Mapping Lived Place
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This document discusses mapping lived place through an experiential lens. It describes mapping as a way to represent how elements of the physical environment are embodied in personal narratives. The author advocates studying movement as part of how meaning and place emerge, noting movement unfolds narratives within the environment. Case studies using mapmaking are presented, such as having workers map their work terrain and paths to represent associations to locations. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of methods to study people's experience of place on the move and how meaning practices are situated and unfold through movement within the physical world.
Mapping Lived Place
- 1. Mapping Lived Place Dr. Luigina Ciolfi, Interaction Design Centre University of Limerick (Ireland)
- 2. IDC: Multi-disciplinary research group (psychology, communication, computer science, art & design, architecture, sociology, media studies, etc) Design, development and deployment of interactive technologies for human use Human-centred approach Technology as mediation tool in human activity and as methodological tool for empirical research
- 3. Study and design of technological interventions within the physical world through notions of space and place Tradition of phenomenological geography (Tuan, Relph) Experiential aspects of place: personal, social, cultural, spatial. Agency, placemaking Augmentation of physical environments The experience of mobility, work in progress
- 4. “the scene of an experience of relations with the world” (Auge’, 1995) How do we experience place?
- 5. “To live in a place means to experience it, to be aware of it in the bones as well as in the head. Place, at all scales from the armchair to the nation, is a construct of experience; it is sustained not only by timber, concrete, and highways, but also by the quality of human awareness” (Yi- Fu Tuan, 1975)
- 6. Articulation of place (Ciolfi, 2003; Ciolfi and Bannon, 2005) Physical/structural Personal Social Cultural Place as an articulation of emergent experience alongside these dimensions. Spatial extension Embodied Emergent Influenced by cultural and social factors Personal (agency)
- 7. “Experience is compounded of feeling and thought. Human feeling is not a succession of discrete sensations; rather memory and anticipation are able to wield sensory impacts into a shifting stream of experience so that we may speak of a life of feeling as we do of a life of thought. (Yi-Fu Tuan,1977)
- 8. Mobility as a situated experience, Vs. many views in the Interaction Design field of mobility as place-less Study of human practices and experiences on the move: use of techniques that are less used in the Interaction Design field, but quite consolidated in geography and other human sciences, such as walkthroughs/ walk alongs and mapmaking
- 9. Overview: experience of path-space why maps can be useful? what can they represent? Elements: terrain landmarks labels connectors/flows boundaries Examples: “NomadS” Project Some practice - hopefully!
- 10. Studying the emergence of practices and experience throughout a physical environment How does place (lived space) become part of practices and activities? Importance of grounding human experiences in the physical world Path-space (Bollnow, Ingold, Tuan), agency
- 11. “Walking (…) is much like talking, and both are quintessential features of what we take to be a human form of life. We are already talking by the time we realize that this is what we are doing” “Knowledge and footprints, it would seem, lie on opposite sides of a division between the mental and the material: on the one side the mental content that we take with us into our encounter with the world; on the other the marks left after we are gone” (Ingold & Vergunst, “Ways of Walking”, 2008)
- 12. Map making is part of narrative enquiry through a space, to highlight how the features of the physical space are embodied in personal narratives. Ethnographically-based method, to be used in conjunction with other methods.
- 13. Situatedness of emergent experience: elements of the environment are not simply a physical support, or triggers for behaviour, they are essential elements of the structure of values and meanings we attribute to situations Movement as constituent of experience of place Movement as unfolding of meanings and narratives
- 14. Mapmaking Maps: representations of geographical space through the perspective of the mapmaker, who chooses which aspects of the space to highlight and connect “(…) Part of what fascinates us when looking at a map is inhabiting the mind of its maker, considering that particular terrain of imagination overlaid with those unique contour lines of experience. If I had mapped that landscape, we ask ourselves, what would I have chosen to show, and how would I have shown it?” (Harmon, 2004: p.11)
- 15. Mapmaking Maps are personal representations of lived paths: path is not just movement but the unfolding of an experiential narrative Experiential artefacts scattered along the way Association of meaning (values, culture, identity)
- 16. “The mapmaker has to simplify, selecting only those elements of reality that he or she considers to be necessary to serve their (…) purpose (…) Usually the subjectivity of maps is concealed because the user shares the values of the mapmaker (…) Indeed the most fascinating and valuable aspect of the subjectivity of all maps lies in the mirror that they provide into the mentalities of mapmakers and their societies (…) Often maps will reveal more about attitudes and objectives than their makers would normally trust to put into writing” (Carlucci & Barber, “Lie of the Land”, 2001)
- 17. Mapmaking is a proactive exercise: re-establish the elements of place experience. What do we ask people to do when we invite them to draw a map? Exercise can be workshop style, or interview style: be careful in planning ahead. What are your questions? What is the goal of the mapmaking session? How does it fit with the rest of your fieldwork?
- 18. Elements: terrain landmarks labels connectors/flows boundaries
- 19. Elements: terrain What is the canvas? Empty or partly filled? What does it represent, what is its scale?
- 20. Landmarks What are the point of references? Are some given or the canvas is left entirely empty? Codes or lifelike? Providing landmarks guides the participants’ work
- 21. Labels How will the map be labelled? Freedom to choose own labels or pre-made ones? Natural language or symbols? What’s in a label? Importance of place names/language (e.g. political, value-laden)
- 22. Connectors/flows A map represents place but also paths, connections and sequences of events. Connectors create a narrative. Providing participants with types of connectors, or allowing them to create their own?
- 23. Boundaries What is inside or outside a certain area? What differences does a boundary mark? Different types of boundaries: fluid or fixed; official or perceived; personal or shared
- 24. In planning mapmaking exercises: - Focus - Scale - Contribution of participants - Preparation of materials (as if of questions) - Technology can help
- 26. Case Study: NomadS Study of workers (sales representatives), who spend their working week on the move Each work-place has different meanings and associations to them, so has the movement between locations Mapmaking as a way of representing their “terrain of activities” Analysis: multi-layered notion of place
- 27. Conclusions - Importance of methods to study people’s emergent experience of place on the move - Situatedness of meaning making practices - Movement as unfolding of meanings and narratives within the environment. Physical world is more than a constraint - Importance of studying these aspects as part of place enquiry
- 28. Thanks! Luigina.Ciolfi@ul.ie www.idc.ul.ie Find us on Facebook and Twitter (UL Interaction Design Centre)