For some reason, I felt it was important to narrow down my thesis topic to focus on tourism for my last DR class. I’ve since completely changed my interests, but it is still fascinating how dependent we are on maps to guide us in a new place. If one point on a map is omitted, then we don’t have the knowledge and have a very small chance of experiencing that place. With different approaches to mapping, designers can completely transform the experience of a place for visitors and residents. Christian Nold created a fascinating internet-based project where people wore sensors that recorded their response to different surroundings on a map, and they were able to write in their personal annotation for that place. He created one for many different cities, but here is the East Paris Emotion Map. Based on the feedback I received from the presentation, a potential thesis topic would focus on how we as designers can change the perception of a neighborhood. Also, what is the difference between the expectations of a place and the actual experience once you arrive?
A snippet from the presentation:
Traditional notions of tourism promote the idea of human circulation as a commodity, guiding tourists from one place of consumption to the next. This leads to the trivialization of place and the dilution of culture, because the culture itself becomes the commodity to be consumed. The true discovery of a city is found in-between the typical tourist attractions; for example, one doesn’t experience Paris at the Eiffel tower but among the myriad streets and neighborhoods along the way.
Homogenization of our cities is a significant problem that decreases value of all new cultural artifacts and degrades the historical value of a place. Designers have the ability to tell the story of a place, and to create enjoyment in the casual encounter of a city for tourists and residents alike. Our surroundings provide valuable references to natural organization, pattern and form, and sensitivity to these visual cues can provide a valuable connection to place in design solutions.
Traditional approaches to tourism and place branding cause a lack of connection to the communities we visit because of the belief in culture as a commodity to consume. The speed and acculturation of globalization leads to dilution of culture and the trivialization of place.
This is the skeleton outline for the written paper that I presented in class (mostly topics for further research):
1. Globalization A. Tourism B. Place Branding C. Online communities 2. Mapping A. Psychogeography B. Crowd-sourced mapping 3. Forms in our surroundings A. Perception and visual intelligence B. Application to design 4. Embodied Communication A. Ethnography B. Survey Research C. Conversation 5. Use Communities A. For tourists (car/bike sharing) B. For residents (office space, tools) 6. Localization A. Art Centers/Residencies B. Craft Fairs and other Events C. Branding of local businesses D. Slow Cities
At this point I thought I would have narrowed down my topic for thesis. (Fortunately or) Unfortunately I am still expanding the possibilities for my topic but seem to be approaching something that really resonates with me. I keep returning to the topic of awareness of place, as well as the connection with a local community and its history. This weekend I re-read parts of No Logo by Naomi Klein and realized that it is the contemporary equivalent of Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Klein makes Debord’s theory concrete with details on the mergers and acquisitions that limit our consumer choice. Branded retail environments like Barnes and Noble replace the library as the literary destination; malls have replaced the traditional notion of the town square. Media companies have merged to the point that all of our news and entertainment come from a total of three companies, and independent filmmakers and distributors struggle to have a voice against this well-connected competition.
But it’s capitalism, one might argue, and America has grown fat and happy with the conglomer-nation formula! Yes it has, but we’ve also lost many opportunities for those with differing viewpoints to be heard. There will be a popular backlash if the one-way communication of mass media outlets continues in this way. Consumers will exercise their power of choice to buy products from companies that are the most transparent. Transparency will in turn lead to better corporate ethics and programs that benefit the community.
Globalism will not stop, but we can preserve the shreds of culture that we have left in our communities. Self-replicating clones like TGI Fridays (that just opened two blocks away) can integrate programs that respect the community they are homogenizing, through the in-store environment or takeaway items. ‘Brooks of Sheffield’ wrote the Lost City blog for many years, lamenting the disappearing cultural destinations in New York City. He compiles a list of remaining classics here, considering them the last few iconic utterly New York destinations. Another interesting blog bent on historical preservation, Forgotten NY documents much of the urban scenery that just doesn’t exist anymore.
One design solution for this problem is to put it in the hands of the people. We have lost so much of our cultural landscape at the hands of largely unregulated corporations, it’s time to take the power back. Excuse me while I start coming up with an inspiring and motivational speech to rally the people, but in the meantime check out these beautiful town logos created by Japanese designers to represent their distinct locality. These designs represent a symbol of the importance of place for each individual.
