Representation, Imagination And Simulation

As a place bearing human's strong emotion, the city has become a major theme in arts as long as it was built, for example, in architecture, in literature and in painting. Moreover, the complexity and multiplicity of modern city is outstandingly reflected on the arts based on "duplicating" technology such as photography, film and so on. Since the 1990's of last century, China have been entering an fast urbanizing period that can't be ignored by any kinds of art, thus life and scenery of chinese cities are "authenticly" recorded and reflect. In the "city image" theory created by American architecturer Kelvin Lynch, he pointed out that the image of a city is constructed by its landscape and its people's cognition, which means a modern city's image can be established and influenced by the forms of human's art, especially by visual art.This essay is going to analyse the constructing processes on the images of three different cities (Guangzhou, Shanghai, Guilin) through three kinds of visual arts' expressions: photography, film and "Impression Liu Sanjie".Not only the images but also the angles of view behind the images are important, because it reveal a fact that these viewpoints include three types: representation, imagination and simulation, which hints a perfect progress of a "symbol" becoming an "reality" and makes a city image becoming the city's "ture" self.