Sunday 1 December 2013

OUIL405 Studio Brief 1 -Visual Journalist

Study Task 1 - Find a Seat

Leeds Train Station
  • 30 Photographs












  1. Are they waiting for someone to arrive?
  2. What are the emotions of the travellers?
  3. Is this station the end of a journey?
  4. Is this station the begining of a journey?
  5. Where are they going to?
  6. Where have they come from?
  7. Has this always been a station?
  8. Does the litter collector ever drop rubbish when not working?
  9. Is anyone lost?
  10. Whos been sat here the longest?
  11. Who are they waiting for?
  12. Where are they going?
  13. What life do they lead?
  14. Train - one thing almost everyone has to get- combination of ppl wierd?
  15. Why are they advertising here? everyone has to go past shops on their way to their destination- perfect
  16. Where are those nuns going?
  17. Where have they come from?
  18. What is the feeling of coming home like?
  19. What is the feeling of setting off like?
  20. Do you feel scared travelling alone?

  1. Rushing people
  2. Bored
  3. Waiting
  4. Tired
  5. Excited
  6. Eye searching
  7. Litter collector getting in the way
  8. Shops selling food and drink
  9. Lots of coffee
  10. Seat area full of bored people
  11. Occasionally a burst of excitement when visitor is recognised and welcomed.
  12. Bright artificial lights
  13. Dark - no windows
  14. Melting pot:
  15. All ages/ genders/ cultures/ classes
  16. Everyones wearing a coat
  17. Advertisements above you 
  18. 'The next train to arrive at... platform 11 is... the northern line... platform B... 12:15...service to Manchester Victoria...'
  19. A cashpoint
  20. 2 nuns collected by another nun
  21. Multicultural
  22. Emotions are mixed
  23. Everyone shares this moment- even though theyre from such different walks of life
  24. Groups
  25. A lot of people travelling alone
  26. Romance expressed when saying farewell or greeting loved ones
  27. Lots of different fashions
  28. Everyones speed differs - walking/ running/ old/ young/ in a rush/ professional
  29. There are some pigeons
Pret a Manger -Leeds City Centre




























Costa

























  1. What did this building used to be used for?
  2. What local coffee shops did it run out of business? (along with Starbucks/Costa/Nero)
  3. How long has the man next to me been sat in here?
  4. Who's waiting for people?
  5. Why are people here alone?
  6. What's the most popular drink at this time of year?
  7. Why did the customers choose here and not another coffee shop?
  8. How many conversations have been had here?
  9. How have the conversations had here changed people's lives?
  10. What decisions have been made over Pret's tables?
  11. How are people sat?
  12. What do people do with their other hand/legs while they drink coffee?
  13. Pret provides a relaxing environment, but are these customers relaxed?
  14. Where were these cups made?
  15. Where were the coffee beans found?
  16. How would the volume of the background music effect the atmosphere of Pret?
  17. How have they seduced customers to come to Pret?
  18. How have they adapted for the festive season?
  19. Is this the idyllic coffee shop at Christmas winter scene?
  20. What is the difference between those on each side of the window (inside vs outside)? -escape from the real world? a relaxing festive bubble? with like-feeling-ed people?
  21. How do the customers reflect the time and day - sunday afternoon?
  22. Is anyone feeling awkward?
  23. Does anyone not want to be in here?
  24. Was this a planned stop? or spur of the moment?
  1. The staff are hovering- ready to start closing up
  2. It is dark outside
  3. It is a sunday afternoon and upstairs is only half full
  4. Shoppers are heading home layden with christmas shopping outside
  5. The christmas street lights are on
  6. Inside we are lit up - warm and inviting light
  7. Lots of families and women in here
  8. A couple on a date- teasing each other about accents
  9. Hats and scarves and coats and gloves
  10. Christmas cups - red
  11. Christmas banners and posters
  12. Christmas specials- Drinks and food- 'roasted nut sandwich' and 'festive chutney' 
  13. Primark bags tearing
  14. 'christmas' bonsai trees on sale outside
  15. Buskers singing christmas songs
  16. Downstairs it is busier
  17. Empty seats outside
  18. Warm in here, warm lighting too.
  19. Low tables and seats
  20. Hushed noise of conversation
  21. Background music - christmas
  22. Friends catching up/ gossiping
  23. Parents resting
  24. Children getting treated/ told off
  25. Put down the heavy shopping
  26. People rushing outside
  27. Darkness approaching outside
  28. Everything happens a lot faster outside the coffee shop. 
Study Task 2 - What's the Story?

 Based on the research, information and source material from study task 1, identify and visually explore a focussed relationship between People, Places, Objects and/or Space.

Thinking about set, sequence and series. 

When I was doing my project in Pret I witnessed a child ask her mother 'why are girls not allowed to go into the boys toilets?' when there was a huge queue for the female toilet and an empty male toilet next to it. The mother had no answer, instead rolling her eyes. As adults we accept most things we are used to without challenging societies rules; this provides us with an easier life and allows us to stay out of trouble. As a child we are uninhibited; innocently pondering these strange behaviours and procedures seen to be normal. As a teenager we start to question these rules again, however this time it is a rebellion. These questions should never be dismissed; some of our social and societal norms are no longer useful or even hold us back, however they all were created to promote order and to prevent confrontation. I want to look at how social or societal behaviour is present in a coffee shop (or in other public situations) mainly looking at what is 'proper' and what is unacceptable socially. I will look at how children at their most uninhibited state behave and play compared to how adults behave and how they teach children to behave properly. 