A couple of years ago I discovered she hit pause studios in the Holiday Market in Union Square. There are hundreds of different artists and craftspeople selling goods in this market and in many of the arts and crafts fairs that dot New York City parks throughout the year. The Bloomberg administration recently decided to crack down on the number of artists displaying their goods, and were met with a huge uproar from this community. In the Union Square art market that’s set up three times a week, artists line up early in the morning to get a spot because spaces are first-come first-serve.
Matt Schwartz is the photographer behind she hit pause studios, and his original vision of a pinup girl translates into nostalgic and ethereal polaroid transfers. Since meeting Matt, I’ve encountered many more photographers using this technique. For example, Ayhan Kimsesizcan is a documentarist that runs a very commercial enterprise including wedding photography, street art prints (he has taken many photos of street art and now sells them as $40 prints) and other standard tourist-loving photos. I found his booth in Union Square the other day (he was not there but had two ladies selling his polaroid transfers).
Anyways, I know that artists get ideas and copy from one another all the time. However, it makes me really peeved when I see an artist like Matt Schwartz who does have an original vision getting the same amount of selling space as large commercial tourist-trap enterprises. The Bloomberg administration has decided not to differentiate between creators of original art and mass-produced items in their crack-down on art vendors. This is a really bad move. As if original artists didn’t have the chips stacked against them enough, now they are on the same playing field with large-scale businesses that churn out ‘art’ and poorly-made souvenirs. Mass-produced items devalue the art that original artists have worked so hard to create, and the Bloomberg administration needs to see this and take action unless they are interested in an homogenized, corporate art market in which everyone sells exactly the same thing. Since that is the state of most art markets in New York City, I’m sorry to say that they probably are. Corporations 1 – Local Artists 0
In class two weeks ago, I read a thesis from 2001 called ‘Manhole Covers and Other Art Underfoot’. I was mostly interested in discovering how to create a thesis out of a concept so abstract. The author found that upon transitioning to a pedestrian lifestyle after moving to New York City, she began noticing and appreciating so many details in her surroundings. I definitely had a similar experience of waking up to the beauty of our city, even in the most banal everyday things.
‘While the exotic may raise our eyebrows, it is the mundane that is truly engrossing, and from which the most can be learned. It is in the everyday that we find insights and miracles, in what’s under our noses… and under our feet.’
New York City at one time was dottedwith cast-iron foundries that produced everything from decorative railings, staircases, doors, building fronts, weathervanes, lampposts, boot scrapers, and manhole and coal chute covers. In the thousands of miles of sidewalks in NYC you can find the names of these foundries with handiwork from as far back as the late 1800’s intact. Also, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Gramercy Park neighborhood are the cast iron gates surrounding the buildings.
It is definitely interesting that these manhole covers signify an old-fashioned time in New York City. A time when we burned coal for heat (oh, we still do that) and had to access the reservoir from downtown, and when there were many fine craftsmen available to make beautiful designs for our buildings out of cast iron.
The most interesting part of the thesis was an historical section that examined the Situationist movement and derive. The Situationist work focuses on the urban environment and it’s interaction with human behavior. Derive is “a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences, one that entails playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects.” This is all so related to urban planning, and some of the articles I plan on reading for thesis research are within this field. I am only interested in this subject with regards to how welcoming a space is to bring people together to interact with each other and their environment.
It is so interesting to think that the experience of our place is so dependent on the maps that guide us. Guy Debord and Asger Jorn offer an entirely new perspective with ‘The Naked City’, a map of Paris that weaves together parts of the city based on their psychogeographic importance. In the map they offer an antidote to being “swept along by crowds… bound by an artificial imperative of speed… rushing toward sites of alienated production or consumption.” It is possible to create a map for residents and tourists alike that suggests drifting through the cities backwaters to enjoy the sense of encounter, and highlighting unique aspects of the city beyond the standard tourist attractions.
