Studio Project
Overview
There is an enormous amount of information to assist with the recovery of Bronzeville across its various stages of development and change. This data exists in the maps of the Chicago School of Sociology, in works of fiction and poetry, in collections of street photography, in the archives of famous residents, in the myriad histories that have been written about its enormous contributions to American culture, in the testimonies of living memory collected by researched like Timuel Black, in interviews with Studs Terkel and the recordings of Alan Lomax, in the archives of historic newspapers like the Chicago Defender or Chicago Bee, and in the special collections of the University of Chicago, the Chicago Public Library, and institutions across the United States and Europe.
There are also abundant techniques and technologies for producing visualizations. Some involve the disciplinary conventions of urban analysis, planning, urban design, landscape and architectural practice. Some involve the discipline of cartography, psychogeophy, cognitive mapping. Some relate to the inventions of 20th Century and contemporary artists.
However, attempts to translate raw data about Bronzeville (which is often structural) into visualizations that communicate and interpret its history are fairly limited.
This project invites students to make some attempts.
Instructions
In teams of 2 or 3, students are asked to produce two (2) complementary visualizations of the “Ghost City”:
A. Reference for Walking
Via reckless neglect and active annihilation, the urbanistic and architectural spaces that once formed the scenography of Bronzeville have been collapsed into their own foundations. Like an archeology of the recent past, these spaces now reside just beneath the surface of other sites and myriad empty lots. Students are invited to plot an itinerary through Bronzeville’s urban field to reconstruct a visual reference to assist others to understand the degree of change that has taken place.
This reference can integrate many time periods into the following frameworks for visualization:
- A street plan, which could be continuous or discontinous depending on the topic of interest, showing the location of spaces in relation to both sides the street.
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Elevations of buildings or interiors (if significant) on either side of street. These can be photographic collages or drawings.
- Annotations about the cultural significance of sites and any notes about time if these drawings reflect multiple periods.
B. Constellations or Networks of Cultural Development.
The itinerary above would intersect with one or more constellations of spaces that supported various forms cultural development in Bronzeville. Because of the history of disenfrachisement, these sites might include both formal institutions and informal spaces, for example:
- Jazz Venues
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Blues Venues
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Theaters
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Churches
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The living rooms of famous residents.
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Policy sites.
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Newspaper publishers.
- Recording studios.
- Fine Arts Institutions
Plot an Itinerary
Overview
This itinerary reperesents a walking tour. It should be no less than 6 blocks long, and no longer than 12. It can be continuous, to recover the ambience of a street in a zone of heightened cultural activity. It could also be discontinuous (with designated breaks) if the team’s interest is in connecting sites spread across a larger territory.
Instructions
This path will inform the next step of drawing. To assist, it might help to refer to these initial maps, drawing the path over one of them, or a collage or combination of them.
Itinerary to Measured Plan
Overview
Reconsruct the city represented by your itinerary, translating it to a measured plan. A reference for the kind of data to be included in the plan drawing is the 63rd Street Map from Cottage Grove to Stoney Island. Note that the techniques of graphic display for the 63rd Street map and the Sanbord Fire Insurance maps are motivated by specific concerns. Students are invited to invent their own technique of graphical display to relate to ther specific concerns, interests, content of their research, or to entice audiences who might be inspired by it.
Resources
Sanborn Fire Insurance MapsPlan to Street Elevations
Overview
In 1965, the artist Ed Ruscha photographed a 1.2 mile long section of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood known as the Sunset Strip. (Sunset Boulevard is nearly 22 miles long). He essentially archived the contents of the street as it appeared in 1965. In a subsequent work, Then & Now (2005), one can compare two shoots, one undertaken in 1973 and another in 2004.
Titled Every Buliding on the Sunset Strip (below) he spliced the images together and devised a novel book format. Consisting of a long offset print onto white paper, the sheet was folded like an accordion. When folded it appears like a normal book, and slides into a slip case. When unfolded, it is 299.5 inches long.
Instructions
Week 1:
From a measured plan you can project the width of buildings to an elevation. Many of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps include a number inside each building outline to estimate the number of stories. If the ground floor storey is typically 12-14 feet and upper floors tend toward 10-12 feet, one can estimate the outline of the building elevation that faces the street.
Week 2:
Using outlines of building elevations as a framework, replace them with photographic or drawing documenation of the facade. Note the year this information was captured or created. Since this is an open framework, it might be filled over the course of the quarter -- or by a subsequent team with access to additional archival material. To facilitate, create footnotes or endnotes of sources.
Note: If you find a photographs taken from an oblique angle, you can rectified it for display using Adobe Photoshop’s image transformation or perspective warp tools.
Final Project Development
Overview
A map (whether displayed on paper or an electronic interface) is a desiged object. It is a model of a world that influences our field of visibility. It allows us to see certain features of that world precisely because it suppresses others. This inherent amplification and suppression of information also makes the consideration of political implications unavoidable.
Consequently, to develop control, it is crucial that you engage in fulsome attempts to prototype techniques of cartographic display. To engage in the way maps support inquiry or shape a narrative this investigation asks you to address three relationships in similar proportion:
- How does the raw data you’ve collected relate to the subjects/objects of inquiry or narrative intent?
- How is inquiry or narrative intent supported by and translated into techniques of graphical display?
- How do techniques of graphic display relate to the ergonomics of human interaction (e.g. techniques of folding and unfolding paper, or how a map is viewed through an electronic or other “user interface.”)
To help you generate something satisfying, studio time will be dedicated to evaluating permutations (exploring possible relationships and techniques) and later, iterations (the refinement of those relationship and techniques) before production for the Final Review begins.
Instructions
Map Prototypes to pin-up — every week — starting Week 6.
- Data should already be abundant / established, however additional sites may continue to be added.
a. Spreadsheet(s) printed so we can evaluate classes of information.
b. Display via Google Maps, ArcGIS or QGIS, for visual reference
- Scope of and scale of the map aligned with size and shape of paper or other interface.
- Map Legends defined and tested via well-crafted graphical attempts.
a. Least challenging sample area — min 3 tests (permutations/iterations)
b. Mots challenging sample area — min 3 tests (permutations/iterations)
Final Map
After 2 weeks of in-studio discussion around your experiments, permutations, and iterations you should have good idea of the narrative, the data, and the techniques you’ll pursue to produce the Final Map.
Note Bene:
Although you are expected to present a well constructed single map at the Final Review, a map tends to synthesize constituent bits of information, and often in specific layers. Identifying your map’s constituent parts and breaking them down into managable pieces will help you divide your group’s labor and schedule weekly effort. This will require some advance planning .
In support of that, in Week 8, you should be able to present your group’s Work Plan for discussion and advice. This would indicate how you plan to organize your group’s division of labor, your process deadlines, and how things need to coalesce for synthesizing.
At the Final Review you should present the final map in relation to all supporting process work.