In the workshop, which took place a week prior to the presentation, a number of undocumented experts in living invisibly in the city guided participants to places in the city with an emotion in mind a total of four emotions were mapped. Prior to the fieldwork a legend was generated by the participants, consisting of emotions that they thought undocumented citizens experience in the city. While walking or mapping the participant could evaluate preconceived ideas to what extent the chosen words matched reality or not in the dialogue with the undocumented. Changing from one emotion to another happened at a fixed time and for all cartographers simultaneously, until all the words of the legend were mapped. The guests rediscovered the diverse meaning and associations of public places and were introduces to strategies of hiding, such as avoiding to walk with a bag, pretending to be waiting for a train, etc.
The importance of a place
A web applications traced the cartographers footsteps while recording the dialogue. The longer they stayed on a certain location the thicker the line on the digital map would become, this way communicating the importance of a place in relation to an emotion and visualising the diverse way of responding to a similar emotion (one might prefer to be stationed somewhere when it comes to a certain emotion, while another might prefer to walk). The conversation can be followed by downloading the audiotrack on this website. The tracks can only be heard by being present on the location and by walking the same track.
The sculpture was constructed, both physically and ontologically by the children, using common materials, stories, and dialogues, which resulted in a co-constructed character, complete with passport, life story and personal interests. As the children created and subsequently toured Mr. Wiels through the streets of Brussels, they relayed their narratives of city-life, objects, memories, moments, questions and so forth to him, exploring their own lives through the artifact and with each other. The shared artifact mediated the individual and communal experience, taking the attention away from the designer / pedagogue by allowing the artifact to guide the process. This provided a rich experience for the children as well as a repository of data to be used by design researchers looking at child-centred design. Mr. Wiels through the streets of Brussels, they relayed their narratives of city-life, objects, memories, moments, questions and so forth to him, exploring their own lives through the artifact and with each other. The shared artifact mediated the individual and communal experience, taking the attention away from the designer/pedagogue by allowing the artifact to guide the process. This provided a rich experience for the children as well as a repository of data to be used by design researchers looking at child-centred design.
A web applications traced the cartographers footsteps while recording the dialogue. The longer they stayed on a certain location the thicker the line on the digital map would become, this way communicating the importance of a place in relation to an emotion and visualising the diverse way of responding to a similar emotion (one might prefer to be stationed somewhere when it comes to a certain emotion, while another might prefer to walk). The conversation can be followed by downloading the audiotrack on this website. The tracks can only be heard by being present on the location and by walking the same track. The tracks can only be heard by being present.