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| Author Dr. Arijit Sen with students at BLC field school |
Landscape - the scene - undeniably offers itself to us as a transparent totality, coherent and final. Compared to the ephemeral nature of human consciousness and social action, the continuity of the material world and its apparent unchangeability seem to promise constant or certain meaning. Yet the stability of physical form falsely certify stability of meaning...[i]
In 1977, Dell Upton urged us
to explore the seen as well as the unseen aspects of the landscape and
understand the relative roles of “vision and the intangible in the interpretation
of landscape.” Later developed in the work of scholars such as Pocius (1991),
Williams and Young (1995), Herman (2005) and Nardone (2003) a method of
analysis has emerged that intertwines interpretations of the material,
experiential, ephemeral and the affective characteristics of the built
environment.[ii]
The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures summer field school at Milwaukee and Madison borrows from multiple disciplinary sources to expand and explore ways to study the built environment. We include scholarship of historic preservation and material culture emerging from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, oral history methods and digital humanities scholarship developed by Randforce Associates LLC[iii] and myriad new media practices in order to rethink, document and interpret the material world. The five-week field school integrates a rigorous analysis of sensate information collected through architectural field studies, sound recordings, oral history interviews, storytelling workshops and digital media. Students make their own portable sound recorders in order to capture ambient sound. Soundscapes allows us to consider an aspect of the sensate material world that visual analysis misses. Field school projects demonstrate how multi-sensory fieldwork methods can render an otherwise invisible world of power, labor, and identity.[iv] Our projects seeks to employ the enduring creativity of storytelling, the power of digital humanities, and depth of local knowledge in order to galvanize Milwaukee residents to talk about their built environment as repositories of community memory, spaces of caring and markers of civic pride.
A central concern in the use
of digital tools is the issue of privacy. Many programs like Panoramio® (www.panoramio.com) make all data public over google
maps; a common mistake that the researcher misses (and we did too initially).
Figuring out the privacy and data use policy of each application and program
may be a wise thing to do.
The field school received a national award from the American Association for State and Local History and was showcased in the American Folklore Association’s 2013 annual meeting. We thank the Wisconsin Humanities Council, Cultures and Communities Program, the Provost’s Office, the Department of Architecture and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for their financial support.
The Field School is admitting students for the Summer 2014 field school at Washington Park and more information is available at www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com or by contacting me at senA@uwm.edu
Check us out at www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com
[i]
Dell Upton, “Seen, Unseen and Scene,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes,
edited by Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1977), 174-79.
[ii]
Gerald L. Pocius, A Place to Belong:
Community Order and Everyday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland, (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1991).
Michael Ann Williams and M. Jane Young,
“Grammar, Codes, and Performance: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Models in the
Study of Vernacular Architecture,” Perspectives
in Vernacular Architecture 5: Gender,
Class, and Shelter (1995), 40-51.
Jennifer Nardone, “Roomful of Blues:
Jukejoints and the Cultural Landscape of the Mississippi Delta,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 9:
Constructing Image, Identity, and Place (2003), 166-175.
Bernard L. Herman, “Time and Performance: Folk Houses in
Delaware,” American Material Culture and
Folklife: A Prologue and Dialogue, edited by S. Bronner (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1985), 155-175.
[iii]
http://www.randforce.com;
The website explains, “Randforce Associates LLC is led by Michael Frisch,
Principal, Professor of American Studies and History/ Senior Research Scholar
at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He established Randforce in the University
at Buffalo's Technology Incubator to advance oral history scholarship and
public practice in the digital age. … He is joined by Douglas Lambert, Director
of Technology, with a background in engineering and information cartography,
and Judith Weiland, Director of Operations, with expertise in institutional
projects, local history, media production, and technology. Melanie Morse, whose
background is in education and video production, and Arnold Alt, editor and
performing artist, are Associates. Since its founding in 2002, Randforce has
been using new digital media tools to "put the oral back in Oral
History"--to mobilize the power of voice and image for professional,
community, institutional, family, and research applications.”
