The City that Never Sleeps

Animation, Printmaking and Photography

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Preparatory Work & Visual Experimentation

‘The city that never sleeps’ explores the juxtaposition of a buzzing city and the connotations of rest and quietness during night time. I was initially interested in examining the complexity and layers of a city whilst observing the night cityscape of Hong Kong. Even later at night, I realised how I could still hear many sounds, see the continuous movement of people and cars, and see how the lights around the city shine even brighter.

To examine sound, I recorded noises from Hong Kong, Leeds and London at night, ranging from underground announcements to the beeping of traffic lights. From these recordings, I developed sound drawings and digital collages using images from the context.

Light Night Photography

Looking at light and movement, I experimented with shutter speed photography during Light Night to capture light trails and textures created through movement. I then used the same images in Photoshop to create conceptual compositions, such as using tilt effects to bend light sources and pixel sorting to produce the vertical skyline of a city.

Printmaking

I developed a series of monoprints that capture the different textures we see at night. I applied both water and oil based colours onto acrylic boards and used cotton buds, rulers and sticks to create isolated light textures. Through gestures of scraping and dragging, I was able to illustrate light, movement and create a fuzzy effect.

Collage

I am using the method of analog collage to show the composite of expanding cityscapes. Speed was inspired by the dynamic movement of trains and the nucleated settlement pattern often found in cities. Structure depicts the complexity and verticality of city structures whilst Movement portrays the movement of cars through road patterns.

Final Animation

The final animation takes the audience on a journey through different levels of a composite city at night, starting from the underground to the station, and moving to the surface of roads to the sounds of people. When generating the narrative of my animation, I wanted the audience to be able to experience all the cities simultaneously. To achieve this, I combined all of my sound recordings and used specific visual elements from each city, such as the neon light of Hong Kong and the underground gates of London. I incorporated textures, sound drawings, city structures and text into the graphics of the animation.