In project 4 I focused on my working space and desk as the location. I have decided to continue exploring ideas in this location as it is a place I want to make meaningful links to how I spend the time there and what I produce as a result of the time spent there. It is also interesting to me as I think when it comes to exploring places, my initial thoughts are of much bigger locations, so to narrow down and focus on a small space where I spend a lot of time gives me limits to work with. Also, I don’t own the home I currently live in, but I do own this desk and computer, which plays with the idea of a place being a space that means something to you.

Experiment 1 – Frottage

Froattage is a technique where you make rubbings to create impressions and lines relating to the surfaces. At first, I thought this would be a challenge as my desk is not that textured, so I wondered what I could create. However, as I started experimenting with different thicknesses of paper and a mixture of graphite pencils and soft pastels I realised there were some interesting textures after all.

The first three images are the keyboard which I use every day and have never really acknowledged what texture it can create. The keys are slightly raised which when rubbed with soft pastel on paper gives an interesting geometric shape. I really like how in some of the rubbing you get a sense of the 3D nature of the keys. I tried the white on black to continue the monochrome theme from project 4, and I like the way it turned out. However, the one that has given the best overall texture is my smaller keyboard which is done using blue soft pastel and thin everyday notepad paper.

As I was making the keyboard rubbings, I noticed the air vents on my laptop are actually very detailed and have a striking geometric texture. I sit at this desk every day and have never noticed just how aesthetic they are to look at. I’m glad I captured them using metallic graphite pencil on white paper as it really shows the pattern.

I then tried to find some other textures and wasn’t that successful as the overall desk is very flat and smooth. I was able to find some good line marking using the rubbing technique by concentrating on the edge of the desk and experimented with trying to capture a group of wires, the edge of my mug and papers on the desk.

I then recreated a life-size layout of my desk using A1 paper.

Experiment 2 – Macro Photos

This was a series of macro photos taken at different times whilst at work over a period of a few days. I then collaged them to try and recreate the objects in their relative places.

What I really like is the different perspectives, distances, and light and how they have changed over time. I find it interesting that I have focused on the keyboards.

I would like to fill the entire page with images. Even though my desk is white, I am sure it would change during the day in terms of light. It could be interesting to do a photo every hour for a day and see how it changes over time.

Experiment 3 – Text

Philips, esc, tab, caps lock, shift, ctrl, silent touch, backspace, enter, shift, insert, delete, print screen, scroll lock, pause, break, home, page up, end, page down, num lock, logi, pavilion, ryzen, radeon, vega graphics, samson

The word lock is the most common. Which is how I feel sometimes.

Experiment 4 – Sounds

This is an early idea and I am not quite sure where to go with it, but I like the idea of recording periods of time using a wave visualiser like audacity and creating something from that. You can clearly see the mouse clicks as well as a period of traffic noise.

A History of Workspaces

Place: An Introduction by Tim Cresswell is a geography textbook for students focusing on human geography. It looks at the everyday usage of the term ‘place’ and the debates and discussions around the definition.

This post will summarise my notes from reading the Introductory chapter.

Notes on Introduction: Defining Place

Place is one of the most important terms in geography and its study benefits from an interdisciplinary one.

Artists along with geographers grapple with the idea of place.

Not only artists, but place now has a price attached to it and is important to businesses. GIS (geographic information systems) map places and fuse with social media so our phone always knows where we are. Data from this is valuable. There are open-source maps so that corporations don’t have a monopoly on the production of place.

This virtual battle reflects longstanding struggles over place. Links to previous protest movements.

Place often has political elements.

Place is important in many aspects of life – food production, housing, holidays. Yet despite its importance, it is very difficult to define. It isn’t a specialised academic term, it is an everyday term that is familiar to us. However, even though we inherently seem to think we know what it means, it is both simple and complicated. It is different to a word like “territory” which is a specialised term.

Every day uses include:

• “Would you like to come round to my place?” – indicates some kind of connection between a person and a building and a notion of privacy and belonging.
• “Brisbane is a nice place” – a geographical location
• “She put me in y place” – a sense of position in a hierarchy
• “A place for everything and everything in its place” – an ordering of things

We often add possessions to spaces to turn a space into place.

We name spaces in the world to give them meaning. Coordinates on a map mean nothing, give it a name like a city and we get an image of what it is like.

The most straightforward definition – “a meaningful location”.

John Agnew has outlined three fundamental aspects of a place as a meaningful location.

1. Location – they have fixed coordinates on the Earth’s surface.
2. Locale – the material setting for social relations
3. Sense of place. – subjective and emotional attachment

When humans invest some kind of meaning in a portion of space it becomes a place.

Goes beyond just landscape they are connections, they help us understand people.

Artists and Works Mentioned

• Towards Re-Enchantment: Place and Its Meanings by Evans and Robson
• Christian Marclay – installation in Gstaad Switzerland

Key Quotes

“place is perhaps the key term for interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the twenty-first century.”

“Place is a word that seems to speak for itself.”

“You discover the art through the place and the place through the art”

“Power of Place”

“transforming space into place”

Ideas

The GIS systems mentioned and how valuable this data is, links to my data collection in assignment 4. I wonder if I could incorporate some of this into a piece?

References

Cresswell, T 2014, Place: An Introduction, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, Hoboken. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [1 Apr 2022].

Here are three extracts which contemplate the theme of ‘place’ in different ways:

Although each is about place and evoke a sens of place, they are on different levels.

The Herefordshire Landscape purely evokes a sense of place. It is atmospheric, full of visual language that evokes all the senses and gives you an idealistic view of the English countryside. It is peaceful, calm and allows you to picture yourself in the landscape living a carefree life. There are no politics in this world, it is celebrating the pure beauty of place in an escapism way.

Slough is much more political and thought-provoking and is a commentary on modern life. You get a real feeling of contempt for modernity from John Betjeman. It makes definite social comment about progress and place about how humanity with its modern interventions has made a place inhospitable. He actually wants bombs to “fall on Slough!” as “It isn’t fit for humans now”.

The Lost Land evokes a sense of place in relation to identity and exile. The poet is longing for Ireland “saying all the names I know for a lost land”. You get a feeling of desperation and loss from the poet, grief for a place and he is imagining himself looking at the shore of Dublin Bay.

I actually like all three poems in different ways. I love the pure escapism and naive joy in Browning’s poetry. It is a world I want to live in. I also like the thought-provoking nature of the second two poems. All three have given me more ideas to explore around Place.

Action Points

• How can I explore the sensual nature of place?
• Place is linked to politics and change – how can this be explored?
• I would like to create a triptych of the three poems and the images they invoke.