Disappearing Neighborhood Light up the city! Virtual Reality
Unity
Arduino
Installation
2024
Our perception of the city swings between two poles: the privacy of the bedroom and the limitless reach of the phone. The space between—the neighborhood—fades into a blur, too familiar to spark curiosity. While the internet promises a vast public sphere, it has collapsed into the scale of a private home, an illusion stretched thin. This disappearance is psychological, not physical: we neglect what’s near, pouring passion into distant places beyond reach. The result is fleeting satisfaction—and a quiet, enduring indifference toward our immediate world.
Nina Shi


-Unity

  1. Unmute
  2. MOVEsician
  3. Resonance
  4. Light up the city
  5. Lonely Elderly
  6. Double World

-School project
     
  1. Seaweeds Bioplastic
  2. Agua Vista Park
  3. Ant Acho
  4. “MADicine”

-Personal project
       
  1. The Five Realms
  2. Illustration
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Disappearing neighborhoods are the backdrop to my recent research, and I've used a lot of them in a short period of time to try to interpret the theme. The following three small projects are all centered around the context of [Vanishing Nearby], with very short time constraints to quickly try out various software, methods, and techniques. The first one is using unity to create a VR experience.
Light up the city is a one-week project that is one of the most direct and simple expressions of the [disappearing neighborhood] theme. Made in unity, the player just has to engage with the environment to get a very direct charge of that area to encourage the player to establish a connection with the neighborhood.




                                                 
 




Light Up The City Installation：

[Arduino+ LED Light+ Light sensor]
Using sand as the key, the player uses sand to light up the houses by connecting them together on the map. The sand can represent us or the community. Expressing it through the installation allows users to participate more directly, without the need for complicated code scanning and logging in, and allows for more feedback to be collected.







         



Flip over installation：

[Arduino+ Touch sensor+ servo+ conductive ink+ TouchBoard]

This installation is one that allows multiple people to participate in the experience and only when six people touch the installation at the same time, six words are displayed. The six words are some key words for building a better community. When flipped over, people can touch the words and some interesting interpretations will be conveyed through the audio connected to the conductive ink, which also adds some 'magic' to the installation and some fun. I have placed the installation in a public area of the school in the hope that people in the community will remember how we can sustain and help the community grow.


                     



Because there was no way for the servo to hold the weight of the stand and the text panel, this version broke after only one run. After that I downloaded the bracket online that allowed thde servo to run vertically, 3D printed it and assembled a second version. It's the same concept, except that only four touch sensors are available at a time.