Somewhere, somehow, in the mass upheaval of my life in the past few months (moving 450 miles away to a new state and starting a new job) I managed to lose all of my SPACING photos. Just when I was ready to really wrap it up and make the archive. So much for that. So what’s on here is what I have to offer as documentation for the Chicago portion of the project. Sorry about that InCUBATE…forgive me?
Some things are meant to be temporary.
photo documentation of a 15 minute bike ride on milwaukee, between western and rockwell. the exercise was to photograph as many instances of the letter “Y” on signage:
date: april 16, 2007
The proposal I submitted for a class about Spacing. More photos to come.
The personal struggle with this project for me was perpetuity. I want my projects to either last forever or have a clean and concise ending. Now that I’m moving back to Michigan, the Chicago version of spacing will need to find a resting place at InCUBATE. Not necessarily a “final” resting place, but an archive that can be accessed by future participants and/or residents if they should be inspired to contribute to Spacing or derive their own work from these ideas.
Over the next two weeks I will work on this archive, through this blog and an actual physical manifestation that will be housed at InCUBATE. Then….?
the idea behind the video was to use a typical mode of transportation (driving) to navigate the designated area. automobile travel was also chosen because of its closed-off nature; when traveling by car we are in a controlled space that is often closed off to the outside environment.
in certain instances the video is slowed down to emphasize the small details, moments and people we often dismiss or don’t fully notice as we travel through an area. this is sort of the anti-SPACING-method of experiencing an environment.
cleaned up the map, added in the street names and zoning areas…
2006 market value of buildings immediately surrounding InCUBATE, according to the City of Chicago’s Department of Zoning:
While I think having discussions of “community” are important and can be facilitated through projects such as Spacing, it’s not my goal or interest at this point. My interest, as of now, is in observation of immediate environments, of creating activities based on my interest in documentation, research and observation in a specific area of Chicago.
Posting site: Armitage and Franciso
friday, april 13, 2007
Did a bit of a dérive on my bike, even though I had somewhat of a goal of riding the perimeter of the area I’ll be mapping and working in. Snapped a few photos, felt very aware of the “artist as ethnographer” feeling.
I find it curious that my aerial map will centralize InCUBATE and move outward but I was inclined to interact with the area starting from the outside and moving inward. Two very different ways of experiencing and navigating an environment.
I took photos of the four corners of the area:
Northeast corner (Fullerton and Western) 
Northwest corner (Fullerton and California) 
Southwest corner (Armitage and California) 
Southeast (Armitage and Western) 
I was reminded of the Chicago Mile by Mile project done by Fake is the New Real, which documents almost every corner in Chicago. The presentation of actual images over an aerial map of the city is really effective – it allows for simultaneous views “above” and “in”.
Neogeography (from placekraft):
Neogeography, as we see it, is a diverse set of practices that operate outside, or alongside, or in the manner of, the practices of professional geographers. Rather than making claims on scientific standards, methodologies of neogeography tend towards the intuitive, expressive, personal, absurd, and or artistic, but may just be idiosyncratic applications of “real” geographic techniques. This is not to say that these practices are of no use to the cartographic/geographic sciences, but that they just usually don’t conform to the protocols of professional practice.
