I first struggled with finding a location for my project. I was not even sure in what I was looking for. I began with choosing a beautiful church that I had seen on a tour of New Brunswick in our Neighborhood Narratives class. But as I began to think of how I felt connected to this place I could think of nothing more than it being beautiful. So I started over. I was on the bus back from college ave feeling defeated when the bus took us passed Old Queens College. I realized that every time I pass by Old Queens I’ve wanted to stop in and take a look. When I finally went into Old Queens College and started exploring the buildings, I noticed that all the buildings were full of history and architecturally beautiful, though I could not find a connection still. I was walking around the courtyard aimlessly feeling lost. People saw me taking photos of Old Queens and stopped me telling me all the about the buildings and projects surrounding them. One man by the name of James Pearson, stopped and talked to me for a good amount of time. I tape recorded our conversation just for reference. I noticed that Old Queens was a very busy place during the day. The courtyard always had people walking through it.
As I explored the space of the courtyard I noticed the four gates leading into and out of Old Queens. When I researched the gates, I found out that they were all built by four different classes and that they all had something unique about them. I then realized that I had found my project. It was the courtyard that I was wandering aimlessly in and the gates that I had discovered. These gates represent a sense of direction. Every gate you exit brings you to a different place. For example one gate brings you to the train station, another to college ave. That is the purpose of gates, which is why they are built, but they are also memorials. Old Queens has four gates, one in which is considered the principal gate or main gate. One other gate is walked through every year by the graduating class. I loved how everywhere I stepped in Old Queens had history including my portals in and out to Old Queens College. I wanted to be a part of these gates so I decided to try and make my own experience with these gates, but not just me, my Neighborhood Narratives class as well. I loved that I could wander in this huge courtyard and end up at these gates of escape. This space has created this place of Old Queens as well. Yi-Fu Tuan writes in the introduction of “Space and Place”, “Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other” (Tuan, 3). In this place I feel secure with the surrounding fence but also free with these four gates along the fence. These gates are my freedom. I wanted to focus on the open space and use my body to navigate to them. I focused on Yi-Fu Tuan’s three themes: “biological facts, relations of space and place, and the range of experience or knowledge” (Tuan, 6). I wanted to use the directions that humans know from looking with their bodies, such as left, right, up, and down. So I thought in some way I wanted to tell people how to get to these gates, but I didn’t just want to give them written directions. I recalled listening to Janet Cardiff’s narrated walks in class and I loved the idea. So I decided that was how I was going to get my class to discover the gates. I decided to add a feature to my project and use Hipcast. I would record my path to each separate gate on my cell phone and then make it into a podcast. I chose these because an ipod and a cell phone is what almost every college student has on them at all times. Rob Kitchin wrote, “Social constructivists posit that technology is a social construct and technology and society cannot be separated because they are intimately entwined with each other and with nature” (Kitchin, 25). Such technologies as cell phones and ipods were the perfect choice for my project. I wanted to include the sounds of the busy streets around me, like the train and the traffic. Unfortunately my phone picked up on none of these sounds around me. I then decided while taping my narratives to my gate, I could include the voices of other around me. So I did. I tape recorded people reading off a line or so of my narrative then played it during my actual call into Hipcast. I then emailed all the students in my class the links to my podcasts for them to put on their ipods. Kitchin writes, “Email allows network users to send messages to each other via their network and in most cases across the internet” (Kitchin, 2). I used email as a type of communication to the rest of my class about my project. During my presentation they will become familiar with this space that I have made my own. I will help them develop a relationship with this “space” in this “place”. Not only will they have to find their way by listening to me but they will have to find their way with their eye’s closed. They will pulled by another person that is not listening to the podcast. The student walking blind will have to communicate with the puller in order for them to find their way. The puller is another way of experiencing the space they are walking through. First of all by having another touch them it offers the blind walker security and protections. Yi-Fu Tuan writes, “Primates, including man, use their hands to know and comfort members of their own species, but man also uses hands to explore the physical environment, carefully differentiating it by the feel of bark and stone” (Tuan, 11). He also writes, “To experience in the active sense requires that one venture forth into the unfamiliar and experiment with the exclusive and the uncertain” (Tuan, 8). I’m trying to make my class experience this space for what it is to me. I want the class to explore the space to the gates. Touching their partner’s hands while navigating to the gate, is a way of experiencing the space while feeling a sense of comfort. Tuan writes, “Relative length, for example, is registered when different parts of the body are touched at the same time” (Tuan, 14). Touching both of their hands at the same time gives them a sense of space as well. Because both of their hands are being touched, the blind walker gets a sense of length and distance. All while navigating to the gates they will be carrying yarn with them. One end will be attached to the stolen cannon stand that they begin their journey at and they will unravel it all the way to their gate. Once at the gate they will attach the yarn to it. Then they will make a rubbing of something that stands out to them at the gate on a piece of paper that has their traced hand on it. This will give the rubbing the illusion that they are touching the thing that was rubbed. Then they will bring back the rubbings and tape them to the string in the beginning. I wanted to do this because I loved all the gates but I wanted them to be connected directly. Sure they are sort of connected by the fence, but the fence is made or stone then metal and it seemed not as concrete. I wanted to be able to a sense touch all the gates at once. I wanted the class to be able to experience this space by touching the string and traveling down it. I wanted to collapse these multiple gates into one experience.
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