Loud and bright, distorted, unstable.
Alternative audiovisual perspectives on Shenzhen’s informal “low-fi” mediacape
Publication in FORUM+
by Yaohan Zhang, Yujing Ma, Marcel Zaes Sagesser
Oct 2026
Open-access publication available at FORUM+
Shenzhen, in stark contrast with its high-tech narratives, is characterized by a portable infrastructure of distorting megaphones and bright LED screens that form a “street mediascape” both informal and in flux. The artistic researchers and authors of this article investigate how an audiovisual method can produce alternative perspectives to archive – and learn from – Shenzhen’s streets. The project contributes to the methods of creative research between documentary, media arts, and socio-technical urban systems.
Figure on the left: from FORUM+ at URL: Zhang/Ma/Sagesser, timeline composition of Minzhi’s informal street mediascape, 2025, digital composition based on GoPro stills taken on the coconut vendor’s cart and the candy vendor’s shoulder basket. The image shows a handmade collage. Stills from vendor-driven camera footage were selected by us to present roughly similar time intervals between the frames. They were arranged on a timeline over several rows. The criteria for assembly were few: primarily to use material that is anonymous and shows the dynamic infrastructure of Minzhi’s evening. Colour processing was introduced to observe how our technical methods would change the information in the collage (lines 1 and 5 are identical, once in greyscale, and once in colour). The colour version adds what is characteristic for the street mediascape: the bright and saturated colours of LED screens, light boxes, reflected lights, and so on. The revealed “knowledge” is partial and incomplete. The collage proves to be a sort of colour dictionary of Minzhi’s urban ecology specific to that one night. It also shows a contrast between movement (much change between the frames) and more static moments (less change between frames). We call this collage a timeline composition of Minzhi’s street views captured by vendor-enabled camera perspectives.
This publication is based on the artistic resesarch project Flowing Sound (scroll down).