Homebodies on Vacation

How important is authenticity in our experience of a place we visit?

I feel that there are degrees of authenticity that I can accept in order to create a pleasurable experience. If a place I visit is appropriating from another time or a place in the form of mimicry, it is a tacky experience. For example, if I visit the New York New York Hotel in Las Vegas, I know that it isn’t New York. No matter how painstakingly they’ve attempted to re-create the skyline, iconic neighbourhoods, New York cuisine, and other New York-isms, I know that it’s not New York and that nothing resembling New York should exist in the deserts of Nevada. On the other hand, if I visit New York and buy a slice of pizza that may be inferior by local standards, visit iconic landmarks that no “real” New Yorkers go see, and partake in an illusion of iconic New York, I can more readily accept that inauthentic city experience as the appropriation is coming from within. With an outside source appropriating, I view it as a purely monetary function. In the context of the city re-writing its history from within, it can be an act that is also one of celebration and preservation of past. It can be a source of pride.

Times Square: Dead or Alive?

New York City has changed vastly in the past twenty years. It is a different place visually, socially, and economically. These changes are most visible in Times Square – an area where 42nd Street is crossed by Broadway and Seventh Avenue in the borough of Manhattan. What was once an area known for Vaudeville theatre, later became a decaying representation of its former self. Crime rates soared and adult theatres became the cityscape. Times Square’s current incarnation is that of a spectacle of mass corporatization.

The article refers to Times Square as being a highly tele-visual place. When I first visited New York two years ago, the image I had in my mind of Times Square was different than what I experienced. It was much louder and brighter than I had anticipated, but on the other hand, it was not at the scale that I expected. Television and film has created an illusion within my mind that Times Square would be this massive exciting place. In reality, it’s smaller than I imagined and it is quite obnoxious. It is the perfect media creation – people desire to visit Times Square so greatly, they want to be part of the excitement they see on television.

I view the backlash to Times Square as one that is not so much about stripping a place of history, but it is commenting on a trend that is sweeping not only New York, but many cities around the globe – the commodification of place.

Maya:reading Time Square Dead or Alive?

M. Christine Boyer. Time Square Dead or Alive? Daidalos 68,1998
(Picture taken by Maya Cochrane in New York 2006)
(Image 1 taken in New York by Maya Cochrane)
(image 2 of Time Square found at www.legeros.com 02/06/07)

Time square is both a “place-name” and a “representational space.” This statement begins to continue the questions of authenticity, simulation and the effects of “electronic visualization” on our ability to experience our built environment. Traditionally a public gathering space its sense of meaning tended to change with time potentially becoming a “non-space.” When I think of non-space, I think of a place that we do not physically inhabit or a place that has lost its sense of identity. Before going to Time Square we are able to experience it on the television screen, which formulates a series of impressions and assumptions about what this space is. After going to Time Square I realized that it was an extremely temporal space that people and cars move through when they have received enough commercial stimulation to make them forget about a gathering space and move then onto the next shopping center.
This article is written with a tone of nostalgia, but my question is how do we move past this new cultural condition? Daidalos suggests that the answer lies “in our ability to perceive and apprehend the world in which we live.” If we begin to let virtual and electronic images control our “playful re-membering” then our concept of inhabited space truly lies in in the realm of “non-space.” If we can be content with the difference between real and not real will not matter any more. Authenticity would not exist. How then you we judge our own measure of existence?

Maya: Homebodies on Vacation week 4

For tourism, the home (even retroactively) is the perfect vehicle of self-representation, and the ideal “auratic” tourist attraction (34).

Reciently Studio 115 went on a trip through southern California ending up in L.A.. There we went to visit many houses created by Architects and were especially moved by the Eames house. There was a great sense of presence in the Eames house. We were not able to enter, but the doors were opened and we were able to peer into the house to see everything as it was when they lived there. What is this obsession with houses like this? Do we really get an accurate view of who these people were and how they lived? The tourist certainly lusts for the authentic and tourism feeds that desire (34). The plants were still alive. To keep this sense of illusion it requires maintenance. “tourist time is reversible and touristic space is elastic.” Even though the experience may not have been authentic, in terms of really occupying the space with the owners, there was enough of an illusionary construct to convince us of its authenticity.

Jordy: Homebodies on vacation

“In the production of sights, tourism constructs “authenticity”… presuming all histories are constructs anyway, what is at stake in the issue of authenticity, is the question, whose authenticity”

If history is a construct, then what do we choose to be our history? Today we have a zoning laws that enforce the preservation of our existing historic buildings, which creates zones were the physical manifestation of culture remains static. Although, I recongnize a need to preserve historic elements in order to maintain a common history and to a sense of where you've come from. What parts of the history are preserved or do we preserve it entirely? What is the cost if we do not preserve our past? What is the cost if remain stuck in the past? I think the selection of history is a direct reflection of what we value, but who determines this and what rationale should it be based on?

If the construction of history is conditional on our values, then is postmodernism worth preserving? Are all of the trivialized styles of postmodernism worth preserving, when it is the capitalist intention that they become forgetting in order to be replaced by the newest fad?

If the history is constructed, then its authenticity must also be constructed. So, the question is "whose authenticity"? Does it matter whose history is being represented? Rarely is the representation of a local history ever questionned when it remains the construction of a community. Yet, when this culture is appropriated by another culture its authenticity becomes put into question.

Maya: week 4 Home Bodies on Vacation reading

"The leisure eye" is a hungry eye (38)."
"The Vacation Home?"

Gorretti: Homebodies on Vacation

Key points:
1. tourism is the commodification of views
2. the photo or souvenir as proof of experience - what is more valuable, being there or having photos proving we were there?
3. time space - "in the space of re-enactment of time," "latitutudes of free play in time and in space - where time can be re-played and gegraphical space can be replaced," "touristic time is reversible and touristic space elastic"
4. slippages

If in "tourist world" we can re-play time and geographical space can be replaced, how does this effect our architecture?

The camera has acted a our primary means of validating an experience. It is not enough to physically go to the Grand Canyon we need the photograph of our body there in order to prove it. In a way architecture has manifested itself into a similar role. For example, it is not enough that we read or watch the disney story of Cinderella we need to actaully visit the castle that has been portrayed in the book and movie. What does this say about our culture? Are we no longer stimulated by imagination that we have to physically construct these fantasies in reality? Or is it that we no longer validate information unless there is a physical space or object that accompaniews it? Oddly enough, even though we construct these fantasy lands and we physically experience them, we still need the photo to prove our experience.