Mexican Gardens in California: a Cultural Manifestation

Mexican front yard in Arcadia. The tall native species are covering the front window. Personal archives

Gardens could be compared to architectural designs. They contain ideas, they are expressive creations, they show man’s reflections. The difference between architecture and garden has ambiguous connotations. If the garden is not created for a human necessity, the garden is what the developer/designer proposed, it is closer to Art. But some gardens have an anthropological dimension, -though many authors defend the aesthetics-, they are expressions of culture. In this sense, the garden satisfies necessities; then, it would be closer to architecture.

Man accesses to this relationship between environment and culture by means of perception. This process involves comprehension and utilization of the information given in different responses to landscape; in this situation, man launches two kinds of mental activities: description of properties, which objective is to understand the situation focusing on the determination of properties and landscape components; predictive activity of experiences in which man could evaluate the degree in which landscape satisfies his necessities, in consequence he could plan his decisions about it. (Corraliza, 1993).

Some characteristics in landscape perception are shared with the social group. That is why criteria in perception could be different between users of this landscape and whoever plans and designs it. Designers should take into account which components have psychological attraction, or are embedded of symbolism and historicity.

An elaborated Mexican landscape design in the front yard. Personal archives.

This example is what anybody would call a “Mexican garden design”. I took the picture in Los Angeles county, but the neighborhood was far from being a Mexican one. Here, the designer is representing the Mexican culture, but this nice garden in itself is not an expression but a mimic of Mexican culture.

The real Mexican garden I have seen in California differs from this one. The term in Spanish is “jardín¨, but Chicanos and Mexicans call it ¨yarda¨, that is a modification of the original English term ¨yard¨. The yardas are full of religiosity and memories, they express the high sensibility that emerges unconsciously from the family´s beliefs. Religious practices are integrated into daily life, because the rural nature of many Mexican communities experienced that often the priest was absent, so folk religious practices were developed inside the houses.

The Virgin Mary in the front yard, Los Angeles. Personal archives.

Backyard with folk Mexican art. Personal archives.

A shrine of the Virgin Mary in Her acception as Virgen de Guadalupe could be displayed in a corner or somewhere against the perimetral walls. Sometimes, the shrine is covered by garlands and vines with beautiful flowers. Folk art participates in the garden, usually in pots that are like ¨misplaced objects¨ reinforcing the family´s memories: painted cans, kitchen pots, tires, etc.

Another religious manifestation is the Altar del Día de los Muertos built in November; this type of altar has ancestral Aztec roots and is built in commemoration of the family´s dead. The grass in the back yard will not be the typical American houses´ lawn, instead of the tiny grass or ground cover, it is the cut lot´s wild grass or hard packed dirt without weeds; the soccer games and family parties are the priority, followed by the hanging of clothes. The front yard is always an exception, as any neighbour could denunciate to the City Hall that the landscape is messy and not consistent with the rest of the neighbourhood front yards. Chicanos tend to block the windows, in their preference for tall native species surrounding the house. Sometimes the species spread too much, covering the yard. This recurrent arrangement is the same one as the interior décor.

The hanging clothes is a recurrent habit in many Mexican backyards. In my country, our cultural habit -at least in the cities- is to hang the clothes but hidden as much as possible, preferably in a terrace with no view to the street. Personal archives.

The species selected are mainly native species, and the chili plant is never absent. Emphasis is on visual perception, but in the Mexican garden the five senses intervene. Looking at a plant of chili, a Mexican man told me ¨I see it and it makes my mouth water¨ (¨la veo y se me hace agua la boca¨), expression that sounded very interesting to me, the simple plant was awakening senses. Another plants are selected on the basis of healing primitive principles. When the Spanish conquistadores came to Mexico in the XVI century, they destroyed the Aztec gardens and the priests´ investigations, as the Catholic Church considered them blasphemous. Although the written knowledge was destroyed, the plant wisdom was kept in the collective memory.

All landscapes, natural or artificial create an aesthetic impression which gives us a reflection of the manmade in a certain period. Though conceptual categories for some researchers may not include the word “garden” for some remaining spaces, the Chicano gardens are created for social interaction and in most of cases, given its religiosity, for myth-making. They are a cultural transition between architecture and landscape.

As the United States increasing number of immigrants grow, the study of vernacular gardens as cultural manifestations where humans interact, should be deepened and classified, since changes in the society are thought to produce changes in the landscape and urban manifestations.

