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NATASHA SHARMA Art in Transit 2.0 PROJECT FACULTY Amitabh Kumar, Arzu Mistry, Abhiyan Humane, Shivani Sheshadri, Aastha Chauhan B. DES Industrial Art and Design Practice (IADP), 2012-2016 SRISHTI INSTITUTE OF ART, DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
Contents
Art In Transit 2.0 project is part of a two-year partnership with the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) and is supported by the Bangalore - San Francisco Sister City Initiative. It aims at creating interventions to transforms metro stations into cultural hubs. Started as pilot project in Peenya Metro Station, it has now moved to other metro stations including the current project destination, Vidhana Soudha and Cubbon Park underground Metro Station. These spaces of transience, the metro, within this metropolis, is a semi-public space that offers opportunities for congregation and social networks. Where a diversity of people come together with a common purpose of getting from one point to another. This collective is interested in a transdisciplinary framework that engages through art and design practices with the ‘metro’ as a symbol of a changing city. OVERVIEW
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/ PREVIOUS WORK
Co-worked on backdrop projections for a theatre performance called ‘Komagate Maru’ staged in Canada / 2013
Scissors made out of bamboo , a tool efficient for the kids to handle as well / 2014 Painting spatualas made out of bamboo as a substitute to the existing metal and plastic spatulas / 2014
Co-worked on shoe packaging that could scrunchdown to a flat pack and be pulled up to be a bag for the shoes, made out of paper / 2014
/ PREVIOUS WORK
An animation teaser for Yes yes, why not? for the launch of its online store / 2013
Water Hyacinth Tea sticks, a packaging of tea that is a product in itself / 2013
Alexander Calder inspired window display for Hermes, Mumbai under architect Rooshad Shroof / 2015
A transforming stool for compact spaces that can open up into a table or a chair as well / 2014
Having come from an eclectic range of interests, in the recent past I have narrowed my explorations and practice specifically under a tactile dimension that includes product, furniture & object making. My work tends to bend towards themes such as interactivity & play, material research and development, social experiments & story telling. As an Industrial Art and Design practitioner, it provides me a platform to intervene in a space outside of the institution and offers me an interface to understand my potential in a professional realm. It gives me the opportunity to intervene in a public space. The dyanamic approach allows space for one to interrupt, interject, connect, juxtapose, narrate, communicate, obscure, contradict, incite, question, play in the space for public. It does not limit my outcome to a product or an artefact but allows me to pursue subjects that engage with the city as a model of form and function. Function that is social, historical, political, cultural, economic or temporal and form that is reflective, perceptive, explorative. WHY AIT?
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What will be my agency as an artist in a space that is solely for public? What is the role of public with respect to site and vice versa? What am I aiming to activate and why?
As a part of Art In Transit 1.0 in Peenya metro station, my process and outcome both followed the theme of interactivity and play through study of material and form. By tracing the most common path commuters take to walk up and down the the main stairway, and by placing mirrors on the vertical surfaces of the steps, commuters walking down the stairs unwittingly follow this pathway of mirrors while those walking up the stairs get to witness this subtle reflection of their own in a public space. It was derived from M.C. Esher’s work ‘Relativity’ with the effect of people walking in a loop, metaphorically expressing monotony that Peenya as a place held. The reflective nature of the site, within its interiors reciproacted to the use of mirror as a material. A site specific installation, its main function on site was that of scale, impact and perception. Components that were kept in mind were to create interventions that are relevant to Peenya as a site, works that aim at uniting the other artworks in their particular themes of curiosity, movement and pause, deriving and modifying ideas that came from the research at Vidhana Soudha and adapting them to Peenya metro station according to the recognised ART IN TRANSIT 1.0 commonalities
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FRAMEWORK ART IN TRASNIT 2.0
What does the city of Bangalore aspire to be? The metro has emerged as a symbol of this transient city and Bangalore’s identity jostles between nostalgia and future aspiration, becoming a collection of various tensions. This projects offers the opportunity to explore the various layers of Bangalore’s transient identity, Through this project we will collect, explore and investigate if the metro can become the
THE CITY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
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connective tissue between the past, present and the future of the city.
