Today I attended a meeting that took place at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff with the previous group three class and tutors that I met at yesterday’s first field interdisciplinary collaborative day.
Here I was informed of the group that I will be working in over the next two weeks starting from today for this interdisciplinary collective project which is a continuation of the module theme Future Generations.
I was handed a brief explaining the principles and expectations of the task.
The whole of the initial class are to work in groups to specifically develop on the underlying theme deeply connected to this broad Future Generations concept.
This theme being a focus on The City/ Utopia & Dystopia ideology using a book called ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino.
“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” – Italo Calvino
Taken from the brief:
Italo Calvino, in the book Invisible Cities, it discusses various ideas presented by the cities on a range of topics including linguistics and human nature and explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 cities, apparently narrated by Polo. It is these descriptions that will become the premise of this Field 4: Future Generations brief.
A different way of looking at our own cities:
The book, because of its approach to the imaginative potentialities of cities, has been used by architects and artists to visualize how cities can be, their secret folds, where the human imagination is not necessarily limited by the laws of physics or the limitations of modern urban theory. It offers an alternative approach to thinking about cities, how they are formed and how they function.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities
In my group we are required to use one of the descriptions of a city from the book provided to us by a tutor, as a basis of a collective visualisation to be formed within my group.
We are going to deconstruct the description of the city looking at underpinning ideas/ideals of this place.
Considering:
- Is our perception of this place good or bad, utopian or dystopian or perhaps both?
Remembering:
Utopia means a perfect world. In utopias, there are not problems like war, disease, poverty, oppressions, discrimination, inequality, and so forth. Peaceful and pleasant.
A dystopia, on the other hand, is a world in which nothing is perfect. The problems that plague our world are often even more extreme in dystopias.
Tasks:
- Visualise the city using mixed media. E.g. photography, illustration, collage, typography etc.
- The visualisation must fit onto a 1 metre format provided but can contain both 2D/3D elements.
- Break outside of the preconceptions of what a city currently looks like. Think big, think future, think what if…
- On Monday January 15th at 10:00am me and my group will present our collective visualisation and spend the remainder of the day making connections between the cities generated from the variety of other groups, in pursuit of the ideal city, if one could exist.
- We can extend outside of the Invisible City text using our experiences and perceptions of the world around us in developing cities of the future.
- Extend upon our research of both utopian and dystopian future cities. Can a utopian city exist without some level of dystopia and vice versa?
- Consider how could the four pillars of the Future Generations (Wales) Act i.e. improving the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales, play a part in your city?
- Use our cities visual language to begin developing visual metaphors that could relate to a tangible city of the future.
My Group:
Me,
Bethan Davies (who I knew from the day before),
Adrian Miles (who I knew from the Cardiff Met welcome event),
Joel Williams (who I knew from the day before),
Jodie Phillips (who I remembered from my foundation course but never spoke as we were never in a class together),
&
Charlotte Reddie (who I very briefly knew from day before).
We will be basing our collective visualisation on the provided city extract entitled: ‘Cities & Eyes’.
The notes we made about the city:
- Dystopian.
- Surveillance.
- Intrusively watched all the time.
- Uncomfortable.
- Freedom of privacy not granted – reminded us very much of today’s surveillance through the cameras of our devices that we are attached too.
- Mirrors.
- Reflections.
- Watched.
- Observed.
- Monitored.
- Tracked.
- A stalker vibe about it – quite frightening and unpleasant.
- Recording of actions within the homes – today through our devices. Reminding me of my recent research that I shared to the group:
Smart cell phones provide platform for government to track everything you do
Thanks to smart phones, now basically everything you do is easily tracked. Where you are, what sites you visit, who you are texting, and what you are saying to them, what pictures you take on your phone etc. Ah, thankfully it’s all in the database of your cell phone company’s records. Government knows that and that is why they recently passed the “Freedom Act of 2015” to take away all your freedom from privacy. Even the Council of Foreign Relations posted the “Freedom Act” on their webpage. Why would they not? This Act forces the communication companies to keep a record of everything you are doing on your cell phone so that elements in the government can easily retrieve it whenever they want. That’s how tyranny works, and the name of the act is just a reminder of the Orwellian society we live in, as well as a reminder that the controllers firmly believe that the masses are that naive and stupid to fall for this trick.
Source: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/08/07/7-points-that-prove-how-dangerous-cell-phones-are-to-humankind/
I interpret this as a really effective way of catching the worst of us such as criminals making it a much easier job for the police who will have clear evidence because of our growing attachment to our phone devices wherever we are our phone is often with us.
In terms of our safety it is also a good way of tracking us if we were ever the victim of a crime like abduction which would potentially save us and bring us justice which our loved ones would be incredibly thankful for.
The fact is it’s a lot easier to get caught which is a massive deterrent to criminal action and by having it on our phones is a subtle and a lot nicer than having cameras situated all over our residential streets which would only cause fear and alarm. I was saying to the group that it’s fair enough that there is lots of camera surveillance in the town as it’s to protect and deter theft. It’s also a way of identifying terrorists as we all know target the most densely populated areas like cities.
I think that even living in a utopia there would always be some level of dystopia. Sadly and frustratingly we can’t control everyone to be good not everyone has the ethical mentality due to psychological conditioning in the worst of criminals reflecting a destructive nature as a part of who they are. On a brighter note there are far more good people than there are bad.
Our ideas:
- The idea of visualising camera lenses filled and clustered with eyeballs looking at us.
- A 3D visualisation of the city as an interactive installation hanged so that the viewer can see it from a bird’s eye view perspective in front of them. A webcam is to be placed above the installation directly recording the viewer which will then have themselves projected onto the Valdrada city. This will place the viewer into an experience of that lived by the imagined inhabitants and a reminder and perspective of the way how our own city is run raising an awareness of the surveillance and tracking through cameras today.
I made the suggestion that the city Valdrada’s verandas ‘one above the other’ stacks of houses should be composed of skeletal frameworks with the idea of using transparent and an exploratory range of perhaps recycled materials for the walls and floors to work with the ‘always being watched, even when you’re in your home’ setting. By building the houses in a normal aesthetic of concealing barriers of walls it suggests a safe place of privacy that desensitises us to the surveillance that is actually going on in this Valdrada city and our own.
This proposition will reflect what not only is our visualisation of the city described by Polo in the book but a clear representation and reflection of our own city today, which can be understood as a dystopian intrusion into our freedom of our every business being our own.
When it comes to the presentation I believe that we need to clarify and understanding of why our cities are running like this and suggest the positives to this that can be argued. Then conclude however how it is ultimately a dystopian matter put into place as consequence of the guaranteed criminal action.
Evidence of our phone cameras being accessible by the government:
http://cameras.reviewed.com/features/how-your-smartphone-camera-can-be-used-to-spy-on-you
A clear diagram of the favoured 3D concept we have collectively selected as our project plan for initiation:
Jodie and Bethan volunteered and were eager to go out and complete some interesting and relevant research by counting the cameras down a single street in Cardiff town located on the exterior of the buildings.
They counted something like 80+ down one street and as Jodie went to take a picture of a security camera she was told that she was not allowed to take pictures of the cameras by a security guard of one of the shops as it can be linked to suspicion of terrorism/crime organisation.
This research made it clear how we are definitely being watched in our world and that there is a direct link between cameras and there purpose being for catching crime.
The bigger the fear of crime the more there are cameras.
Our next MEET UP:
We have arranged for us as a collective to meet again this Thursday on the 11th of February to create some practice mock ups. This will gain us valuable knowledge of how to approach the final piece and a chance to problem solve any issues that may arise beforehand.
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