FURTHER READINGS

Castro, Rafaela. Chicano folklore: a guide to the folktales, traditions, rituals, and religious practices of Mexican Americans. Oxford University Press.2000

Drexler, Dora. Landscape Perceptions – The Symbolic Meaning of Landscape and its Role in Mental Wellbeing

http://www.openspace.eca.ac.uk/conference/proceedings/PDF/Drexler.pdf

Muñoz-Pedreros, Andrés; Moncada Herrera, Juan; Larrain, Alberto. Variación de la percepción del recurso paisaje en el sur de Chile (Variation of the perception of the landscape resource in Southern Chile). Revista chilena de historia natural. Santiago, 2000

Nazarea, Virginia D. A Map of her Own: Accessing the Imagined, Imagining the Unaccessed.

http://www.future-agricultures.org/farmerfirst/files/T1c_Nazarea.pdf

Palmer, James. Research Agenda for Landscape Perception

http://masterla.de/conf/pdf/conf2003/52palmer.pdf

Settlements Extinction and Identity: the case of Greenland Norse

Greenland lake. http://airportshotelsandparking.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/greenland-lake.jpg

Hvalsey church ruins. By Lars Reimer

As I said in my post about Cellular Automata, my concern is the data input, because the conditions given for life or death in the software are originally based on animals population, and it is a good analogy, but sometimes there are unexpected situations, related to feelings, psychology, memory, identity, and I understand that interdisciplinary help is needed to achieve urban simulations results as accurate as possible. This concern of mine began when I read chapters 7 and 8 of the book “Collapse” written by professor Jared Diamond. Some critics say that he is apocalyptic and his book is supported by the old “non consistent with reality” Malthus’ theory of overpopulation with its consequence of famine, disease and widespread mortality. I think Diamond is right in many aspects of how societies choose to fail or succeed. Both chapters have archaeological sources, and what was really interesting for me –after all, many towns and settlements were abandoned and cultures disappeared- is the fact that the Vikings inhabitants of Greenland were Europe-centrics above all, and this social identity conducted them to extinction.

It is the exception to the rule, because identity reinforces the social group ties and the feeling of belonging to a cultural group, helps in finding solution to emergent problems. Norse case is an example of auto-organized criticality: the system evolves without external intervention and without control parameters and this amplification of a small internal fluctuation can precipitate this critical state and provoke a chain reaction leading to a catastrophe. When appropriately perturbing a chaotic system, it is forced to take one of the many possible behaviors. But without sincronism, and under different environmental conditions, two virtually identical chaotic systems, will evolve toward different final states.

Barns ruins. By Dale Mackenzie Brown

What follows below is a compilation, slightly adapted from chapter 7 and 8 of “Collapse” and the article on line “The Fate of Greenland’s Vikings”, by Dale Mackenzie Brown. The Inuit’s description and their houses was taken from www.greenland.com. Further references are below for whoever is interested in more specific details, all of them very interesting.

Of the first 24 boatloads of land-hungry settlers who set out from Iceland in the summer of 986 to colonize new territory explored several years earlier by the vagabond and outlaw, Erik the Red, only 14 made it, the others were forced back to port or lost at sea. Yet more people, drawn by the promise of a better life, soon followed. Under the leadership of the red-faced, red-bearded Erik (who had given the island its name), the colonists developed a little Europe of their own just a few hundred miles from North America, a full 500 years before Columbus set foot on the continent. These Vikings shared the land with the Inuit (Eskimos). The Vikings disappeared but the Inuit survived, proving that human survival in Greenland was not impossible.

The Norse (Vikings) prospered by trading with Norway; the population may have risen to a peak of about 5,000 inhabitants. Their subsistence was based on a combination of pastoralism (growing domestic livestock) and hunting wild animals for meat; an odd behavior if reason says that fishing and whale hunt would be priority; but hunt must have brought great prestige to the individual hunters, and it maintained for the whole society the psychologically contact with Europe. They established dairy and sheep farms throughout the unglaciated areas of the south and built churches, a monastery, a nunnery, and a cathedral. Norse settlers started out with a mix of livestock following the European rank: lots of cows and pigs, fewer sheep and still fewer goats, plus some horses, ducks and geese. It quickly turned out that this ideal mix was not well suited to Greenland’s colder conditions: ducks and geese dropped out immediately, pigs proved terribly destructive and unprofitable in the lightly wooded environment; cows required far more effort than sheep and goats in Greenland’s climate, as only during the three snow free summer months grass is found. But cows were too prized as a status symbol to be eliminated. Sheep and goats were more suitable for the climate conditions, but the European habits were based on the opposite sequence.

Christian hierarchy also played an important role in Norse’s extinction. When Erik and his supporters arrived in Greenland, the old Norse gods were still worshiped. But Thjodhilde (Erik’s wife) converted to Christianity. In time, he granted her a small church, with room for 20 to 30 worshipers.

Although the presence of the Church had originally uplifted the Greenlanders, it then became their burden. By the middle of the fourteenth century, Church owned two-thirds of the island's finest pastures, and some of the proceeds went directly to the support of the Crusades and even to fight heretics in Italy.

The number of Norwegian merchant vessels arriving in their ports, though only one or two a year in the best of times, dropped until none came at all. This meant that the islanders were also cut off from the major source of iron and tools needed for the smooth running of their farms and the construction and maintenance of their boats. The dangerous ocean crossing would have put merchants at too much risk for too little gain, especially when African elephant ivory, once difficult to obtain, could be gotten easily and replaced walrus ivory.

