| RUSSET LEDERMAN THESIS RESEARCH DOCUMENTATION FOR MEMORIES OF PLACE: NYC THOUGHT PICTURES: web page 2/3 |
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| THEORY For both the practical and theoretical aspects of this thesis, I researched and integrated the "City" writings or "Denkbilder" of Walter Benjamin and Graeme Gilloch. Benjamin's sketches of Naples and Moscow, along with his childhood memories of Berlin provide a good grounding for interpreting the modern urban experience from numerous theoretical vantage points: social, cultural, and psychological. By using Benjamin as a loose road map in documenting and depicting the urban tales I have collected over this past 8 months, I have been able to synthesize the fragmented, conflicting and diverse stories into an "inconclusive" whole. Here, I am using the word "inconclusive" in its most positive sense. For me the open-ended quality of Memories of Place: NYC Thought Pictures is a strength. I want the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions, not mine alone. |
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 Illustration 4 |
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| Along with Benjamin, I have explored anthologies and various individual studies from such diverse disciplines as sociology, urban studies and cultural studies, which examine the individual and memories as they relate to the urban experience. What excites me about this thesis is that the subject matter and approach bring together a wide range of academic fields, along with the experience of listening and recording personal stories. I like that the research for this project led me from the psychology "stacks" at the library to the living rooms of individual storytellers. The open borders of this area of study allowed me to take my cue from the very different personal stories I listened to. For instance, if one of the thesis subjects mentioned their memories of attending matinees at the Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx, then my research led me from fantasy architecture to cultural meeting places to war time diversions. In the end, I let the stories dictate the visual direction of the overall piece and ultimately shape a "public/private history" that we can all relate to. Therefore, in order to better interpret and recontextualize my growing collection of stories, I reviewed some of the following writings and anthologies: Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, edited by Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi; Power of Place by Dolores Hayden; The Experience of Place by Tony Hiss; Anywise, edited by Cynthia C. Davidson; and Outside Lies Magic by John R. Stilgoe. I revisited the visual documentation of Allen Ginsberg's "road photos" from the Beat Era; and Peter Gabriel's interactive CD rom, Eve: The Music and Art Adventure. To aid in the integration of my core aesthetic perspective and the specific vantage point of this project, I reread the writings of John Graham, Systems and Dialectics of Art, and John Berger, Ways of Seeing. It should also be noted that in the research and interviewing phase of this thesis, I collected many more stories than I could have possibly used in the final project. This provided me with a broad base of stories from which I developed and refined the larger focus of this thesis. In the final project, the individual stories, when heard/viewed together, weave a larger picture of the public/private urban experience of place. In order to do this, I collected many different types of stories. It has been interesting to see in the editing process which stories proved to reverberate and reflect the larger "urban experiences". I anticipated a lot of raw material that required heavy editing. As I got deeper into the thesis, the precise focus became apparent. Using the theoretical structure that developed from my extensive research of Benjamin, Gilloch, Hayden, and Hiss, I have been able to create a work which avoids a "scripted" depiction of place. I have continuously been aware that any attempt to show a "universal" picture of a people and place will ultimately fail. By retelling several small, very personal and idiosyncratic stories from among the many millions of stories that make up the continuing drama of a city, I am presenting a fragmented slice of urban life, which reveals all of our intensely individual, yet universal experiences as they relate to a sense of "place". As a result of my research on the urban theorists: Benjamin, Gilloch, Hayden and Hiss, I have been struck by the overall renewed interest in reclaiming and reconfirming our "physical" space. My assumption is that this interest is being generated by our growing daily interaction in a virtual computer space. As many of us are now communicating via e-mail, computer bulletin boards, and live "digital" chat rooms, I am noticing a movement in advertising commercials and academic theoretical circles which presents or discusses a "traditional" sense of place or space. For example, a current Microsoft television commercial presents a rural midwestern town which is "preserving its small town qualities" by digitizing and communicating to the rest of the world via new technologies. The voice over in the commercial goes on to say that the town is able "to keep its young people from leaving for better jobs in the city, and thus maintain the generations of farmers." (I am paraphrasing here.) For me, this depiction of traditional place, is similar to our fascination with the traditional father/mother family. For as we move farther away from that ideal, we seem to want to reclaim it. It is therefore, timely (and probably not coincidental) that I am working within the sphere of "place". |
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 Illustration 5 |
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I would also suggest that a renewed interest in Walter Benjamin within academic circles is as a result of our larger societal focus on redefining "place" in a Post Modern world. Benjamin's "City" texts, "sought to explore the relationships between metropolitan environment, individual memory and collective history. How does the city transform memory? How does memory give form to the urban complex? Could the narration of an individual past critically illuminate the history of an epoch?" By using a fragmented style to present his urban observations and thoughts, Benjamin was working within a Post Modern dialectic. The random and repetitive, inconclusive images within his writings predate the patchwork of sounds and images that are the visual norm in the late 1990's. Gilloch notes that,
