ASSINGMENT 5: Using Your Hands I Ewen Hall
ASSIGNMENT 4: Above, At and Below Ground I Ewen Hall
Above, At and Below of a Tennis Court
IN PROGRESS
ASSIGNMENT 10: Design a Drinking Object I Ewen Hall
IN CLASS:
DESIGN A DRINKING OBJECT:
Between increasing the distance the water has to travel and the effort it takes to sip out of a creased straw, it will take much longer to drink out of rather than a regular water bottle of the same size, feeling like more liquid.
Summary Drawing: Nov 25th – Alwyn Rutherford
IN CLASS: COURSE SUMMARY DRAWING
A9: Smell Notes | Pierre Tulk
For this assignment, I ventured into a small alley in-between two condo complexes, close to 63rd avenue and Yukon Street. Because the alley was linear and well delimitated, it would give me a clear ‘sample space’ to record the smells I encountered.
Doing so was not easy, however. Olfactive science is complex, and one single, isolated smell may be the result of a myriad aromatic compounds. Plus, it was pretty cold outside that day: differentiating smells was not easy. In any case, I divided the broad smells I encountered into 3 categories, represented in the perspective and plan below.:
- In BLUE is what I identified to be the “core” ambient smell: the cold, crisp and fresh air and wet concrete. It was very faint, but omnipresent.
- In GREEN are the vegetal, green smells present in the enclosed alley: wet humus and soil, organic matter, freshly cut grass (maintenance workers had passed not long ago), decaying leaves, etc. That smell was varying in intensity (as shown in the plan) and was more dominant when the space was enclosed by the house blocks.
- In YELLOW is the strong industrial, chemical smell that was present at either end of the alley: the maintenance workers were packing their equipment and there was a dominant smell of diesel and gasoline there.
A8: Tuning In & Windplay | Pierre Tulk
For this assignment, I visited a newer residential project in Marpole, where I sat down, tried to document the sounds that I was hearing, and tried to categorize them into broad categories (represented in the graph below). I realized a few limitations to my approach as I was compiling the results:
- Because sounds are modular and vary in strength depending on the recorder’s position, they are not easy to represent statically, as in the graph I’ve made. I’m sure there exists better methods of doing so to represent and graph these sounds than the ones I did with the graph and 2 point-perspective.
- Sounds are not easy to categorize (Urban VS natural? Aggressive VS peaceful? Etc.). Again, there must be an approved and relevant method of classification somewhere, but I did not check it up.
- Noting and scaling the sounds accurately proves difficult and overwhelming for a single person. Here, apps or certain computer programs may prove useful.
For the wind sculpture, I generated a few images using Midjourney V4 in order and a basic prompt: “A simple urban sculpture that transforms wind into music.” Below are the resulting images, and my own alteration:
A10: Taste Rave & Drinking Object | Christopher Reid
In-class
At Home
A8: Tuning In & Windplay | Christopher Reid
In-class
At Home
Assignment 9- Smell Notes Arevik Petrosyan
in class/at home
I am REALLY sensitive to smell, and sometimes if a smell is too strong it makes me feel ill. Ocean smell in particular has always been very unpleasant for me. This is a map of where I felt most ill at the beach. I realized the algae smell made me more ill than the seawater, which was bad too but a lot milder.
Then we walked past this playground and I remembered this fire truck.
The first time I saw the pacific ocean was when my family visited this same beach on a trip to Vancouver over ten years ago. I went swimming in the ocean and choked on the seawater because I can’t swim, and threw up. Then I went looking for seashells and found a really big one. I picked it up to show my sister. It grew legs. It was not a seashell.
It was a crab.
I threw it into the water and started crying.
A few years before that my mom accidentally served me the head of the fish at dinner. I hadn’t yet made the connection that fish the animal and fish the food were the same thing. Its eye was staring at me. I cried. I don’t eat seafood anymore, anything fishy grosses me out.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that smell is something that can be very personal. I had a bit of a tough time with this portion of the site visit, and I was surprised to see that nobody else was grossed out. I hadn’t realized that ocean smell is something that a lot of people enjoy? My experience of this particular smell is shaped not only by my biological reaction to it, but also by some of my earliest memories, and everyone else in the world experiences the same smell differently for a variety of equally valid reasons. Definitely something to be mindful of when designing.