Thomas Huntingford

Supervisors: Professor Alan Pert and Professor Gini Lee

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View thesis project on Miro

Perspective Mapping:
7 Days Cycling in the South Australian Riverland

Description
This project uses a cycling tour conducted for the Movember Foundation in late 2020 as a case study to examine perspective and mapping from a cyclist’s viewpoint. Mapping as a method of visual research is used to collect, explore, and display spatial information, data and narratives of space and place. Framed by the instrument of the bicycle and the practice of touring cycling the researcher (cyclist) acts as cartographer and spatial ‘translator.’ Through visualisations, the researcher transforms local forms, such as landscape and architecture, and knowledge, from conversations and archival research, recognising the value in the subjective interpretation of place-based information and spatial thinking.

Methods
A mixed methods research process is used that includes multiple data types to produce new questions for cycling as a methodology and push the research project in multiple directions to create opportunities for mapping. These methods include:

1. Use of the bicycle, camera, phone, digital and paper maps, conversation, and desktop research to form visualisations of route and trip data.
2. Interpreting stops through representation and recordings, recognising the context of content and interpreter (cyclist).
3. Creating a repository through the collation of stories and archival information relating to findings from the stops.

Abstract
Restrictions on mobility and in-person interaction, applied in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, have necessitated a renewed reliance on digital technology that threatens to linger beyond the current state of emergency as the incumbent method of interpreting spatial information through image and map-making. This dependence on aerial imagery, 3D models and abstract geographic data, available through software packages like GIS, sets-up denaturalised perspectives^[1] that engender a one-dimensional understanding of place. One devoid of the first-person experiences of architecture, landscape, people, climate, objects and time.

Perspective Mapping presents an alternative approach. From the viewpoint of the touring cyclist, understanding of place is formed through immersion, as both observer and participant^[2] one ‘rapidly passages through varied ambiences’^[3] constantly in a state of ‘landing’^[4] and steadily being displaced by virtue of one’s own physical effort. An exercise in mobility, a trip is spatially mapped by itinerary and route, both a linear series of movements and ‘stops,’ the former acts as a guide or loose set of instructions and the latter is enriched by chance, ‘findings,’^[5] ‘X-points,’^[6] and ‘events.’^[7] By delivering the cyclist into these scenarios, the bicycle can be seen as a cartographic instrument,^[8] one that generates findings beyond simple spatial relationships and necessitates a broad approach to mapping.

The cyclist is exposed to forms of architecture that elude the term ‘informal’^[9] but are often conceived ‘without architects’.^[10] Almost exclusively mobile and defining various forms of ‘camping’^[11] these architectures are instead derived from ‘the artful tendency within the everyday pragmatics’^[12] of their users. Such forms are captured using still imagery, exploding a journey^[13] into defined perspectives while maintaining legibility of movement,^[14] and drawings that isolate the artefact, presenting it alongside spatial data^[15] while also conflating it with stories attempting to embody a particular genius loci.

Augmenting this experience, the use of film allows for the auditory and rhythmic mapping of movements vs stops^[16] as well as factors pertaining to the habitual and physical experience of cycling such as breathing, heartbeat and cycling rhythms.^[17] Further, film introduces forms of notation through storyboarding^[18] and analytical methods^[19] that can map the movement and time defined events of journey as a series of directions as if to be followed. Noting that a repeat of the same route would yield entirely different results and that one’s interpretation can only ever be ‘partial and relative’.^[20] Finally, in presenting the map as installation, the object as an element of narrative^[21] is able to speak as part of the map. Presented as synonymous with the imagery^[22] and removed from their useful contexts^[23] the items form part of a set of instructions for reading the map,^[24] displaying the inherent value of a perspective and the place cultures through which it travels.

Questions

1. How does the ‘first person’ approach to mapping through journey and route manifest in spatial and topological mappings of place?
2. What role does architectural representation play in mapping the cyclist’s perspective?
3. How can the coalescing of image and sound through film relate the experience of journey to landing, landscape, and architecture?
4. How can figuration as a form of mapping and architectural representation convey the stories and interactions with others that influence landing, finding and how a place is interpreted?
5. How can notation record and communicate the myriad factors that contribute to the experience of cycling and landing?
6. How does the cyclist’s perspective differ from others and how can this shift in perception and activity be communicated through mapping?
7. What implications does mapping from this perspective have for architecture and the built environment?

