In 2018, co+labo research projects included an investigation of virtual urban identities. Daisuke Kobayashi examined depictions of Ginza in Japanese movies filmed during the period 1948-2013. Following Relph's theory of place (1976) which points to the coordinated importance of physical settings, activity, and associated meanings, Kobayashi explored shooting locations, usage patterns within the filmed spaces, activity of characters, and lines that referred to Ginza. This map locates and brings together-all of that information, color- and size-coded to refer to details such as the year of filming, the types of shoots, and so on. The mapping used urban choreography notation (introduced in this issue of a+u by Tamao Hashimoto), while the functional elements of the place were expressed as networks. The lines that included the word Ginza or places alluding to its quality were recorded, classified, and analyzed through a text mining tool. In this unfairly brief summary it suffices to say that the words related to water and water-side space (such as bridge and sea) appeared frequently. The word bridge was usually referring to the words "to meet" and "to wait. The cinematic Ginza consists of two, separate realities of day and night life. The activities in Ginza are diverse, combining ordinary, everyday scenes of working, walking, and shopping and extraordinary bursts of quarrel, attack, and even murder. Most beautifully, in that Ginza world "love" features prominently.
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