Over the last few weeks I have become very interested in the whole concept of cognitive mapping, my environment, my everyday, everything that surrounds it, my space, my private space ( my own thoughts ) my public space ( my walking down street with my own thoughts ) how do these states influence each other?!
David in one of his discussions said that 'we all have our own perceptions of our city'. I was intrigued by this comment as I had never really thought about this and found this whole notion very engaging, instantly finding myself looking at my environment differently.
We perceive our world using mental maps. Cognitive maps are/ have been used to identify geographic areas of a community that people like, dislike, frequently visit, feel are important, travel through regularly, feel safe, and so on. I decided to create a map of my own, printing off a small map of limerick city and creating a graphic map of my walkings at the end of each day. I wanted my journeys to take an abstract form as did in Kevin Lynch's; The image of a city. Lynch gives us an account of research carried out in three cities Boston, Los Angeles and Jersey. He shows how urban environments can be read through human behavior and perceptions, and how they coincide. He pinpointed the legibility of an urban environment as been based on five elements; Paths, edges, landmarks, nodes and districts.
“Every citizen has had long associations with some part of the city, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings.” Kevin Lynch.
I wanted to visualize 'my everyday' and see weather I would fall upon these five elements. ( Lefebvre in Production of Space: sees 'the humble existence of everyday life has two sides': the arbitrariness of the particular and the essence of the social) Lynch states that human behaviour provides for routine and that this was evident in the daily observation of a city. Would I fall into this category? What would this present on a two dimensional surface?
Would my everyday and mundane routes led me to new paths?? How would I express this?
The first response to the urban city is a visual response.
The first response to the urban city is a visual response.
In the Image of the City: Lynch focuses on four main concepts, correlated to a wise urban planning:
- An urban system has to be held legible, through definite sensory cues
- Its image has to be perceived by the observer, arbitrarily selected by the community and finally manipulated by city planners.
- Legibility and image ability would then lead to the identification of a structure, and therefore a precise identity, which are both parameters through which it is possible to analyse an urban system and its own elements.
- Lynch reckons that there might be different relations of complexity within every structure: these consist in the relations between definite elements, which are identified in: path_landmark_edge_node_district.
'The banal, the quotidian,the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infa-ordinary,the background noise, the habitual? [...] How are we to speak of these common things, how to track them down, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they are mined, how to give them meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what it is, who we are.' - Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, 1974.
I remember a quote I once read from Debord telling us that;
''A new form of mantal illness has swept the planet: banalisation. Everyone is hyptonised by work and by comfort.''He would turn in his grave!
The maps below show days one, two and three of my daily walking journeys. Most of my journeys entailed leaving my house in cathedral place and walking to Georges Quay, sometimes id take the adventurous way home!!
"And what about the day," Jacques Derrida asks, "the rhythm of the days and nights without day or light, the dates and calendars that scan memories and memoirs? Derrida wonders how there can be a daily journal of events through the eyes of a blind person., when the visually impaired live in a world of darkness.
"And what about the day," Jacques Derrida asks, "the rhythm of the days and nights without day or light, the dates and calendars that scan memories and memoirs? Derrida wonders how there can be a daily journal of events through the eyes of a blind person., when the visually impaired live in a world of darkness.
This map shows ten days worth of journeys of my life, my abstract life, so my real life is now, and my abstract life is my that I am documenting.These maps got me thinking about my spatial environment. I think these drawings are interesting and make me want to have drawings from everyday of my life from every country I've been. How would my map look then?
Lefebvre in Everyday life in the modern world, suggests that to investigate an aspect of your 'everyday' is to 'get inside it'. How would I go about getting inside my everyday? By experiencing, living and learning? But does that mean I need to document every movement of my everyday to understand it? What if i recorded every conversation?! What if i took a photo every five minutes of my day?! What makes my journey worthy of documenting? I think I would prefer to record somebody else, record their journeys but it would involve following somebody...
I began to look at animals and the journeys they might take and if such creatures would go by the theory of cognitive mapping. I was aware that Bees use a form of cognitive mapping to source their nectar.They use landmarks associated with specific routes travelled previously to buzz around. Ants are similar in behaviour.
