The Way a River Talks

Imagination of how the river Taff talks and preserve its memory.

For us, the River Taff has witnessed many things that humans haven’t. But for the river itself, every moment it faces a new thing. Therefore, I imagine that the River Taff is a child instead of an elderly. Children are full of curiosity, and always excited about new things no matter whether they are good or bad, so does the river as a child. The purpose is to provide a different prospective towards the Cabinet of the River.

Cabinet of the River should be collected by the river rather than human.

To imagine how the river feels and how it would react to its surrounding, I immersed myself into the environment of the site, tried to act as a river. By doing this, I collected very lively sensorial memories along the river. And then, I danced and drew out the way the river talks by using abstract dancing movement lines. And turned the drawings into reality by using steel wire. The outcome is a 2-min video showing the abstract dancing lines under the changing lighting condition, which represents the flow of time.

This work is a good start of exploring the site, which should be done every time before you start designing an architectural project. It was very creative, which raised my interest in exploring the boundary of architecture and dancing. It was also very helpful to my later project along the river Taff as it helped me to get a comprehensive understanding of the river Taff.