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THE CITY AS SITE; SEEING AS THINKING:

LOCALE AS INSPIRATION FOR THE CREATIVE PRACTICE.

The City as Site is a participatory course focused on field research and class discussion. The course seeks to bridge the gap between the creative studio practice and the locale as a source of inspiration.

 

The course utilized exploration as the seminal process for learning to see the world through the senses. Using the city of Dubrovnik, students explored the physical, geographic and cultural character of place. Through systems of observation and methods of recording information they addressed personal and collective interpretations of place.

 

Students participated in the process of mapping as walking. This nomadic and transitory exploration involves the use of observation as a means of providing insight that can help the artist/designer to see the physical environment in new ways. It converts the familiar to the unfamiliar and vice versa. The essence of the project is to make students utilize all of their senses and to learn to see the non-visible. The act of decoding the cityscape through the senses challenges participants to “see” the landscape of the city through motion in real time and provides a means of interpreting and defining the city as a physical place full of sensory experiences.

 

A momentary encounter with something foreign – architecture, food, an object or a scent – has the potential of crystallizing the experience of place, making it more than just a set of geographic coordinates. Inevitably, the process of gathering and recording these experiences will provides the student with a reservoir of sensory codes stored for future use in the creative process.

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