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The ‘transitional’ nature is a constant for any city. This nature of society alters our interaction with the physical, social and cultural world we inhabit. This frame provides a platform to explore city and human journey through all these facets, both in terms of experience of transit in terms of the metro and experiencing the city in trasnit in its journey itself.
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The “metro” has become a default commons, giving us the opportunity to rethink the idea of the commons in the city today. A semi-public space, albeit paid and monitored, the experience of the daily travel offers nodes of collective gathering and brief pause allowing the opportunity to connect with other travelers before embarking on a journey. Can the transit terminal become the new neighbourhood park? Can an experience in one metro resonate with experiences in other metros around the world connecting collective and diverse experiences?
EXPERIENCE OF TRANSIT
TRANSIT AS A SOCIAL NETWORK
PROCESS
Partially using the framework of City: Past, Present and Future & Experience of transit, I was interested in understanding how the metro is symbolic of a trasience city and how these public spaces become monumental to what a city experiences. How do we know ? What do we know? Ways in which we approached it were: 1. Personal (Experience, embodiment) 2. Outside of me (Research through readings, films, archives, case studies, news). 3. Interviews and talks ( Perspective and people)
...the protagonist of an urban project is public space, the place where the collective reality of the city is produced. The city is essentially its public spaces and serves as urban material capable of providing a response to various social, aesthetic and collective needs. Beyond public spaces, shared spaces in a contemprory city Giulia Setti | Article
MAPPING
Initially, I started to look at the site, from my own personal lens, bent towards what I see & what I feel vs what I know. (experiential vs factual). I set a rule for myself, to understand the site through its visual experience only. As the metro was stilll under contruction, we accessed the areas around it to map. I was allotted the site around Queen Victoria statue at Cubbon park.
VISUAL DAILOGUE
After mapping the exterior and neighbouring sites around the underground metro stations, I kept my inquiry close to Cubbon park metro station. I looked at the elements that were repeating itself at the site trying to understand and making up the aesthetics of the site.
Stalls Bins Fences Garbage Metro
What do these objects tell us? What is its relevance with respect to site? How much does a public space tell us about a city?
Fence as an object As the sun was over our head, the play of shadows along of the footpath was engaging. I noticed the fencing of the park, it did not only function as a barricade between the park and the road but even its aesthetics of craved leaves on it extended crisp shadows on the footpath, communicating the nature of the space. This morphing between the nature of the space and the design around it brought about questions in my mind. The fence was symbolic of what it held inside it, the park. As I walked further, the aesthetics of the fence changed as per the site, the insides of cubbon park had straight line, the fences near the Victoria statue was 3 feet tall and locked, and the fences near Vidhan Soudha was indicative of power and strength. The fence held both the inside and the outside space through its aesthetics.
What is the meaning behind fences? What does a boundary do to a public space? What are fences symbolic of?
Bin as an object Apart from the where the vendors were located; the entire Queens road had no dustbin at all. A patch of land between the barricade of the park and the footpath was where the garbage was swept away and kept. It made the footpath look clean and the park look clean but there was this entire area between them that was line up with waste. Aesthetic of the park was kept in mind; aesthetic of the road was kept in mind but the problem of garbage as a form remained as it is. When I entered the park, the situation was quite similar. Although there are more than 70 bins installed in cubbon park, you would see waste hidden in the corners around cubbon park, or make a radius around the bin. This philosophy of ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ that we share with our waste was something that came to surface and bins acted as artefacts of that behaviour. Is the aim of the city’s inhabitants to only see clean? I started to think how bins functions as that aesthetic that hides or make garbage almost invisible turning a blind eye to the problem as an whole.
What role does a bin play in a public space? What is its aesthetic value in public space? What is it indicative of?
