Did you hear that?

In Deep Mapping the Media City Mattern (2015) draws attention to myriad sensory modes—whether it be aural, graphic, textural, electroacoustic, digital, or haptic. Mattern says that clues in any one of these sensory modes might offer insights into other registers (Mattern, 2015, p. 23). Of these sensory modes, the aural, the sounds, echoes with me profoundly.

Sounds in the city tell stories and feed imaginations. I have fond memories of the time I spent at my granny’s place back in the city of Taipei. Every night, around mid-night time, from the room where we slept, my sister and I would hear a deep buurrroooom sound followed by more and rapid buurrroooom. The volume of the sound was very erratic, sometimes at full power and sometimes whispering. The poor engine of the scooter clearly had suffered and it always took a well couple minutes before we finally heard the buurrroooom-boom boom boom sound—the engine had started and off the scooter went. The quiet midnight alley amplified the sound of the scooter—and the laughter from my sister and me. At the first sound of the buurrroooom, we looked at each other and started giggling and with every failed buurrroooom our laughter grew louder. This sound took and had a role. After a couple of months our midnight sound-venture vanished. We wondered what might have happened to the rider; we hoped s/he was okay. We wondered if the scooter had served her time; we wondered if the rider had got a new scooter. And we also missed the mixed soundtrack of the buurrrooooms with the loud ha-ha-has that echoed across the quiet midnight alley in the city.

Figure 1. Typical ‘old’ scooter seen in Taipei city. Image source: Judy Chen. Taipei, 2017.

Mattern notes that there’s necessarily some speculation involved in piecing together the sensory dimensions of urban history. The speculative aspect of the urban sounds tells stories and feeds imaginations. I am drawn by how a single sound—or a combination of sounds—alone can lead to many possible, speculated scenarios. Speculative models allow urban dwellers to imagine what the city they inhabit looks, sounds, and feels like. Speculative models also bring joy and excitement.

Mattern points out that the representation of the city in, for example, photographs, cinemas, and other digitalised work, continues to be a prominent theme and the emphasis on imaging technologies has reinforced an ocularcentric approach (using historian Martin Jay’s term). In my personal experience I believe seeing is believing does not always hold true. I am fascinated by manual transmissions. One beauty of driving a manual car is that the ocularcentric approach does not prevail. Much driving relies on both hearing and feeling. One can tell a missed shift, poor control of the clutch, or grinding gears by, and only by, hearing the different and distinct sounds produced by the vehicle. These issues are not visually presented on the dashboard; one can only tell and acknowledge through analysing the sounds and the vibrations of the vehicle.

To understand the city we inhabit and to understand how humans and the city evolve together, a deep map could provide valuable insights. Archaeologists Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks (2001) explain that a deep map “attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual; the conflation of oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, natural history and everything you might ever want to say about a place” (as cited in Mattern, 2015, p.33).

The urban environment is filled with myriad sensory modes, each telling its stories and together feed the urban imaginations. Each urban dweller is capable of producing his/her own deep map(s) and together these maps tell the history and the development of the city.

The Zima Blue in the city

Do you remember the first colour you ever saw? For artist Zima, that colour was the blue tiles of a swimming pool. Love, Death, and Robots is a Netflix series of sci-fi shorts and Zima Blue is the last episode of Volume One. The story of Zima Blue is a beautiful one in which I am deeply captivated by both its aesthetic and philosophical qualities.

The story follows an enigmatic artist named Zima who in the far future attracts a worldwide following of his mural artwork. Zima started his art career in portraiture; but the urge to search for deeper meaning led him to look further to the cosmos itself and that’s how the mural work started. Over time the artist’s murals begin featuring a blue square in the middle of the canvas. Starting with a tiny blue square in the centre of the canvas, over the next several decades the blue square becomes more dominant until Zima unveils an entirely blue mural.

Then the artist presents his final work—a swimming pool. It is then revealed that the artist’s existence began as a simple robot designed to clean the blue tiles of a swimming pool. Over time the robot underwent various modifications, adding on new features and technologies and “with every iteration it became more alive.” Consciousness, great intelligence, awareness and mind capacity cannot fill the void within the artist. After decades of searching for truth the artist knows what has to be done. Zima the artist immerses himself into the swimming pool he rebuilt with the blue tiles. As he does, he slowly shuts down his higher brain functions. The artist’s last words are, “…un-making myself, leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings.”

I am deeply captivated by the artist’s performance of immersing into the water, disassembling himself, and enjoying the simple pleasure offered by the surroundings. I love cities. In my years of studying, researching, and working in the field of urban studies, my passion toward cities grows and so does my knowledge. The knowledge. We are trained to see and study the city through various lenses—the city as marketplace (space of exchange of information and commodities), the city as an assemblage, the city as organism, as nervous system, as a laboratory, as an archive, as text, language, and speech, as performativity…and the list goes on. Studying the city and urbanity through these lenses is and has always been a thrilling and exciting adventure.  

But Zima the artist sends me a reminder. The urban environments. Urban environments are clusters of mediated information and sensory experience. In my gracefully-frantic search to understand cities and to apply and witness theories, I at times neglect the urban environment itself. The urban is also understood through the senses and the sensory experience urban environments offer is immense.

So tonight as I take a walk in the city I let go of my thoughts on insurgent urbanism, performative urbanism, ecological urbanism, splintering urbanism…. I, following the artist, shut down my thoughts and leave just enough to appreciate the urban surroundings. As I look up I am pleased to know that I can still extract some simple pleasure from the urban environments. The vintage neon signage is my Zima blue—the simplicity—in the city.

Figure 1. Archambault Musique. Image source: Judy Chen. Montréal, 2021.

Figure 2. Miss Villeray Café. Image source: Judy Chen. Montréal, 2021.

Figure 3. Château Lafeyette. Image source: Judy Chen. Ottawa, 2021.

I couldn’t decide whether my fascination toward the city is because of what the city is or how the city works. This fascination I carry with me, I know, is a precise thing.