Hong Kong Accelerate
Posted on February 7th, 2012
A stunning time-lapse video by Spot On Idea (a production company in Hong Kong). Sometimes I have to pinch myself that I actually live here.
A stunning time-lapse video by Spot On Idea (a production company in Hong Kong). Sometimes I have to pinch myself that I actually live here.
A couple of weekends ago I attended DETOUR 2011, Hong Kong’s annual design, culture, and arts festival which was held at the former Police Married Quarters (PMQ / 前荷李活道已婚警察宿舍) on Hollywood Road in Sheung Wan. This year focused on the theme of “USELESS”, highlighting the impacts of irresponsible consumerism through a mix of exhibitions, performances, and forums.
As anyone who’s read his biography will know, Steve Jobs was not particularly pleasant to the people around him (to put it lightly). Like it or not this seems to often be the case with people who end up in positions of power, but whatever his personality, his impact on the world was undoubtably immense.
Samuel Cockedey, a French photographer and video artist based in Japan, has put together another ethereal time-lapse film of the Shinjuku area in Tokyo set to the soundtrack of Blade Runner in tribute to Ridley Scott and Vangelis.
This evening I came home to catch up on reading my feeds and discovered this wonderful animation giving an overview of What is China? in 10 minutes by someone called ‘Eno Jin’. As I watched it I realised something sounded familiar, then I realised that the voiceover was reading almost word-for-word a series of posts I wrote back in 2009 called ‘Chinese Culture 101‘.
According to a local legend in Hong Kong, in 1880 the small fishing village of Tai Hang (大坑) was devastated by a powerful typhoon. Around the same time, a large serpent entered the village and was killed by some of the residents. Shortly afterwards, plague and cholera broke out, leading to the deaths of many villagers.
One of the most enjoyable parts of travelling is experiencing a moment of serendipity, that is to say coming across something unexpected, or in other words a “happy accident”. During my most recent trip to South Korea the weather was pretty miserable but pausing for shelter on a bridge during a hard downpour yielded a particularly memorable scene…
When film director Mamoru Oshii was looking for a model of the city of the future for his seminal 1995 animated film adaptation of Ghost in the Shell (based on the manga by Masamune Shirow), he turned to the cityscape of Hong Kong for his inspiration.
Around the time of the Shanghai World Expo last year the Rhône-Alpes region of France produced a wonderful series of short films about their twin city. I can’t find much background about them but for anyone with an interest in Shanghai they provide a wonderful glimpse into this burgeoning metropolis at the turn of the last decade.
Ankle deep in stagnant water the rancid air magnified the sense of claustrophobia I felt as me and 5 other Indian-Jones wannabes trudged through the 70-year-old tunnels the Japanese Imperial Navy forced locals to dig during WWII (1941-45) on Lamma Island (南丫島) in Hong Kong.