Tuesday Lecture Notes:

‘Social Space’ – to gather together, public space, encourages social interaction. Henri Lefebvre – all space is is socially produced “space is at once result and cause, product and producer”

What is the commons?

Dictionary Definition:

Common as an adjective:

1a: of or relating to a community at large : PUBLIC
work for the common good

b: known to the community
common nuisances

2a: belonging to or shared by two or more individuals or things or by all members of a group
a common friend
buried in a common grave
common interests

b: belonging equally to two or more mathematical entities
triangles with a common base

c: having two or more branches
common carotid artery

3a: occurring or appearing frequently : FAMILIAR
a common sight

b: of the best known or most frequently seen kind —used especially of plants and animals
the common housefly

c: VERNACULAR sense 2
common names

4a: WIDESPREAD, GENERAL
common knowledge

b: characterized by a lack of privilege or special status
common people
a common laborer

c: just satisfying accustomed criteria : ELEMENTARY
common decency

Noun:

peer to perer knowledge, resources held by a community, mangaged by the people whi use them “creative commons”, publicaly owned green spaces

Verb:

Self governance; engaging in relationships and relations that have been diminished under capitalism; continuing reliance on, learning from, and commitment to one another.

Activity:

Space 1 – Car park Symonds St

Occupying, Exchanging

very still, airy space, echoing, open space but feels tight

Space 2 – Beach Orewa

relaxing, roving,

expansive environment, people own a larger personal bubble as a result, comfortable, freedom to move, soothing sounds

Space 3 – Supermarket

exchanging, staging, placing,

bustling space, bright, noisey, often crossing into peoples personal space, cool temp

Thursday Lecture Notes:

Choose a social space to observe/participate in. Consider the full range of actions and interactions that occur.

Consider how it’s presented in relation to the chosen location.

Dinner parties Sarah Wigglesworth – The disorder of the dining table.

Straw bail house

Definition of a Document:

Gravitational Pull:

Orewa Beach

1. Roving
2. Relaxing
3. Occupying
4. Joining

I chose Orewa beach, as it’s a place I repeatedly visit and have visited for years. It’s a place where you can escape life for a bit, relax and reset before going back to reality. I think the gravitational pull of the place is the sense of peace it provides or a free change of scenery from regular lives.

The coast has always been a place of exchange, culture and trade. A hub where all kinds of people can come, mixing and mingling.

Orewa may not be a port of trade but it is still a place where all people are able to come and share the space.

Being at Orewa Beach you get a sense of being apart of something, togetherness, whilst also being left to do your own thing if you choose to

An hour of observations:

In observation I noticed lots of pairs of people but very rarely did those pods interact. And if they did it was very brief.

The age range of people was very broad. Due to the location of the beach being close to a handful of retirement homes there was quite a lot of silver folk walking on the beach. You would also get young families with their kids playing in the shallows or being walked in prams and teenagers hanging out after school.

I noticed that the white noise of the waves drowns out everything else providing a sense of peace and quiet.

The activities that people were engaging with was mostly walking up and down the beach. There were also people running, sitting, surf life saving training, catching up with friends, watching the water/beach and walking the dog.

People didn’t interact with other groups of people very often they usually just stuck to their own pod. Some instances when they did interact it was the interacting of dogs that connected people or if they recognised someone they already knew who was also at the beach.

George Perec Text:

Personal analysis:

I love they way Perec breaks down the layers of an environment from a surface level right down to the clay deep below the surface. I found it incredibly helpful reading through the different concepts he explores. I definitely need to practise the discipline of noting ‘what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless’. I really like the the point of not saying/ writing etc. when observing a space to not be lazy and actually exhaust the list.

His prompts when observing people were really simple yet I hadn’t thought to ask them when I was observing my space. Things like where are they coming from, who are they, what is their speed of motion and do they live locally.

There is so much more to Orewa Beach than I had noted down in my first round of observations and I will use some of Perecs prompts for analysis next time I observe the area.