Investigating written response

_{The influence of Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces is mainly reflected in my process. Perec encourages observers to slow down and record ordinary details that are usually ignored. He asks us to write down “what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless” (Perec, 1999, p. 50). This made me rethink my way of observing. At first, I only thought that the Northern line seats were dirty. However, after photographing and scanning them repeatedly, I began to pay attention to the location, edges, colour, fabric fading and repeated appearance of the stains on different seats. As a result, my research changed from an overall emotional response into a systematic record of the seat surface. Perec’s approach made me realise that observation is not passive. It is a process of learning how to see a familiar space through repetition, classification and recording.}

_{I take the seats in a Northern line carriage as my research subject. Because I used to ride the Northern line every day for two consecutive months, the unknown stains and signs of wear on the seats made me feel uncomfortable. I recorded these traces through photography, scanning and visual tracing, and extracted the stains from their original context to study whether viewers’ feelings and understanding would change when they became independent graphic forms.}

_{Agnès Varda’s film The Gleaners and I relates to my project mainly through its theme. Varda focuses on discarded and overlooked objects and materials, bringing them into view through collecting and re-presenting them (Varda, 2000). This encouraged me to pay attention to the stains on the Northern line seats. They are usually regarded only as sources of pollution and discomfort, rather than as traces with particular forms and research value.}

_{This led me to ask why stains create discomfort, and whether something is lost when they are removed from their original environment. After being extracted from the seat, a stain loses its original hygiene context. It becomes an unidentified shape that can be imagined as an animal, object or space. Varda therefore helped me consider how an overlooked thing can be understood differently when it is placed in a new context.}

_{Finally, I used tracing paper to make an experimental publication. The transparent pages allow the stain graphics, participants’ imaginations and the original seat images to overlap. This shows that when a stain is separated from its original environment, the feeling of disgust can become weaker, while new personal interpretations appear. My project therefore does not only record that the seats are dirty. It investigates how a physical trace gains new meaning through visual transformation and viewer projection.}

Reference List

_{Perec, G. (1999) ‘The Street’, in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Edited and translated by John Sturrock. London: Penguin, pp. 46–56.}

_{Varda, A. (2000) The Gleaners and I [Film]. Paris: Ciné Tamaris.}