Project Development • Making a Framework

2Aesthetic Immersion as a way of testing a mapping and testing a program • Photography Exercise

Begun 22 September (Friday), Completed 9am 25 September (Monday)

We have maintained that our proposals for the Fens will address not only the park but also the city of Boston. Central to your investigation will remain the issue of the Fens as an urban infrastructure. Your assignment is to seek out and document with photographs those objects, landscapes, and/or infrastructures within the city that will help you develop your initial programmatic proposal for the Fens. Your proposal may be little more than a hunch. You may be absolutely sure about your proposed program. Whichever the case the exercise will help you gather precedents, information, and context in relation to the project. You are developing an argument and substantiating your proposal. (And you may actually debunk your own proposal, but this is also a useful exercise). And your photography may cross into the territory of design.

Just as mapping is creating a new world and creating, in essence, designing, so is the act of photographing. If the photography isnÕt design, it should lead to design. For example, if your initial proposal is for a visitors center, then you might seek out visitors centers. Or you might investigate a route that leads to and from your visitors center. In another example, if your initial proposal focuses on memorial aspects of the FensÕ central area, you might seek out memorials and their contexts. In another example, if your initial proposal centers on a fascination with the unseen qualities of the Fens, you may photograph manholes or the experience of the underground in Boston via the T or other cuts into the ground.