by jbomeara on 30 April 2010
I spent a good amount of time reading blogs the other day. I enjoy reading people’s little musings, creeping through their words and nesting in their textual consciousness. (I even have a blog of my own — I’m on the road for a seven-month span from January to August, so I figured it would be nice to keep my folks updated.) But when I set out on the trail for an Amsterdam-related travel blog, I always became distracted.
I left a text-heavy blog on transportation in Amsterdam because it linked me to a cheesecake restaurant in Rotterdam. My phone rang when I was perusing a Dutch sports blog and I sort of lost interest from there. I stumbled upon a great music blog, but it was not in English and half the bands looked like an amalgam of heroin chic and Justin Bieber. One blog, which I thought was devoted to dos and don’ts for tourists and first-time visitors, turned out to be a cannabis farmer’s forum for growing techniques and convenient marijuana depots. Rats.
The one blog that caught and held my attention was this one, written by a travelogue named Dhull. I appreciate a chap who writes with a similar voice as mine. (I’m assuming Dhull is a dude, lest I self-emasculate my writing style.) The blog is not fettered by typical structure. Dhull tosses around pictures and paragraph alignment like he’s trying to pull off his best Picasso impression. He toys with the reader’s attention, using easy-on-the-brain language, spacing, and pictures to create a fun milieu on the page. What the blog amounts to is a big chunk of information that feels easy and reads well; that, or Dhull is a cretin and I have simple taste. In either case, that is what I like to see in a blog.
If we are talking “play,” Dhull satisfies that in spades. His amusement with both the experiences and their recollections emanates from his blog. I am not sure of his age, but he reads young. I would guess that he was a kid out of college who got the travel bug and wanted the world to share in his delight. In a lot of ways, that is what I hope to convey in my blog and in my experiences in Amsterdam. The city is rife with opportunity for academic, philosophical, and architectural-acumen growth, but it is also a city known to be fun and kooky. As a group, we should explore that! To invoke my favorite red-headed philosopher, we should take chances, make mistakes, and get messy. Dhull wouldn’t accept any less.
by smithpae on 30 April 2010
The very first thing I did in approaching this assignment was input “urban space blog” into the Google machine. The second thing I did was click on the top link, which brought me to Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, a green blog with a narrow column of dense text centered on the page. I gave the page a brief scan before deciding that the pictures and text were too small for easy browsing. Also, upon further inspection, I found that the blog was largely about public policy. Blog posts about taxes and business classifications are directly at odds with my interpretation of “play.” So I quit that and turned instead to its list of links. I chose the blog link with the most “play”-ful sounding title, Bird to the North.
Bird to the North was much easier to look at. The pictures were bigger, so as I scrolled down the page I could easily become engaged with a particular post without reading through all the titles. However once I was hooked by a picture, there was often very little text to accompany it. I scrolled through about a years worth of posts without actually learning anything. So once again I looked through the list of links. This time I clicked a winner.
The Polis Blog has the same layout as all of our blogs and the blogs I went through to get there. Blog posts are on the left and in chronological order, and links alphabetized in a column on the right. This structure is standard because now we’re all adept at navigating through a website set up like that. The author of Polis Blog writes each blog post as an article. Each post has a distinct topic, a catchy title, and an eye catching image. In many articles, the author directly references social norms regarding space. For instance, on the first page of the blog, he writes “The founding gurus of urban space were so obsessed with cleanliness and order and the ‘right’ people that they left us with a million rules about who can do what where without dealing with the structural absurdities that leave some many spaces dead and truly alive spaces threatened with erasure (after all, they are illegal!).” As for play.. this blog is really well written and a delight to read. As I was playing in the blogosphere I ignored blogs that were too ugly or too boring, even if they might have been a great source of information. I recommend this blog to anyone still looking for a research topic.
by colinip on 29 April 2010
There’s always something to do in Amsterdam by Dhull Link to Blog
I had trouble finding a blog that incorporated a sense of space as the writer described his or her thoughts and feelings while traveling from one place to another. I used Googleblogs to search for an appropriate article. I used key words such as “urban space” combined with “Amsterdam” to no avail. Then I decided to use words such as “first impression” which had better results.
