When we had to present our individual proposal I started thinking about all the work done till that moment with Christos and Theodora, my group. What I noticed is that comparing our work with the other groups we were more abstract and general in our approach, while the others where investigating more deeply in their personalities, their flaws, ... their fears.
Therefore I began a research about me, my self, my needs as a designer, but also as a person, as a soul. What I really need to feel comfortable? What I need to feel free? What I need to feel my self?
Reflecting on these points I realized that I always need to escape from the reality and especially from the “ordinary” life.
I feel that I need to be somewhere with people around me, it should be a place where I can reflect my self on the others, where I can find my self in the others, where I can be absorbed by the others. Trying to find my self in the crowd, while the crowd is inspiring and nullifing me at the same time.
The reference which better represents my experience and needs is the figure of the flâneur.
I am a flaneur, a contemporary flaneur completely absorbed in the contemporary cities, where cities are considered as physical and virtual. The physical cities can be defined communicative metropolises where the economic model has changed from the fordist industrial to the post-fordist. They are cities where concepts such as machine's automation in industries, increasing of migrations from the countryside to the cities, syncretism and mixture of different ethnicities are already all solid and crucial points. Such syncretism dissolves and transforms the relationship between foreign and familiar levels, between individual and crowd, between elite and mass cultural models, between local and global styles, between natural and technological perspectives.
In the same way “virtual cities” are the digital world with we are all connected in. They are places-non places where all the infos, datas and inputs are multiplicated again and again becoming an infinite flow that is overwhelming us.
Every day we receive too many inputs from the external reality, instead of reflecting we are now just acting, every day we loose the contact with our identity and the individual become multi-vidual.
We are all contemporary flaneur, absorbed and lost in this pulsating panorama.
Therefore I began a research about me, my self, my needs as a designer, but also as a person, as a soul. What I really need to feel comfortable? What I need to feel free? What I need to feel my self?
Reflecting on these points I realized that I always need to escape from the reality and especially from the “ordinary” life.
I feel that I need to be somewhere with people around me, it should be a place where I can reflect my self on the others, where I can find my self in the others, where I can be absorbed by the others. Trying to find my self in the crowd, while the crowd is inspiring and nullifing me at the same time.
The reference which better represents my experience and needs is the figure of the flâneur.
I am a flaneur, a contemporary flaneur completely absorbed in the contemporary cities, where cities are considered as physical and virtual. The physical cities can be defined communicative metropolises where the economic model has changed from the fordist industrial to the post-fordist. They are cities where concepts such as machine's automation in industries, increasing of migrations from the countryside to the cities, syncretism and mixture of different ethnicities are already all solid and crucial points. Such syncretism dissolves and transforms the relationship between foreign and familiar levels, between individual and crowd, between elite and mass cultural models, between local and global styles, between natural and technological perspectives.
In the same way “virtual cities” are the digital world with we are all connected in. They are places-non places where all the infos, datas and inputs are multiplicated again and again becoming an infinite flow that is overwhelming us.
Every day we receive too many inputs from the external reality, instead of reflecting we are now just acting, every day we loose the contact with our identity and the individual become multi-vidual.
We are all contemporary flaneur, absorbed and lost in this pulsating panorama.
“Pour le parfait flâneur, pour l’observateur passionné, c’est une immense jouissance que d’élire domicile dans le nombre, dans l’ondoyant, dans le mouvement, dans le fugitif et l’infini. Être hors de chez soi, et pourtant se sentir partout chez soi; voir le monde, être au centre du monde et rester caché au monde, tels sont quelques-uns des moindres plaisirs de ces esprits indépendants, passionnés, impartiaux, que la langue ne peut que maladroitement définir. L’observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito. L’amateur de la vie fait du monde sa famille, comme l’amateur du beau sexe compose sa famille de toutes les beautés trouvées, trouvables et introuvables; comme l’amateur de tableaux vit dans une société enchantée de rêves peints sur toile.
Ainsi l’amoureux de la vie universelle entre dans la foule comme dans un immense réservoir d’électricité. On peut aussi le comparer, lui, à un miroir aussi immense que cette foule; à un kaléidoscope doué de conscience, qui, à chacun de ses mouvements, représente la vie multiple et la grâce mouvante de tous les éléments de la vie. C’est un moi insatiable du non-moi, qui, à chaque instant, le rend et l’exprime en images plus vivantes que la vie elle-même, toujours instable et fugitive. [...] La foule est son domaine, comme l’air est celui de l’oiseau, comme l’eau celui du poisson. Sa passion et sa profession, c’est d’épouser la foule.” |
“For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define.
The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not—to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life. [...] The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd.” |
Charles Baudelaire
Le Peintre de la vie moderne, dans Le Figaro, 1863
III - L’artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant
Le Peintre de la vie moderne, dans Le Figaro, 1863
III - L’artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant
Inspiration - Alvin Lucier I am sitting in a room
Why a city?
After a research about the bohemien life, the flâneur and his world, I decided to create a special city for him
because is the place where he get inpired, it is his habitat.
At the beginning my intention was to create a realistic collage with different epochs and architectural styles mixed up.
I wanted to merge the entertainment and pleasure aspect with a dystopic and futuristic atmosphere.
I also wanted to represent the idea of the contrast between the individual and the crowd.
because is the place where he get inpired, it is his habitat.
At the beginning my intention was to create a realistic collage with different epochs and architectural styles mixed up.
I wanted to merge the entertainment and pleasure aspect with a dystopic and futuristic atmosphere.
I also wanted to represent the idea of the contrast between the individual and the crowd.
After a while that I was working on this collage, I realized that something was missing and that the atmosphere was not about the entertainment and peasure, but actually it was more negative. It wasn't reflecting my first idea.
Then I changed my point of view and I decide to create something more abstract and metaphorical.
Then, I decided to study 8 different shapes, each one with a different function, based on archetypes of those functions.
Then I changed my point of view and I decide to create something more abstract and metaphorical.
Then, I decided to study 8 different shapes, each one with a different function, based on archetypes of those functions.
From this new beginning I developed my final project (see the page Project)
and I presented it at the end of the trimester.
and I presented it at the end of the trimester.