From week 7 we started to prepare our final project. After returning to my city Shanghai at the end of 2020, the significant comparison with Melbourne is the population gap and traffic congestion. Therefore, my personal starting point for this project is: what kind of climate problems will be caused by today’s megacities and large populations.Demos et al (2021, p.149)  mentions ‘peoples’ increasing sense of the seriousness of climate disruption and their simultaneous failure to enact necessary measures to address it’. Similarly, all of my group mates want to explore the impact and destruction of human behavior on nature. Also, everyone recognizes that the best sketch is basically 5 and 6, which are focusing on noticing the destruction in our cities. What’s more, the cities in which we are living can now be regarded as large cities or even megacities in China, so we quickly reached a consensus and wanted to focus on exploring the harm caused by urbanization and population gathering.

In Monday’s session, our group explored some areas that can be studied, such as construction waste and land degradation caused by urban construction; the toxic gas emission by a large population including the Industrial emissions and domestic waste emissions or the light pollution at night, which may lead to the disordered biological clocks of wild animals. Although it is not completely certain which destructive behavior will be selected as our final project, the theme can basically be summarized as how modern urbanization pollutes the land and the environment. In terms of the form of final work, we hope to present it in a documentary way. The current assumption is that it may include some interviews and historical comparisons. Showing the city’s past through the memories of the previous generation and comparing the polluting issues before the cities become such large.

Reference

Demos, T.J, Scott, E.E. & Banerjee, S 2021, ‘Sensing Climates,’ in: The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Routledge, New York, pp.149-152.