The philosopher and the painter share the same problem, namely ‘expressing what exists.”[1] – Maurice Merleau-Ponty
How is it
possible to show something as complex as the multi-layered and mental event
that is urban space? In this final
section of the paper, I use practice-led research and a series of experiments
to investigate some possibilities for communicating my lived experience of the
space.
If an image
relies on memory, representation, and perception to communicate, then all of
these characteristics must be taken into consideration when creating them.
Images can create paradigm shifts by presenting alternative views to supposed
reality. The philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested that artworks have the
potential to emancipate consciousness because they demand an imaginative and
creative response to living in a world constrained by convention.
I want to
use an artistic approach to explore the representation of urban space and so
began my investigation by going through the examples of artworks I had been
gathering over the period of the research walks, covering such artists as Bruce
Nauman, Richard Long, David Hockney and Mark Dion. I selected examples which
both interested me and had communicative potential, I added my thoughts, and I
began again with the idea of making a physical thought path starting with the
statement that the images/art should make viewers experience the “mental event”
as well as the physical space. I added four key words – Movement, Time,
Details, and Virtual and began moving the images and concepts, grouping them
and considering them as possible jumping-off points to create new types of
images. (fig.28)
Once again,
the physical activity of moving the categories and placing the artworks and
artists side by side, walking through them and considering them on the ground
and from far, and moving them back and forth between the main categories led to
interesting results. From these categories, I selected the areas I had the most
interest in and created a series of five experiments that covered some of the
more prevalent but also more difficult to visualize qualities of the space. The
following three chapters discuss these qualities and present the experiments.
