During the walk, HPU members perambulated through the Hamilton Farmer’s Market with a rough map in hand. Their task was to document the different “scents” they smelled within the market using words associated with another sense modality.
Synesthesia is a literary device wherein the writer uses words associated with one sense modality to describe another eg. “loud yellow” (aural/sight), “burning silence” (haptic/aural), “bitter cold” (taste/haptic), “piercing fragrance” (haptic/smell). Lots of poets use synesthesia as a literary technique in their writings – notably, Baudelaire who was also one of the friendly flâneurs!
Synesthesia is also a psychological “pathology.” Members of the HPU are not trying to become synesthetes. We are interested in finding new ways of using language to describe place.
This public walk and talk takes the area around the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (WAHC), particularly the newly built West Harbour GO Station, and analyzes the social strata that affects this particular place and space. Strata-Walk (WAHC Version) aims to provide participants with strata-mapping skills in order to highlight the different layers of place that make up Hamilton’s fast-changing downtown core.
The Googlemap City Center Drift takes as its starting point the spot where Googlemaps has placed its city marker. How does Google Maps decide exactly where the center of a city is? Is it according to the city’s dimensions? Should it be city hall, the cultural center, the financial center? Where do you think the city center should be? And what are the relationships between a digital information space as perceived by a dominant geolocation service such as Google and every day urban space?
In order to investigate these urgent questions, HPU members journeyed to the location, which Google Maps pinpoints as on Young Street, between Catherine Street South and Walnut Street South.
Young St. between Catherine St. South and Walnut St. South.
Hamilton City Centre?
Does this place coincide with what one usually thinks of as a “city center”? We didn’t think so, but then what does? We thought this mound of dirty snow could be the center.
Toronto’s city marker falls just shy of its city hall, and that is certainly logical since, given the size of the city, there must be many centers. City hall is a diplomatic choice (as a symbol only however; not as a reference to the hijinks that occur within city hall these days). By contrast, I don’t think Hamilton’s city center is its city hall, or this snow mound on Young Street. To me, it’s Gore Park, especially the corner that angles into Jackson Square. It seems that the city radiates outwards from that intersection. It is always moving, and it is always the same: colourful. But that’s just me. Where do you think city center is?
Corktown, Hamilton ON.
From the seemingly arbitrary spot chosen by Googlemaps as the center of Hamilton, we explored Situationist drift techniques, such as relying on our senses to guide us through the city, identifying areas of “attraction” and “repulsion” as well as “switching stations” that offer opposing directions of choice. We ended up exploring the neighbourhood of Corktown and its historic row houses and old stone buildings, the waterworks building (which we made Sarah investigate), and some interesting streets and underpasses.
Map of flows by Sarah Truman.
This is the map Sarah made while we were walking, indicating switching stations, the flows and areas of attraction and repulsion.
The idea for the Googlemap City Center Drift was influenced by artist Aram Bartholl’s project Map, which places giant red Google placemarkers, twenty feet high, in places designated as city center.
Aram Bartholl, Map, 2006–2019.
The beginning point of this walk is more or less arbitrary, as so it seems the Googlemap designation of city center. But the idea of center and margin is always usefully challenged by inquiry into these terms, along with a healthy sense of urban adventure that gets you out into the city, exploring. It could be as simple as a blind jab at a map to designate a starting point.
On December 21, 2014, the HPU hosted a Yule Walk (you’ve all heard of Christmas food/clothing “drives;” well, we are perambulators so we had a “walk” instead!)
The walk took place in Kirkendall neighbourhood – we perambulated the streets with our wagon and collected from numerous houses. Others also contributed to our efforts (via car) from as far as Ancaster, Dundas, Westdale, and Beasley neighbourhoods.
By the end of the walk we had two vehicles full of new toys, clothes, gift cards, food and other items to donate to The Native Women’s Centre.
Dates: March 1, March 8, March 15, March 22, 2014 Location: Hamilton Artists Inc. 155 James Street North, Hamilton, ON
The HPU’s winter project 2014 was entitled Km2, and consisted of 3 different directed walks within a square kilometre of Hamilton’s downtown. Each week’s event began with an artist talk by the walk leader, who showed some of her work as well as introduced the themes and objectives of the walk.
March 1: Map Voice Film Poem (led by Taien Ng-Chan) Poet Ezra Pound observed that “In the city the visual impressions succeed each other, overlap, overcross, they are cinematographic.” The urban experience of unrelentless stimuli was what, for philosopher Walter Benjamin, created the need for cinema. Map Voice Film Poem explored the city through the microcinema of videos and stories. Participants were invited to map the city through the digital image. The final video was edited from the contributions of participants.
March 15: Search Gather Research Make (led by Donna Akrey) Search Gather Research Make focused on the visual arts and how to forage the city for ideas to realize as art works. Participants were offered some directives and then embarked on a walk within the KM2; the participants gathered found materials/found ideas to use as art-making supplies or inspiration for new works.
March 8: Flânerie Collect Contemplate Write (led by Sarah E. Truman) Historically, the flâneurs were “men of leisure” who ambled through urban streets and observed, mused and wrote about the cityscape. In week 2’s Flânerie Collect Contemplate Write, participants strolled within the KM2 as modern day flâneurs (leisurely if only for an hour, and any gender, not just male!) and composed written works inspired through the acts of walking and sensory exploration of the city’s core.
March 22: Final get together share session (Hamilton Artists Inc.) The works we made were exhibited to the public and other artists/creators in a final meeting
