ITP Surveillance Society / Observation Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to learn to watch the street. Before embarking on this assignment, read Chapter 2 of William Whyte’s "City" ("The Social Life of the Street") (in Dropbox) to get a sense of what it means to learn to see.
- Sit in a public place (cafe, park, subway, etc.) for 30-60 minutes with 2-3 of your classmates. (Choose your own groups.) Watch how people move, how they interact. Watch their facial expressions and their gestures. Look at how they queue, how they deal with proximity, how they create order, how they navigate violations of social protocol.
- Each of you take extensive field notes. Document the people, their actions, the environment. Share them with each other (and us). (You’ll see different things.)
- As a group, create a representation of what you saw so that others can see too. (Use photography, animation, sketches, text, whatever allows you to express what you saw.) Think about how you will share salient details, how you will highlight what stands out.
- Plan for a 5-minute presentation of what you saw, what differences in perspective you had as a group, and how you chose to represent what you saw.
- Goal: The goal of this assignment is to reflect on what you see and what you don't, what you give special attention to and what you gloss over. In discussion and representation, pay attention to the differences in what your team members see.
In advance of the class, submit to Dropbox: 1) each person’s individual field notes; 2) the group representation.