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The Fjord - A journey of imaginary

Yi He

Diploma project

Spring 2019
Institute of Urbanism and Landscape
This project is about an unknown field and an intervention with a balloon. It starts with a fascination with the mystery and darkness of the fjord, and with rethinking the public’s notion of hydro-space. From the cultural-historical perspective, a question about how we shape the fjord, and how it shapes us, starts to arise.
 
We only know what we see, and we tend to only see what we know. A new description of the fjord is critical, but since scientific exploration underwater is limited by current technology, we cannot rely only on it. We need to also explore the subjective, the imaginary, to understand what is at stake.

The cruise ship will act as a site, the passengers as audience. The design is a surface, a space and an event on the roof deck. It uses a gigantic plastic balloon to stimulate the imaginary.

Made of plastic from the ocean waste, the 40-m balloon travels on the cruise ship eight days. In the harbour, the scale of the ship dwarfs the balloon. After boarding the ship, passengers never see the whole volume again, only a part of its 5000㎡ surface.
The space between the balloon and the sloped deck is designed for immersive experience. It’s a platform equipped with projectors, lights, fog machines and speakers, waiting for the artist and passenger involvement.

The event calls for artist to explore the translation and transformation of abstract data into something spatial.
The intervention demonstrates how we need to blur the boundaries between information technology, landscape architecture and art in order to solve complex problems.

At the end of the trip, glancing backward at the ship, the balloon is not the same one passengers saw eight days ago. Ideas have been planted, imaginaries have started to develop. Everyone sees their own fjord.
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Yi He