As the Greenlanders' isolation from Europe grew, they found themselves victims of a steadily deteriorating environment. Their farmland, exploited to the full, had lost fertility. Dairy products alone were not enough to feed Norse inhabitants. At first, they consumed 20% of seafood (mostly seals), then the percentage rose up to 80% in the later years of their survival. Though it is incredible for archaeologists that Greenland Norse did not eat fish, the percentage for fish was less than 1%. Professor Diamond suggests that maybe they developed a taboo against eating fish. It seems that they never took advantage of the ample fish resources in the streams and fjords, even in times of famine.

Greenland's climate began to change as well; the summers grew shorter and progressively cooler, limiting the time cattle could be kept outdoors and increasing the need for winter fodder. This situation produced a change in the barns patterns. Originally conceived as single-roomed structures, they were divided into smaller spaces for warmth, and then into warrens of interconnected chambers, with the cows kept close by so the owners might benefit from the animals' body heat.

Farm beneath the sand. After three years of excavation, the Farm Beneath the Sand site began to take shape as rooms and passageways were revealed. It became clear that the front of the farm (to the right) had been eroded by the river; fortunately the river sands that covered the site had sealed it from the air and caused permafrost to preserve everything. http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/archeo.html

Inuit-Norse relations seem to have been fairly friendly at times, hostile at others. Canadian archaeologist Robert McGhee has pointed out, there is no physical evidence of massacres, the destruction of Norse property, or the takeover and reuse of Norse shelters by the Inuit. Besides, studies on Inuits’ mitochondrial DNA (inherited from mothers only) show no European admixture. What suggests that contact between the two people was limited to minor encounters.

In their effort to preserve the European identity, Norse’s clothes reflected the French and Dutch fashions, of course they never had to be confused with the “savage” Inuits. In their reluctance to see themselves as anything but Europeans, the Greenlanders failed to adopt the kind of apparel that the Inuit employed as protection against the cold and damp or to borrow any of the Eskimo hunting gear. They ignored the toggle harpoon, which would have allowed them to catch seals through holes in the ice in winter when food was scarce, and they seem not even to have bothered with fishhooks, which they could have fashioned easily from bone, as did the Inuit. Instead, the Norsemen remained wedded to their farms and to the raising of sheep, goats, and cattle in the face of ever worsening conditions. To Norse, concerned with their social survival as much as with their biological survival, it was out of the question to invest less in churches, to imitate Inuit’s survival tactics or intermarry with them.

Greenlanders became desperate. During a freezing winter, the farmers killed and ate their livestock, their dogs, birds, rats….Thomas McGovern of New York's Hunter College, who has participated in excavations in Greenland, has proposed that the Norsemen lost the ability to adapt to changing conditions. On the contrary, since the first wave of immigration via Thule around 4-5000 years ago, the Inuits in Greenland have been dependent on nature’s resources in the form of fish, birds, land mammals and marine mammals. Hunting and fishing have therefore always been a question of survival in a country in which the summer is short and the climate unsuitable for effective farming. The Inuits have had to utilize their ancestors’ skills, their own imagination and the materials that were available in the landscape around them to make the tools that could mean the difference between life and death. Throughout the generations, the Inuit cultures managed to create and refine unique products such as the kayak, the soapstone lamp and harpoons, bird spears and high quality clothing made of animal hide and fur. The fact that even compacted snow could be used to build a temporary shelter in the form of the igloo (shelter made of snow) bears witness to an extraordinary ability to utilize nature’s own materials.

Turf Hut by Filippo Barbanera

Model of igloo. Picture by Lars Reimer.

The turf hut was the most common type of dwelling, as they were so robust and well insulated that they could be lived in more or less permanently. A typical turf hut was low, square and its walls were made of large stones and turf and the roof was supported by wooden beams made of driftwood. The dwellings were always situated close to the sea so that the hunters could easily get to their kayaks when hunting for seals. An igloo is constructed of large blocks of snow that are cut out in different sizes with a special snow knife. The blocks are placed on top of each other in a spiral and form an effective dome-shaped shelter.

Instead of looking out for these type of solutions, the Norse carried with them their cultural values and preferred lifestyle based on their experience for generations in Norway and Iceland. Values that they defended under inappropriate conditions, till they suffered from starvation and met death.

REFERENCES

http://www.greenland.com/content/english/tourist

Dale Mackenzie Brown The Fate of Greenland's Vikings. February 28, 2000
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
Diamond, Jared. Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.Penguin Books, U.S.A. 2005
http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/archeo.html
http://larsdatter.com/wordpress/?p=52

What is Cellular Automata?

Two simulations of growing towns-cities in CA. See both centers as "downtowns". Each color is a representation of land use. Personal archives.

