A psychological interlude

As my mind was racing last night after a whirlwind Christmas holiday, I decided to glance through my notes from the beginning of my thesis journey. Besides getting even more confused about what I want to do, I may have stumbled upon the overall meaning of my work.

I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut on a standard parcel of land somewhere in the backcountry. We barely interacted with our neighbors, and my parents seemed quite content about that (they grew up in the bustling neighborhoods of the Bronx, so maybe the peace and quiet was ideal for them). On my road there wasn't a community in the sense that people waved to each other and chatted about their kids, borrowed cups of sugar, or planned holiday get-togethers. I didn't have a group of neighborhood kids that I could run outside and play with anytime. My brother and sister are ten and twelve years older than me, and they were off to college by the time I was eight. I grew up feeling like an only child, and even though I had a lot of friends from school, time for play dates had to be well-planned.

Greenwich is a beautiful town, but once I moved to the city when I was twenty-one, I realized how much character the streets, buildings and neighborhoods could have. Since New York is a very pedestrian city, I was constantly impressed by the street art found on the walls of old buildings, and hidden doorways and various nooks and crannies found in the older settlements. Greenwich, like most suburbs, consists of long main roads and shorter side roads, and you need to take the car to get anything done. While the town has a character of its own and I lived there for twenty-one years, it's not something I grew a strong attachment to.

Both of my parents passed away by the time I was twenty-one years old, and settling in the city was a way to grow roots somewhere. The city became a constant character in my life, and I've grown an attachment to it that I can't fully explain. Thus my intention with thesis work is to tell a better story about what I love about New York City, and to offer alternate ways to experience it. My attachment to the city's landscape and character has also activated a fear - the fear of losing anything that makes New York what it is, whether it's the authenticity, energy, or diversity.

The conclusion I finally come to after all of this thesis stuff is finished will have nothing to do with preserving the way things are, or nostalgia for the way things were. New York City is constantly being transformed - rebuilt and recreated by its people. That may be the thing I love the most, and the thing that makes New York City what it is today.

SOME THINGS THAT MY THESIS IS NOT ABOUT:
While corporations with out-of-place branding is deplorable in historic neighborhoods, that is not something I want or need to tackle. I feel that corporations like McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts should have flexible branding strategies for their retail outlets, in order to connect with the community and enhance the beauty of the built environment, but this is something that needs to happen at the top levels of management. Many neighborhoods welcome chain stores because of the economic contribution, or convenience of easily grabbing a latte, gadget, or cheap shoes. Only a few community boards will completely block chain stores from opening in their neighborhoods, and some will place strong restrictions on signage to maintain visual integration.

The greater issue is the lack of historical and contextual awareness of retail stores, but costs would skyrocket if research and attention to context were required for every outpost. The responsibility is with the corporation to make a meaningful contribution to the community they enter, and many already have policies for employee volunteerism and grant programs. In this new age of social responsibility, maybe every globalized behemoth will make an effort to integrate visually and also with their community. In fact, it may even bring in a new customer base.

Also, I'm not trying to place meaning where there is none. Branding is a giant industry that tries to create beauty from the banal; to create meaningful experiences from trivial ones. I'm not interested in making the everyday beautiful, just to understand that the quotidian is enough. I'd like to uncover the truth in what is already there, and find my own meaning in the city I'm surrounded by every day. Maybe once I find truths hidden in the cracks and shadows of New York City, they can be applied to other cities around the globe.

So there you have it - a quick psychological interlude. Also it's my personal context that helps explain where I'm coming from and the color of glass that I'm peering through.

Community Building

In the Spring semester I was awarded a Pratt Fellowship to work on community building activities with the Communications Committee, the Grad ComD student group. Camille McMorrow and I decided the best way to create community was to introduce skill-sharing workshops where people could also recycle all of their discarded prints to create beautiful art. The first workshop was a bookmaking event, and for the second one we did collage. We also threw in some great finds from Materials for the Arts, which I was actually interviewed for by PBS! In the video below my interview is around the 1:45 mark. It is such a fabulous organization because it provides art materials to schools and community groups absolutely free of charge. The only thing you need to do is write thank you notes, which admittedly was a big pain. Still, an amazing place.

