informal urban practices

Our Place is a traveling stall that invites you to take part in an interactive face-to-face and online investigation of space and its manifestations.

Keywords/Concepts:
• Space and Place
• Interaction
• Ownership
• Investigation
• Behaviour
• Community
• Temporality
• Commitment

Themes:

The ‘Our Place’ project will investigate how people engage and think about public space by encouraging people to interact and leave their mark in any way that they feel comfortable.

‘Our Place’ is interested in generating longer-term awareness about the spaces individuals inhabit commitments and documenting how the public reacts to this. It will encourage the public to engage and become active in the space, observing the transition of ‘space’ to ‘place’. They will be invited to take ownership of the project, and share its outcomes, thus learning something of their personal creative abilities that would have otherwise gone undiscovered.

‘Our Place’ is a dynamic and responsive project; the outcomes may vary depending on the site and engagement with individuals.

Methods:

‘Our Place’ will take the physical form of a nomadic stall, spending up to three days at each space. Interaction will take place face-to-face with the assistance of objects, consultation, swapping, conversation, documentation, sharing. Later, the communication, exploration and interaction will continue online, assisted by much documentation.

Regular updates in the form of text, photographs, videos and audio, as well as links to relevant websites will be employed to keep the public interested, informed and tempt them to participate. It will also make the experience more permanent and provide a source of ongoing inspiration

Group 5: Nicholas Rebstadt, Sophie Bain and Lucy Fraser

As an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Fitzroy resident’s behaviour was very typical for it’s location. We observed many activities popular in the area such as, cycling for transportation, street shopping, café culture, loitering, busking, exercising and socializing in the park. Rather than point out all the activities people did in Fitzroy, we thought we would try to document spaces that define the suburb and make it individual. It also became clear that some activities which are quite common in the area are partaken during discreet hours as they may not be favoured by the authorities. There seems to be a culture of social awareness concentrating towards sustainable living, and an air of disuse or disrepair to blend in with the dating architecture and décor of many of the buildings.

Rahul Perira

Skateboarding and parkour

What’s fascinating about skateboarding and parkour is the level of discipline and determination that goes into these sports that make them seem so seamless and effortless. These sports almost defy the laws of gravity.

Parkour: Parkour a.k.a. free running is about navigating obstacles, and rethinking the way the body is used and the use of public and urban spaces. Some practitioners of parkour/free running believe that the techniques and the discipline they learn in the practice of this sport help them in their daily lives, making them more courageous and confident to tackle challenges.

Skateboarding: Skateboarding is the most well known urban activity. Skateboarders use urban spaces as canvas for creating their form of art. They rethink the way urban sculptures are used. Skateboarding can be used in different ways by people like as a mode of transportation, an activity, an art form or a profession. This helps practitioners to train their body in unique ways, build confidence, and always challenge themselves.

Video Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1v6Drp5Gc-  Skateboarding

Daniel Ward

Pranks

As an avid watcher of youtube and other online video communities i find pranks very interesting given that most pranks are posted onto the internet. Its fascinating the way that pranks can gain so much attention as most are upload onto the internet and can generate millions of views worldwide.

Elevator take over:

This prank is done by taking the elevator and then changing the inside so that it is a disco or even bed, as the examples in the video show. This can be very annoying for people waiting for the elevator, but hilarious to watch. The two examples in the video are done by Remi Gailliard a famous French prank ‘artist’

Invisible rope:

The invisible rope is performed by going to an urban area where people have to cross and then acting like you are pulling a rope over the walkway. People in cars or walking will think that there is a rope and stop with caution. Often this leads to the public getting angry, but can also attract a massive crowd of onlookers to see what the two people are doing .

Post-it note bombing:

This form of prank is both time consuming and annoying. Covering areas in post-it notes as a form of prank has been done for a long time, but since the inception of youtube these pranks have been gaining attention over the globe. In the video is an example of one where they used 15’000 post-it notes as a welcome home for a friend who had been away for 3 weeks and on youtube had gained over 1 million views.

In Asian, America and even here there are shows that are dedicated to performing pranks of people. These shows often attract many viewers in the respective country and around the world.