This reminds me of a book I just read actually. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925), which diagrams in detail the many points, lines and planes that are available to the artist simply from referencing our environment. In my Visual Communications I class with Professor Mark Sanders, one of our first assignments was to find a modular structure in our walk to class and create a pattern out of it. The concept originated in the Bauhaus philosophy, and more specifically Klee’s philosophy “that rested on empathy with the created world, accepting everything that is with equal love and humility. As a very young man he had spoken of his art as “andacht zum kleinen” (devotion to small things)… Through observation of the smallest manifestation of form and interrelationship, he could conclude about the magnitude of natural order.” This text is found in the devotional introduction to the book by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, and in the concluding notes she quotes Novalis in the hopes that Klee’s book will inspire others to: “…give sense to the vulgar, give mysteriousness to the common, give the dignity of the unknown to the obvious, and a trace of infinity to the temporal.”
Since I have a very broad topic to work with, coming up with a plan for primary research seems a bit putting the cart before the horse. However, I have considered a few strategies in order to delve deeper into the needs of the community. I don’t have a specific solution yet to my problem of sustaining a healthy community, but I can do formative research to define what that really means.
The best way to approach this problem would be to focus in on one specific neighborhood or community, and what would be better than my own? There is a wealth of information in the residents and long-term local business owners of this area. The tactics of ethnographic research and marketing research would give me valuable information to inform my design decisions.
1. Visual Anthropology – I would spend a significant amount of time speaking with and photographing people in the community – being with people in real time. 2. Observational Research – focus in on the particular neighborhood, tracking popular and off-the-beaten-track traveling routes through the community. 3. Survey/Questionnaire – both of these would be useful research tactics. There are older residents in my building that have lived here for 30 years that would provide great information on what the community needs are. Also, the flower shop owner on 13th street, the Irving Place painter who sits every day and paints the landscape, the Gramercy Park animal hospital vets, and the owner of the local coffee shop are all sources of community information.
I could ask questions like: What have you done in the past to connect with people in your neighborhood? What do you feel is the most valuable part of your community? To improve this community, what do you think would have the most impact? How would you map your neighborhood? What points would you describe on a map and why are they interesting to you? How would you visually represent your community as a symbol, flag or otherwise? How do you feel visitors view your community? How would you prefer to have your community experienced by visitors? What is something interesting about this community that you wouldn’t know unless you lived here for many years?
“Innovators, by definition, are the ones who get up and dust themselves off when they have fallen on their face.”
Krishna, a plastics engineer, has invented a way to close the loop in plastics manufacturing, so people can maintain the same level of consumption but plastic does not end up in the landfill. Also, the cinematography makes the manufacturing plant look beautiful by focusing in on the details.
I’m at a point in my thesis research development in which there are so many ideas bouncing around in my head that I’m having trouble narrowing down to a specific direction for primary research. In terms of secondary research, the sources I have range from visual intelligence, resource sharing systems, sustainable cities, community building and place marketing.
My idea is that through love for banal everyday occurrences, objects and situations, we slow down enough to appreciate our city and experience our place in a new way. Through this new perspective we will build stronger communities by creating valuable programs and services. Why build community? As an antidote to the isolation of globalization, to reduce consumption and share information.
‘Walk’, project by Constantin Demner of Studio Elastik An intervention in public space in East London, UK, using the language of street art to bring local history to life in the imagination of passers-by.
This project captured my imagination because of my interest in street art as a portal to the essence of a city, and representation of the more subversive side of it’s population. Street artists, however, are not community-builders – they are vandals at worst, and political activists at best. Projects like Walk balance between those two sides and unite them to deliver a strong message about how we view our surroundings, and offer a suggestion on how to explore different ways of seeing. Demner’s focus on local history is a great example of creating a connection to the community, something that residents would find valuable. I think there could be a lot more information in the signage for this project in order to get the most value out of it, but it definitely makes a statement on seeing the city in a new way. I especially like the part when the music stops and we take a look at the historic building across the street for a few seconds – that is a beautiful observational moment.
This concept does not address the ‘how’ of building community however. There must be programs and services put into place to add value to our neighborhoods. Things have changed so much since my parents generation. They grew up in 1950’s-60’s Bronx neighborhoods, which I picture as the idyllic example of community. You knew your everything about your neighbors, and when you had to run out to the store you asked them to keep an eye on your kids playing stick-ball in the street. My great-grandmother was a real estate maven – she owned 6 or 7 buildings and rented out the apartments, while my great-grandfather had a beautiful garden in the backyard of their house, with overflowing tomato plants and even chickens!