PATHS TAKEN BY ANTS
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around Ireland. |
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| Ants on Route |
Ants! Natures secret power- Subterranean structures.
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PATHS LEFT BY SOCIETY
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| Paint Paths left by Cars, Cyclists and Pedsetrians Look at; UrbanShit.de |
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| Ikea store. Look at; Pruned: The Labyrinth of Ikea |
NATURAL PATHS
In Lynch's model; Paths, Edges, Districts, Nodes, and Landmarks were unique elements of an urban environment.
The image above is paths I have further ventured within Limerick city.
Above shows in red traffic lights I have regularly passed or crossed while on my paths.
This got me looking at traffic stops, road signs, where traffic goes in conjunction with pedestrians. I walked around town during an afternoon and some road signs took my attention. I noticed pedestrians ignoring the crossing lights and car ignoring stop signs. I witnessed a motorist ignore a 'do not turn left sign'. The lights below are situated in O'Connell street.
On December 10, 1868, the first traffic lights were installed outside the British House of Parliament in London, by the railway engineer J.P. Knight. They resembled railway signals of the time, with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for night use. The gas lantern was turned with a lever at its base so that the appropriate light faced traffic. Unfortunately, it exploded on 2 January 1869, injuring or killing the policeman who was operating it.
How boring are traffic lights?! What if they had speakers so pedestrians could listen to music while we wait for the lights to change.
Pierre Vivant's eternal tree replaced another London plane as it was dying. Funded and produced by the Public Art Commissions Agency, the tree is eight meters tall with 75 sets of lights, and it was installed in East London in 1999. 'The Traffic Light Tree' was the winner in an international competition, and each set of lights has a cycle that is controlled by a computer.
Red has often been the color chosen when the goal was to attract attention, since red, more than any other color, heightens nervous tension in people. Green, on the other hand, has a neutral effect on human emotions, so it was natural to use it to indicate an "okay to proceed" condition. When it was decided to add a caution lamp to the traffic light, yellow was chosen because, other than white, it was the color most distinguishable from red and green. White, of course, was not desired since it could be confused with the many other white lights—such as streetlights—that might be near the traffic light.
Leitrim gets first set of traffic lights- 2003
There was some road works in Limerick city centre and I got thinking how easily we as daily road users conform to ways without questions. These road works have been there since I can remember. Footpaths closed, traffic and pedestrians being guided elsewhere to maintain to the flow of urbanism.
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| Road works on the top of William St. |
I much prefer this mode of communication ( below), its immediate and to the point. Its not lying to us! How do we handle the arbitrary nature of a sign?
The street sign below can be seen in Romania where a vast proportion of transport is horse and cart. I have seen a huge amount of horses and horses and carts in Limerick and surrounding areas. I have yet to see awareness.
What about all the cats in my estate? One cannot leave a window open in fear of a stray cat taking up home. I think a street sign would aid communication in this respect.
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| Image sourced from google images |
Drugs and Crime are rampant in Limerick and nationwide (my focus being on Limerick!!). One doesn't have to go very far to see the effects that drugs is having on our society . Drug dealings, Drug pushers, Drug takers. I'm sure we would all love to see street signs highlighting drug free zones, it would be positive if even for a short time!
google images.com
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Since I’ve started the MA in Social Practice I have become amused, no I have become perplexed than amused that when group discussions take place or just folks talking about their life or society, its negative limerick that becomes apparent or reveals itself... time and time again people reveal that they have lived or were brought up in certain areas of Limerick that are deemed socio-economically challenged. I often wonder if we were doing this course in the likes of Donnybrook in Dublin what would be the topic of conversation be then? Why do we as a nation focus on the negative and the victimized nature of our lives. We still discuss the famine like we were victims of it last week. We blame Britain for all our hardship. We hate Teri Henri because it was his fault we did not get to the world cup. When are we going to take charge and stop moaning about the broken communities and ram-shackled estates of Moyross and such the like. Instead the locals try to protect the reputation from the rest of the country. What would make my journey into limerick city amusing and positive? I like visuals and most people respond well to them. It is people like us that could actually make a difference but with attitudes like this I'm not sure how it will envelop.
