City of the Mind, City for the Mind

The article "I walk in dreams and I can change them" by Tristan Priimägi, Estonian pop culture enthusiast as he calls himself, brought my attention to few of the recent discoveries and inspirations.

In this article he recalls that according to his friend there has always been an exception in the film production course in the audiovisual media department in the University of Tallinn - the sketch or a story can not take place either in the psychiatric clinic or in dreams, as in the above named places there is no need to seize the narrative structure. Indeed who of us does not remember that writing an essay on a free subject actually always turns out to be one of the most impossible tasks you have ever had to do in your life. As if some restrictions were always necessary...

Once Plato imagined a place where a group of people who had lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall, known as the Allegory of the Cave. The people watched shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and began to ascribe forms to these shadows. The shadows were as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. However in Plato´s vision, once the prisoners were freed from the cave, they would come to understand that the shadows on the wall were not constitutive of reality at all, a perceived true form of the reality, but rather the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.

We construct worlds daily whether we call them invisible, hidden, parallel societies, imagined landscapes or anything else. But what if there were no limits to our imaginations? How many of us would be able to construct completely unseen world not using and/or copying elements of the seen?

That´s something Christopher Nolan has pointed out, against some academics belief that narrative subject needs to be limiting, in his new film Inception. The description of the movie would seem shallow in the paper, the content incomplete and maybe even somewhat comical. But the movie has few angles that keep haunting and inspiring me : "(...) you gotta draw from stuff you know right? (...) never re-create from you memory, always imagine new places (...) it is pure creation."

Mapping a city in film has been exploring relationships between city, urban space, moving image and memory for centuries. Why am I inspired? Inception, one of the few latest blockbuster movies, does not describe cliche worlds, but rather tries to question the limits as well as ethics of our imagination and is therefore something intellectually challenging, at least for me...

The more people around, the less people around

It has been discussed lately that human beings in nowadays society are not considered substance anymore, but a function. Human 'role' in life has become more important than his personality. How does it affect our perceptions of (public) space - space that we share with others? And the way we tend to think and name activities, spaces, people around us?

Man-is-not a tool by Paavo Piik

Man is not a tool.
He may not be.
He is not a tool for pleasure or intimacy

or respect or lightness or boredom
tool for making your work.


He is not for making money,
filling emptiness, teaching, viewing
for self-esteem and self-defence tool.
Because man is not a function.


He has no confessor or a prostitute
or a handhold or a domestic animal
or a wallet or a clown
or a workhorse or a babysitter,
non-critical role of a critic.
At least in it's own mind.


The more people around you,
the less they resemble the people
and the more they resemble functions.


Ergo,
The more people around you,
the less people around you.

source: free translation from Paavo Piik's poetry

Fixed Feature Life?

Fixed feature space is one of the basic ways of organizing the activities of individuals and groups. It includes material manifestations as well as the hidden, internalized designs that govern behaviour of man. One common example of fixed feature space is spatially organised inside of the western house. Not only there are rooms for special functions - food, entertainment, socializing - even the artifacts associated with the activities are related to that specific space. In some standards people who live in a mess are those who fail to classify activities and artifacts according to a uniform, consistent and predictable spatial plan. The internal layout however is quite recent.

Philippe Aries points out in a book Centuries of Childhood that rooms had no fixed functions in European houses until the eighteenth century. Members of the family had no privacy as we know it today nor there were spaces that were sacred or specialized for one function only: "...strangers came at will, while beds and tables were set up and taken down according to the moods and appetites of the occupants". In the 18th century the house altered its form, rooms started to be arranged likely to street and named after its function - bedroom, living room, dining room etc.

Some aspects of the fixed-feature space however are not visible until one observes human behaviour. It is important to note that fixed feature space nowadays acts like a mold into which great deal of behaviour is cast. As Churchill has noted: "We shape our buildings and they shape us".