Watch the full episode. See more SundayArts.

These are the collages I made to promote the Save Your Scraps collage event. Sasakisan is a huge inspiration.

I'm taking a studio painting course on the Brooklyn campus right now, and my professor doesn't seem to like collage all that much. I guess the argument is that artists can hide behind collage, instead of showing their full selves with brush strokes. Ok, point taken. I still love collage as a legitimate medium, especially as a graphic designer who works with paper every day!

Community involvement is key to combat the loss of public spaces from branding and the loss of culture from globalization. I wonder if my thesis could explore the creation of an online blog template for communities to transmit real-time updates. This would of course include a large map of the area for organization on where events and meet-ups are taking place. I'm beginning to think that anything can be made into a map of some sort. I'm starting to have some interesting paintings that I will post soon, on the subject of abstract mapping.

Presentation from our last Directed Research class

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

Still expanding the possibilities

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.

Some Ramblings on Community

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.

Inspiration from this weekend/Observation Journal Part 3

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.

Organizing my thesis-related thoughts/First Draft of Hypothesis

This thesis presents the hypothesis that we will see our surroundings in a new way and enjoy the encounter of our city through the work of designers, artists and local craftspeople. Designers can capture the essence of a community through mapping, photo essays, local branding campaigns, crafts and homemade goods. This thesis will explore the limitations of current place branding campaigns and explore how designers can better create/preserve community from the speed and consumption of globalization.

In addition to the above, the main research areas that I plan to explore (on the post-its above) are: representing the importance of place, embodied communication (conversation/story-telling), human-centered design, Guy Debord and the Situationists, derive, beauty in the mundane, experience design, John Thackara's theory of localization, and how perception affects what we see.

The design problem is the lack of connection to the communities we live in. People feel isolation and anonymity due to globalization, the lure of online resources and the absence of a neighborly spirit. The target audience are children and teens with their parents (between ages 30-55) living in urban environments.

Plans for a new neighborhood in NYC

I came across a new plan to develop the no-mans-land south of Tribeca on the real estate blog Curbed. Check out the new Greenwich South! I love the idea of designing an entire neighborhood, developing a new community, and breathing new life into an area. The plans represent a reimagining of the area, opening up the world trade center site to allow Greenwich street to run through, thus connecting the West Village and Tribeca neighborhoods to this new community. These are not finalized plans, so it's pretty funny that they designed the New Yorker cover already! I would love to see this happen if the plans aim towards creating a new location contributing to nyc culture. However, if the development plan calls for big box outlet stores and chains it wouldn't bring me down there, that's for sure.

A successful recent addition to the nyc landscape is the High Line. The High Line is a beautifully designed park floating above the western side of lower Manhattan. The streamlined form and consistency make it aesthetically pleasing and the views and location make it a huge tourist attraction. The design integrated it's original use as a train track into the current purpose, and the whole look is very organic. Benches and lounge chairs rise on angles from the long wooden tracks running through the entire park. It's incredible that the High Line was going to be torn down, and now it's a gorgeous gem bringing more people into the Meatpacking District, and revitalizing an area that was quickly becoming known as only a slick nightlife destination. Here are some pics from my summer stroll on the High Line:

This topic also reminds me of something I learned recently - that Central Park was actually DESIGNED! I had no idea, I thought that the area of the park was just sectoned off and that's what the topography of Manhattan looked like originally. Well, nooo! It was designed back in the mid-1800's when people were weary of industrialism and realized that they needed more of a connection to nature. When the grid system was created to organize the streets, this huge parcel of land was reserved for landscaping by the writer Frederick Law Olmsted and the architect Calvert Vaux. They created the natural-looking ponds and lakes, hills and paths as an peaceful escape from urban life. When they dug up enormous rocks they piled them up and created the many rolling hills dotting the landscape. Well done! I would have never known... Hopefully future landscape designers and urban planners can use Central Park and the High Line as examples of maintaining the elements of the past and natural landscape to create organic design.