Stalls as an object Further I started studying the street vendors around the same site. There was a difference in the sense of aesthetics amongst the street vendors around the park as opposed to the one near HAL aircraft monument. The economy/business running there was that of perfect competition, fruit vendors were surviving with other fruit vendors on the same footpath. So I started to think what makes each stall different from the other? I began to realize the differences in the aesthetic sense of each stall along with the service that they provided. For example, the stalls selling fruits near the HAL side take their stalls back home after 6pm and bring it back every morning, where as the stalls near the government aquarium could get locked over night and start functioning again tomorrow. The stalls near the HAL were basic, where as the stall near the aquarium were fancy and colorful, more attractive. On that same footpath there were stalls, which had water, but only one stall served cold water, and tetra pack juices. The dustbins were also better looking. One stall had styrofoam bowls and the other had leaf bowls. I think that was one of the reasons why they were allowed to stay on the periphery of the park.
How does the space around us alter our actions? How integral our these stalls to cubbon park?
Metro as an object Our Metropolis by Gautham Soni and Usha Rao| Film What does it take to make Bangalore a world-class metropolis? This short documentary made on Bangalore chronologically covers four years of Bangalore’s journey while the Mahatma Gandhi metro station was being built. It comprises of a range of people- old bangloreans, the street vendors/cleaner, the people living in the slums on one side vs the state actors. What I infered was how this renowation the city went through led to replacement and displacement leaving the city heavily impacted. The shade of the canopy is now replaced by an over head metro line, the shadow of trees have now been replaced by shadows of pillars. The identity of the city tends to hold conflict between the present of the city and what the city aspires to be, the Singapore of India and metro acts as an evidence to it.
Ekta Mittal Founder of Maara, a media and arts collective | Interview “I am against the metro, I don’t use the metro” Ekta Mittal has lived in Bangalore all her life and her active practice is to deal with public spaces in the form of arts. Her personal and nostalgic opinions about what the metro has done to the city opened up subjects of how this new geometry layed on map of Bangalore has impacted the city. After this conversation, the subject of inquiry which is the metro became an object, an aesthetic, that brought about different new subjects. It didnt remain an object of transit but that of aspiration,public, future, developement and also an object of identity
How does change in aesthetics impact a space? What does ‘aesthetic’ mean in a public space? What are its functions?
PROPOSAL INTRODUCTION Peenya metro station, Cubbon Park and Vidhana Soudha metro are quite contrasting as sites not only in terms of construction but in terms of the situation that surrounds them as well. In my previous project my intervention was site specific and looked at mapping people’s traffic and their movement within the station. Art in Transit 2.0 serves as a clean slate as the underground sites allow me to look beyond the potential of the site through what is around the site. My research began with the curiosity of knowing the east, west, and north and south of the site within one kilometre radius. I started to study how the area around my site has the potential to tell more about the city and the metro socially/politically/culturally.
CONTEXT The identity of this site tends to holds the conflict of reality versus global aspirations of this city. What is central in such modernist planning is the severe restriction on emerging mechanisms of political representation. Its notion of aesthetics in the large-scale conceptual moves, homogenized into the composition of the wider field – where cities were framed as compositions to be viewed up from a high mountain top vantage point, if not an airplane or, even, outer space. The metro laid one such geometry on the map of Bangalore itself. It symbolically gives Bangalore a reason to be called a ‘metropolitan’ city. Each of these places that create the aesthetics of the city, such as Cubbon Park or Vidhana Soudha, reflects more than just the form of it but deconstructs what the city is versus what the city wants to be. My study goes around how these spaces and the intricacy of what makes these spaces structurally like the street stalls or the fences of the park, the garbage, road and even the metro line, reflect and represent its identity. (Refer to previous pages for the study)
RESEARCH QUESTIONS As a part of Art in transit, how can I critique aesthetics in what we are trying to do as a project? How do we understand aesthetics through what we see around us? Does aesthetics just stands as an idiom, where its figurative meaning is visibly distinct from the literal meaning it holds? How much do aesthetics inform us? What can objects tell us?