Cellular Automata (CA) was originally designed by Ulam and Von Neumann in the decade of the 40’s to provide an investigation model for complex systems behavior. Originally it was based on the inherent limitations of machines for their auto-reproduction. A CA system consists of a regular grid of cells, where each one of them could be in a number k of states, upgraded in synchronicity in lapses of time under interaction rules among the previous states of the neighboring cells. For example, the “Game of Life” of John Conway (1970) was based on a set of simple rules to study population's space dynamics, where the cell had two states: alive (1) or dead (0) and three transition rules: survival, death and birth. With this simple system, extremely complex models are achieved; they grow - or they disappear - through a simulation. The rule (function) of growth or transition is contained in each cell in finite state that is translated in configurations of states of the "neighborhood." (The cells, for established reasons die in some moment and/or they reproduce in contact with others).

The “neighborhood” consists of cells located around and adjacent of one given. For the models of one dimension the cells are connected with their neighboring r by each side; r is a parameter referred to the connection radius and it is expressed as 2r+1, including the cell itself.

CA shows the ability of a system to grow and then to alter its rhythm of growth, and possibly to revert it and die, what makes it essential in the simulation of biological populations' behavior in a certain lapse of time.

In 1970, the first approaches to computarized models were applied to problems that demanded little information and, consequently little computer effort. Then, computers made possible the use of more information and the possibility to pass from models of big scale to microsimulation. The new techniques with the application of cellular Automata were introduced by Tobler (1979) to model geographical phenomena (Norte Pinto, Pais Antunes, 2007) based on the use of land. It is still discussed if the urban CA are evolutions of classic CA systems or if they are only models based on cells.

Since 1960 to middle '80s, the interest was upon regional models. Then it became evident the necessity to understand the urban problems in small scale.

There are three classes of urban CA models, with different purposes (Norte Pinto, Pais Antunes, 2007):

a) models designated to explore the space complexity

b) models to investigate economic, sociological topics and of spatial complexity.

c) Models to produce operational tools of planning.

By middle '80s, Helen Couclelis continues the investigation of CA applied to urban modelization, being this way two investigation lines established: the first related with complex systems and the second the possible uses in urban planning.

The transition rules among the "Game of Life" and the urban phenomena, are the following ones:

The “alive” cells are interpreted as urban areas - they could be clusters, blocks or isolated constructions - with a certain function. The cell continues alive if two or three neighboring cells have carried out their function, - birth, growth -.

The “dead” cells are those that have lost their urban function because four or more neighboring cells have carried out their function, - birth, growth - and they would suffocate the first one or, on the contrary, if only one neighboring cell is left over, the original one would die for its isolation.

The rebirth of the cell, takes place when there are three cells that comply exactly with their urban function. (A purpose to live). If none of the precedent conditions are met, the original cell stays dead.

Let us take into account some analogies:

The “death” of a town could be produced by these reasons among others:

Finalization of the main economic activity that gave it life.

Close of railroad stations.

Isolation caused by the layout of paved routes far from the old earth roads.

Lack of investment in improvement of existent routes.

Decrease in human population of each one of the involved communities, reflected in each census.

Weakness in their infrastructure of services due to town decreasing problem.

Lack of public transportations that allow the existent population's transfer.

Lack of investment from the State in formal and informal education.

Lack of work sources.

Impossibility of information access and the opportunities in general.

Civil battles, wars.

Plague.

Kelso, California. Kelso originated as small collection of buildings along the Union Pacific Railroad in the Mojave desert. When the Second World War ended, the mine was closed and Kelso began to decline. As diesel engines replaced steam locomotives, trains no longer stopped for Kelso's water. The station was closed in 1985 and in 1992, the Bureau of Land Management took over the property.http://www.ghosttown.info/ca/kelso/index.html

Kelso, California. http://www.ghosttown.info/ca/kelso/index.html

Another possible analogy is to take groups of different zonings (and in strict order) residential-industrial-commercial (White and Engelen, 1997). A cell in vacant state can change to the superior state, but the inverse action is not possible. We consider this not a very feasible situation; in Los Angeles and Orange County, for example, there are many similar situations of change of use but no area takes a "superior” state obligatorily. The changes will always be restricted by a general regulator plan in a master plan that includes all the areas of the city.

In the '90s the non restriction concept is taken (unconstrained cells), where the characteristics of the cells are exclusively related with their state values, without interest in their location inside the grid; they are not restricted cells, for what the application of transition rules responds to the current configuration of cells. (White and Engelen, 1997).

In the years 2000 it is taken the concept of use of the land, that will depend on three factors:

The inherent qualities of land

The effects of the use of neighboring land

The aggregated level of demand for each use of land.

Finally, the innovation is the consideration of the fractal Dimension to verify the model behavior and the results of the urban simulation. Then, the fractal Dimensions are calculated for theoretical cities and compared with known fractal Dimension results of real cities.

