Unit1.1_Investigation

WRITTEN RESPONSE:

Live inside a box, and make it yours.

In Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Georges Perec wrote a chapter about bedrooms and memories of past ephemeral bedrooms. He questioned, “What does it mean, to live in a room? Is to live in a place to take possession of it? What does taking possession of a place mean? As from when does somewhere become truly yours?” (Perec, 1999, p24) When I first arrived in London, I spent a week quarantine in a small hotel room. The tiny size of the hotel room is like a box, and I soon become familiar with the space. After that, I moved into student accommodation, as small as the hotel room, and I spent four weeks in this new “box.” I continuously repeated the process of moving into a new space, occupied it, then left it. The experiences of possession bring out the questions about the private site and personal space.

Inspired by Georges Perec, I started my investigation by observing the spaces and common items, disassembling them to get new perspectives, and further exploring what defines a space’s occupation. By placing myself as an audience, I am able to analyze this familiar space rationally. In the chapter “The Street,” Perec starts by describing the buildings and streets, emphasizing architectural and identification systems. “The street is what separates houses from each other…In addition, the street is what enables us to identify the houses.” (Perec, 1999, p46) In a similar manner, I observed walls, windows, and other architectural elements as the foundation of the space and saw how they define the private and public spaces. The walls and fences separate the private building room from the public street, and the window of the room allows people inside the safe, personal space to get pieces of information from the outside world. By documenting the room structure and mapping the outdoor area, I understand the boundary between outside and inside. Moreover, I noticed the lack of personal signs, which pushed me to investigate the signs of possession further. 

In Infrastructural Tourism, Shannon Mattern brought up several methods of exploring the infrastructure. During my process of investigation, her writing inspired me to try different ways of observing and experiencing. In “Sensing Infrastructure,” Mattern discussed how sound serves as “a useful diagnostic tool” and can give a kind of “presence to the infrastructure we’re unaware of, even when we’re inhabiting them.” (Mattern, 2013) I get to understand the space and the relationship between public and private when employing the method of sound recording. The sounds recording “de-emphasizes the visual realm and opens up another dialogue with place, one that is haptic and time-based.” (Mattern, 2013) Throughout the twenty-four hours recording, I expected that the sound of my movements would be strong and obvious. However, in sound recording, the background noise is much louder than the sound inside my room. The outside world was already intruding in my personal space through sound. The noise of traffic, singing of birds, and pedestrians’ voices penetrated the wall and windows into my room, which provided a fresh experience for me. Therefore, I used field recording sound files in my final approach to emphasize the outside environment’s existence, which brought the contrast between the inside and the outside.

Bibliography :

Perec, G.(1999) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin Books. 
Shannon, M. (2013) ‘Infrastructure Tourism’, Places. https://placesjournal.org/article/infrastructural-tourism/#ref_22

SITE: Private room/Personal Space

After I arrived in London, I spent my first two weeks self-isolating in the tiny hotel room and student accommodation. Space limitation made me think about how people see their personal space and interact with the familiar environment.

The investigation starts with two questions:
How do people define personal space?
What represents the occupation and possession of a space, a room?

The “BOX”: Imagine the room is a box. There are two aspects of observing. One is seeing outside the “box” without getting into that environment. Another is situated in that space and experiences it.

ROOM&PERSONAL space: People themselves can act as a sign of occupation, such as sitting on a chair in the library, and it becomes your area temporarily. A larger space such as a room can be considered as an extension of ourselves.

Experience and limited inside the “BOX”: The process of getting familiar with an unfamiliar space, gradually began to feel bored of the same environment, then defamiliarizing and observing it differently.

DISASSEMBLE the space: structure, texture, color, shape

Corners: Wall is the boundary of space in architecture, and it defines an area. Corners are the joining point of surfaces, the component of three-dimensional shapes. I want to explore corners as the representation of the architectural structure. With the zoom-in photo of corners, we can get a sense of space and roughly recreate the room structure.

Defamiliarization through the disassemble of visual elements of the space, I noticed the lack of personal signs. The signs of human existence.

Placing of PERSONAL BELONGINGS: In a documentary exploring spatial behavior(Personal Space: Exploring Human Proxemics, 1999), social tests inspired me to consider the placement of personal belongings as part of space extension. This test explores the personal space(mental space) by invading it and breaking the proxemic rules. When strangers invade and go too close to the invadee, they will start to put their personal objects around them to defend against the invasion.

Emphasize objects in the room and see how their existence represents the existence of the owner.

SOUND RECORDING: Field recording & sound of every objects in the room.

Objects sound: Sense the existence of people without showing it directly. Human activities and movements are triggers of object sounds. For example, touch, open, close, sit… 

Field recording: Documentation of the soundscape creates an overall sense of space, movement, environment. The relationship between outside and inside becomes evident with the depth of background and foreground sound.

Architectural elements that defines public and private.
Mapping the distance between people.

INTRUDER: The architectural components, wall, and fence separate the public and private space. The yard is a space between total public and private. There are uncontrollable elements such as weather, animals, and strangers. I left papers in the yards for days and saw its changes.

Documentation of process of occupation.

24 hours sound recording: I recorded a 24 hours sound recording of my room. And the whole experience made me more aware of myself and all my movements. I have observed myself and, at the same time, expect future audiences to observe me. The self-awareness and fear toward exposure were occupied my mind during the recording, and I subconsciously started to hide from the recorder. 

Fragmented elements: Youtubers and Vloggers constantly expose their life on the public internet, conveying their perfect lifestyle through photos and videos. However, I think the awareness of others’ looks can influence their revealing options to some extent. Therefore, the use of beautiful content fragments becomes one of their strategies of showing their private space.

What can I do to reveal my personal space emphasize the awareness of revealing and observing? 

Final direction:

Using the existing computer interface to explore the relationship between people and their personal space. Throughout the investigation process, especially the 24 hours sound recording, I noticed the discomfort and awareness while exposing my private space. In this approach, I send this folder with fragmented Infos to each person’s computer desktop and allow them to browse my room through fragmented sounds, images, videos, and gifs. There are a lot of hidden folders and messages. Finally, they were asked to delete the folder from their computer. Overall, this short and random browsing creates a personal invader perspective.