DESIGN BRIEF Looking at the structures around the site (Cubbon park metro station) as ‘objects’, ‘forms’ and ‘elements’ that make up that space and understanding how it throws light on other social issues/actions apart from just the aesthetic of that space. Also understanding how these objects (fence, bins, stalls) and their placement form physical artifacts of that place reflecting the identity and functioning of that space.
METHODOLOGY As this project is process oriented I am looking at answering these specific questions through a series of experiments/installations and understand our notions about aesthetics with the objects around the site (fence, bins, stalls). As I proceed I am likely to have more questions that will emerge out of the insights which will help me follow up my next experiment.
ARTIST INSPIRATION
Cooking section Inspired by the Cavendish story, Cases of Confusion consists of three hand-luggage Wardian-type suitcases for the transnational bananization of the world. The work questions whether regulations against the smuggling of soil and seeds are really meant for environmental security or are actually driven by economic protectionism.
Michael Rakowitz paraSITE (1998), critiques and makes visible of the prevalent attitudes towards homelessness, whilst at the same time improving the material living conditions of those living on the streets. Rakowitz designed a series of inflatable shelters that plug into the vent outlets of buildings, creating a warm and dry space for their inhabitants.
Joshua Allen Harris. Created these subway sculptures, which would inflate, as the trains would pass by and then deflates to its original form. This animated aesthetic of garbage brings to light the issue of global warming and polar extinction. What inspired me was the use of already existing movements (subway trains air pressure) to create the installation. His use of garbage as a form was another aesthetic clue of the entire issue.
Thomas Hirschhorn “I want to put together what cannot be put together; I think that is the aim of collage, its my mission as an artist”In his work ‘Too too, Much much’, he intentionally composes his work with powerful anti aesthetics. His idea puts light to growing pollution and over consumption and around how the majority of the consequences of our consuming society is tossed in the bin and thought nothing more of.
Hanz Haacke ‘Information’, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, claimed to be the first conceptual art exhibition mounted by a U.S. museum. The artist Hans Haacke posited this SYSTEM as art: a query, a response algorithm, and its visual feedback. He used transparency not just as a material but as a concept itself to make it visible and influential.
Achor points Aesthetics. ‘Aesthetics’ as a framework opens up many other subjects of inquiry in a public space. My next steps as suggested was to review other ideas and thoughts about aesthetics and also formulate one of my own through the method of experiments. Also, to look at only bin and fence only as objects to experiment with and not stalls was another suggestion that came about as both these objects are enforced objects and have a similar logic, where as stalls tend to get personal.
Ways of seeing The framework of my experiments came out of the experiences around the site. I intepreted the site through objects that had other functions/intepretation than just what it stands for. Through these experiments I am trying to generate a way of seeing the site and the objects
Semantics and meaning-making Any artefact throws out an interpretive function of meaning making. For better understanding of my form, I was suggested to look at how I can intepret the objects (bin and fence) in not so obvious manner through semantics. And see how my form represents my concept for my experiments. Also studying it as a part of my paper.
Form, function, public space. To formulate the relationship between form and function and stretch the idea in a public space of what form and fucntion both can mean.
Methodology I followed a research method of understanding a subject through personal experience, outside of me (books, articles) and feedback (experiements and conversation) that overall allow me to get stronger insights about my thesis.
