In the morning. I attended Prof. Gu Zheng’s undergraduate third year photography class. He asked them to write initial responses to the idea of screens in Shanghai already. In mid-November, their mid-term assignment is to photos of screens. So we had a long talk about our project and the various things they had noticed. This was all very encouraging, and we will see what kinds of photos come out of it. I told them I want to know how Shanghai residents, i.e. they, react to these screens.

Among the topics we discussed in the class were: the question of government regulation of the screens; a huge public screen like a sky at Tianmu (if I understood correctly), near the World Trade Centre in Beijing; someone’s research on the subway that revealed that actually many commuters would like the screens to have sound and that they felt the screens were good for distracting people from each other and therefore for reducing tension in the subway; the idea of following people for a day to see what screens they did encounter/interact with; people having problems with or being intimidated by touch screens, e.g. to buy tickets in the subway; and much more. A lot of the students did have questions about method, especially the third, archival stage where we try to go beyond observation and go into history, interviewing and so on. I guess this third stage is in danger of being a sort of "everything else" stage in terms of methods, and maybe we need to consider that. One of the students also asked about sheer range of issues concerning the topic that were coming up in our in-class conversation, and said she was not sure what our real focus was. I said everyday life and public space, and that we were interested in other things like policy, advertising strategy, and so on only through that focus. I wonder if this a useful way for us to think about this.

In the afternoon, Wenhao and his wife drove Wu Dan and me around the Pudong side of the Expo site, which is simply huge. I can imagine that screens might play a big role here, but it’s not clear exactly how yet, as the site is very much under construction. It’s the size of Luton by itself, so I cannot imagine how people are going to tour around it yet. I also am not sure if we should include it or not, because it’s so much not about everyday life. Even the buildings will be torn down when it’s all over, because expo regulations insist on that for some reason.