I would advice in the output and input data. I took my time for my first exercise of CA in converting an urban block from La Boca, Buenos Aires, in a synthesis of cells. When I ran CA, with some selected conditions based on my experience on the real neighborhood, the resultant morphological pattern was completely different, but, to my surprise, the fractal dimension was pretty close to the one I got for the real pattern. So, the input was correct but the output did not reflect the urban situation. A couple of years after, using DUEM software, I designed two neighboring systems, I selected the conditions, including mixed use (residential, commercial and industrial) and I saw my two settlements growing until they conformed only one, after many iterations, both original “centers” (downtowns) were almost disappearing in the new pattern. This result was satisfactory for me, until I read the book “Collapse” by Jared Diamond and realized that some primary conditions for the extinction of a town or social group are highly difficult to represent in the softwares. This will be part of another post. My conclusion, CA simulations need a good group of interdisciplinary professionals analyzing the input and output data, it is not a game any more, it has to be based on real life situations.

Simulation in La Boca neighborhood, Buenos Aires. Personal archives.

The two towns-cities are growing, they are only one now, the two original centers are melting in the urban pattern. Personal archives.

REFERENCES

Couclelis, Helen : Geographic Illusion Systems: Towards a (Very Partial) Research Agenda for GIS in the Information Age

http://www.geo.wvu.edu/i19/papers/couclelis.html

Norte Pinto, Nuno. Pais Antunes, Antonio. Cellular Autómata and Urban Studies: a Literary Survey. In Architecture, City and Environment. 2007

http://upcommons.upc.edu/revistes/bitstream/2099/2494/1/28_nuno_NORTE.pdf

Norte Pinto, Nuno. Pais Antunes, Antonio. Modeling and Urban Studies: an Introduction. In Architecture, City and Environment. 2007

http://upcommons.upc.edu/revistes/bitstream/2099/3137/1/1-nuno.pdf

White R, Engelen G, "Cellular automata and fractal urban form: a cellular modelling approach to the evolution of urban land-use patterns" Environment and Planning A 25(8) 1175 – 1199. 1993

White, R., and G. Engelen. Cellular automata as the basis of integrated dynamic regional modelling. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 24, no. 2: 235-46. 1997.

"Ghost Lots" and Negative Space in California

Le Chateau des Pyrenee, by R. Magritte. Web download

My term “ghost lots” has nothing to do with the current Halloween wholesales. And it does not mean a lot where ghots live, not even a ghost town.

In my previous post about negative space, I explained that an open space, that was designed as part of an urban project, is positive space. But sometimes the circumstances indicate that this open space is not positive space any more, it has become negative, it is the “left over”. Or, in extreme cases, it does not exist any more, at least legally speaking.

I found some interesting cases on line, this one is an auction of lots originated in a huge building, in Madrid, Spain. The problem, the building does not exist.

http://www.rankia.com/blog/subastas-judiciales/2009/09/subasta-de-edificio-fantasma.html

Next case belongs to Phillipines, the A P78 million road right of way claim by a realty firm owned by Sen. Manuel Villar could possibly be for a non-existent lot, the Senate committee is investigating an ethics complaint against the senator; in the original plan prepared in 2002, GHMI property was not included. (Malaya News. October 2, 2009. Phillipines. http://www.malaya.com.ph/oct02/news7.htm)

There is also a denunciation of fraudulent sales on line “A seller and perhaps his surrogates have been promoting and selling lots located just outside the Puerto Viejo area near Margarita - Sixaola……Despite many victims that fly down to locate their investment once they have made the final payment - none have ever found the lots. Topographers have been hired - neighbors have been harassed - some even sued - and yet no buyer has ever ended up with what they purchased”.

http://www.livingcostarica.com/index.php?topic=1162.0

The list of cases continues everywhere, but I’d like to focus on Southern California and the meaning of “ghost lots” in the planners’ jargon. Since the last two years or perhaps more, many lots have been sold in short sales, or foreclosures. Usually, the lots have a big taxes debt. What the potential buyers did not know, is that some of those lots were affected by Zoning Code changes, and the investment plans they had in mind, had no feasibility at all. In simple words, for a retail that belonged to a commercial zoning, when the Zoning is changed to residential, the new owner has only six months to rent it as commercial, if not, the lot is only for residential purposes and there is no way to submit a variance asking to avoid the two cars garage, just to begin with. So, no house could be built, the lot – retail remains empty. Or, a lot is sold in between two other lots, it has a legal grant deed, but there is no way to access with a car, or the set backs and lot coverage required make it impossible to build a house with the required garage. If the City Council is really helpful, maybe there is a solution. Or, it will be in lawyers’ hands.

Theory says that positive space is the one conceived as a void, then wrapped in a built shell erected to define and contain it. But in architectural theory, this space inside must have a purpose, it has to be for humans use. If not, it is a mere (artistic or not) installation, a construction. When the building has no purpose, it is kept empty, it would be like Rachel Whiteread’s house in London. Only the memories are still there, and the space that was conceived as positive becomes definitely negative.

Contribution on Aesthetics of Ruins

Hiroshima, WWII. Photocollage by Myriam Mahiques. What was left over...

Memories of the Russian Politburó. Photocollage by Myriam Mahiques

Domestic ruins by Myriam Mahiques

Earthquake in China, 2008, photocollage by Myriam Mahiques

Ruins of colonial church in South America, by Myriam Mahiques

Concepts on Negative Space

A survivor of an earthquake in China, may 2008, creates an informal tent and creats positive space around him. Web download.

