The space I chose to investigate is the Gasholder Park located in King’s Cross. This is a place where I walk pass by almost every single day and the unique architecture style always fascinates me. Through this project I wish to investigate the purpose of this space and how people interact with the space in different time of the day.
It has been illustrated in detail that two blind people’s actions and appearances in the Rue Linné (Georges, Perec, 1974). In my project, I was to observe people in the Gasholder park like what Perec was illustrating in his writing. During my investigation, I was sitting in the corner of the park, and note down people who entering the park, their route, appearances, actions, positions, genders, and approximate ages. I then summarized the information into symbols and graphs. It’s interesting that I found both my investigation and Perec’s writing are consists of both objective facts (for example, we both recorded the target person’s actions and appearances) and subjective observation (in this case me and Perec both record /wrote about the approximate age of the person through his/her appearances and the person’s emotion/feeling through his/her actions). As a result, I believe the objective facts can reflect subjective observations. However, if I were to continue this project, I would to proof or deny my subjective observations by talking to my target people.
Johanna Drucker (2014, cited in Designing graphic interpretation) states that Imagining new intellectual forms of interpretation also means designing and sustaining the spaces that structure interpretive act. It relates to my investigation of the Gasholder Park in a way that it’s theme of suggesting a new way of using graphic to interpreting the intellectual forms. In my investigation, I visualized people in the park with symbols and colors to categorize them and investigate their actions and emotions. It also resonates with what Drucker (2014, p. 181) states “Innovative graphic armatures will extend our capacities to create associative arguments in digital space, creating the support for extensive interpretative activities among textual and visual artifacts.” By using graphic interpretation, I was able to spot the different interaction people made with the space during different time of the day clearer and with more logic.
Reference List:
- Perec, G. (1974) ‘The Street’, ‘The Neighborhood’ and ‘The Town’, in Species of Spaces and Other Places. pp. 46-67.
- Drucker, J. (2014) ‘Designing graphic interpretation’, in Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 180-192.