Screen shots here of latest animated short project -

Click below to watch animation:

http://vimeo.com/25201548

Final YOU - ARE - HERE map ended up as kind of an interesting prototype, communicating profile information about a London area.

Some more screen printing and experimentation ensued. These are shots for my research book.

The next round of feedback suggested that it wasn't 100 per cent clear what was happening. Also I had gone a little bit away from the format. I also thought that the graphics were a little negative, and although critical analysis was good, I wanted something positive, which was what the little booklet listing people's 'places of desire' did. I took another step back and considered an earlier idea, a You Are Here map, a stand alone map situated in the place. I could incorporate the positives from the booklet and advertise an area such as Archway, by possibly doing a bit more research to uncover people's secret spots in the area, and show materials in a positive light and I also wanted to keep the visibility/ invisibility concept but to show of nice places. I thought that the materials/ textures part could replace the objects phase of the previous work, and could also serve to give identity to an area when organised, almost like a flag. The gradient of visibility should be appealing, and the signs concentration prints could highlight nice eating spots, etc. It was also mentioned the colours on the previous poster were a bit bland and I should really consider past good design when trying this. The image here is from a Per Mollerup book, who mentions that a function of signs can be to lend identity.

I took a step back and my research came in handy. I was at the stage of profiling the environment based on what I had read and backed up by the previous little experiment. I wanted to show what was interesting - the concentration of signs and symbols we have to make sense of, the difficulty and pleasure of closed/ open spaces. Also found objects were great representations of character and activity in an area. I produced graphics in order to highlight these 3 areas. Also a booklet to position the posters in a sense of - I've highlighted the problem, this is a little solution - people's opinions as to what's wrong/ good with London places and some little tips of favourite places.

Feedback from the latest tutorial suggested that there was something in the idea of the way that people see things, the spaces that they gravitate towards. I did an experiment with a friend where we walked around the neighbourhood and I asked him to draw a map from memory. The results were great, he explored the area and especially gravitated towards green open spaces and then draw his journey from memory. A possible concept at this stage was to repeat this with several people to get a 'common' picture, maybe overlaying the work. It was felt in the next tutorial that although this was an interesting idea, they would not be my graphics shown and I was a bit in dangerous territory as it wouldn't be my work.

After the latest tutorial I got some great suggestions from people contributing. Someone suggested I 'get lost', not in a bad way, but that maybe go to an area I didn't know and try and find my way around whilst recording it. It was suggested that it was all at this present time a bit confused and that I shouldn't try and shoehorn things into a final result, although intensive work was also needed. I hit on the idea that I could invite people I know, as interviewing the public extensively can have issues, and ask them to draw a map of my area from memory after walking around the place. I would also have a record of their movements and the places they are attracted to. After a couple of suggestions of filming things in recent tutorials I thought that this could really be an interesting record along with accompanying graphics. I wanted to screen print and photograph some found objects, as I think this is a very expressive medium and the facilities are there. I would need to organise the graphics to make sense, and I thought overlaying the drawings onto each other to investigate similarities between people would be appropriate. Also found objects could symbolise the participants' memory process and movements, e.g. landmarks, symbols, green spaces, tracks etc. I would need to research printing to help shape the graphics.