Positive space is the one conceived as a void, then wrapped in a built shell erected to define and contain it. Negative space is created by hollowing out a solid that already exists. Hollowed out caves in primitive times would be the first example. In urban space we find the same classification: negative space would be the open space left over after a construction, what is remaining. Positive space would be then the spatial shapes that have been deliberately designed under a preconceived plan.

Vincent Scully states that during the Middle Ages, space was seen as negative, it was the interval between two objects (buildings) or the hollow within them (Piazzas and streets).

The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. In negative space drawing, instead of drawing the shape of the object, only the space around is drawn, with or without any pattern detail. Though the object is like a silhouette, it cannot be outlined, if so, it would not be a correct negative space drawing.

In landscape, Japanese use the term “ma” (empty space between two structural parts) for garden design, and in Arts they use the term “notan” to explain the relationship between negative and positive. It is based on the principle of light-dark, the popular example is to cut out a square, adding a white backing paper, then identical shapes are cut out on each side. The Dutch artist, Escher made positive and negative forms interact, so both of them have the same level of importance. In minimalistic visual arts and architecture, the concept of negative space also refers to the empty space that surrounds the object and it never affects its signification, but rather reinforces the theme. Same happens with photography, negative space is acquired by placing one object in an uniform background (a plant in a desert, a rock in the water, a dancer in the dark…). The observer is then concentrated on the object, the effect is like the application of a zoom, and the dead space transmits a feeling of solitude, isolation or calm.

Horses by M. C. Escher.http://www.geocities.com/wenjin92014/escher/Horses.jpg

Not all spaces could be so easily classified. There are some cases where space has to be deconstructed to understand it from humans actions and manipulations of this space.

This negative and positive space has direct parallels to theatre space. William F. Condee suggests that the design of the formal Italianate theatre, that employs perspective scenery on the stage, shapes a negative –empty- space around the auditorium, which becomes in turn wholly positive because “every cubic inch is charged as it floats between spectator and performer”. From my point of view, I prefer a comparison between the formal theater and the modern performances of underground or psycho-geographical groups to establish the difference. In formal theatre the building shape is absolutely needed, specially for acoustics issues, the space has to be positive, and what he calls “floats” loses importance if the public is static. On the contrary, when people interact with actors, the stage and the buildings are not containers any more, the relevance is on the act of performing in itself, the show and public participation, the space becomes negative.

In literature and movies we find empty space when the context raise the feeling of placelessness and indefiniteness; some authors are more explicit, and leave empty spaces in between a poem or a few seconds of black out scene; music is more obvious in the use of abrupt silences.

Sometimes the absent object becomes the object of attention, if so, the object is not a material thing that could be touched or an action is directed. It is a conceptual object of perception where the imaginary and real collide. In Eric Grohe’s murals, the real is a wall, but the observer’s imagination constitute a space, positive if we think about the architectural painting, but negative indeed, there is no space at all –in the sense I propose here-.

Mural at Miller Brewing Co. By Eric Grohe. This is a mural painting, it is not architectural space. http://www.ericgrohemurals.com/projects/miller.html

It is a mural, not a cross street. By Eric Grohe. http://www.ericgrohemurals.com/projects/crossroad/crossroad3.jpg

The best example I could find in sculpture, that involves architecture too, is the work of British leading contemporary artist, Rachel Whiteread. She is best known for her negative-space casts of rooms and houses. In her interior spaces, viewers discover the void-made-into-object. But they cannot see through the building, so interior scenarios are imagined and emotional value is added. She has also made casts of particular parts of rooms and furniture, as the area underneath a chair. Critics have often regarded this type of work to be reminders of death and absence because they seem to emphasize the fact that the objects these sculptures represent are not themselves there. Negative space is a manifestation of the hidden, most of the times referred to the memory of objects and spaces.

“You leave space for the body, imagining the other part even though it isn't there”. (Henry Moore)

House in London. By Rachel Whiteread, 1993. (Demolished) http://www.damonart.com/myth_uncanny.html

http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/recent_acquisitions/2000/co_rec_eur_whiteread_1999.asp

http://photodoto.com/negative-space-can-have-a-positive-effect/

Condee, William F. Filling the Empty Space:Inclusion and Exclusion in Theatre Architecture. In Scenography International. Issue 2. Architecture and Practice.

http://www.scenography-international.com/journal/issue2/emptyspace.pdf

Proposed Fractal Urban Analysis for Uros' Islands

Uros and Arts. http://indian-cultures.com/Cultures/uros.html

Uros' island. http://indian-cultures.com/Cultures/uros.html

Basic urban morphology analysis is commonly applied to aerial pictures of cities or settlements anywhere on urban or suburban areas; for rural areas, the focus is on land use. But, little attention is paid to the analysis of settlements as part of islands. Apart from the well known methodology to measure an island’s coastline with the application of fractals theory, islands represent a difficulty at the time of measuring certain parameters accurately. The Uros’ islands, in Peru, are an example of this issue, given that an urban analysis based on Euclidian geometry would be unappropriate.

