Monday, 29 September 2014

Self-Reflection: Finding Space Within Place

Over the past week, I have had my house to myself much to my own happiness.  After leaving university and going through the process of getting employment beyond small-scale commissions, I haven’t been able to fund my own flat which has moved me back into the parental home.  For those of you who have experience such circumstances, you will probably understand the shortcomings with such a situation, especially if you were rather happy in the previous living setup.  It’s a factor of the little things like sleep schedules, privacy, points of discussions, etc. which can build up into a recognised negative. 

The most recognisable thing for me correlates to my hobbies and interests, particularly gaming and a desire to learn more from the medium.  To be immersed in a world where your eyes envelope the monitor and ears hear nothing but the ambience is a truly wonderful experience; until people either disrupt with juxtaposed prose or a contrasting piece of radio / TV.  I don’t hold such a desire to be sociable against them naturally, but this event can make one less interested in either side of the spectrum and possibly come across as dismissive.  In the end, both parties get a fragment of what they wanted. 

So back to this past week, I had a couple events to attend to, but the majority of my time was set to creating an environment of immersive gameplay to rekindle some of that time I had in my previous university residence.  The stage was set and the first day went well, with a mixture of RPGs, shooters, a couple Indies to try out and some Dota.  I enjoyed my time greatly because it was disrupted by factors outside of the immersion.  However, as a couple days went on, I was unsure about how to fulfil my time which I had been looking forward to.  All my thoughts on this desire for personal space were (in a roundabout way) possibly unwarranted beyond small chunks of time.  As the week went on, I found a happy medium of social interactions and immersive gameplay (most likely due to my work commitments) which pushed me to consider a self-reflective experiment; with the return to the status quo how long would it be until I desired personal space and to what extent. 

Sunday came around and by 3 in the afternoon the parameters were in place to analyse my little personal experiment.  The return to normality was met with the conventional catching up and discussing how the past week went alongside a brief agreement on what to eat for dinner.  The day continued on with me replaying some tower defence games I had got back into over the weekend (Defense Grid and Sol Survivor).  I had particularly enjoyed replaying Sol because of the new modes and discovering the soundtrack again (Oil and Sweat my particular favourite track atm) which combined with the hectic decisions within higher difficulties held my enjoyment and interest.  It was in this timeframe that my experiment came into place; with myself being asked about an advert for hair care products while easy-watching TV droned on in the background around the 7-8pm mark.  The flow of conflict on screen was out of sync with my disinterest in the product of the advert it was most likely clear that I felt that way (although I accept I could have acted in a more amicable manner). 

Many hours later, I took a moment to understand this experiment referring back to my previous living situation trying to find any similarities.  What I considered that although I enjoyed my time in immersive gameplay and academic theory, I purposely took time to talk and discuss things with my housemates.  As I mentioned in one of my introduction posts, having hour long conversions at 3am about architectural theory, games or anything in-between was something I enjoyed a great deal.  So, on the surface I could deduce that I desired social interactions but only of particular subject matter with people of similar interest.  This made sense, but I felt that the range of my housemates and their interests ranged greatly of both the academic and general converse of life.  My second point was one brought from an architectural point of view being that I looked for both personal space and communal space within my environment; something that would seem rather obvious to everyone who is ever lived as we all have pigments of introverted and extroverted characteristics.  Beyond this although, it got me consider Heidegger’s ‘poetically man dwells’ alongside a few minor points. 

We live within places (houses, flats, etc.) but create space within them.  This space is an expression of self and as such becomes architecture.  This architecture can be created by a number of items of both physical and mental application; colour schemes and furniture to whether one converses within said space or not.  We also do this outside of the home, for example in public green space; we outline our space with jumpers for goalposts or towels for picnic; even though you don’t hold ownership of the area.  On the other side of the spectrum, it may me think of my previous mmo experiences where a person may lay claim to an area for farming (as in particular monsters or resource nodes) regardless of free ownership or the camping of spawn points for particular rare monsters.  One of the examples that Heidegger presents is a long distance lorry driver who may have a sleeper cab; this is their space with place but their journey still features interactions with exterior factors e.g. other people. 

With this reflection underway, it got me to think about the desire to return to the previous standard of living in a new way, because that kind of wouldn’t exist in my future.  To move is more of a case of self and defining self in his residence alongside their interactions.  To charge on with the possibly superficial ‘find my own place and get away’ would do a disservice to myself and those I interact with and I need to make sure I do it properly.

So yeah, this was a bit of an odd reflection for me because of what came about from this past week, but I hope you found it interesting or possibly similar to your own experience.  On the subject of employment mentioned above, I’ve built up a larger set of contacts so I hope to become a bit more established in the heritage / gallery space and I can look to make this a bit more than just words on a page.  In the mean-time, I’ve had some really enjoyable commissions recently and it’s keeping me going slowly but steadily.  If you can make a job out of something you enjoy, try it but be ready to accept some frustration; but in the end you can make it worth it.

= )

Ryan

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