It has been discussed lately that people do not think of their relationships with other people by kinship or emotions any more, but they have also started to name people by functions.

Futuro house by Matti Kuusia, 1968

Something is missing?

The telephone, television, video, home computers, and so forth have introduced new ways of interacting. Direct meetings in public spaces can now be replaced by indirect telecommunication. Active presence, participation, and experience can now be substituted with passive picture watching, seeing what others have experienced elsewhere. Or is that in the past already?

Abundant possibilities do exist for compensating for what has been lost. The demand for easily accessible social opportunities outside the home is growing, whether it is due to the change in family patterns, decreasing family size or great deal of free time, the spaces that are worth using, are being used. The public spaces are needed, even more now in the world of virtual communication. The city might not be a goal anymore, but a tool that will be formed by its use.

Necessary, Optional and Social?

An ordinary day on an ordinary street. Pedestrians pass on the sidewalks, children play near front doors, people sit on benches and steps, two passersby greet on the sidewalk, groups engage in conversation. This mix of outdoor activities is influenced by a number of conditions. Greatly simplified though, these activities in public spaces can be divided into three categories, each of which places very different demands on physical environment.

Necessary activities include those that are more or less compulsory and in majority can be summed up as those related to walking. These activities are necessary, their incidence is influenced only slightly by the physical framework. These take place throughout the year, under nearly all circumstances.

Optional activities are participated if there is a wish to do so... if time and place make it possible. These take place only when conditions are optimal and place invites them. When outdoors are of high quality, activities take place with approximately the same sequence. However a wide range of optional activities will occur because place and situation invites people to stop, sit, eat, play etc.

Social activities depend on the presence of others in public spaces. The most widespread of social activities is a passive contact - simply seeing and hearing the other people.These activities can also be termed as a result of the above mentioned as they evolve from activities linked to each other. Social activities occur spontaneously as direct consequence of people moving about and being in the same space. The presence of others compromises one of the most important characters of public spaces - the subject of outdoor activities therefore does not begin with a single or limited category of activities - it is finely interwoven pattern.

The Social Life of Urban Spaces

This witty and original film is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don't. Beginning at New York's Seagram Plaza, one of the most used open areas in the city, the film proceeds to analyze why this space is so popular and how other urban oases, both in New York and elsewhere, measure up. Based on direct observation of what people actually do, the film presents a remarkably engaging and informative tour of the urban landscape and looks at how it can be made more hospitable to those who live in it. The video was adapted from a book with the same name by William H. Whyte.

Space & Place - Action & Movement

I came across a concise and well-written book by Tim Creswell - Place: A Short Introduction - a text that introduces the fundamental concept of place, marrying everyday uses of the term with the complex theoretical debates. It traces the development of the concept of place from 1950s through its subsequent appropriation by cultural geography and the linking of the place to politics. Below I listed out some of the key thoughts that could become useful for developing my own perceptions of space and its use. If you know any inspirational sources, list them in the comment box!

* Tuan defines space as an open arena of action and movement while place is about stopping and resting and becoming involved. He argues that through human perception and experience we get to know the world through places. The term 'topophilia' was developed to refer to the 'affective bond between people and places' (Tuan in Topophilia, 1974).

* "To live is to live locally, and know is the first of all to know the place one is in" (Casey, 1996). 

* To say a place is socially constructed is to say that it is not natural and given that human forces made a place then human forces can equally importantly undo it. To say something is socially constructed is to say that it is within human power to change it - to change meaning and materiality (Creswell on Harvey).

* Thirdspace is lived space and it interrupts a distinction between perceived places and spatial practices. Thirdspace is practised and lived rather than simply being material (conceived) or mental (perceived).  In these terms places are never established but produced and producing. (Soja, 1999)

* "To be inside a place is to belong to it and identify with it, and the more profoundly inside you are the stronger is the identity of the place" (Relph on placelessness - where someone goes is less important than the act and style of going...)