I grew up in Connecticut on an isolated street that was nothing close to being a neighborhood. If we needed something, we got in the car and drove to the store – we rarely spoke to the neighbors much less ask them for a cup of sugar. I used to envy the kids that could run across their yard and get their friend from next-door for a playdate, since my mom had to call and make arrangements well in advance.
Society is moving closer and closer to internet dependence, and there are many opinions on the effect of this on our social interactions. Does it make us more or less isolated to be plugged in to ‘social software’ like Facebook, Ning, and Foursquare 24 hours a day? I don’t know the answer to this, I can only give my opinion which is that there is NO WAY a computer screen will ever replace being with a person in real time. Then again it’s possible that an online community can strengthen connections between people because they know each other well enough to say hello. John Thackara writes at length about this – most recently on Change Observer.
The transition toward sustainability is not about messages; it’s about activity. It’s not about proclamations; it’s about practices. Many professional designers are in the representation business, so their default response in recent times has been to design a poster about sustainability. Or maybe a website filled with green things to buy.
But projecting more signals into an already cluttered environment is like throwing confetti into a snowstorm. Advertising folk respond to what they call “the clutter problem” by adding to it. Social media? They’re part of the clutter conundrum too. Online communications are a mode of publication, not of conversation. The number of bloggers is growing at 35 percent annually; the number of people using the internet is growing at 10 percent. Do the math!
Emitting messages, however clever and evocative they may be, is not the same as being with real people, in real places, who are changing their lived material reality. That’s why I have a radical proposal: Consider speaking your words in a place rather than pressing “send.” Ivan Illich believed that our culture started to go off the rails in 1120, when monks stopped reading texts aloud to each other and became solitary scholars.
Are social media playing a similar role today? For Illich, there was a huge difference between a colloquial tongue — what people say to each other in a context, with meaning — and a language uttered by people into microphones. Or typed onto a Facebook page.
When someone we trust tells us to our face that a thing is important, we pay attention. Conversation is usually a more powerful medium for provoking change in behavior than pre-packaged messages projected at us by media. Conversation matters more than content. Out there in the bioregions, and especially among folk like the Transition Towns groups, face-to-face is key.
There’s continuity here between today’s social radicals and the avant-garde of art in earlier times. For years, artists fought to bridge the schism in Western culture that separates the creator from the spectator. The Constructivists, Dadaists, Surrealists, Lettrists and Fluxus artists all fought in different ways against the idea that art was about the creation of beautiful, static forms.
As Guy Debord put it: “Representation separates life from experience.” The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is a process in which an active body enters into a “communion” with its surroundings. I empathize especially with the Lettrists, who invented a technique called hypergraphics, or super-writing. Their technique merged poetry as text with more graphic ways of communicating such as painting, illustration or signs. Rather as traveling storytellers have been doing in Rajasthan for 2,000 years.
I apologize for practically transcribing the entire article by John Thackara, but it is just so pertinent to the point I’m trying to make. I’m reading ‘Society of the Spectacle’ by Guy Debord, a provocative 1960’s book on cultural theory. He describes the spectacle, ‘In all its specific manifestations – news or propaganda, advertising or the actual consumption of entertainment – the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life.‘ He argues that we want what we are told to want by the governing bodies of this ‘spectacle’, which in modern times means the advertising industry and any other governing body in control of our cultural experiences (film, art, music, etc.). He also laments society having downgraded from ‘being into having’ – this successfully describes the cause of alienation in a globalized world. The one way communication of mass-media adds to our consumerist society and potential feelings of isolation and apathy.
So let’s talk about some solutions! My teacher showed me this great link to an Italian craft fair, Unconventionall Holiday Market, where they are bringing artists and designers together from around the world to create better souvenirs for the town. The creative agency Unconventionall accepted submissions from artists for a minimum of one week stay in the town and they expect over 150 artists over the course of the summer. This is a really unique way to create value in the community, and stop the manufacture of cheap knock-off not-made-here souvenirs.
