Alleyscape
"The assignment is to create an immersive city/street-scape that represents or communicates an impression of Downtown Los Angeles. Motivation for this topic is the realization that all of the streets of the world will soon be imaged in an Aspen-Movie-Map-like way. We would like to explore alternative representations that will be possible with such data."
I felt conflicted with this assignment. The interesting stuff in this subject, as I see it, emerges when you have unique ways of interacting with map(s) or have large amounts of data and consider the implications and possibilities of it. The former was attempted by Andrew and Jenova to a degree, but not to a terribly interesting degree; it’s only a week after all. The latter I think is perhaps more of what a week long assignment on this subject should’ve been about. This being how I felt, I sought instead to create a self-expressive map, one that went against ideas of utility, commerce, and perhaps a (understandable) fetishism with technology. So, I documented some things that are likely to go undocumented in an “Aspen” world map.
The details and personality of urban landscapes are fascinating to me. They’re filled with surprises and interesting things to find, if you’re looking; alleyways in particular. Self-expression and self-masturbation abounds in graffiti, along with layers of decay, wear and renewal that give one a strong sense of history.
I was downtown doing an assignment first and foremost, but I was also there with friends on a beautiful day. I’m new to a large city, but these two certainly aren’t. Because of this, I thought including them in the setting of an alleyway worked particularly well.
I’ve created stereo, color correct, seamless panoramas to make money. No desire to repeat that tedium in school really. I didn’t pay too close of attention to how many pictures I was taking, or how much of an overlap there was. I experimented by changing my focal length and let the auto-exposure do what it wanted. I tried to capture areas that I personally felt intrigued with, such as the diagonals of the alleyway buildings, the graffiti on the door, the engravings in the wall around the door, the car, and the giggling, seemingly at home grad students.
The looseness of the composition I think goes along with the subject matter. It’s more of a collage than a seamless immersive experience. “Urban” art seems to be a lot of collage and appropriation: think Hip Hop. The composition breaks with traditional forms. It’s incomplete, and almost “torn”, not unlike a poster or piece of artwork on an urban surface that’s been torn in an attempted removal.
I enjoyed creating this, but felt like the assignment wasn't conceived correctly and was even confusing. I read: "explore alternative representations that will be possible with such data." as saying: "the data has been recorded and it's like the Aspen movie map, now experiment with representing that data." I take issue with the decisions of what will be recorded in the first place and why. My guess as to what will be recorded (shopping store fronts and residences) I find incredibly dull. As far as finding alternative representations for this particular data…I passed.
1:24 AM November 30, 2004 Comments 1
kellee
something popped into my head while reading this - from hip-hop culture, taking the idea of "mapping" and relating it to "tagging". Like how kids tag buildings with grafitti... there seems to be a connection...
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