week four readings

HOMEBODIES ON VACATION
By Diller + Scofidio

The authenticity of a place can only be experienced by living in it, by becoming a part of that society even if only temporarily. To visit is to see or to be there, and only experience it on one level but the life of a place, its reality, exist on many levels and to experience it on multiple levels requires time or investment. I think that seeing a place and taking pictures that record the event and make it possible to remember that you have been there, points to memory and its importance to place. There is no importance to that place beyond the importance that brought you to it in the first place but personally it holds no meaning and the record of being there becomes pointless once the purpose for having gone there in the first place is forgotten. The day to day living that makes life interesting and also makes a place special it is memories and experiences that
create a sense of place and with out those experiences, the experience itself becomes superficial. Travel can provide an escape from the activities of day to day life but then why the obsessive need to record being away from the place you are trying to escape, especially if the act of recording it becomes meaningless? One should not passively see a place but actively experience it.


TIMES SQUARE DEAD OR ALIVE?
By M. Christine Boyer

Times Square cannot be experienced any other way than the sanitized version of what it is, because the unclean version of the place is perhaps more true to the unique reality of New York than the one that has developed into an idea of what it should be. The authenticity is lost, what one sees every new years on TV is as good as it gets, it seems even less intriguing in reality unless that is what you expect it to be like, an if your expectations are too high the reality falls short. It seems a lot like Las Vegas.

It seems like the idea in revitalizing the place was to remove what makes in dirty and inherently interesting and then follow to make it bright and flashy in an attempt to hide the fact that it may be just another intersection surrounded by office buildings. The interest of the place lies in the history an how the different worlds coexist within the sorted past of this intriguing place. To remove any element removes a piece of its history, its story and renders it less interesting less lively and by encouraging signage that is bright and shinny only hides that fact, or at least distracts from it.

If the new Times Square is like a simulated reality, an electronic artificial visualization reflecting our current economy driven by data, information, services and entertainment, they got what they wanted, too bad it’s no fun! An alternate reality based in advertisement and superfluous flashy lights may entice the imagination but like Vegas with any further investigation the life of the place dies with no reality to cling to.