I’ve also done some research into ‘Use Communities’ and I can’t believe how many there are out there! It’s a great way to limit environmental preaching (which no one really listens to) and actually do something to reduce consumption. It is related to the idea of reuse of materials, which I’ve posted about numerous times. It is the idea of providing services without requiring ownership, from car-sharing to dress rentals. There are many online resources that provide the link between individuals in a community, rather than consumers renting services from businesses. Here are a few: Neighborgoods, Rentoid, I Let You, Building Bulletins, Gogo Verde, Bright Neighbor and Barterquest. Even more sites offering product sharing include Swaptree, Techtain, Loanables, Sharer!, FreeCycle, RentAThing and Return My Pants. Shared office space sites are WorkSpace, The Hub and Aula. Thank you WorldChanging for this great list!
Borrowing from friends and strangers can help build community, and using an online network to do so can eliminate the awkwardness of knocking on someone’s door. Need I also mention that this saves money and the need for storage space? This requires a critical rethinking on what the American Dream really does to the Earth, and to really consider the side effects of our lifestyles. If we visualize the negative backstory (and future) of the products we are using, it will change our behavior, and could change our relationship with objects from one of ownership to one of use.
I think I’m conflicted. I like two distinctly different illustration styles. Maps and infographics are so easy to understand with clean digital graphics, but I love the style of rough-drawn line drawings.
Illustrations by Lamosca from Monocle Magazine
Detail of a World Map poster by Japanese illustrator Satoshi Hashimoto
Detail from one of Paula Scher’s unbelievably complex and detailed maps (one of which is hanging in Union Square Cafe I noticed a few weeks ago). Author Katharine Harmon may be someone more obsessed with maps than I am. She’s written two books: You are Here and The Map as Art (where I scanned this image from) that contain the most creative and abstract maps in gorgeous styles.
This illustrative map by Stephen Walter looks like it was a fun project – a map of the imagination.
I went to the Renegade Craft fair in Brooklyn today, and between dust storms found illustrator Claudia Pearson. One of her childrens coloring books is titled Buy Local Eat Seasonal and it contains charming illustrations of the kinds of produce you would find in season each month. I love this style – reminds me a lot of Kate Bingaman-Burt (in the image below) from her Obsessive Consumption project.
Also today I started looking into sharing between individuals in a community – a service that doesn’t require ownership of, for example a drill when you only need it for one thing and don’t want to buy an entirely new one. This concept makes so much sense and would reduce consumption and environmental impact. I think it could be represented in this illustrative style in a screen print with each object that could be shared/rented between individuals in the community and the name and price next to it. This is something I would like to explore creating. NeighborGoods is one of the sites I’ve found that facilitates this service.
More inspiring work from Claudia Pearson. It looks like she created a portrait of many faces in her community and gives a little idea of what many of them would say.
1. I picked up this Monocle magazine yesterday and fell in love with the style, layout and infographics. It reminds me a lot of Good Magazine – this style of information design is such a happy and upbeat way to represent statistics. The clean lines and simple shapes probably appeal to the organized side of my personality.
2. This is a take-out bag from a recent trip to Chipotle. It made me start thinking that so much more can be done with packaging and takeaway items from local businesses and restaurants. There could be more of a connection to the community – for example, a picture and story of a child from a local school and their artwork or story.
3. I was so excited to get an email with a link to David Lynch’s Interview project. His son Austin travelled around the country interviewing 121 people in their communities, which results in a soulful look into the essence of America. The focus is on the individuals and their stories, and the interviews are structured in a way that they are able to really speak their minds. It is a beautiful character study – of the people and of our country as a whole. This is an image from the article in Big Picture magazine that I grabbed from the blog of Julie Pepin – the still photographer for the project.
4. Observation Journal Part 3 I’m beginning to understand more what I’m trying to find with my observation journal. I’m very interested in way-finding systems and methods – maps, symbols and images that help people move around in the least confusing way possible. Or I also just like when they’re for decoration too.
How gorgeous are those radishes? I couldn’t eat them because they had bacon on them but Dean said they were really good.
I took the photos in the subway because I thought it was so interesting that there’s this cold and unfriendly sign called ‘Neighborhood Institutions’ – they list AIGA on there because it’s the 23rd street stop. Needless to say, this system could be improved to make people feel more welcomed into the neighborhood. Also the posters tacked on the wall contain line changes due to service and construction but there are a few that could be used for community programs and events! What a great place to introduce people to the neighborhood and give them ideas on where to go.