Dissemination
Recordings, archival information, and analytical drawings will be exhibited as an installation. The installation will allow the cycling tour and its associated repository to be read as a cohesive whole by mapping the various actors together. This installation will be accompanied by a film, both of which will be available digitally via a website.

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^[1] _{Theodor Wyeld, Andrew Allan, “The virtual city: perspectives on the dystopic cybercity,” The Journal of Architecture, (2006): 8. Reseachgate.}

^[2] _{Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (London: Harper Perennial, 2003).}

^[3] _{Guy Debord, “Theory of  Derive,” Situationist International Online, 1956, https://www.cddc.vtedu/sionline/si/theory.html.}

^[4] _{Christophe Girot, “Four Trace Concepts in Landscape Architecture,” in Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed. James Corner (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999)}

^[5] _{Girot, “Four Trace Concepts in Landscape Architecture.”}

^[6] _{William Kentridge, “William Kentridge, Drawing Lesson Three: Vertical Thinking – A Johannesburg Biography,” Posted by Mahindra Humanities Center Jan 15, 2020, 1:16:01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVTrSr7T_bM}

^[7] _{Bernard Tschumi, “Manhattan Transcripts,” ANY: Architecture New York, No. 5, Lightness March/April 1994, JSTOR.}

^[8] _{Mark Smout, Laura Allen, and Geoff Manaugh, British Exploratory Land Archive (BELA), Accessed May 2021, https://issuu.com/bartlettarchucl/docs/smout_allen_04_archive_s05_update_e}

^[9] _{Menna Agha and Leopold Lambert, “Outrage Informality in the built environment is a fallacy and a notion we should disown,” The Architectural Review, 1477 (December 2020/January 2021): 6.}

^[10] _{Bernard Rudolphsky, Architecture Without Architects (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1964)}

^[11] _{Charlie Hailey, Camps: A Guide to 21^st-Century Space (London: The MIT Press, 2009)}

^[12] _{Gini Lee, “Three Scenarios for a Critical Architecture of Desert Mobility,” Critical Architecture, Conference, Bartlett, UCL, London, November 2004: 279-287.}

^[13] _{Derek Jarman, “Journey to Avebury,” with COIL Soundtrack, Oct 9, 2018, 10:25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo7Rmu3woNk&ab_channel=PhilBarrington}

^[14] _{Edward Ruscha, Filthy McNasty’s (Sunset Strip Portfolio), 1976, printed 1995, Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/student-resource/exam-help/journeys}

^[15] _{Momoyo Kaijima, Pet Architecture Guide Book (Tokyo: Warudo Foto Puresu, Heisei, 2001).}

^[16] _{The Straight Story, directed by David Lynch (1999; Cannes: Asymmetrical Productions), https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1587263043655}

^[17] _{“Tour de France – 2009 Remaster,” Spotify, Track 12 on Kraftwerk, Tour de France (2009 Remaster), Parlophone Records Ltd, 2009.}

^[18] _{Martin Scorsese, “Raging Bull” Story Boards, 1980, Hand drawn storyboard, https://cinephiliabeyond.org/raging-bull/}

^[19] _{Sergei Michailowitsch Eisenstein, Александр Невский – Alexandr Newski (1938), in Michael Haverkamp, Movement Represented by Film Score and Sound Design (27th Tonmeistertagung: VDT International Convention, November, 2012), 3.}

^[20] _{Richard Weller, “Between hermeneutics and datascapes: a critical appreciation of emergent landscape design theory and praxis through the writings of James Corner 1990-2000,” Landscape Review 7, no. 1 (2001).}

^[21] _{John Wardle Architects, This Building Likes Me (Australia: Thames & Hudson, 2016).}

^[22] _{Nicola Delon, Julie Choppin, Sébastien Eymard, Infinite Places: The French Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, 2018, Exhibition, Inexhibit, https://www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/infinite-places-the-french-pavilion-venice-architecture-biennale-2018/}

^[23] _{Simon Starling, Turin Fiat 125 Special, 1968 / Cutaway View (Front Section), 2019, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, https://www.themoderninstitute.com/viewing-room/simon-starling-a-a-b-b}

^[24] _{Marcel Duchamp, Museum in a Box, 1941, Ivory Press, https://www.ivorypress.com/en/review/museum-in-a-box/}