There are moments when people are drown by the normality and want to "escape life". If it did happen, how do we define "escape" and what will be the track of escaping? Also, if the reason of escape is reaching for what is missing, will there be places in the other parts of the city that we regain it? What is the cost of doing so? The collectiveness of ideal daily schedule provides hints for us to explore the way in which people want to escape their daily routine. The premise hypothesis is that tracks of GSD students have a certain amount of similarity and overlap during the semester. Therefore, by selecting the points which locate in the area with the least point density, we create a new database of the escape activity.
Visualizing stress level, land use, and distance surface relating to these "abnormal" points, our model illustrates the relationship between the escape activity and its spatial and temporal rhythms. The undulating topography represents the distance surface derived from land use, which shows the resistance force that keeps people away from these isolated places. Columns in different colors represent four categories of activities including mental, bodily, social, and economic. The heights of the columns show the weighted stress level of people conducting these activities. With the columns projected onto four sides, four plexis on the periphery document the content of the activities, unveiling some secret events that seldom happen in the city. The plexi on top demonstrates the land use of these activities which are the missing pieces of the complicated urban puzzle. Combining all the represented information concerning escaping, we find out that the escape points have their own centrality at low resistance area, which creates a second realm of normality. On the contrary, there are only few points in high resistance area. Therefore, the psycho-geographic terrain displays the paradox between people's desire to escape and the physical and geographical limitation that has normalized this "abnormal".
GSD Fall 2019 SCI 6322 | Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation Instructor: Robert Gerard Pietrusko
