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Neighborhood Map

Create a map that reflects your neighborhood investigation this semester. This may be hand drawn or computer generated (ex. from google maps or some online source). You may use any type of materials or conceptualization to create your map. The main criteria is that your map demonstrate understanding or grappling with ideas from course readings and/or discussed in class.

Your map might include any of the following elements (these are optional):

1. A map of locations visited or routes taken

2. Indicate moments or particular places that demonstrate some intentional curation of experience

3. Address the senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) in response to one or more of your sensory inventories

4. Integrate other writing, text or imagery, such as fiction, poetry, journalism, photos, video, music, and/or sound

5. Map or trace assemblages and flows of materials and other forces through this space (see Bennett and Nxumalo).

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Ghosts, Hauntings, and Futures

"Using your imagination, create a portrait of your [space] in which everything you encounter is magical, exaggerated, or slightly altered from reality" (Smith, p. 99).

What ghostly pasts, haunted presents, or speculative futures can you imagine? Choose whatever documentation method you prefer to present a speculative portrait of an imagined past, an altered present, or a hypothetical future of your space.  This might be an annotated image, a comic book sequence, a painting or visual rendering, or other method of presentation.

Reference: Smith, K. (2008). How to be an explorer of the world: Portable Life Museum. New York: Penguin Books.

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Ghosts, Huntings, and FUtures-Bryant Park

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Artistic Representation

Create an artistic representation of your neighborhood that reflects some aspect of your ongoing analysis. Integrate a text, material, or found object associated with your neighborhood into the piece. We will provide art materials in session 7 to help you get started. You might choose one of these prompts from 'How to be an explorer of the world' to help you get started.  Reference:  Smith, K. (2008). How to be an explorer of the world: Portable Life Museum. New York: Penguin Books.

1. Interesting Garbage: "Collect pieces of detritus you find interesting or intriguing. Document them in some way with sketches, photographs, or writings. Take note of where or when the objects were found. Some questions to ponder: What do we choose to keep and what do we throw away?" (p. 97) Are the things we consider "without use' salvageable? How can we find new presentations for these things? Now, craft an art piece based on this interesting garbage.

2. The Truth About Inanimate Objects: Capture the hidden life of inanimate objects you find in the world. What do they do when there are no people around? Track their activities and social interactions. You may have to go undercover for this operation. Now, craft an art piece based on this inanimate object.

3. Free Your Mind: Just manipulate your materials and objects into something that helps you process the space you have been investigating.

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Big Ideas After three years of the pandemic, when people come back to have big events together, students will begin to recognize the diverse culture from activities being raised in the park. Knowledge Using five sens

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Ordinary Affects Through Literature or Poetry

This prompt asks that you write about your space in a form that is evocative of feeling, senses, and embodiment, but in a way that brings the reader into the scene with an openness that is "not rooted in fixed conditions" but in "a something coming together" (Stewart, p. 2). Reread Stewart's introduction to understand the kind of writing about the ordinary that is "at once abstract and concrete" (p. 3) and what possibilities that might open.

Choose to compose a passage or poem that does not necessarily describe what it is or what it means to you, but instead evokes where it might go.

If you need a starting place, you might consider E.B. White's Here is New York, Malcom X's description of Harlem from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Harryette Mullen's Urban Tangleweed, Natalie Diaz’s Manhattan is a Lenape Word or Kathleen Stewart's selections in Ordinary Affects (see Canvas).

Option B

Do you have a favorite poet or author? Share a poem or scene they wrote that is based in the senses and stories of a particular place. Compose a short poem or scene for your place, based on their style.

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Skyscrapers arounded, People crowded, breeze, breeze, Sunshine through... The dancing shadow through the leaves, I am here. Around here. I wander, I wonder, In the shade, Under the tree... Giggling, Giggling Are you -3

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The Art of Noticing

Look like a ... (historian, vandal, futurist, bad guest, improv performer, child), pp.  48-57)

These activities provide instruction to help us slow down, activate the imagination, and find alternate questions and meanings in the spaces within which we find ourselves.  Choose at least two of these activities for your scene library, however, feel fee to keep playing and do them all to support your neighborhood inquiry.

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Texting in Space

Pay attention to words, letters, signs, symbols, and language in your space. Look for examples of these and consider the different meanings of each given how you imagine or define the audience and/or context.

How are these words, letters, signs, symbols, and language positioned in the space and/or in relation to other objects?

How do words, letters, signs, symbols, and language impact:

your understanding of the people/things that occupy the space?

your understanding of the knowledge in the space?

questions you have about the people/things/knowledge in the space?

Document your wonderings in the form of sketches, photographs and/or video.  Submit this to your scene library.

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Wondering in Silence

Find a place in your selected neighborhood and stay there in silence for a minimum of 5 minutes. There is nothing to do here but let your thoughts wander. You might pay attention to the variety of sights, sounds, smells, sensations on your flesh, or emotions that arise. But do not fixate on them for long. Notice them and let them pass so that other thoughts may enter.

After some time has passed, turn your attention intentionally back on to the experience of staying in wonder.  What thoughts came up for you that linger?  What did you notice? What sensory feelings emerged? Take a photograph of something in this place that represents your wonderings.

Making Connections

Jot down some notes, sketch an image, or video or audio record your thoughts prompted by the following questions. Submit this reflection as part of your Scene Library.

What questions about knowledge and curriculum have been raised for you during this activity?

Does this experience of wondering provoke any ideas or questions that you would like to further explore?

Does this place provoke any ideas or questions that you would like to further explore?

Reflect on the readings. What might one of the authors say about it?

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Deepening One Sense - Choose One

Deepen your sensory inventory, by not just paying attention to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures; but also note how your sensory inquiry affects your experience or understanding of a space. Go for a walk or find a location to sit in the neighborhood you selected for your final project. Use the questions below (or make up your own!) to tune into one sense,  your body, and your thoughts. Keep track of your sensory experiences in a variety of ways to contribute to your scene library.

Smells, scents, aromas

Take a scent walk. "Be alert for curious and unexpected smells, but also for 'episodic' smells specific to a particular area - flowers or cooking - and background smells that are less intense but suggest an olfactory 'context'. Walk slowly and note at least four distinct smells [known as smell catching]. Write them down, noting the location, the smells' intensity and duration and your own reactions and thoughts. Try smell hunting - crushing leaves, or actively sniffing at a wall or other object. " (The Art of Noticing, Rob Walker, 2019, p. 82)

What feelings, reactions, and/or memories do the smells trigger?

Choose a smell that summarizes the area."

Debrief Questions

Use these questions to reflect on your sensory inquiry:

How do you walk or sit differently in different places?

How and why do you position yourself in relation to different spaces, objects, or beings (human or non-human)?

How do you use your body and senses to distance or engage?

How did your inquiry invoke certain parts of your identity, culture, or memory?

What meanings did you find or make? Where were you confronted with new knowledge? When do questions or the desire for more knowledge arise? How does this all relate back to the senses?

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The smell in the park is complex because each section of the park has a different odor based on different functions. I selected an enticing food smell as the scent walk because it is not usual for food smell to becom

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Sensory Inventory and Map

Conduct a sensory inventory at two spots within your neighborhood spaces, as we did in class on Tuesday (indoors and outdoors).

What do you smell, see, taste, hear, and touch?

How does your body relate to the objects around you? What sensations do you feel? How does your body move?

What feelings, memories, and associations are provoked by your sensory inventory?

After completing this in at least two spots, create a map of your site based on these sensory inventories. Submit the map as part of your scene library.