SENSING PLACE
Designed a book about my travel and geographical writing alongside my experiences in academic research in artistic and graphical contexts, using the visual explore as a record my personal journey in Blackpool and Clacton on sea.
HOW I APPROACHED THE SUBJECT
After visiting Blackpool, a town I had never visited before, I was engaged in capturing a sense of place, participating in what Donald Meining has termed “geographical creativity”. i Initially, I was struck by a feeling fear whilst walking the streets. In equal measure, however, I was excited by the landscape and atmosphere of the place. Therefore I proceeded to explore the city and took photos to record the atmosphere I was sensing.
Reflecting, I realized the extent to which I had been drawn by the decaying visage of the townscape. I became aware that photography distorts, rather than reflects social realities. This led me to realise that perhaps my first impressions of the place were based upon what was especially striking to me or had an emotional impact on me, as opposed to the true realities of Blackpool - a distortion of reality. Therefore I started to visually explore DISTORTIONS of the place, through taking pictures with a water filter and crumpling photos to express distortion.
TAKING BOOK BACK INTO THE PLACE
I explored the flat page format and decided to leave it as a poster, adding some perforation lines to let people fold this book themselves. This enriches the overall sensory experience of the project. As I mentioned, the format of a poster or flat page particularly appealed to me. Images of both Blackpool and Clacton were stitched together to form individual montages of both places and juxtaposed back onto shopfronts and shutters in the towns. This layered my interpretation and perception of both towns back onto the urban environment and represent a meeting point of distortion and reality.
ABOUT FILM
My personal goal of this project was to construct the sensory experience in both physical and digital formats and to take advantage of the need to use digital presentation methods during this pandemic. I decided to make digital outcomes and I created two films:
The first film is an instruction of how to build this book.
The other film is a digital showcase of this book.
Sounds which I recorded in Blackpool and Clacton on Sea are mixed with background music to give my project - ‘sensing place’ - an audio experience also.
