Doors Open Milwaukee

For Doors Open Milwaukee, I decided to attended a location that I wouldn't normally go to.  I visited Old St. Mary's Church on Broadway Street.  The  reason behind the selection of location was to observe the  overwhelming nature the location seemed to possess.  I was interested in being overtaken by all of what surrounded me within each specific space.  When I walked into St. Mary's, I was in the presence of so many paintings on the wall, followed by statues of biblical figures.  I felt very overwhelmed, both physically and visually.  At one point, I even felt an uneasiness and I ended up leaving sooner than I wanted to.  There was such a sense of reverence and quietness that it almost became an atmosphere in which something bad was bound to happen. It was an odd experience to have in a place that it supposed to be holy and peaceful. It was a juxtaposition.

Micro/Macro

This is my intervention with feathers. Speaking to the ideas of ephemerality, memory, personal value of objects, and everyday observation.

Public/Personal

41º 56'36.96 N, 87º41'32.64 W


This is a park behind the high school that I attended in Chicago.  The name of the park is Clark Park and it is a public space that is used for everything from p.e. classes to minor league soccer tournaments over the summer.  More importantly, this place was practically a designated make-out spot for everyone who had a girlfriend or someone to fool around with.  Although it was mostly a place that everyone knew about, I had a very personal connection with it.  No, I wasn't connected primarily because of the fact that I would take girls there to make-out with.  I mean, yeah, but also because I would ride my bike through there, as well as run through it.   I felt that it was a place where nobody would really care about what you were doing.

Throughout the course of my high school education, or even after it, I would always find myself going there to walk and think or to meet up with someone.  I remember days when I would walk hand in hand with a girl that I really liked.  It was as though nothing else existed; just the two of us, walking among trees and a serenity that seemed unreal.  I remember the exact moments that we had spent together, the smiles exchanged, the tender kisses, and the sun shining intensely.  I also remember the rain on the windshield of her red Jetta parked in the lot and the rain drops on her cheeks.

The power of location to trigger memory is quite remarkable.

Note: I switched the words of the post title because I feel that before something becomes personal, it has to become public first.  Well, when dealing with location at least.

3 days, 3 ways.

I walked, biked, and rode the bus. Pretty predictable,right?
Whenever I go anywhere I tend to think a lot about everything and anything that interests me. I wasn't thinking about my surroundings.  I was thinking about whatever came into mind right away.  Sometimes I have very random thoughts that are triggered by scent, music, or color. For this assignment, nothing changed. I wasn't really thinking deeply about my surroundings or what was going on. I was walking, observing, and taking some pictures with my phone. Those photos triggered thoughts, which would lead me to question what was in front of me.
Biking and riding the bus simply added other elements to observe. People, for example made me question them and what they did.  The bike ride was fast which added a strong element of ephemerality to the interaction with my surroundings.  I mean, in essence everything is ephemeral, but that's a whole different topic. Here is my stream of consciousness during the 3 different modes of transportation. enjoy.
 Walking:
-The alley smells like rotten eggs
-I'm walking down the alley the entire way.
-Im listening to health while the wind blows against me.
-Julio said my project Sucked, but then Said he liked it. He's lying.
-It smells like fish.
-Just left the alleys.
-Well, they ended.
-So now I'm on Broadway.
-An old girlfriend just texted me.
-There are feathers all over the msoe campus.
-I think they eat birds for lunch.
-Almost walked through a field of crickets. Nvm.
-Just saw Brittany again.
-I'm back in an alley
-Oh, I just got here. Took van buren here.

Bus: -Milwaukee people are so odd.
-these bus billboards are so damn weird.
-this song is so good.

Bike: -my legs hurt.
-my chain is rusty
-i'm tired.

Touching on the Nato Thompson reading, I thought that he made many interesting points about us and the relationship that we have with our geographical surroundings.  "We become what we experience" is something that I found to be very true.  Throughout the three ways of experimenting this route, I became bored and uninterested, just like the route itself.  I was sick of seeing the same thing over and over.  I think that an intimacy between ourselves and our surroundings is only existent when we truly want to be intimate with them, when it catches our interest.  I really like the idea of ephemeral cultural forces.  It's something that triggers the mind in many directions.  "If one wants to change the mind, one must change the geographic conditions that shape it." I would have to disagree with that statement, because I believe that a changing in the mind comes from the changing of our lifestyles and thoughts.  Anyway, good read.  

some pictures from the walk.