The Uros Indians of Peru and Bolivia are actually a mix of Uros, Ayamaras and Incas. They live in the Andes region on more than forty floating islands on Lake Titicaca. It is during the rainy season, from November to February, when the islands float on the surface of the lake.

Totora plant. truxillodailyphoto.blogspot.com/.../totoras.html

A totora sculpture and houses.http://www.tiuli-peru.com/4/IMG_5517_Small.JPG

These islands have the particularity of being made of totora (Schoenoplectus californicus) reeds which grow naturally on the banks of the lake. The reeds are used to make the dwellings, boats, furniture, containers, clothing, strings, and the islands themselves; reeds are matted as a fabric-ground and added to approximately every three months as they disintegrate at the bottom. The dense roots that the plants develop and interweave from a natural layer called Khili (about one to two meters thick) support the islands. They are anchored with ropes attached to sticks sunken into the bottom of the lake. Each step on an island sinks about 2-4” depending on the density of the ground below. As the reeds dry, they break up more and more as people walk on them. In consequence, moisture gets to them, they rot and a new layer has to be added to the “ground”. (Adaptation from Wikipedia.org).

Totora reed has played a cultural role. It has also been noted that it has been used as both food for humans and livestock. The value of totora to local residents justified the efforts spent in maintaining adequate supplies of this plant. Increases in population, politics, and yearly variation in climate patterns have created a reduction in available totora and contributed to an increase in management practices. (Banack, Sandra A., Rondon Xanic J., Diaz Huamanchumo, Wilfredo. 2004)

Because of their own materiality, when using a satellite photograph for fractal analysis, we are tempted to “read” the islands with the dwellings as clusters; but the filled areas are not easy to separate from the landscape. These islands boundaries are interpreted by ambiguous pixels, not only for the reed that is an amalgam with the water, besides, the islands change in size and more are created as needed; they also have movements, what in concept generates a dynamic edge with infinite shapes. In case we decide to find out the fractal dimension of the edge, it will be only valid for the specific instant when the aerial picture was taken.

Since these islands are an agglomerate, the “buildings” cannot be separated in parts, not even from the island that gives them support, because everything is part of the same totora fabric. That is, these islands cannot be considered as flat projections, they have a 3 Dimension that includes the dwellings and public construction (school).

Binary file of a sector of Uros' island. Personal archives.

Rugosity fractal analysis. Personal archives.

Plot of sector of island's elevation. Personal archives.

Then, a more complete fractal urban analysis cannot be met only by measuring the area of the fractal dimension of edges; the topography, becomes so important that the texture (rugosity), the elevations, and of course the island in itself, have to be included in the study. The following pictures are part of a more extensive study on the Uros’ islands. The selected .jpg file had to be transformed into a binary file in order to use the corresponding softwares of images analysis.

References

Banack, Sandra Anne; Rondon Xanic J. and Diaz Huamanchumo Wilfredo. Indigenous Cultivation and Conservation of Totora (Schoenoplectus Californicus) in Peru. In Economic Botany 58(1) pp.11-20. The New York Botanical Garden Press. 2004

http://indian-cultures.com/Cultures/uros.html

Collective Memories: The Wall of Sorrows, East Cleveland

Wall of Sorrows. From http://www.survivorsvictimsoftragedy.org/

How social groups remember the history of the city is very important for the historical processes and the making of identity. Collective memory is not given, it is a social constructed notion. The past is known through symbolism, ritualism as well as historiography. Social classes, families, Unions, Armies, associations, all of them have constructed different type of memories. It is individuals who remember, but being located in a specific social group, they carry with them the specific context to recreate the past. Nevertheless, some groups prefer to eliminate the “inconvenient” remembrances.

Maurice Halbwachs shows a stratification of memories, from the religious to the domestic sphere, and from there to various other groups; it seems to exist only one area in human experience that is not rooted in a social structure: the oniric world. Compared to all other human memories, the dreams lack organization, continuity, progression. Dreamers do not recall the past in a coherent manner. Human collaboration and dignity can only emerge in the real presence of others. (Halbwachs & Coser, p. 23)

The autobiographical memory, is the one that compiles one’s personal experience of the past. It also serves to reinforce the bonds between participants who have shared the same or similar experiences. This memory tends to fade away if individuals do not get together over a long period of time. It is possible to stimulate it by readings, gatherings, or graphic and written exhibits.

Wall of Sorrows. From http://www.survivorsvictimsoftragedy.org/

This is the memory that I would like to emphasize here, as opposed to the historical memory, which is reached through written words, photographs, films, etc, and can be kept alive by commemoration acts and celebrations.

Spatial images play an important role in the collective memory, as place and group interact with each other; every act of the group is translated into spatiality. If extraordinary events are also fitted in this spatiality, the relationship between the group and the place suffers an alteration.

