City Residuals

09/2023
3d, Web

City Residuals is an interactive web development project based on my contemplation about individualized experience in the city. Inspired by city-related theories, I started to pay attention to how cities open up different perceptions and phenomena. In combination with my background in digital media, I use website as the medium to generate interactivity and simulate a Dérive journey in a virtual landscape.

City Residuals hypothesizes the city as an interface that invokes people’s perception and helps them process the information behind. Using the interactivity and flexibility the web offers, City Residuals provides a highly-customizable experience that invite the visitors to rethink about city’s functionality and potential, under the scope of technology.

Experience it here︎︎︎

Project Background & Mindmap

The initial concept of the project derives from a short film I made in 2022, that talks about how the physical city overlaps with memory and impressions. The film proposes to view the city as a space for meditation and reflection regardless of its scale or functionality.

City Residuals: The alternative side of cities, the remaining of a city in its abstract and metaphorical forms.

Project Structure

Moodboard

Sketch

Modeling

Element details

Developing

Three.js is used to develop the interactive 3d scene.

Interactive Elements

The design of interactive element considers the experience of the audience, resources available locally and online, and the possibilities within the development environment. Overall, the purpose of those interactive elements is to enrich the experience and possible combinations as well as proposing some questions or directions of thinking for the audience to ponder about. The interactivity is an metaphor about the city as an interface to trigger different types of infos.