Food for Thought: Place, Journalism Libraries

For those in the Rochester area tonight, the following may be of interest!

Hi all,

I’d like to invite you to the following upcoming CIAS gallery events:

TODAY (Thursday 10/15) Join us at 5:00 pm in Carlson Auditorium for an artist talk with Terri Warpinski, as she discusses her exhibition of photographs — Surface Tension — exploring the divided landscapes of Berlin, Israel-Palestine, and the U.S.-Mexico borders. A reception will follow in William Harris Gallery (Gannett Hall, 3rd Floor) from 6-8 pm. Free and open to all, refreshments served!

TOMORROW (Friday 10/16), stop by Bevier Gallery from 4-6 pm for the opening of Transformations, a stunning group show curated by Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez that features the work of eight exceptional artists and alumni of RIT’s School for American Crafts. Free and open to all, refreshments served!

Hope to see you there!

John

John Aäsp
Gallery Director, Adjunct Professor
Gallery r | Bevier Gallery | William Harris Gallery
College of Imaging Arts and Sciences
Rochester Institute of Technology
Gannett Hall (7B) Office 2284
585.475.4977
John.Aasp@rit.edu
http://galleryr.rit.edu

CMC journal

Consumption Markets & Culture, an interdisciplinary journal  published 6 times per year by Routledge, has published a number of papers on issues relevant to place, narratives, and visualizations, including:

Just looking? Choice and constraint in practices of visual consumption at magazine newsstands, by Mehita Iqani.

"This article takes as its subject practices of looking that occur in London's newsstands (magazine retail displays). Taking an ethnographic approach inspired by the flâneur and emphasising the symbolic properties of consumption activities that take place in public retail space, it reports on an extensive participant observation of newsstands. A three-fold typology of visual consumption is put forward: “drifting,” “speed-shopping” and “free-reading.” These practices of looking are then critically analysed in the light of theoretical perspectives on visual consumption, in particular, the tension between arguments prioritising the pleasures and, conversely, the constraints that it entails. The analysis culminates in the argument that the most fruitful position is a dialectical one that acknowledges the conditional freedom of visual consumption."

Gettysburg re-imagined: the role of narrative imagination in consumption experience, by Anthinodoros Chronis, Eric Arnould, and Ronald Hampton.

"We investigate the role of imagination in the consumption experience and we theorize the ways in which important collective narratives are (re)imagined at storyscapes – consumption spaces where narratives are the focal object of consumption. We ground our empirical investigation in the historical narrative of the American Civil War and we explore ethnographically the ways in which this historical episode is (re)imagined and articulated in tourism at Gettysburg. Our research provides an alternative account to mental imagery theory that is based on restrictive cognitive conceptions of imagination and expands narrative-based theories of consumption experiences. We argue that the workings of imagination in tourism sites are inextricably linked to the production of cultural imaginaries, that is, socially important narratives invested with collective values; we illustrate the process through which cultural imaginaries are co-constructed at storyscapes; we develop theoretically the concept of consumer imagination; and we make a case for consumer imagination as a social process."

Synchronising retail and space: using urban squares for competitive place differentiation, by Gary Warnaby. 

German Christmas market (December 2009).

"This paper argues that the town/city square, through its role as an urban node, has an important potential role in the creation of competitive place differentiation, especially in terms of the activities occurring therein (with particular reference to retail activities, such as periodic markets), which can, in turn, be considered as contributory elements in existing conceptualisations of an urban place “product”. Drawing on the concepts of rhythmanalysis and synchronisation, the paper suggests the existence of a more overt temporal dimension which can contribute to the creation of a genius loci (or “spirit of the place”), which can be capitalised on for place marketing purposes. The paper considers such issues in the specific context of St Ann's Square in Manchester, in the north west of England."

The mobilities and post-mobilities of cargo, by Thomas Birtchnell and John Urry.

"Cargo is moved from factories through global production networks via supply chains to consumers, but this process is hidden from them by what Raymond Williams termed the magic system of marketing and what Allan Sekula and Noël Burch call the forgotten space of containerization. This paper addresses recent concern that the mobilities paradigm has neglected two domains relevant to cargo: global production networks and global cultures of consumption. These domains are examined in relation to three key elements in this paper: distribution, consumption and marketing. In assessing moving consumption from the perspective of the mobilities paradigm, this paper recommends that the future of cargo, the ease of which consumers take utterly for granted, is far from clear-cut from a strategic foresight perspective."

An emotional economy of mundane objects, by Alev P. Kuruoğlu and Güliz Ger. 

"This article illuminates the affective potentialities of objects. We examine the circulation of Kurdish music cassettes in Turkey during the restrictive and strife-laden period of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. We find that the practices comprising circulation – recording, hiding, playing, and exchanging cassettes – constituted tactical resistance and generated communal imaginaries. We illuminate the “emotional economy” that is animated by a mundane object: the cassette, through its circulation, becomes saturated with emotions, establishes shared emotional repertoires, and habituates individuals and collectives into common emotional dispositions. Cassettes thus play a part in shaping and reinforcing an emotional habitus that accompanies the emergence of a sense of “us,” the delineation of the “other,” and the relationship between the two. We thus demonstrate the entwinement of materiality and emotions, and examine how this entwinement generates emotional structures that shape and perpetuate the imagining of community as well as the enactment of resistance."

Review Essay: Frank Cost, Bricks and mortar: offline shopping in online America, by Thomas O'Guinn.

Review of RIT photography professor's Frank Cost's book produced by wearing a GoPro camera during twelve shopping trips in the Rochester region.

More information is available on the journal's homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gcmc20/current

Invitations to Contribute to the Blog

Good morning and thank you to everyone who participated in our labinar focusing on the fundamental concept of placemaking, that is the connection between people, culture, contexts, geography/site, and design. We have sent invitations to everyone who joined us. And, we invite you to contribute to this blog as you wish. Please also let us know if there are others who might be interested in participating. We look forward to continuing the conversation. Sincerely, Juilee, Andrea, Roger, and Mindy, co-organizers (PS to Jonathan, please post the link to your journal!)

Mitsitam Espresso

Mitsitam Espresso

Developing Sense of Place through Travel Experiences and Online Information

My research focuses on the motivating factors behind travel choices, including destination, mode and path choices, with an emphasis on non-motorized sustainable modes. Trained as a civil engineer, my work bridges the gap between engineering design and behavior by understanding the interrelationships between the built environment and travel, including destination choices.

With respect to sense of place, my attention is on two contributing factors: (i) how our journey to destinations and spatial mobility affect our perception of place and (ii) how the internet or online reputation of locations compliments or detracts from this perception. The overarching vision of this work is that non-motorized travel improves sense of place by exposing travelers to their environments. Given the pervasiveness of mobile information and communication technologies (ICT), online reputation of locations may further adjust this perception of sense of place.

I currently have an ongoing funded project looking at the link between (i) non-motorized travel access; (ii) online reputation and (iii) sense of place. The study focuses on three sites in Rochester: (a) Public Market; (b) East End and (c) College Town. Intercept surveys are conducted at each of these sites, collecting attitudinal and travel access information from site visitors. Additionally, a built environment audit is used to characterize the design attributes of each location. Finally, online sites that collect feedback from users, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Twitter are data-mined to provide sense of place metrics for each site. An analysis of all three sources of information is conducted to characterize the interrelationships. 

                                                                     Public Market

East End