Process-oriented Each of my experiments, insights and thoughts through feedback would reciprocate my previous questions and also open up new ones, thus leading to an open-ended process of idea generation around the topic aesthetics that could take a theoretical form by the end of the project
PROJECT STATEMENT Situated in the heart of the city, this new semi public space that we are working in is surrounded by the green lung, Cubbon park which played a great role for the city to be identified as “The Garden City.’’ Neighbouring site, the metro symbolically gives Bangalore a reason to be called a ‘Metropolitan’ city. Each of these public places create the aesthetics of the city. The aesthetics then becomes an artefact of the city reflecting what the city is versus what the city wants to be. Thus, the public spaces act as the protagonist of an urban project, the place where the collective reality of the city is produced. It serves as urban material capable of providing a response to various social, aesthetic and collective needs. My thesis project is to understand the sense of aesthetic and see how Cubbon park and the intricacy of what makes the park like the street stalls or the fences of the park, the bins and even the neighbouring metro line, reflects and represent city’s identity. Calling them objects of aesthetics, my process would try and explore how these objects are symptoms or physical artefacts of social issues and changes. The outcome is process oriented and will be a series of experiements (around two objects i.e. the fence and the bin) that would help me grow my research and inculcate into a textual/ theoretical form that gives ways of seeing the site through its aesthetics and objects.
Thesis research questions: What does aesthetic mean in a public space? What are it functions? What does it inform us? What is ones relationship to it?
CURATORIAL FRAMEWORK
AESTHETICS AND ASPIRATION Project falling under this category will be research intensive process that will be responding to the complex urban location of the site. The relationship between the intervention and the city is pronounced both in form and concept
PARTICIPATORY NETWORK
THE CITY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
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EXPERIENCE OF TRANSIT
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TRANSIT AS A SOCIAL NETWORK
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These would be projects that are accessing the city through its various systems. It is anchored around ideas of community and participation, and is aimed at accessing the nature of place in an urban space.
THE TRAVELLER We try and engage with the idea of transience and figure of the traveller. How can we evoke our unique urban situation through ideas of transit? How does the city change when we look at it as a constantly moving city- the landscapes of which are constantly shifting to a song of its own. Who then is the traveller. and what is the journey that is being travelled?
THE OTHERLAND Using the various ideas activated by the ‘underground’- we set forth to re imagine the site through a series of whimsies, fantasies and other stories.
Where does my project fit? Every aesthetic embeds a certain aspiration. The projects under these theme would look at how the city acts as an artefact to it. As my project was keenly looking at understanding aesthetics of a site and what it holds and how it indicates to more than what we see. Aesthetics and aspirations gives me a clear framework to curate my project. It also gives me the freedom of temproray interventions and experiments that will help me generate thoughts around the topic of aesthetic and aspiration itself.
Key points: Reality check, Revisualising the city, alternate ways of percieving aesthetics of the city, Value judgements associated with aesthetics
LITERATURE
Aesthetics is derived from a greek word aesthesis, meaning, ‘pertaining to..things that are perceptible by the sense. It refers to things that are material.
The Intergral Nature of things by Lata Mani | Book
...“aesthetics” of public space as a “landscape in which the propertied classes express ‘possession’ of the land, and their control over the social relations within it.” In this sense, we begin to perceive the reflexive, ideological nature of space and the manner in which space simultaneously is: (i) a reflection of social processes, (ii) the location of their occurrence, and (iii) a primary factor in the production of such relations as well
Street people and contested realm of public space by Randall Amster | Book
What is central in such modernist planning is the severe restriction on emerging mechanisms of political representation. Its notion of aesthetics was in the large-scale conceptual moves, homogenized into the composition of the wider field – where cities were framed as compositions to be viewed up from a high mountain top vantage point, if not an airplane or, even, outer space. Therefore,the city aesthetics cannot just be thought of as an artistic creation of ‘the beautiful city’ but rather imagined as significant political aspects in the way the term aesthetics is mobilized.
The ‘aesthetics’of a ground up city by Solomon Benjamin | Article
CURATORIAL MAPS
As per our project each of us has to choose sites in and around the metro that speaks for our form. We also had to curate our own curatorial frame around the site. This process was elaborate as we started looking at how our projects speaks to other projects under our theme and how can we locate it around the site. According to our projects, we divided our self into two sub-themes: URBAN SITUATION Project: Karman Nanda, Roshan Shakeel and Natasha Sharma Location: Above ground and station entries ECOLOGY Project: Abishek Daniel, Mrudula Panda and Anwesha Chakroborthy Location: At the heart of the station
My project was mainly revolving around the objects of cubbon park, the site neighbouring both the metro stations. I choose to conduct my social experiments in Cubbon park as it directly spoke of my context.
