macro-to-micro city descriptions
something from [t] on micro worlds:
Once a few years back there was a tiny exhibition at the railway
station held by our departementīs croquis course. Their assignment
was to get a piece of the daily life at the railway station on a sheet
of paper. there were some fantastic results. All of those could have
worked as postcards Now that i think of it they could have been
commenting existing postcards since railwaystations are so often
used imagenary in cards.

In the drawings people had captured parts of the physical world
by scratching the surfaces of the station (like kids do with coins)
and then continued drawing the surroundings to them. some of
the drawings seemed to have many focal points leading from
the general overview to enlarged detail. This is one of the lack
of postcards you find from shops: they only contain the macro
world. And in my experience people stick to subscribing the
same thing in their writings at the back of the card. - Oh the
railwaystation was beautiful.

Easy-fun-fast-macro-to-micro-personal-remakeofthemostwantedturisticsites
could be fun to do.

-T

posted by [j] at 05:33

extension on >torontohelsinki< _project
mailing continues on until the 31st of August where
we can start another phase in the process.
It doesn't mean that it has to stop there as well,
we could continue on posting...
posted by [j] at 05:57

feedback from mailings
We were discussing about scanning the
mailings and posting them on the _project.
It would probably also be useful to write a little
about the experience of receiving as well so we can
learn from the sending. That way we'd have a variety
of interpretations from the same material.

posted by [j] at 05:54

being a tourist in your own home
I was discussing with [jm] about the difference
in views of a city from a tourist or local person's
point of view. One thing we were questioning was
if you could be a tourist in your own home?

I have a cousin in the Netherlands who took me out
one night and asked me to show him around his
home town. So I went around discussing what
interests me, and in the end he had a new experience
in a city he's lived in for a while.

So then how to recreate that feeling of being a tourist?
It almost goes back to what we were exploring with
the idea of city recipes. If a person assembles ingredients,
and creates a recipe to put them together, then there's
something new created and the results are random
since everyone will have a different way of interpreting
the recipe.

everyone's a tourist ::products
Perhaps we could create packages which inspire
people to create their own city experience. Materials
could be provided as in a "kit" form, or the user could
gather their own. In print form it could work as a manual
(recipe) to inspire people to explore a city.

posted by [j] at 05:47