Author Archive

Atlantic Station Car cut-outs

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

An activity that will be included in the Atlantic Station Parking Garage memorabilia project is a set of paper cars to be cut out, folded and taped together.  Because we have chosen to situate our work in a late 1950’s/early 1960’s aesthetic, I have found pictures of several vehicles that one might have seen at that time, and using Photoshop we will transform these into three-dimensional paper models.

Here is a draft using pictures of a 1963 Studebaker Avanti.  The body design for this vehicle was ahead of its time, and only about 800 of these were made. 

Studebaker Avanti

Draft of Avanti Cut-out

The other vehicles include a 1957 Chevrolet truck, a 1957 Chrysler New Yorker, a 1960 Chevrolet Impala and a 1962 Ford Falcon.

Observations in Piedmont Park

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

BY LAURIE MARION

Today I observed the activities of ducks, geese, humans, squirrels, herons, and dogs at Piedmont Park.  Below are my notes:

Notes on Piedmont Park

Field notes on Piedmont Park

I also visited the Piedmont Park Conservancy Administrative Office and inquired whether there was any monitoring of wildlife at the Park, and if so, who was responsible.  According to the receptionist, there is not a single individual or organization that does this.  She did, however, give me the name and phone number of a veterinarian who took care of an injured duck, as well as the contact information for the Programs Director who organizes, among other things, birding tours of the park.

Here are some more notes from my visit:

Notes on Piedmont Park

Field notes on Piedmont Park

Next to the Greystone Building, which formerly was a bath house, there is a new playground for children.  There is a walkway from this playground to the bridge with the gazebo over the lake. 

Based on my observations, it seems that the installation should be on the opposite side of the bridge from the playground.  By placing an attraction on the opposite side of the bridge, parents might have an easier time gaining cooperation from their children who are reluctant to leave the playground.  Further, we should consider offering something besides marshmallows, since many parents like to limit consumption of sweets especially with young children.  My suggestion is to have some kind of dispenser activated by ducks that will give children (or other passers-by) an origami duck.  Or is it possible to make an origami machine that will make the figure before their very eyes?

It seems to me that these refinements of our design will enhance people’s enjoyment of the park.

Northlake Tower Festival

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

BY LAURIE MARION

This shopping center in my neighborhood is an example of a space that does not make much sense.   The buildings and a large parking lot were built around a radio tower.  Originally it was called “Northlake Tower Festival” and now the signs just read “Northlake Festival.” 

Northlake Festival sign

Sign for Northlake Festival shopping center

 Below is what one sees when entering the shopping center at the west entrance:

Entrance to Northlake Festival

Entrance to Northlake Festival

The radio tower is in the middle of the very large parking lot, which has islands planted with trees throughout.  The tower is enclosed inside a brick wall, and its three anchors are set in planted areas with chain-link fencing around them.  The next four photos show the tower and the anchor points.

Northlake Tower

Northlake Tower in center of Northlake Festival Parking Lot

Anchor for Tower

Anchor for Radio Tower near Jason's Deli

Radio Tower Anchor

Radio Tower Anchor near Monkey Joe's

Radio Tower Anchor 3

Radio Tower Anchor in Large Planter

Very few people walk from one store to another along the walkways; most foot traffic is from parked car to one store and back.  The parking lot usually has a fair number of cars in it, but is never full.

Here is a video showing what the tower and parking lot look like from the east side of the parking lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6mtxwy3tBM

This second video shows a 360 degree view of the parking lot and buildings on the east side of the parking lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NyoZL9CNpI

I think you will agree that this is one amazing (excuse the pun) parking lot.

Some Tactics for Medical or Hospital Visits

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

BY LAURIE MARION

Upon Rebecca’s recommendation on T-square, I looked at the Non(Place) blog for ideas for digital subversion.  The web address for this blog is http://nachbeest.nl/.

This blog has a subtitle, “Using interactive media to add meaning to functional environments.”  There is a description of transforming a non-place, such as an airport, into an anthropological place, by making places for tired people (otherwise categorized as “passengers”) to sleep.  Airports are designed to move passengers through, to get passengers from one destination to another, to do the opposite of what a real anthropological “place” does.  By making sleeping spots, the participants in this project subverted the non-place  to create a new meaning within the environment.

