archivists of ArchiWenzhou with the Festival audiences in CSM. Ideally, I could make something interactive to collect some feedback from the Festival guests to the archive, and then get our archivists informed of the feedback.
After evaluating the content I collected in the past few months, I felt I might be interesting to form a map which included all aspects of the unique cultural characteristics in Wenzhou, and I categorized them further into three different themes: the humanistic geography, the ancient culture (especially the prosperous period of Song Dynasty in one thousand years ago), and the modern landscape. I also got benefit from this process because it helped me structure the content of the archive collected up to now.
Since I wanted to make the map look interesting but was not professional in drawing, seeking help with AI came to my mind in the first place. At first, I attempted to generate the landscape with some natural elements for the map through midjourney and it worked smoothly.
However, as I started to generate elements more humanistic, like temples or shops, it no longer worked well. There are two reasons I found.
First, the humanistic elements I would like to generate is quite localized. The current algorithm of midjourney has not been advanced enough to create images catering to the local culture in Wenzhou. Most of them are still reflecting a strong stereotype toward Chinese culture but neglect the geo-cultural diversity in China.
Second, the online resources of culture, art and humanity in Wenzhou are far less than I expected. For example, there is a kind of temple called the Hall of Sangang built in memory of a great historic figure called Chen Yi, which is ubiquitous in Wenzhou, but It is hard to even find a full view of any of the halls on the internet. Probably, it again reflects the citizens’ neglects of cultural heritage in the contemporary era. On the other hand, it also gives the direction for ArchiWezhou project in the future — functioning as a database to collect more useful recourses to future researchers.
Finally, I decided to draw this map by myself. It forced me to recall the skills for Chinese ink and wash painting which I learned 15 years ago. The process was not easy but unexpectedly enjoyable. It reminds me of my childhood in Wenzhou!
The next step is to make some brochures or a book functioning as a guidance to understand this map, in which I will include the research process, the method of participatory archiving, and quotations of content from the archivists who have engaged in the archiving process to provide the clues for different elements on the map.