Visualizing Invisible cities

My thesis investigates how content in stories arouses and translates into different forms including writing, photography, installation, and lighting design. Visualizing Invisible Cities is inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. The development follows performance design process including text analysis, deep research, and translation of ideas from written text to visual language. The project development occurs in a three-step process, including a quotation project, a photography project, and an installation project, over a period of two years. The quotation project, #invisiblecities #italocalvino #mandarin #quote, started from reading both English and traditional Chinese translations of the book in order to approach the content and to observe how ideas are realized in different translations. The project extracted 12 quotes from Invisible Cities to see the content in another way and to find my own perspective of the work. The photography project, Visualizing Invisible Cities - Taipei, translated the thematic idea of duality from the book format into photography format. The project of 12 photos captures ephemeral scenes combining sight and reflection in Taipei. The installation project, my thesis presentation, attempts to transform inspirations from Invisible Cities’ writing method and Italo Calvino’s philosophy of literature by exploring reflectivity and materiality in a designed installation space.