Mar
29
Notes from today’s class
March 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Hi all:
I know you are typing up your notes from today, but here are my notes too.
Class projects are emerging around different topics. We discussed:
Religion: The architecture of religion, the practices that are present, the way religion is woven into the neighborhood, botanicas as a photo essay (see other post from Portraits of Place)
Food: Not just looking at restaurants, but also bodegas and supermarkets. What food is available, what is not? I like the street vendor idea too. Who are they, where are they, what are they selling? Here is a link to The Street Vendor Project and to the type of interviews they are doing: http://streetvendor.org/about/tesfalum-kiflu This could potentially be a great project. If you are interested, I would also recommend “Sidewalk” by Mitch Duneier.
Art: We talked about murals, wall art, memorials, and graffiti. Again, there is a lot to talk about here and would be a lovely photo essay. We also talked about interviewing De La Vega and this sounds really interesting. I would be happy to help you set up an interview– again, research is needed here for interview (as well to collect photos of his work in E. Harlem.)
Music: Collecting “ethnomusical” samples of music from the neighborhood. Or, even just sounds of the neighborhood. This could be a really great element to your map of the neighborhood. Sound is often an overlooked part of the urban environment: http://www.tenement.org/folksongs/client/
Fashion: Thinking along the lines of Bill Cunningham (look him up on The Times), you could collect photos/voiceover of styles. We need to talk about this more. How could this connect to ideas about gentrification?
Public Space and the Built Environment: We talked about gentrification, housing, and greenspace.
All students will work on content, as well as on website development. We’ll need a design team, a group devoted to text, as well as the visual editors responsible for cleaning up images and making sure they are of appropriate quality.
