PROCESS/METHODOLOGY/INSPIRATION/CONTEXT
I am a hoarder. In what is a temporary existence, I amass information, pictures, videos, and objects that will infinitely remain as entities that will testify for what I hope to be a profound life. The body engages in space and it absorbs all sorts of information. Documentation serves as a tool to identify how I have engaged in a space (as well as with other bodies in the space) and a guidance to how I can further enhance this engagement.
Essentially, my obsession with documentation comes from the nomadic life I live. The fleeting moments and abrupt changes in environment is too many to not leave a trace of physical record. It clarifies the values in the relationships I have with friends and family and even with strangers or with that distinct space in time when I document it whether it’s in the form of writing, pictures, or objects. It is for this reason that I have made it a habit, even if absent-mindedly, to take pictures, videos and objects.
A habit that formed in Paris, I specifically collect restaurant business cards, take-away menus and visual brochures. There was a quality intriguing about the way the menus or style of the visual objects said about the place. I have a collection started for New York and often refer to it as my personal data or archive. In an effort to unravel the profound value that is behind these instinctive behaviors and personal data, I became invested in analyzing my collection.
Through an exercise in studio class where we exchanged projects with our partners to understand someone else’s approach to the topic, I was introduced to the idea of digital mapping. Using this idea as a starting point, I looked for projects related to digital mapping to gain an understanding of the programs and methods I can use to create this digital map. The results were that I couldn’t find examples that are specifically digital mapping but I was able to find related projects on maps or objects found in maps to create a new composition. This includes a project by Jenny Odell[1] where she isolated objects from their original environment and joins an aerial view of similar objects to create a strange new juxtaposition. Swimming Pool and Basketball Courts in Manhattan are two projects that illustrate this process of hers. This gave me the idea of not only focusing on the location of the physical data I’ve collected but to observe its components to see a particular re-occurence of objects. In searching for artists who use the same medium that I am interested in, although it didn’t give me the answer I was expecting, I was lead to projects that broadened my perspective on the different ways I can tackle my topic/data.
As part of the digital investigation of my brochure collection, I revisited the buildings of the restaurants and museums that my data indicated. Using Google Maps as a tool, I bookmarked all of the places indicated by my physical data and went into street view to explore the digital realm of the familiar places. Much like Jenny Odell, I sought to identify a pattern with the places I visited to compose them in a meaningful juxtaposition.
BUILDING SERIES
Although there was not an explicit common feature that I identified like that of Odell’s Swimming Pool, I was particularly made aware of the full view of the building – a view, I realized, that is often not acknowledged when interacting with the edifice in person. Finding myself re-engaging with the space, I organized the buildings according to their colors in order to provide a medley of alike objects. This formed the series of red, yellow and multi-colored buildings. While the red and yellow building collection adopts a more traditional organization, the multi-colored collection is more exploratory. It features modern, cool-toned building and because I couldn’t gather a sufficient amount that fit the theme of the collection, I experimented with what I had. Using the World Trade Center Transportation Hub structure as the key player, I constructed a narwhal in spirit of The New School. In utilizing the iconic buildings of Manhattan, ranging from the Flatiron to the Whitney Museum, it represents the space (New York) that The New School is a part of.
DIGITAL EXPLORATION SERIES
Going beyond the data that was mapped, I began exploring the paths that I take on a daily basis and eventually popular locations that I have not yet been to. Through a process of exploration and research, I distinguished certain behaviors, freedom and restrictions, and glitches in the digital realm.
Relating to people, there would be areas that were especially concentrated with humans. Not only was the mass of people visually intriguing but it also stimulated curiosity on human behavior and culture.
One pattern that I noticed while exploring my data was the trucks that persistently blocked the view of the buildings I wanted to revisit. I could only get an incomplete, and I would occasionally even be taken to the subway area beneath the store or restaurant I was revisiting.
The digital map also holds discrepancies of outdated views of buildings, which provides juxtapositions. Depending on the slightest shift in angle, the map would provide either an outdated or updated view of a space. This was particularly interesting when I was tracing the path that I take on a daily basis. In a space that I walk almost every day, the discrepancy in details de-familiarizes a familiar environment in a curious manner.
The digital realm is a space where you are both a distant spectator and an intimate follower. One type of freedom I experienced was the allowance to follow a stranger and observe their behavior. In what felt like a similar research to Sophie Calle’s Suite Vénitienne[2] where she follows a stranger for days in Venice, I was able to follow a park ranger in Battery Park. There was an odd sense of intimacy and freedom in following him for what was a 5-minute walk.
However, I also experienced restrictions in exploring certain spaces in the digital realm such as parks and private complexes like Stuyvesant Town. The map only allows the engager to circumnavigate the area like a spectator.
FLOWER ITERATIONS
As part of unraveling the significance behind the instinctive behaviors of documenting and collecting, I also explored the drawings of tropical plants that is part of my personal archive. Produced over a specific period during summer as part of a daily drawing exercise, the drawings were digitalized and printed using a laser cutter onto wood. In reproducing the data in a different medium and digitizing them, it replicates the process seen in the digital mapping. The flowers are preserved in several media including in ink, wood, and film.
AFTERTHOUGHTS/ CONNECTIONS
The iterative nature of collecting feeds the iterative method of my artistic process. Through collecting and documenting, I create a habitual routine, whether it is in the act of consistently taking business cards from restaurants or practicing a drawing exercise on a daily basis. Perhaps I form a routine in order to amass the data that is part of my personal archive. By learning the significance of repetition in action, I was able to develop an artistic process that is based on iterations and experimentation. In my obsession to document, I collect and I create – and recreate.
Habe-Evans, Mito. “‘Collecting’ Swimming Pools And Stadiums: Art Made From Google Maps.” NPR. July 29, 2011. Accessed May 08, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/07/29/138766174/-collecting-swimming-pools-and-stadiums-art-made-from-google-maps.
Ulin, David L. “Sophie Calle investigates the distance between us in ‘Suite Vénitienne'” Los Angeles Times. March 24, 2015. Accessed May 08, 2017. http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-sophie-calle-suite-venitienne-20150324-story.html.
[1] Habe-Evans, Mito.
[2] Ulin, David L.