Some notes from my sketchbook :
- our weird reservations and behaviours
- food
- friends
- Inhibitions
- personal space
- play
- DATA/ FACTS
- gender specific things
- Things you shouldnt do in public
- small things
- social norms
- conformity
- How to survive in a coffee shop? How to survive your coffee break? What to do in a coffee shop?
- Things not to do in public?
- Mind your manners?
- manners
- dont speak to loudly
- dont sit on the floor
- ques
- types of people there
- different opinions of whats acceptable?
- Comparison between the shocking/unacceptable conversations being had, yet everyone still follows the coffee shop policy
- politeness
-territorial behaviour -could do as animals guarding their seats/food aka window seat /warm/not by the door/toilet
'Using observation, photographic documentation, interviews and narrative inquiry, Griffiths' article explores the phenomenon from its many sides: the store owners who need to make a profit, the customers who want a quiet place to study, the ones who like to spread out and those who just plain want a seat for five minutes. They all have different needs and perceptions. In its own way, it's a lot like studying a foreign culture.'

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere
Public sphere- could take place in/ be a coffee shop. Research any interesting/important events/decisions that have been made in coffee shops. Politics etc.

 Pasqua Rosée also established the first coffeehouse in Paris in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò opened the Café Procope in 1686.[21] This coffeehouse still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.

 Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the Wits gathered round John Dryden at Will's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden.[citation needed] The coffee houses were great social levellers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_space
'...In short, they try to explain space is the social space in which we live and create relationship with other people, societies and surroundings. Space is an outcome of the hard and continuous work of building up and maintaining collectives by bringing different things into alignments. All kinds of different spaces can and therefore do exist which may or may not relate to each other. Thus, through space, we can understand more about social action...'
The tables must be far enough apart from each other to feel comfortable and not crowded or able to converse with those not in your party; but must be close to allow for as many customer seatings as possible.
'Löw extends sociological terms into a “duality of space.” The basic idea is that individuals act as social agents (and constitute spaces in the process), but that their action depends on economic, legal, social, cultural, and, finally, spatial structures. Spaces are hence the outcome of action. At the same time, spaces structure action, that is to say spaces can both constrain and enable action.'

Henry Lefebrve says that (social) space is a (social) product, or a complex social construction (based on values, and the social production of meanings) which affects spatial practices and perceptions. He explains space embraces a multitude of intersection in his great book, “Production of Space”. That means that we need to consider how the various modes of spatial production relate to each other.
He argues that there are three aspects to our spatial existence, which exist in a kind of triad:[16]
1.First Space (Physical space/perceived space) "The spatial practice of a society secretes that society's space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it."
2.Second Space (Mental Space/ Conceived Space) "Conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers, as of a certain type of artist with a scientific bent -- all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived."
3.Third Space (Social Space/Lived Space) "Space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols."
Nigel Thrift - Rational View of Space - 
First Space is the empirical construction of space. Empirical space refers to the process whereby the mundane fabric of daily life is constructed. These simple things like, cars, houses, mobiles, computers and roads are very simple but they are great achievements of our daily life and they play very important role in making up who we are today. For example, today’s technology such as GPS did not suddenly come into existence; in fact, it is laid down in the 18th century and developed throughout time. The first space is real and tangible, and it is also known as physical space.
Second space is the unblocking space. This type of space refers to the process whereby routine pathways of interaction as set up around which boundaries are often drawn. The routine may include the movement of office workers, the interaction of drunk teenagers, and the flow of good, money, people, and information. Unlike the old time in geography when people accepted a space as blocked boundary (Example: A capitalist space, neoliberal space or city space), we began to realize that there is no such thing like boundaries in space. The space of the world is flowing and transforming continuously that it is very difficult to describe in a fixed way. The second space is ideology/conceptual and it is also known as mental space. For example, the second space will explain the behaviors of people from different social class and the social segregation among rich and poor people. 


 Coffee Shops Historically
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse
"Discussing the War in a Paris Café" - a scene from the brief interim between the Battle of Sedan and Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. 17 September 1870. Illustrated London News. Frederick Barnard (1846-1896).

From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups of two or three people. A coffeehouse serves as an informal club for its regular members.
The 17th century French traveler Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse scene:
People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose. The narrations by the mollas and the dervishes are moral lessons, like our sermons, but it is not considered scandalous not to pay attention to them. No one is forced to give up his game or his conversation because of it. A molla will stand up in the middle, or at one end of the qahveh-khaneh, and begin to preach in a loud voice, or a dervish enters all of a sudden, and chastises the assembled on the vanity of the world and its material goods. It often happens that two or three people talk at the same time, one on one side, the other on the opposite, and sometimes one will be a preacher and the other a storyteller.
the original image is dated before 20th century. The brochure is a Turkish government publication. 
 The Arabic name qahuwa (قهوة) was transformed into kaweh (strength, vigor) in the Ottoman Empire.
A visual representation of how the word Coffee which was a loan word from the arabic version Qahwa permutated throughout Europe and into our modern language.

