V. The Smart City: What’s in a Word?
“A word is worth a thousand pictures.” — Elie Wiesel
The well-known phrase is that a picture is worth a thousand words. We often view images and attach our emotions and life experiences to them, but what happens when we are given a word and a split second to ponder?
As researchers and designers of our project, we have already shaped the possible future through our initial ideas and brainstorming from week one, and quickly moving towards the theme of being under. What narratives might we have already excluded? Although I’m a Londoner, building on Rosner’s views about missing viewpoints and reshaping narratives, I thought it necessary to understand the city from the perspective of its inhabitants. After all, we aren’t designing for ourselves.
After spending some time people-watching by the Southbank, I decided to do some guerilla research, asking “what’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say the word underground”. Within a few hours, I had 126 responses which I represented as a word cloud, in the shape of a wifi signal to symbolise interconnectivity.
Word cloud of dweller responses to the word ‘underground’
It’s evident that the underground provokes thoughts about more apparent themes like transport, but also less visible or tangible themes like death, homelessness, secret and illicit activity and tranquillity.
Many researchers argue that visual materials can “reveal what is hidden in the inner mechanisms of the ordinary and the taken for granted’ (Sweetman, 2009). Looking to understand the threads around the topic I used everyday crafts around me to build an underground “web”, documenting it as a video to fast forward and rewind with the hopes of spotting new connections (a still of this collage can be found here). My purpose here as with all videos I’ve created so far was to be affective.
Video “web” of the underground
How could I situate myself with these ideas? I thought back to week one’s lecture. After creating the video, I closed my eyes and pointed at a scrabble word at random, choosing this as the idea to explore, investigate and fabulate.
Death in London
Living in Peckham, I was expecting to walk down the stairs and take a 30-minute stroll to take me near Nunhead cemetery. It was my first thought in connection to death. However, just 30 metres from my front door I came across a roadside shrine.
Flowers laid out in Peckham outside my flat where two people were killed on 15th February at 5:45am.
Reading the yellow plaque, I was told two young men had lost their lives in an altercation. Unfortunately, it’s not an event that’s uncommon to the area, but I’d never paid this much attention to its representation before. What was the story behind their altercation? How would this be reported and by who? What lens am I putting on when I look at these photos?
On Monday 3rd October, 2011 at 4:30, 24-year-old Deep Lee became the 13th cyclist this year to be killed on London roads after colliding with a truck near kings cross.
A ghost bike representing Deep Lee who was struck by a truck at King’s Cross
Flowers and bikes act as lifelines to memory. In a way for as long as they are visible, the dead are still alive, their story lives on. How might a city keep that memory after the flowers die and the bikes are unchained? How might it allow the dead to tell their own stories?
What I find interesting about these images, is that they are both taken above ground, rather than below, their presence deliberately visible and juxtaposed against the living. What about the dead we can’t see. Not necessarily those that are in cemeteries, urns of mausoleums, but those that are undocumented and have never been registered as living?
What would it mean for a city to celebrate the dead?
Upon reflection, this was a very heavy topic that affected me mentally. I found that I couldn’t turn off my thoughts, seeing links to death in London in most spaces. However, this is a part of design, there’s great importance in speculating at every level of society. Thinking back to Speculate Everything, I recalled the topic of dark design that looks at ugly and complex themes that most design ignores, but followed through it can lead to a “frisson that excites and challenges.” It is not about the exploration of darkness for its own sake, but rather to bring positivity out of negativity. For this reason, I’m glad that I’ve “stayed with the trouble”, and look to further explore the related themes of underground, loss, memory, hidden narratives and visibility at our next group meeting.
UPDATE: Again, our meeting had diverging themes about the underground, but they are naturally moving closer together, with other group members also researching death. While I focussed on the physical offline experience, other group members have focussed on the digital experience, traditional monuments and computer-generated poems based on these. This has allowed us to build up a world around the topic, opening up a rich design space for more focussed exploration.
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