The above quote could describe a contemporary video installation or the choppy splicing of images now popular for television graphics (such as the opening credits of shows like "ER" or "Homicide".) Benjamin's popularity as a subject of study for university undergraduates may be seen in this light. In a sense, he presaged the emergence of the Post Modern aesthetic. During his own lifetime (Europe between the wars), he was given scant recognition, however, it is with hindsight, one can see that several (not all) of his observations were quite accurate. His interest in excavating and then reassembling, montage style, the diverse fragments of city life to present a conflicted, inconclusive, open-ended whole has been instrumental in developing the theoretical and aesthetic direction of my thesis, Memories of Place: NYC Thought Pictures. |
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| DESCRIPTION OF COMPLETED PROJECT The final cross platform (Mac/PC) CD-Rom version of Memories of Place: NYC Thought Pictures is a purposeful collage/montage of dialogue and imagery. The work is constructed in a modular format: containing 3 real life "place" stories and 4 theoretical "place" dialogues. There is a stark visual contrast between the real life stories and the theoretical dialogues. Real life stories are photographic collages, while theoretical modules are defined by a singular color and pastiche of text and type play. The viewer enters the piece through a minimal black and white title page with a looping background sound. A visual and auditory introduction outlines the theoretical and aesthetic focus of Memories of Place: NYC Thought Pictures. Unlike the majority of the piece, the titles and introduction are fixed and clearly defined. My intention is not to bombard the viewer with sounds and images until he/she is introduced to the conceptual basis of the work. Once the viewer is past the introduction, and enters the main interface, a random and seemly uncontrolled navigation structure takes over. A band at the bottom screen acts as a panning device to randomly animate the rectangular images, which reshuffle and become static when the panning bar is not active. The panning device is also linked to a sound track of a bustling city crowd. The volume of the audio is programmed to correspond with the panning velocity, i.e. a faster pan produces a stronger sound. The impression conveyed is the constant urban dialogue which surrounds us. The viewer than clicks on a random image to navigate to one of the 7 major sections of the work. The viewer's only clue as to his/her destination is a one word description which might indicate the storyteller, the place, the time or the theoretical section title. These sections are titled: City, Fragments, Time, Memory, Manhattan 1945-1970, Brooklyn 1920-1950, and Bronx 1940-1958. The theoretical modules are a random dance of indiscernible text on a monochrome background with several isolated white dots. Once the viewer clicks on a dot, he/she is met with a screen of text and audio fragments centered around the module title, i.e. the Fragment module presents text about the fragmentary style of Benjamin's "Denkbilder." The sound and imagery in these modules is meant to be interrupted, disjointed, and overlapping. My intent is to create a multimedia experience similar to the fragmentary writing style presented in Benjamin's essay, "One Way Street"; a collection of urban theoretical snapshots. The viewer is given brief visual and auditory "bites". If desired, the viewer can cease clicking and hear a theoretical sound bite in its entirety. These modules are meant to function in an open-ended manner, allowing the viewer to control the flow of information. The storyteller modules are clearly identified by their titles and photographic collage style. Again the viewer uses a panning device to randomly animate the interface. Each time the panning stops, the viewer is presented with several story options which can be activated by a mouse click. Once an image is clicked on, a story fragment is related. These stories, which are about specific events and places, can be interrupted or allowed to play in their entirety. The overriding sense is one of memory, nostalgia, and a connected discontinuity. Within the theoretical discussion explored by Walter Benjamin's "Denkbilder" writings, Memories of Place: NYC Thought Pictures presents a diverse, disconnected, and open-ended picture of urban existence and memory It is an inconclusive work which pushes the viewer to examine the urban complex from multiple and ever changing vantage points. |
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 Illustration 6 |
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| RATIONALE I have never professed or aspired to create a work of art which exists within a vacuum. We are all products of our time and environment, and my interest in Walter Benjamin, who champions the idea of an entity created from broken, fleeting, and disconnected collage elements, is symptomatic of living within this time period. It, therefore, follows that my thesis would be an extension of my absorption and "re-presentation" of the fragmentary information that surrounds me. And, similar to "urban theorists", such as Hiss, Hayden and Stilgoe, I am trying to reclaim and reconfirm a sense of "place" within a "disconnected" technologically advanced society. Perhaps, it is through a new appreciation of the subtle, personal and simultaneously universal stories that contribute to the fabric of our urban existence, that I can retouch a place that is becoming more and more akin to the set and plot line of a "made for TV" movie. Perhaps, it is through the retelling of these daily urban remembrances within a repetitive and random computer generated aesthetic that I can somehow preserve them before they are swallowed up by the same media that I am using to present them. |
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 Illustration 7 |
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CONCLUSION
Ultimately, I would like Memories of Place: NYC Thought Pictures to be an open-ended work which presents each individual, fragments of their various stories, and their contribution to a larger view of a particular place and time. My goal with this work is to inform the viewer about the importance of the many diverse "little" acts, remembrances, daily activities and routines that describe a specific sense of place and create an evocative whole. By using a random and repetitive navigational structure along with the theoretical writings of Benjamin and Graeme Gilloch, I am reinforcing within the viewer a sense of the fleeting and momentary nature of these observations. If, in the end, the viewer is asking more questions and is challenged to re-evaluate their own sense of "place", then I have been successful. For me, the investigation of place is ongoing, without any finite conclusions. |
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