ChoreoSensing Toronto's Residential Neighbourhood Public Spaces by Mushtari Afroz

Whether it’s urban or suburban areas in cities, public spaces in residential areas are fundamental to everyday life experiences(1) which have been linked to well-being and quality of life of residents. Consciously or unconsciously, we connect with them through multi-sensory interactions (2) that create overall impressions of our neighbourhood public spaces(3,4), and help establish meaningful connections with the neighbourhood community. However, the drive for creating ‘functional cities’ (5) in the West through ‘disembodied’ practices (6) has detached public spaces from our bodies(7) , instituting the stage of mutual ‘disengagement’ as a retreat from everyday public spaces (8) and deteriorating the sense of belonging to the residential neighbourhood environment. As a result, residents either tend to avoid connecting with public spaces altogether or resemble an ‘auto-pilot’ state (9) manifested through their lack of sensory attention to public spaces– they see the surroundings but do not look, they hear the surroundings but do not listen. In this research, my aim is to devise a sensory engagement practice, which I call ‘ChoreoSensing’ (10), to (re)’engage’ residents with socio-physical dimensions of their neighbourhood public spaces. Focusing on two most dominant senses – visual and auditory - the practice attempts to establish deeper sensory and embodied engagement of residents with physical/material and social aspects of their neighbourhood public spaces. The research is conducted through interdisciplinary methods including sensory walks/movements, choreographic thinking toward pedestrian movements for sensory engagement score development, pop-up interventions (11), participatory experiments with residents and conversational form feedback (12). The purpose of my research is to empower residents to awaken their sensory engagement with neighbourhood public spaces and subsequently, enhance their sense of belonging to the neighbourhood (13,14), through a series of performative and grassroots initiatives. Works Cited: 1. Certeau, M. D. (1980.). The Practice of Everyday Life (L'invention du quotidien. Vol. 1, Arts de faire'). Paris.: Folio Essais. 2. Dong, Y. (2022.). Designing with Senses: Creating Interactive Multisensory Experiences in Public Space. Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University. 3. Pallasmaa, J. (2016.). The Sixth Sense: The Meaning of Atmosphere and Mood. Archit. Des., 86 (6): 126-133. 4. Hasse, J. (2016.). Traffic architecture- hidden affections. Elements of Architecture: Assembling Archaeology, Atmosphere and the Performance of Building Spaces. Oxon: Routledge. 5. Holston, J. (1989.). The Modernist City - An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago.: The University of Chicago Press. 6. The term "disembodied" refers to practices or experiences that are disconnected from the physical body or embodied experience. In the context of public space and city design, disembodied practices refer to approaches that prioritize abstract concepts or ideas over the lived experiences of the people who use those spaces. 7. Pallasmaa, J. (2012.). The Eyes of the Skin -Architecture and the Senses. New York.: John Wiley & Sons. 8. Wacquant, L. a. (2014.). Territorial stigmatization in action. Environment and Planning A., 46: 1270–1280. 9. Middleton, J. (2010.). Sense and the city: exploring the embodied geographies of urban walking. Social and Cultural Geography., 11(6): 575-596. 10. The method and set of tools are inspired by the various past work (see citations) but artistic representation was developed by myself to align with my research objectives. 11. Lydon, M. a. (2015.). Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change. Washington, D.C. Island Press. 12. Lerman, L. a. (2022.). Critique Is Creative - The Critical Response Process in Theory and Action. Middletown. Wesleyan University Press. 13. Costanza, R., Fisher, B., & Ali, S. (2007). Quality of life: an approach integrating opportunities, human needs, and subjective well-being. Ecological Economics, 61(2–3), 267–276 14. Di Masso, A., Dixon, J., & Durrheim, K. (2014). Place attachment as discursive practice. In L. C. Manzo, & P. Devine-Wright (Eds.), Place attachment: Advances in theory, methods and applications (pp. 75–86). Routledge.

September - November, 2022

Where: Wards Island, Toronto

For this solo investigation, I went to the streets of residential quarters of Wards Island.

Method:

- I first sat in one corner of the street and watched the movement of the pedestrian for 20-30 minutes.

- I tried to make a distinction between the residents and the tourists. Tourists tend to walk at a slower pace than the residents and tend to look around. Residents typically do not look around when they are walking on these streets. They are busy doing their daily chores.

- Then I took a walk myself pretending to be a resident of the neighbourhood and I walked forward facing front. I scanned the street from my standing height. (1)

- Then I took a second walk but this time slowly and attentively, paying attention to what I see from my standing height. I looked on my side, I turned around. At the same time I took note of the colour of the houses. (a)

- Then I took a third walk similar to the second walk but this time using a camera at the height of my eyes I video recorded what I saw from my standing height. (b) https://youtu.be/SPB1IhP_-xU

- Then I sat down for a moment to reflect on my experience of this process. I wrote down a short poem (c)

- Then I walked on the street assuming a child's height. This walking meant, walking on the knees. (2)

- I walked like this once without a camera and once holding the camera at the level of my eyes. (d) https://youtu.be/CZEqIjedrT4

- Then I took a pause again to reflect on my experience of attentive seeing from this new height. Walking on knees was difficult.

- Then I walked on the street looking up (3) - once without a camera and once holding the camera to record what I see. (e) https://youtu.be/D2RXapoBXnw

- Then I paused and reflect on writing again. From this perspective, the trees appeared very close to each other in some places and I wrote down about them (f)

- Then I started walking again. This time looking down (4) straight on the street floor - once without a camera and once holding the camera to record what I see. (g) https://youtu.be/pnuhc1wGriE

- I saw dry leaves that I did not see while I was looking up. From the looking up perspective, it was hard to tell what kind of trees are found on these streets because in these cold months, almost all trees except the evergreens are bare now. But their leaves have fallen on the ground. From the looking down on the street perspective, I got a sense of the type of trees that are hugging these streets on either side.

- For my final investigation, I also tried looking at the street through a paper roll (5). I walked with it holding it very close to my right eye and tried to observe what this frame makes me see. I paused at various locations on the street and switched my eyes. I moved the paper roll left, right, up, down, front, back while looking through it. Some images taken are in h)

- I also explored a few possibilities for embodied attentive hearing. I moved with my eyes closed standing in one spot of the street and tried to pay attention to what I hear and how it changes with movements. I also tried to listen to the street floor by performing very simple movements - lying down on the floor with back/belly touching the floor, rolling etc. (j)

- My intention in this solo investigation was to think through various movement modalities that could assist in designing movement scores - for Embodied Attentive Seeing and for Embodied Attentive Hearing - to be used in live experiments with dancers on these streets of Wards Island.

j) Investigating movement modalities for Embodied Attentive Hearing

Period 1: Solo Sensory Walking, Moving

h) Looking through paper roll. The artpiece (face) on the window stayed unnoticed until I started investigating 'attentive seeing' through paper roll. The first sight of it through the paper roll shocked and surprised me at the same time. It definitely gave me a chilling sensation because I thought the landnord of the house was watching me watch his house. I immediately removed the paper roll and looked at the house again with my naked eyes. Then I realized it was simply an artpiece. But the question came to my mind - How did I miss it even though I scanned the same street 5-6 times? And why the different perspective - through naked eyes and through the paper roll - gave rise to different sensations? Did my mind create different narratives based on the perspective it was exposed to?