The things about pranks is that while occasionally annoying the people involved they are used to be funny and uplifting. This is also the reason why they do gain so much attention because people can laugh and share the videos with friends, even recreating the pranks.

There is great value in pranks as they give you something to laugh at during the day and they create a sort of social interaction between workers, friends and classmates.

Guerilla Gardening from informal.urban on Vimeo.

Guerilla Gardening Groups are mostly Non-profit organisations run completely by volunteers and donations without permit or license, plant seeds and seedlings in neglected corners of public spaces.   They are passionate to design public spaces to raise awareness by example by beautifying the city without a big budget, without sponsors and without logos to bring life back to the street.  It is simply creating a space of “positive influence” for concerned citizens to get involved and participate.

Individual Guerilla Gardeners are creating opportunities for people to feel better as they pass by and promote positive human behaviour by using public spaces.

Guerilla Gardening from informal.urban on Vimeo.

Random Acts of Good-will and Human Kindness from informal.urban on Vimeo.

random acts of good-will and human kindness can be seen in various forms of informal urban practices.  A few examples include: free hugs, guerrilla gardening, and twipple (using twitter to ripple human kindness).

FREE HUGS  this examples shows how something very simple can go along way.  Juan Mann made it his mission to reach out and hug strangers to brighten their day.  While it started with one man, it spread and the free hug campaign has taken place all over the world.

GUERRILLA GARDENING  is all about taking deserted, run down, or potential urban spaces and planting gardens to brighten these dark spots.  It can be done in a number of places, from pot holes, traffic islands, or along sidewalks.

TWIPPLE is using twitter to ripple human kindness.  The idea of this Twitter group is to give ideas for random acts of human kindness and to do those in your daily life.  Some examples include leaving extra quarters in a pay phone, picking up trash on a train or tram, or buying a coffee for the next person in line.

random acts of good-will and kindness video

The beggars in Asian are quite different from the Western. In China, the beggars got hundred years history. It becomes a special culture such as “Beggar’s Chicken” (food), “The Mad Monk” (fairy tale), “The king of Beggars” (movie) and so on. Usually beggars just sit on the street with a bowl and bagging for money. Lots of them are disable people, but actually some of them are pretended. Some baggers scaming from people, as if their son or parents just died. The beggars trend toward younger age. These little beggars like fasten on passerby such as catch their cloth or hug their legs.   Most of children beggars are organized by criminals. Criminals trafficking in children and make them become disabled. So that leads one problem: How to treat thebeggars? Some people stop giving beggars alms, because beggars have to give most of the money to criminals. Some people have other rules, like this:

If they ask for money,
I gave them food;
If they ask for food,
I gave them money.

little beggar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcE92B__vBY

disable beggar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyyQn3yLIoQ

My video:

http://vimeo.com/13664225

By  Jiazhen Ken Chen

Street trading and hawking within Asia consits of both legal and illegal goods, items such as DVDs, clothing, bags, electrical can be found in department stores and these items are all legal, but most people travel to Asia to buy illegal and fake goods. Most of these goods might be fake but the quality is so good and it makes it really hard to tell if these items are real or fake. These street hawkers are hurting the department stores because they are selling more then the real goods. The government might say they are trying to control these hawkers but I don’t believe this is true because you can find fake items anywhere in Asia. The value in this is that both hawkers and tourist as well as the police are all getting something out of it.  Other street traders within Asia are people that are selling foods from small stands that move around, allowing the tourist and locals to buy traditional food that may not be customary to us.

http://www.vimeo.com/13756286

Research 3 different examples of ‘informal urban practice’ from cities outside Australia in your assigned topic area.

Explore the practice: What is fascinating about it? What is clever about it? What is of value in it? Summarise and communicate with ‘flair’.

Find a more detailed description and the list of practices here: 01_research project

the afternoon will start with the presentation of the research on overseas examples of ‘informal urban practices’, followed by the discussion of the next project. in the more formal part staff will continue the mini lecture series with presentations on their research interests, this time with Hélène Frichot from architecture, followed by Marieluise Jonas from landscape architecture.

we will also have a so-called ‘informal collective opportunity’, an evening with viewing of Improvised Film samples, 3-5 minute clips, of cinematic examples, played from DVD’s