What follows is a critical example of the re-development and re-imaging of urban spaces and the production of urban collective memory.

East Cleveland was once wealthy, in the early 20th Century, they had a street known as “Millionaires Row”. Besides the “mom and pop” businesses that supported the rich, there was the East Cleveland Railway Co. and a division of General Electric Co. As cars and suburban sprawl grew, East Cleveland’s wealthy began leaving; working-class blacks migrating from Cleveland and the South, moved in. By 1980’s, the region’s manufacturing jobs dissapeared. The city was under unemployment and poverty, the buildings once inhabited by the rich shared space with boarded-up businesses and crime became a common every day situation.

An abandoned decaying two stories building at 14748 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, Ohio, in the former area of “Millionaires Row”, is now the Wall of Sorrows, a memorial to young victims of violence. The original design was, obviously, embodied in the materiality of the building; now it is not a famous memorial, an architect’s design, it is a wall with handmade painted plywood signs, drawings, stuffed animals to remember those lost to urban violence. On one side of this wall, there is an announcement “Home of the Memorial Wall of Sorrows”.

The building is between a liquor and a church surrounded by weed; the first floor has been covered in white washed plywood. This empty structure once was home to vandals and drugs dealers. Now, it offers solace to the victims’ relatives and friends. The first signs of collective activity are dated since 2002, when victims’ names were printed onto vynil sheets and then nailed to the plywood. Then, hundreds came to leave their offers; over the time, the names, the murals, the messages covered the whole first floor (about half a block long and more than one story high). The character is solemn, nobody disturbs it, no one bothers the visitors.

“At the cemetery there’s just dirt, just grass. Here, my babies aren’t by themselves. Neither am I.”(Juanita Freeman, whose son and grandson are memorialized on the Wall of Sorrows). (Source Los Angeles Times, page A23 august 13, 2005).

By 2005, the City Council was considering to demolish the building. For the local community, the thought of the wall being destroyed, or hidden or relocated is a cruel one. Because the camaraderie achieved among the families would fade, fewer people would come to visit. And the City cannot afford to help pay for the move or the new installation.

“This is not the history that we want to be selling to investors and developers” Said City councilman Gary Norton Jr. “Death is not what companies want to see”. (Source Los Angeles Times, page A23 august 13, 2005). City officials believe an empty lot would help the community far more than a wall of names, it would be more attractive to potential developers in a city where 15% of the residents are unemployed.

A Cleveland business woman who calls herself Griot Y-Von came to the rescue by offering a new site to host the memorial wall along with an adjoining empty lot that is due to become a community garden. By 2008 the new wall was going up slowly with a small volunteer crew that worked on weekends. Councilman Kevin Conwell said he wasn’t totally on board with the project, at first. He and some of the area residents had concerns that it would become a large scale version of one of those teddy bear and balloon memorials, fastened to telephone poles throughout the inner city. (Building a wall of sorrows, june 12, 2008). Maybe the City Council does not realize that if the names on the wall were increasing since 1990, the real problem does not reside in the building, it resides in the acts of violence that could not be stopped, and I wonder if investors would set eyes on such a dangerous area….

There is a difference between a memorial and a wall of sorrows. The memorial could be a monument, a building, there are also on line virtual memorials. But the wall of sorrows, in the sense it is exposed here, has techtonics and is very difficult to be replaced because of its symbolism. The plaques and boards can be relocated, but not the wall that is powerful in its own simplicity of the names that dominate everything. It provides each sacrificed person a place in history. But even if the bricks are relocated, the relationships established between the building and the victims’ relatives are not so easily altered, as their feelings and thoughts are influenced by the images from these architectural and graphic objects. So, it is understandable that under a menace of demolition, the group will object the authorities’ decision and offer resistance.

“Not only homes and walls persist through the centuries, but also that whole portion of the group in continuous contact with them, its life merged with things. This part of the group is just not interested in what is happening outside its own narrow circle and beyond its immediate horizon. The passivity that the group sees in this portion of itself that remains unconcerned about the passions, hopes, and fears of the outside world reinforces that impression arising from the immobility of things. The same is true for disturbances in smaller groups based on blood, friendship, or love when death, disagreements, or the play of passion and interest intervene. Under the shock of such troubles, we walk the streets and we are surprised to find life going on about us as if nothing had happened”. ( Maurice Halbwachs, 1950)

Wall of Sorrows. From http://www.survivorsvictimsoftragedy.org/

References.

Halbwachs, Maurice; Coser, Lewis A. On Collective Memory. The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. Chapter 4. “Space and the Collective Memory”. 1950
http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/hawlbachsspace.pdf
“From East Cleveland, Ohio. When she spoke of his bright smile, his career goals, their heart-to-hear….
http://www.web-cams-webcam.com/news/node/486
(Building a wall of sorrows, june 12,2008)
http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/news/12310
http://www.survivorsvictimsoftragedy.org/
Huffstutter, P. J. A Decript, Stirring Memorial. Los Angeles Times, page A23, Column One, August 13, 2005