The Dual City Multi-sensory Experience of Markets

The MMHK project looks at the sensory cultural heritage, combining tangible and intangible heritage, that creates identity and cohesion in a community. In urban research, analysis of everyday-ish and informal customs typically relies on visual images, texts, and archival materials, to describe the multifarious aspects of culturally significant places and practices. By contrast, the acoustic environment is often not part of the narrative, and very rarely is the olfactory environment recorded. Given the contemporary context of rapid and profound transformation in Hong Kong, essential threads of the city fabric risk being neglected, and might even disappear before they can be documented. Can we really claim to know urban places without thoroughly considering, and documenting, the sensory cultural heritage represented by sounds and smells? In the same synergy, a field trip method is applied to experience the markets in the centre of Birmingham that is under the threat of large residential and mixed-use urban developments such as the Smithfield markets. The sounds, smells and textures representing the Birmingham markets will be presented in parallel with the market experiences in Hong Kong to offer a dual city sensory stimulation through the exhibition.