Experiment 1.0 Bin as an object of aesthetic on site Form: Transparent Dustbin Critiquing the aesthetic of a dustbin by making the trash visible. Using transparency as a design principle to showcase it. Further recording the usage of this bin in a public space. Aesthetic function of bin in a public space: Body of public Passive Aesthetic Out of sight, out of mind philosophy Making waste invisible Artefact of a clean space Questions: What will the replacement of aesthetic view activate? What will happen if the bin no longer acts as an artefact of hidding garbage?
PROCESS
FORM
To come up with a form, I mapped different kinds of dustbins already existing in the site. Some were aluminium boxes with illustrated leaves saying ‘Use me please’, while some were chopped tree trunks that one could miss out as a bin. I wondered what it signfied and what kind of meaning one could make out of it. While some had Kannada text printed on it. That object could mean anything to a person who does not know the language, and it looked very authorative as well. I wondered if that was a complaint box initially. All these bins were installed by the horticulture department. Any bin kept outside the park is not their responsibilty but comes under the BBMP area. On the otherhand, the metro had branded privatised bin of conical shape often repeating itself with different brands at every stop of the metro. For my form, I remained close to the conical form of the bins in metro and with a visual signage on it. As my idea was to make garbage visible I worked with the simplest form to conduct the experiment.
VISUALISATION
MATERIAL OPTION
Material option: Acrylic/ Polycarbonate/Polystrene Process option: Bending / Laser cutting
DRAWING
For lazer cutting
For bending
MAKING
SITE
*Used Acrylic and the process of bending for making the bin as it was more cost effective.
* I placed the bin opposite an opaque bin close to the entry/exit of the park near the Government aquarium.
Special thanks to Vishweshwaraya art and science museum for letting me use their workshop.
VISUAL DIALOGUE
“its inspiring, shows people actually do use the bin“
“I won’t spit in it, the dustbin should look clean“
“People will be more cautious of what they throw“ “Its like a solution, we will keep it clean now that we see it”
“The aesthetic beauty of the park goes”
“The city is just like a transparent dustbin”
“I wont use this bin, I dont want people to see what I throw or consume“
“its modern“
“You pay more attention now about your action“ “I won’t use this bin, I do not want people to know what I have consumed“
INSIGHTS
With this experiment, what came to surface was the relationship between ‘aesthetic’ and ‘code of conduct’. And how change in the way things look creates changes in the way we interact with them. Transaparency reveals how things look like, it gives a straight forward represenation of activity of what it is and what it holds. The transaparent bin changed the bin into an active aesthetic of the park. People stood there looking at the things that were thrown, the more it got filled people felt responsible for throwing it in the right place. To me it become an artefact of behavior, as people to responded to it and gave it thought. What I also realised was the impact of placement. As I had placed it opposite an opaque regularly used bin, the emphasis on the transaprent was more and it created a confusion that led to a thought of where should one throw and why? The out of sight out of mind philosophy was changed, and it came out like a design solution. As peole could see what was thrown in it and how it looked most people threw only dry waste in it, spitting was thoroughly avoided. People could make meaning out of it as the form spoke for its function. It held a directly responsibilty within people to use the bin. Product semiotics was another stem that came out of it. A social and a visual dailogue was created with this object of utilitarian
Experiment 2.0 Bin as an object of aesthetic on site Form: Blackboard bins After my first intervention, the next emphasised on how people conduct themselves around the bin. Taking forward the idea of a visual and social dailogue that the bin created, I thought of how can I make that dailogue visible. How can the bin be inviting? how does bin become more than what it is viewed as? How does this object open up opportunities for these social activities? Will this look like an act of public vandalism or will it be a canvas of thoughts in public places? Will people even write on a bin? How friendly/approachable/ accessible will the bin become through its aesthetic? I collaborated with Design Uru, a festival that was happening in Bangalore from the 2nd to the 10th of April, 2016 to conduct this experiment.
