Link to final project:
https://carlschurzparkmovementguide.tumblr.com/
Reflection on the semester and final project:
I guess I will start by telling you what my perspective was coming into this class. I didn’t pick systems and strategies, I was assigned, and truthfully I was very confused on what the class would actually be about. In the first week, I got an introduction to systems thinking and realized that, while I hadn’t been introduced to the formal field of systems thinking, I had already been using it in my everyday life. I established my own definition of what systems thinking was: A wholesome way of understanding the world that relies on your ability to identify, analyze, and relate all elements of a given situation. Our first reading for seminar was the Donella Meadows piece on basic systems thinking. From that reading, I have pulled the follow quote.
“The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made.”
My interpretation of this quote is that a system in more complex than the sum of its parts. In order to fully understand a system, you must understand the relationships and dialogues that exist between the separate parts of a system.
Relating this to the development of my final project, I am going to talk about how my definition of mapping has evolved over the course of this class. We generally think of maps as representations of the physicality of a location. My new definition of a map comes from its primary purpose as a tool; a map is an aid in navigation. In order to successfully navigate through a place, one must be extremely familiar with and have a full understanding of that place. So in systems thinking, a map is a tool that aids in the full understanding of a system. My goal for this project was to accurately represent Carl Schurz park. To do this, I created a “map” or a guide that crossed boundaries of physically representing a place to provide a more wholesome image of the location. Coming back to the quote, my map had to not only incorporate different aspects of my location, but also speak about the relationships between these aspects. My map starts with the historical nature of place, which is directly related to the physicality, which influences the sensory, which in turn influenced the movement that we generated on that site. In order to map the system of Carl Schurz park, I could not simply give you the historical, material, and sensory information I collected. I had to identify and exaggerate the relationships between those categories of information in order to successfully guide the viewer through my representation of this location.
The next quote that has stuck with me throughout the semester and has informed the way I approached the final project was from Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook:
”Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.”
“How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook.”
This immediately resonated with me, and it informed, or rather reinforced, the way I journaled, took notes, and sketched this semester. Relating this to my final project, I am going to relate journals to field guides. A field guide is a map, but for me it implies a more personal form of map, like one person’s compilation of field research, experiences, and knowledge of a place. So for my field guide, It was important to me that I represented myself in the map, speaking like Joan did, It was important to me that my map also revealed what it was like for me to be in the park. The part of my project that explores this is the improvised movement. This is a direct reaction to how I was feeling at that given moment in that place. Also I think it is important to talk about perspective at this point. While my goal was to create a wholesome map of Carl Schurz, I must recognize that this is an impossible task to do alone because the profile of a place is changed completely depending on whose perspective you are observing it from. This is why I wanted my friend Anjali to dance with me, her movement represents an alternative perspective to the location.
And finally, a quote from myself in my week 5 research table:
“The spaces we inhabit are constructed to make us interact with them in certain ways, and as a human community, we adapt certain practices in order to organize ourselves within these spaces.”
It is important also to reject the ways in which we are trained to behave in a certain settings. Going against the grain of a system will often tell you much more about how that system works than going with the system will. My movement for my final project was doing just that. By interacting with location in a kinda weird way, it forced me to be extremely aware and perceptive of that location. It also allowed for a new perspective of the location to emerge.