 From 1670 to 1685 the amount London coffee-houses began to multiply, and also began to gain political importance due to their popularity as places of debate. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.
17th Century Coffeehouse, England
A cafe in Istanbul
Watercolour, Ottoman Empire, between 1850-1882. Amedeo Preziosi.
Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the Wits gathered round John Dryden at Will's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden.[citation needed] The coffee houses were great social levellers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and the London Gazette (government announcements) read. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center. According to one French visitor, Antoine François Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."

 Women
The banning of women from coffeehouses was not universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe. In Germany women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned.[27] Émilie du Châtelet purportedly wore drag to gain entrance to a coffeehouse in Paris.[28] In a well-known engraving of a Parisian café of c. 1700,[29] the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffeepots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, separated in a canopied booth, from which she serves coffee in tall cups.
Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki opened the first coffee house in Vienna, using coffee beans left by the retreating Ottoman Turks in 1683.
(Could do historical events linked to cafes/coffeehouses and then last page/bit could be a rhetorical question like 'what will your coffee shop be famous for?' - but not that.)

 In London, coffeehouses preceded the club of the mid-18th century, which skimmed away some of the more aristocratic clientele. Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Lloyd's Coffee House provided the venue for merchants and shippers to discuss insurance deals, leading to the establishment of Lloyd's of London insurance market, the Lloyd's Registerclassification society, and other related businesses. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses ofSotheby's and Christie's. In Victorian England, the temperance movement set up coffeehouses for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house (pub).[30]
In the 19th and 20th century, coffeehouses were commonly meeting point for writers and artists, across Europe.

US
Coffee shops in the United States arose from the espresso- and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. From the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also served as a venue for entertainment, most commonly folk performers during the American folk music revival. This was likely due to the ease at accommodating in a small space a lone performer accompanying himself or herself only with a guitar. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach became major haunts of the Beats, who were highly identified with these coffeehouses.
As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. The political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. A number of well known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylanbegan their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins bemoaned his woman's inattentiveness to her domestic situation due to her overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing in his 1969 song "Coffeehouse Blues". Starting in 1967 with the opening of the historic Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; the Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model.
From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. They were often storefronts and had names like The Lost Coin (Greenwich Village), The Gathering Place (Riverside, CA), Catacomb Chapel (New York City), and Jesus For You (Buffalo, NY). Christian music (often guitar-based) was performed, coffee and food was provided, and Bible studies were convened as people of varying backgrounds gathered in a casual setting that was purposefully different than the traditional church. An out-of-print book, published by the ministry of David Wilkerson, titled, A Coffeehouse Manual, served as a guide for Christian coffeehouses.

They say: 'Coffeehouses are where people gather and are usually in no hurry, they talk and they listen. It's a place for sharing thoughts and ideas, where relationships happen and unintentional networking is formed. It's a picture of the Kingdom of God as people are brought from isolation to community.
A coffee house is a perfect setting for connecting with people, especially the more you get away from the Starbucks type of coffee house and get closer to the old-comfy-couches-artsy-Bohemian type. They're a safe place for people to speak their mind, for us to hear, respect and value them.
It's an easy place for us to demonstrate the character of Jesus, and win someone's conversation by simply buying their coffee for them. And because coffeehouses are second homes to many, there are plenty of regulars that you can end up in progressive, long-term relationships with.
People in underground subcultures are looking for acceptance, people they can trust in and rely on, and a safe place to hang out and be themselves. They can find that at coffeehouses.'

What link is there between charitable giving and coffee? 
Perhaps it is because the people buying them obviously have money to spare that they can spend up to £5 on a drink and are buying a coffee in a warm and comfortable environment where they can have food or drink whenever they like; a complete juxtaposition to the homeless who are stuck outside uncomfortable and probably hungry or thirsty. Most of the public have their doubts about giving the homeless money however with a coffee they can be sure they are actually helping the homeless and not fueling any addictions etc. This links in to my question/statements of the difference between those outside and those inside the coffee shops.
For some research I went to Costa today and also noticed the staff were the total opposite of their counterparts. At busy times they are frantic working hard to fulfill the needs of others while they rest from work or work in a more relaxed environment. 
Here are some of my photographs from today:

I found this study/report which links in to my research on the situational and environmental factors on behaviours and cafe etiquette. http://architecture.unl.edu/projects/bsfed/projects/downtown_lincoln_coffee_shops.pdf

This study looked at the differences in attitudes of the staff and atmosphere of independent coffee shops vs Starbucks and found the latter to be a lot more relaxed and friendly; surprising the reseachers! http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/08/29/study-starbucks-less-snooty-than-local-boston-coffee-shops/

My sketchbook notes on social commentary in reference to my book and how people, places objects and spaces should be linked and how they interact:



http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=social+etiquette&sm=3

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