BA Art & Design Year 3 - Project 1 - Weeks 1 - 3 - "Non Place... WTF?"

Non Place

“...the word ‘non-place’ designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with these spaces.” - (Augé 1995:94)

 In 1995, French Anthropologist, Marc Augé, introduced the term ‘non-place’ in the seminal book ‘Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity’.  Augé coined the term "non-place" to describe spaces which are more abstract in character than ‘places’.  ‘Non-places’ are spaces which people travel through.

“Since non-places are there to be passed through, they are measured in units of time.” - (ibid. 104).

“The distinction between places and non-places derives from the opposition between place and space.” - (Augé 1995:79)

The "WTF?" genuinely represents how I felt when I was presented the brief and I don't feel it often with projects, I had to stop myself from actually saying the words allowed. (No in an loud angry way, but a genuinely stunned "What is this?")
I was disappointed because I was really excited about getting a new big brief and being able to use my illustrating skills.

While "Non-Place" is a very interesting and open concept, my initial reaction was (well, you can see above) "How the hell am I supposed to illustrate this!"

For the first couple of weeks I bounced from one idea to the next; something I don't often do with my projects, I usually decided things fairly quickly and confidently.

The fact that I couldn't figure out what to do made me very frustrated.

The apocalypse

My first thought was about how you pass though places everyday and never truly register them, because they hold no interest to you/they don't matter.

I was looking up when the 5th series of "The Walking Dead" was going to be released on DVD, and thinking of the show made me realise that the dead world its set in, is essentially made entirely of "Non Space/place" as the characters live in a world that's destroyed and the homes they wonder through belong to no one.

The same concept applies to other apocalypse themed films such as "I am Legend", "Resident Evil" and "The Road"; a dead world which the characters wander through to survive, nothing is personal, nothing and no place matters, therefore the world is a non place. 

I was thinking of creating a short comic of a character wandering, living through an apocalyptic landscape. It could be that the character does have a home and the short story portrays the character emerging from their home, exploring the dead city and returning home later. The home is real, but everywhere else is non place; the character must risk non-place for supplies in order to survive. I think it could be interesting; an unclear story, it would be the settings and the actions of the character which would be interesting and convey the situation of the story.

 drawing

• This drawing is my attempt at drawing a street in my home town of Stirling, but as a wrecked landscape that suggests a uninhabited zone.
• I drew this from memory, which actually gave me a better understanding of non-place; even though this is a street I have passed through all my life, I enter the shops on this street almost every time I go to town, yet I can't remember what it looks like. there are only two clear shops in the picture, even though there are several between them in real life, but I have not drawn them because I actually could not remember them.
• Proving to me that this street is actually like a non-place.

 While I really like this idea, it relies mostly on landscape art, which is my least strong/and favourite point. I would have to take a ton of picture references of Stirling and accurately draw and change/adapt them for the story and this is only a 7 week project; I'd then of course have to create the comic/story.

The idea is too big for my personally for just 7 weeks, so I have to look into something else.

The Internet

A virtual non place that we can get sucked into for hours on end, wether we're playing games, watching videos or shopping, the internet is technically a whole world, even though its not real.

My inspiration of this idea came from a graphic novel called "In Real Life" by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang.

 

The book portrays a girl on her computer, playing an online fantasy game, and its illustrated to look as though the game is real, that she physically becomes her online character.

This idea is also portrayed in the Japanese animated film Summer Wars, another story which portrays real people and the world of the internet as though it were also a real physical place.

Above - The characters portrayed as their online avatars.

Below - The Characters in reality

 

I liked the idea of illustrating my own idea of the world of the internet; since it is a Non-Place, it suits the project. However, like the apocalypse, its a very broad concept and could be difficult to illustrate to a professional standard in just a few weeks.