City of (Re)constructed Histories
OVERVIEW
In the City of (Re)constructed Histories, the people of the present vote to determine the facts of the past. These histories are constructed, reconstructed, and maintained through a general election process. Notices of approved histories can be found marking recently voted upon sites and serve as public reminders that history is written by the voters.
How might the (Re)constructed Histories of West County influence their culture and community?
Is it problematic or empowering that the fabric of multiple histories is dynamic?
THE PROJECT
In my field research, I became interested in the layers of decommissioned relics of the built environment resulting from natural and human influence on the landscape. I was also inspired by another project I worked on in parallel which involved exploring different time senses.
A simplified reading of Aristotle's Law of Identity says that to have an identity, means to have a single identity; an object cannot have two identities. Therefore A = A. (Re)Constructed Histories challenges this notion and posits A is not A by peering behind the scenes to examine the identity of a city and presenting objects with alternate historic identities.
Click an image below for a slideshow of early explorations which informed the final project.
REFLECTION
Remaining threads of interest to explore include how this speculative scenario might play out in relation to power structures and society:
-Where might these sites live in a city?
-What influence do they have on their surroundings?
-What technologies might be used to play out this ongoing scenario?
-How might this process invite study of or escape from stories of place?
-What might the economic impact be of these rotating sites?
To help reconcile for myself some of the preceding questions, I mapped out a design fiction involving a private business fabricating a synthetic dust-like substance which stimulated brain activity into a lucid dream state. The citizens in this dystopian world are conscious but manipulated through the altering of histories, and become trapped in a type of medicated knowledge loop.
MATERIALS AND TOOLS
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
iPhone (photo and audio documentation)
PROJECT BRIEF
Your brief is to create a city, or a piece of a city; a re-imagined Los Angeles, a Los Angeles from
a parallel world - past, present or future - where a certain condition or situation is amplified,
mutated, extended. Your city will exist as a multimedia drawing, possibly incorporating 3D elements. Your city will be a radical abstraction. It will be comprised solely of a few carefully created elements, derived from situations we have encountered or ideas we have discussed during the first part of the project. These elements - the building blocks of your city - will be positioned / employed / deployed multiple times to create a hybrid urban landscape. There must be an underlying organizational idea to your imagined city. We want to understand the essential structure of its hybrid form.
CLASS
Emergent Conditions
INSTRUCTORS
Ben Hooker
Sean Donahue