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| google images |
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During the week I meet up with a friend who is deaf. When we meet up face to face we usually communicate through pen and paper because unfortunately I cannot not sign ( but through time I will learn) Sometimes we communicate through gestures. He has shown me how he senses things e.g one night we were out in a pub and I asked him how he was able to dance without been able to hear the music etc. He told me to close my eyes and put my hand on the wooden pillar in the middle of the floor. It was amazing, I had never thought of this before really and I could really feel the music. He lives life everyday with nothing holding him back and does not let the fact that he is profoundly deaf restrain him. He once said to me jokingly, ' at least I'm not blind too!'
I wonder how visually impaired people live their everyday. I cant imagine how that would be. Looking at my maps I cant imagine how I would go from here to there. I would love to blindfold myself and test it. Would the shop on the corner become a landmark. Would the wall become my node? Would my senses heighten to sound, touch and smell?? Would people living their everyday help me across the dangerous road? Would the traffic lights really benefit me?
So many questions i would like answered!!....
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I am using a system of mind mapping, I think through time that ideas and concepts will evolve. I see myself as a visual reader/learner and find it challenging to read page after page, so by pulling out words and creating a mind map I am hoping that this will help me learn and produce useful research for myself. I started this mind map a few days ago and am adding to it when I discover something or think of something that I feel is relevant to me. I have considered different types of mind maps, spider maps etc but I want to develop this one and see how it evolves organically.
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I am still mapping my everyday, they are getting interesting but they bear witness to my boring everyday. Systematic, going to, coming back from... I was questioning earlier in my blog whether I would view my journeys differently as i began to map myself, well i have in some respects. i listen more to the urban sounds, I pay more attention to why I might be stopped or inhibited from walking i.e road crossings, street lights, cars, people in my way, cars parked where they shouldn't be.
I really want to research how visually impaired people would map their city. I would love to map a visually impaired ( Blind) person for a long period. Its not that I want to focus on people with disabilities, when I was young I used to walk around my house pretending I was blind. My way of getting around my house was by counting my steps. I knew how many steps it took to go from the kitchen up to my bedroom, I knew how many steps the long hallway was. Having looked abstractly at my space, my city, I began wondering how many steps I would take from my house to college everyday. How would my experiences of my daily walk to college if I were blindfolded? What emotions would unfold?
I am hoping that one day I will wake up and walk my usual trip and blindfold myself and be unaided. I think this will give me a true representation of my space. I think this may change my perspective of my private space and my public space. I am thinking that if I were to walk into my city blindfolded then my space would ultimately become private. I cannot envisage this until I put my words into practice.
First I need to start collecting other data. A starting point is to calculate my movement (blindfolded) as I did when I was a child.
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I found a really interesting project taking place right now in Spain whereby artists are placed in gallery spaces, working alongside with visually impaired people.The artists in collaboration with the visually impaired public work in a dark space for one week while creating a mapping system. at the end of each day the dark space is light up and exhibited to the public! This is the very first 'non visual' residency.
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VOID SPACE FOR YOU TO THINK!!!
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My mapping system is building up and I have become more preoccupied with the idea of the Everyday, the daily happenings, the social, the community, the everyday street negotiations. To once again quote Henri Lefebvre; 'Everyday life is profoundly related to all activities, and encompasses them with all their differences and their conflicts.' ( The everyday Life Reader: Edited by Ben Highmore)
My everyday is challenging me into new ways of thinking and perceiving this space. I am concerning myself with culture and how I approach culture within the urban environment. I found myself walking through the streets in a derive type fashion, and naturally selecting objects and happenings that were either the everyday or not. I selected terrain that may be or become contested and judged it by appearance whether it would be everyday or not. I found lots of everyday but these are my negotiations and my outcomes and they tended to be preconceived or redesigned ideas. For me to question everyday life is to question my understanding of the world around me but I think in order for this to become reasonable I must conduct this a through a theoretical framework. As discussed above, I was discussing conformity within our social lives and taking a birds eye view it would seem that everyday life and society feeds of conformity.
Marx describes the it as 'the actuality behind the actuality'.. so the action behind the action, the thought behind the thinking, right?
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I came across this really exciting project in Los Angeles, I would like to create this project in Limerick. I think the city would benefit greatly form it!
Billboards
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