Changes in time. Changes in environment.
Project with Suzanne Shaheen, student in art history and photography at NYU.
How people can affect time and place.
1.Changes in time
(Walking in the city)
Is time always progressive or can we stop it?
Even if you try to control time, it will never stand still for you but maybe in fact you can change it.
A study of changes that took place in time and space, and how directions can either recreate or completely change composition that should remain constant.
A random person goes and takes the same photograph as we did using our directions here below.
We chose two different settings (one more architectural and the other more organic) to analyse how the space would evolve differently.
Photograph 1
Photograph 2
We send the directions to people and are waiting for their photographs.
Pictures gathered
ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH 1
Rodger
Rihanna
Conway
ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH 2
Sah
Rodger
Conway
Drawing paths
Following our directions, people draw a similar path in a small area of Manhattan.
To complete our experience, we asked to each person to write down their departure point to our directions on a map. By this, we will visualize their path to directions they need to follow. Some random drawings will then be drawn into the city.
We can then imagine a whole new drawing or "City Map" made by the people and ending by merging all of them.
We could then analyse the different routes.
Even though their pictures will never be the same, we could see how their different path at the beginning turn out to be similar towards the end, concentrating in a small area of activity.
2.Changes in environment
(Drawing with strangers)
If you put something into the environment, how does that variable change the place immediately and over a period of time?
Does it change at all?
We wanted to analyse how people or weather conditions could alter our experiment. We used sugar in powder that we put in the streets. We chose sugar because it is white so it can be seen or hidden on streets, and its particles are easily movable.
We made our experience in two different ways.
1. THE OBVIOUS ELEMENT
We composed a line with the sugar on the sidewalk. We wanted to see if people would interact with it or simply avoid it.
We also wanted to see if the environment (wind, rain, foot steps) would change the line, or if the line we made would change the environment.
2. THE NON-OBVIOUS ELEMENT
We disposed the sugar to fill in one stripe of the zebra crossing, to see how pedestrians and cars would interact with it without noticing it.
