Author: Mario Alejandro De La Peza Diaz

09/11/2020

As part of my “Formulate” project, I decided to stretch the functionality of Google Maps, one of the apps I use most frequently. However, this time I wasn’t interested in knowing the location of nowhere or get the directions to nothing. This time I set myself to try to DRAW with Google Maps.

To get started I thought of simple shapes and if it would be possible to achieve them. I chose straight-line figures, so I had clear “touching points” I could refer to. Then, using London as a base, I asked Google Maps to give me directions to each of the edges of each figure as destinations. This way I got the directions to do each route by foot, by bicycle and by car.

The results were interesting:

After doing this, I wondered what would be the results if I did the exact same thing, but in a different city. So I chose two different cities, each one of them more different than the other: Mexico City and New York City. To do so, I followed the same parameters, including the scale.

For me, it was interesting to explore how mucho would these figures change, especially considering the very different conditions between cities, such as their layout and their relation to water (London has a river going through the middle of the city, Mexico City sits on top of a lake but no longer has a connection to it, and NYC IS pretty much an island in the middle of a river).

Finally, I found it captivating to compare each one of these options between each other and find out what happened:

So far, for me has been interesting to explore all the possible outcomes there can automatically be in Google Maps asking for a route and using the exact same points as destinations, only changing the way of transportation and the cities in question.

02/11/2020

After showing my progress last week and discussing with my tutor and classmates, I decided to engage further with two of the topics I had developed till that point. These are time and activities.

For me it was important to explore further how the space between two trees is influenced by the time of day, and how this relates to the activities that happen (or don’t happen) in it.

In order to investigate these topics, I found inspiration in the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher, Idris Khan and Pelle Cass.

26/10/2020

We often think of a “space” in terms of area and volume. It’s easier to understand it as something enclosed and limited by certain boundaries, whether these ase walls, borders or even just lines drawn on the floor. However, what if we think of “space” in terms of experience? Does it matter where that “space” begins and ends?

For this project I raised those questions and came to think of trees. We could easily describe the limits of a tree as a physical object. But, doesn’t what happen around it, under it or beside it affect the limits of it when we analyse it as a “space” whether than as an object? What happens under a tree or set of trees? What activities occur? What factors determine the existence or lack of experiences that surround them?

The material next to this text reflects the process of an exploration about these topics, taking the “space” between two trees in Finsbury Park as a site of study.