MAKING
SITE
Material options for blackboard surface: MDF + blackboard paint Black sunboard (low cost and effective) Acrylic + blackboard paint
* I placed 2 bins at the MG Road Boulevard
INSIGHTS
It came by surprise how people did not hesitate to to ‘throw their thoughts’ while throwing their waste. The fact that the waste was seen and so were the drawings and the scribbles, the aesthetic of the bin became very reflective of that space and the public. It became a personal impression in a public space which is no different from the relation we share with our waste. People drew in the inside surface of the sun board as well. The quality of repulsion a bin certainly holds was taken away and people instead started throwing flowers too with the garbage so that it looks accessible. In some ways, throwing the garbage made you feel of the contribution you made to the bin and inturn to the city. Bin becomes an interactive object, less authoritative, more personal and you do not feel hesistant to feel connected to it. This takes me to what Lata Mani says “If we could but open to the truth that trash is simply matter in motion and as such, shares the essential quality of all matter in changing form, shape and function, we would be able to honour the waste we produce as well as those who tend to it.”
Experiment 3.0 Fence as an object of aesthetic on site Form: Lines The experiment I conducted around the idea of fence and boundary in a public space was to test and understand Questions: What does a boundary do to a place? What are its aesthetics? What are its semantics? (Form related) and with aesthetics how does one conduct oneself in that space?
SITE
PROCESS
To test out the idea of what boundary does, I located dense picnic spots in Cubbon park and created a boundary around it with chalk powder. People gather in circles, sit facing each other under a shaded tree. Deriving from all the points that make people choose their spots, I made 6 feet circular lines creating confined spots. You are only invited to it as you come close to the spot. The choice of accessibility is given to the public.Â
DAY 1
Problems: The circles were small and scarce. Documentation techniques were to be thought out. Next steps: Make the form less confined to a circle and more organic and dense and see if it contradicts what I got from the first experiment. Also, see ways of documenting it well.
INSIGHTS
DAY 1
DAY 2
The circular boundaries become enforced spot juxtaposing the comfort that lies in an open space. It was too tight and confined. Though it visually did not block the view of park for anyone who was sitting, as a space it affected movement and comfort. A hand drawn line was perceived as a space held by another body, thus the sense of belongingness was taken away. It acted as reserved spaces. It denied certain experiences of postures, number of people, making it an uninviting space. People felt more secured, less conscious when they choose the spot themselves. The space looked no different from what was inside the drawn circle and outside the drawn circle, but just the presence of a line around a space evoked a feeling of being control. And control in both ways for the person who is accessing it and the one who is not. For example the couples, felt more secured and private in that space, and felt like they own that spot. For groups with 2 or more people felt the space wasn’t meant for them the size, the closeness, the freedom was in someway taken away. The function of ‘meaning-making’ an aesthetic can hold comes from where its situated and how that alters what we think it is. And in a public space like Cubbon park, where there are spaces within space, fenced within fences, a line can act as a illustration of control.
Although the first stage of experiment generated some inferences and thoughts, it still gave people the freedom of space as the area I chose was wide. The circle was too confined and people don’t always sit in circles but stretch out and locate themeselves differently within the same space. After the feedback, I tried and made more organic boundaries, boundaries that were dotted line, boundaries that allowed an entry point, etc. I also choose a micro green site within cubbon park where people sit. I created six to seven spaces with chalk powder in a space that can maximun hold nine families. The results were not as contrasting. Infact, it become more evident in a smaller space of how people conducted themselves and spent time in locating a spot outside the boundary. It became this activity of finding a space outside the boundary within this larger fenced space. As it got denser by peak time and most of the spots outside of the boundary were already occupied, people started to break the boundaries, and have a space outside and inside of it partially, making a boundary of their own. There was one family that occupied one of the spaces I had put and as I intervened, they said that they felt like this was their space in this park because of this boundary, and that they belong here.
TO BE CONTINUED