Dates: 23/01/23 – 27/01/23

Group Members: Carlotta Montanari, Jennoir Simpson, Anushka Motiani and Xiaole Zang

DAY 1

The morning began with a ‘Power Walk’ lead by Rosie Oliver starting from Waterloo Bridge, London. The walk took us along a journey of the different power structures and agencies that London poses as a city. From the Church, to the Government, to the Banks and the Parliament and everything in between.

The walk concluded at the Royal Courts of Justice with us having the opportunity to sit in on a few hearings. It was very exciting to see the way power dynamics influence the design of spaces.

Tackling a 5-day brief has a different thrill to it. To have to think on your feet and design a journey that leads from the inner world to the outer world. As a starting point for the project, we had to do a derive either starting or ending in Hackney Marshes. Although before heading out, we did a couple of rounds of ‘8 ideas in 8 minutes’ exercise in class. This time the trick was also to flip the folded sheet of paper as each minute got done, otherwise we end up dwelling on one idea for longer.

We shortlisted these ideas from the pool-

• Rainbow-coloured lenses: The person would look at the world through differently tinted glasses which would inevitably affect their view of the walk.
• The floor is lava: The participant would have to parkour their way through the walk according to some rules in place but particularly that you cannot touch your feet to the ground.
• A graveyard history walk: The idea was to research vertically in a space instead of horizontally, and see what is beneath the ground. How do graveyards tie in with the history of a place?

DAY 2

Next day was about exploring the wild, doing experiements, having discussions and just letting ourself be vulnerable with the space. We didn’t want to go in with any pre-conceived notions about the area, so we decided to go in without any research about the area but a little about ‘derive’ and what was expected.

We began our walk at Stratford International Station and began walking in the general direction of the Hackney Marshes with no particular route in place.

One of the ideas that emerged during the walk was to design for visually-impaired people, so two people walked for a little while with their eyes closed, relying on other senses (and some guidance from us too!).

Halfway along the walk, the marshes began to show up on the sides of River Lea. We all tried walking inside the marshes as well which was not necessarily a very pleasnt experience, I was just constantly scared I will fall cause of the slippery surface. But I did get to pet some dogs along the way!

Finally having reached there was a sense of dissatisfaction from all of us. For some reason, we were expecting to find something at Hackney Marshes but there really was nothing. It was plain land with a few football goal posts on either side.

This made us think that our walk was actually quite interesting compared to the destination and that’s what we decided to work with.

DAY 3

For a day, we were struggling with finalising on an idea. It was difficult to get everyone on the same page and there wasn’t enough time to dive any deeper into the subject.

DAY 4

Ideas surrounding meditation, colours started popping up in our discussions a lot. Then we decided to combine these elements and design something called a ‘Coloured walking meditation’. The idea rooted from us going over the pictures we had clicked during the course of our walk, and we realised the 4-5 predominant colours running across them. The colours affected the functionality, mood, appearance and ultimately the experience of the space.

The idea was to have these colours as parallel themes running along the walk. The participants would experience the ‘walking mediation’ through an audio experience and they choose were to begin their journey from by holding the thread. The room is entangled with many threads and they have palms dipped in the colour they will be walking.

After a tutorial with Tonicha and Rosie, we were advised to think of another way to represent threads in our experience. They felt that they might be a little distracting from the purpose of meditation. Although, they seemed to love the idea of a walking meditation and how we had planned to do it as colours.

So instead we switched up our idea to a ‘colour walk’ literally. Instead of dipping the hands in paint, it would now be the participants’ feet. We decided to situate our experience in a seperate enclosed space from the class to offer adequate privacy to our participants. The entire floor was covered in white sheets to form a large, walkable canvas.

Alongside this we began working on our audio pieces since they tie the entire experience together. We each picked one colour to give voice to, the one we most resonated with on the walk. The audio pieces were also tied in with some background meditative music as well as appropriate background sounds.

EXPERIENCE FOR YOURSELF

You may pick 1 or more audio pieces to listen to. The experience is designed as a walking exercise, so if your space allows you to walk while listening to the audio, please do so. It is recommended to use headphones or earphones to listen to the tracks.

DAY 5

Since, we were not allowed to verbally explain our experience, we decided to hand out handwritten pamphlets to give the audience a just of what they could expect when we present and we also added some wet paint drops to each of them as a mini tactile experience for the audience.

Each participant was given a colour and the corresponding audio track of the same. They were asked to step into a pool of paint barefoot and then walk to explore the space in their own way while listening to the audio tracks.

The experience was live streamed for the rest of our classmates to see and we also played ‘The Grey Walk’ on speakers in the class for everyone to understand what the participants were listening to.

After the 3 minutes almost all participants had finished and we had a beautiful artwork with us in the end. To me it looks like a congruence of journeys.

The feedback received was that although the experience felt unique and childlike fun, it lacked some immersive qualities especially given the spatial constraints of a room. The experience of dipping feet in paint was well received by the participants as well as the audience. Something that our mentor, Alaistair, really appreciated was the correlation between the pictures from our walk and how we picked our colours based on that. Rosie Olivers specifically mentioned that the overlapping quality of the colours was as poetic as it was meaningful.