prompt 5.1 - community building

With a new semester under way, so is the start of Studio II taught by Louise St. Pierre. For the second studio course for the masters program we are given more freedom in deciding our prompts. The only thing we were told to keep in mind when choosing our prompts is to pick something we are curious about and a method we want to try.

For this prompt, I am curious about community building and the methods I want to try are music-making, film photography and a scavenger hunt. In a world that is becoming increasingly asocial, enhanced through technological advances in the way we communicate and relate, in this project I plan to utilize technology to increase a community's chance for random interactions with their neighbours.

I currently live in Mount Pleasant and on January 17, 2023, Vancouver witnessed one of its greatest snowfalls in over 60 years.

The night before the snow hit I was mulling in my bed considering what I wanted to do for this prompt. When I woke up and witnessed how much snow was on the ground, I knew exactly what I had to do. With classes cancelled, I grabbed my film camera (Pentax IQZoom 160), my field recorder (Tascam DR-40X) and shuffled my way to Mount Pleasant Park. I knew this moment would never come again and I thought what better way for a community to feel cohesive than connecting it to a place and time.

The plan for this prompt then was to make a sonic mural for Mount Pleasant Park. On Jan. 17th and 18th 2024, I would auto-ethnographically capture my experience of the snow day from both a sonic and visual perspective. I liked using the film camera for this exercise because since I can’t look back at the images and I am limited to how many I take, I have to be more present and intentional of how I want to capture the park. This intentionality I believe will let me capture a more raw authentic feeling which in turn people looking at the film could relate more too. After capturing the moments, I will make a sonic mural from only the audio I captured those two days that highlights different sections of the park i.e. a tune for the community garden, basketball court, skateboard park and main park bench.

Visitors of the park would be able to go to any of the aforementioned locations and scan a QR that directs them to a webpage with a map of the park and the sonic murals that can be unlocked.

Each QR code has a 4 digit pin associated with it that enables you to unlock the song on my webpage. Once the visitors walk around the park find all 4 QR codes, they will be able to access the photo gallery of images from the infamous snow day.

Methodological Insight

Through documenting the park over the two days, I became aware of a way of working I enjoy and that gets the best out of my latent skills. On both the 17th and 18th we didn’t find out the campus was closed until the morning of. On the 17th, because of plans I made later in the day, I only had 15 minutes to capture the park. At this time I still didn’t exactly know the concept I was going for or what I was looking for. Nevertheless, I shot from the hip and captured whatever spoke to me. The next day Iistened back to the audio I captured and began to realize the direction I wanted to go and the gaps in the recordings I made. On the 18th with another impromptu snow day, I was able to go to the park this time in a slower pace and was able to be more intentional about what I wanted to capture. Reflecting on this exercise, although the steps I took were not initially planned, I see this methodology as being something I want to continue to do. Relating this to an interview I read of the image maker Bas Princen, he made the point that “you can only see interesting things if you see something for the second-time, when you compare and see the changes” - (Arquitectura-g - apartamento #31 pg. 199). By doing first, reflecting and then being, I believe I was able to capture the park in a way that feels authentic to my style of creativity.

At each location, I plan on making a site specific QR code that is more elevated than your traditional black and white ones. I want to find the balance between making something that acknowledges the environment that it is in while at the same time still standing out enough to catch ones attention.

Basketball QR code for courts, a QR code made from 2 rakes for the community garden, a graffiti styled QR for the main park bench (the bench has some graffiti on it already), a QR code that looks like trucks on a skateboard for the skate park.

Next Step

1. I want to spend more time sketching and ideating on what an elevated QR code could be like, which is site-specific to the different locations in Mount Pleasant Park

   1. I plan on doing another site visit where I start to identify the final forms and locations of codes

2. I want to solidify the sonic direction for the field recordings. Some ideas:

   1. One song broken up into four parts; the decision here would be if the song parts could be listened to in any order.

   2. Four independent songs

   3. Instead of a song, make more of a soundscape

3. Develop film

4. Wireframe webpage

Because of the increased freedom we get in Studio II, we get the choice to complete our prompts every 2 weeks or chain our prompts together and complete them over a longer timescale. I am choosing to chain the prompts together and take 4 weeks for this one. However, for my next studio class, the milestone I want to achieve is to have 1 out of 4 songs done, 1 QR code done, select pictures from the film roll and develop a wireframe sketch for the webpage.