The blog mentions two important methodological ideas for this type of activity: strategies and tactics. Below is the text from the blog:

Tactics and strategies (Pierre Bourdieu, sociologist) are very important in our project.

Strategies are planned rules coordinated by a central authority. These rules are meant to influence big groups of people and efficiently guide them to their goals. The rules are universal and are void of all cultural expression.

Tactics are isolated actions made by people in a non-place, that make use of the possibilities that gaps in strategies offer. They are meant to surprise and shock and are used by people to create an autonomous place in a non-place. These tactics are important for us to temporarily transform the airport as non-place into a place.

The key ideas expressed here are that strategies are used by organizations to assert their authority over the individuals who interact with the organizations, and that tactics are ways individuals or groups of individuals can subvert the dehumanizing aspects of the strategies and re-create a sense of anthropological place.

Perhaps for the sake of efficiency, spaces like airports have been designed to minimize or prevent the formation of any feelings of attachment.  An airport is not a place to dwell in; it is a space to move through. ” Moving through” is facilitated by signs that indicate the direction one must take to arrive at one’s intended destination.  It is rare (perhaps by design) that anything will occur in such a space to which one might attach any special meaning.  

The space is designed also to deny that there is any danger involved in traveling.  Risk has indeed been minimized so that statistically it is safer to travel by air than by automobile.  The denial of danger is also the denial of the possibility of meaning in the space, since meaning is frequently developed by facing and overcoming danger.

Medical offices and hospitals are structured in a way similar to airports in that they have become spaces that are designed to be moved through and not dwelt in.  There are triage systems to determine the order in which patients are to be seen, there are time management systems tooptimize a physician’s time, and in hospitals there are protocols to release patients as early as possible after they have been admitted.

This system prevents both medical professionals and patients from developing any emotional attachment to the space or to the process or to the other persons involved.  Further, the script especially for “informed consent” to procedures, is designed to downplay if not deny the presence of danger.  Again, the overall statistical picture often is that there is less risk of death or permanent damage in undergoing a procedure than there is in letting nature take its course.

In both air travel and medicine, then, there is both a life-and-death situation and a systematic denial of danger.

The group who performed the sleeping experiment in the airport made a point of not moving through the space, but dwelling in it.  Sleeping there, allowing it to be part of their dream world, pioneered the kind of emotional attachment that transforms a space into an anthropological place.

What kinds of tactics could be used to transform medical or hospital spaces into anthropological places?

Because a “patient” is usually in pain or experiencing some kind of illness at the time of a visit to a medical office or hospital, his or her ability to execute tactics to make a medical office or hospital into an anthropological place is compromised to a certain extent.  How can meaning be generated when one is in this space usually not by choice and there is a chance that the outcome may be a lower quality of life?

One tactic involves making ironic responses to the scripted interactions with personnel.  One example that I can give occurred earlier this year when my son was being admitted to the hospital for surgery.  The nurse interviewed our family, quizzing us about how did we understand the procedure, what kind of medications would be appropriate post-surgery, what kind of learning style did each of us have – “how do you learn best – are you a visual learner, an auditory learner, a kinesthetic learner, etc.”   My husband’s response was that he learns best by yelling.  There was probably no tick box on the form the nurse was filling out for this response.  A smile and a laugh were generated, a sense of being comrades in arms rather than” institutional representative with all the answers” vs. “powerless individual.”

Another possible tactic to respond to the experience of a nurse filling out forms is to bring forms of one’s own and interview the nurse or any other medical professional in the same way.  The forms should be something compiled by a patients’ organization and could include anything that a patient might be concerned about.  It could even ask if the doctor performing the procedure has had a good lunch that day, for instance.

This type of query system could be done digitally with iPhones or Droids.  Daily updates on patient concerns might make better decisions possible for patients.  If you knew, for instance, that a doctor recently stayed up all night, you could decide to opt out of a procedure on that particular day. 

If a systematic practice of using this tactic developed, it would then be a strategy itself.  The question would still remain how to create meaning in these spaces that are designed to deny its possibility?