01.1 Methods of investigation

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first thoughts + experiments

As a space to investigate I decided to choose the last carriage of the Northern Line, from Oval to Kings Cross and back. It is a journey that I do quite often and thus had never paid too much attention to it and to the experience of it, consequently, I thought that it would be interesting to engage more with this space.

as explained here, when I started my investigation – trying to achieve the first prompts I’ve set myself (see below)- I realised that it was actually quite difficult to use photography and video to record data from this space. Indeed, because of how crowded it is and the fact that it involves people, it makes it quite awkward and almost grossing boundaries when trying to take pictures for example as people think that you are taking pictures of them.

Fail attempt of taking a video to record what you can see from the tube’s window.

This lead me to explore new ways of recording/investigate the tube and to focus on ‘non purely visual’ mediums

Experiment 01.

For this first experiment, I’ve explored the notion of movement and instability of the tube as well as the idea of ‘crowded’. To achieve this, I either stood up or sat down in the tube and took a notebook and a pen. I’ve put the pen onto the page and let the movement of my body/hand draw on the page by itself, as some kind of automatic drawing. I started with a series of drawing in between each station (see below)

drawing experiment per station.

drawing experiment for the whole station

Experiment 02.

This experiment explores the sound/noise aspect of the tube as well as transcribing the notion of business and enclosure.
For this, I’ve started by using ‘automatic’ writing (see below)

These are words I have written while experiencing the whole journey in the tube. I’ve written them without thinking too much about it. The idea was to be spontaneous and somehow truthful to what I was experiencing, seeing, feeling, thinking while in that carriage.

In addition, I have also recorded the sound: at each station from door opening to closing, as well as the full journey.
I combined this sound aspect and the words to create a video that will communicate the exploration of this second experiment.

Experiment 03.

In this experiment, I’ve focused on people’s shoes. This was a way to show the diversity and changes within the carriage. In my opinion, shoes can be a good social marker when investigation a space. It is something – in my opinion – that can tell quite a bit about your personality, where you work, your social class, help guess where you came from and where you’re going…

feedback + refelction

feedback –

  • interesting way to show the movement: because of the void you get the same idea of movement than you’re in a car where you can see the landscape moving
  • train > body > paper : transmission of the movement
  • shoes can also show the level of wealth > look at who comes at each station?
  • shoes also reflect that people in the tube are always generally looking down / can record what I see when I look down?
  • experiments 1 + 2 > linked because they are both about things happening naturally can be put in opposition to the Idea of the tube which is something really structured and planned.
  • using the light? can have a look at when does the light appears > each station?
  • try to record the sound whilde I draw
  • film myself drawing?

reflection –

  • look into this idea of transmission of teh movement/ the energy: movement of carriage > movement of my body > movement of the pen
  • try to find a way to mix eperiment 1 et 2 together
  • add the notion of light
  • find a way to re cord myself drawing? + do more sound recording