85701 - Week 3

The Creative Era

The idea of the work place as a dark dingy brutalist building without fresh air, communal spaces and windows to the outside world has become a bit of an urban legend now. I suppose the idea was to stop people remembering there was an outside world, remembering their family and friends and good times happening outside the office - thus they'd stay and work until the work was done. Now it seems, at least in the best cities, this idea has not only been subverted, but used for the benefit of the company itself. Now buildings have lobbies with pebble gardens, tropical aquariums, companies have child minding areas for employee's children, companies have communal areas, coffee carts, even company basketball teams. The idea of life has been brought into the office. And companies fight to locate themselves in cities where there is diversity - music and art enthusiasm, cultural diversity, varying recreation and altogether a sense of creative life.

This is apparently, all to attract people like gays, rock chicks and spikey-haired dudes with slogan t-shirts. People, as it seems to me who would be offended by being called a collective "class". But as Florida defines them, the creative class are people working in "a wide variety of industries---from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, high-end manufacturing to the arts" (2002).

The idea of the company and largely the city itself changing in order to attract these people, is apparently something of a new phenomenon (Florida 2002) but nothing very strange for someone in their early 20's, living in a progressive city like Sydney. I can completely understand the diversity of ideas, enthusiasm, passion and debate brought to companies by these kinds of people, that smaller cities are lacking.

Newcastle is one of these cities, losing the 'creative class' because such people gravitate to Sydney and Melbourne where they can find their culture and others like them. Now, not every city can be a creative city, and not everyone can be a part of the creative class. So, does this phenomenon create exclusion? Will it eventually mean cities will be inhabited by certain kinds of people only, who fit into its creativity or lack there of?

85701 - Week Two

A Situationist City?

Being 22 and a poor student on a centrelink benefit, this is probably the most interested I have been so far in a federal election. And for Australia, it's a fairly history-making election, what with having a female prime minster for the first time and all. And yet the politics of it all strikes me as extremely annoying. Yet it is a political election. But I use politics in the derogatory sense - the sense that the future of a country I happen to be very proud of, hinges on some kind of beauty or popularity contest. The campaign to me, sucks. The television ads suck, the ease to which people will believe anything the media writes, sucks, and frankly, our lack of choices, sucks. And so, having just lived a year in France, where people take the idea of revolution more seriously than their own lives, compared to being back home where people think handing in a blank ballot paper might make a difference... makes me think the situationists kinda started with the right idea.

If it was all hinged on the fulfillment of desire, then I think what they were desiring in those days was rebellion against a society dominated by the politics of capitalism and media telling everybody what to think (Debord 1967). The 60's as it seems now, were a time for revolt, and I think this can be summarised by May '68 in France, an event constantly refered to by every one of my professors whilst I was there.

I don't know if it's just my age and the fact that I'm at a point where I'm very opinionated and interested by worldly events because of my education, but it feels to me that we, or at least, I, am unfulfilled by the politics of the society in which I live. If I am unhappy about irresponsible media, sacrificing young lives for possible alterior motives in war, the lack of choices for our country's future, unsustainable living on Earth, the continuing presence of capital punishment in seemingly contemporary societies, a lack of complete democracy, corrupt justice systems, and the presence of prejudice towards people who have had no choice in their race/ class/ gender/ sexuality/ disability/ etc, the maybe a hell of a lot of other people are too. We are creating a situation which I've already stated that to me, means something along the lines of an artistic nature. And it seems to me that in history, when politics fail us, artists take over. Maybe it's time for a new revolt?

85701 Research Based Design - Week One

An Exercise in Flanery

The "flaneur" is a concept I'm fairly familiar with, having studied French, a little philosophy, literature and photography. For me, being the flaneur means going out and emersing yourself in the quotidien life - that is, just the everyday normal processes that people go through. Being the flaneur means having so specific destination, no will to change anything about what you see, just to see, listen, smell, touch, observe, chuckle, or cry. Whether it's window shopping, or as the French call it "faire la leche-vitrine" - literally to "do the licking of the shop windows", perambulate through streets following nothing but your curiosity, or go on walkabout to photograph the nuances of the streets, essentially I believe this act is a kind of catharsis for the wanderer. In literature, TS Eliot, Plath, and Joyce wrote what was coined a 'stream of consciousness, and the flaneur does essentially the same thing, on the street instead of pen to a piece of paper.

I think technology bring interesting changes to the practice of the flaneur. It is now technically possible to wander down the streets of any city, sitting in your lounge chair with your laptop and an internet connection. Google street view is a fascinating program in that you can technolocigally walk down any street of your choice, and see what it looked like, what was happening there, what cars were parked there, at the time the photo was taken. A story on my newsfeed on facebook came up a few weeks ago where people had gone and found images of working girls on Google street maps. Although I wasn't too thrilled at this demographic being singled out, I was intrigued by the concept - what else has been frozen in time and made available to everyone? A drug deal? A car driving without licence plates?


To me, the issue of anonymity is crucial for the flaneur. It is important to not have an identity. To not draw attention to oneself. You want to take in what is around you, not change anything by subjecting it to yourself. Cameramen recordning wildlife don't stop the lions from attacking the zebras - if they did, they would disrupt the natural circle of life and never see what happens when lion do attack zebras. In the realm of photography, I think the idea of anonymity comes out a lot in 'flaneur photography". Cartier-Bresson, a photographer famous for hiding himself behind newspapers and using zoom lenses to take his photos stated, “..approach the subject on tiptoe, even if it is a still life”. This idea comes out in many of my favourite photographers - Doisneau. Mary Ellen Mark, and the ones Paul Sutton introduced us to in his presentation. Sander did a photographic project a few years back entitled "Extraordinary images of ordinary people". I think this title captures the essence of what it means to be a flaneur - noticing the extraordinary in what appears to be ordinary. To some extent I used this philosophy when I did some street photography a few years back:

Our 'flanery' from UTS to Darlinghurst brought up many observations for me - the different sounds of the city, graffiti, the histories of certain places, moments in time, being on "autopilot" and not usually noticing these things, the streets being a very solitary place, the different perspectives everyone had on their journey, etc. But I guess the most noticeable thing for me was what makes something or someone noticeable? What makes you slow down and take a look?

This 'situation' we're creating isn't entirely clear to me yet, I guess that's normal. My initial response was an artistic approach - I thought of flash mobs or silent raves or thousands of naked people at the opera house. What keeps being repeated is the idea of 'researching a question', and I'm intrigued as to what this will be. A cultural or social commentary, a political debate, a personal story? I'd like it to be something that addresses that idea of solitary streets or a cold world of strangers. I think walking down the street should be a friendlier experience.