While reading the blog, I tried to place myself in the writer’s shoes and imagine what he was seeing. I first pictured myself traveling from Munich to Amsterdam while comparing the two different cities. Amsterdam is very crowded and full of life. There are many different types of transportation in the bustling city ranging from trams and cars to bikes and canals. Munich was more peaceful and clean. The only rowdiness that I encountered was at the soccer game.
The blog is chronologically ordered which makes it easier to follow Dhull’s experience in the two cities. He describes in detail the places that he visits and his impressions of them. For example, as he walked through the old German concentration camp, he depicts the depressing aura and the chills that run down his spine. He also gives his thoughts openly when he describes the indifference that people show towards precariously leaning buildings in Amsterdam and connects it to the Dutch’s tolerant perspective.
Dhull describes the English Garden’s in Munich as a big park in the city with activities ranging from surfing in the river to nude sun bathing. As I read his narrative, it gave me a sense that the park was very large considering that a river runs through it, narrows at a point to create a standing wave, and have enough space for people to come and gather and watch surfers do their thing. This large sense of space seems to allow a stronger sense of privacy for things like sun bathing but at the same time allow people to come together to watch surfing. This can be juxtaposed to his first impression of Amsterdam which was craziness and chaos in the bustlings streets full of cars and bikes. The lack of space initially made Dhull feel uncomfortable until he settled and tried to gather a sense of order while smack in the middle of Amsterdam traffic.
The role of PLAY in my exploration through the blogosphere is the idea that these bloggers are writing about their adventures for fun sometimes not knowing that their blogs have meaning to their readers. The process of reading and understanding their thoughts is essential for my own growth and development as an observer and a thinker. Their experiences are ‘at play’ and from their stories I can learn about social interactions between people, the affects of space on society, and many other things.
by dreinelt on 27 April 2010
This image captured my attention because there is a fascinating amount of variation and detail in the many buildings which structurally compose one rectangular complex. The canvas for each house’s design is a single predetermined section of wall, yet each …
Continue reading →
by Clifford on 19 April 2010
For this assignment, we ask that you take a walk around the blogosphere, and in doing so, consider the ideas about exploration and observation of space presented in the assigned readings.
Spend some time exploring blogs related to urban space generally or Amsterdam specifically. Choose one blog to examine in depth. In your blog post for this assignment, you will be asked to reflect on how you found that particular blog in addition to your analysis of the blog itself. You can also use this exercise to help identify or narrow a potential research topic.
A couple of points about the readings:
The Lynch & Rivkin article was meant to both introduce you to urban studies methods and begin to sensitize you to using your skills of observation. The Hartmann article takes an urban exploration approach and applies to exploration of the internet.
As noted by Lynch & Rivkin, people either perceive order in space or they try to create order in its absence:
“the individual must perceive his environment as an ordered pattern, and is constantly trying to inject order into his surroundings, so that all the relevant perceptions are jointed one to the other.” –Lynch & Rivkin (1959) A Walk Around the Block
Consider also that the notion of space is socially constructed, both the built environment and our conception of it are constructed through social interaction (NOTE- the following quote comes from a reading not yet assigned).
“Social space is a social product – the space produced in a certain manner serves as a tool of thought and action. It is not only a means of production but also a means of control, and hence of domination/power.” — Lefebvre (1991) The Production of Space
In your blog posts of 500 words max, reflect on the following:
1) observation skills: trust your skills of observation to inform what you see (in addition to what you read) in the blog content.
2) ordered patterns: what sense of order is present and/or imposed? you dont want to spend too much time discussing the blog structure per se, instead your comments should focus on indications of the blogger’s reaction to or interaction with the structure.
3) social construction of space: in the blog you select, look for indications of socially constructed norms, particularly with respect to space.
4) play -as an individual and social activity:
The Situationist movement was deeply influenced by the writings of Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga, who suggested that PLAY is a “significant function – that is to say, there is some sense to it. In play, there is something ‘at play’ which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something.” ( Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element of Culture. (New York: J and J Harper Editions, 1970), 19.)
What is the role of PLAY in your exploration? How is your exploration of the blogosphere playful? What is the social aspect of play at work here?
Please have your blog response posted by: Midnight PST May 1st, 2010
