Experiencing non-places through soundscapes.

• Main Author: Tan, Emily Sze Hui.
• Other Authors: School of Art, Design and Media
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52323
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Motorways, airports and supermarkets; French anthropologist, Marc Augé called them nonplaces to mark their transience and the large amount of time we spend at such spaces in this day and age. Essentially, he deems them of little significance to be considered as anthropological places. (Augé 1995) While his observations are accurate and valid, meaning can be created at such transitory spaces and they can possess qualities that anthropological places have. Through the physical representation of a specific non-place, this project aims to create a poetic landscape that represents the delicate and multi-layered nature of experiencing places and its people. And also to find pleasure from silvers of human behaviour that can be observed at these highly transient yet solitary sites. People are not just moving creatures but human beings with emotional lives. The final outcome of this project presents concepts of the individual and the collective in a specific non-place, which is the bus-interchange. The collective human behaviour can be observed and experienced unconsciously. It is represented by visualisation of the sounds that were recorded and recreated through the paper sculpture. The individual is represented by poetic anecdotes of the happenings at the non-place. The aim is simple. It is to extract the often neglected and unpleasurable element – which is sound – from an environment and to use it to represent a physical landscape of the non-place. And also, to encourage viewers to find their little pleasures in what might seem as the mundane process of commuting and everyday life.