1 m2 Mapped

This project was inspired by a story which my cousin told me:

‘There was this very curious woman in England who decided that she would go on an adventure in her back garden, as she had no money to go on holiday to an exotic location. She had a feeling that there were hidden gems to be found there – if only one looked hard enough. So she decided that she would study 1m2 of grass, in the greatest of detail. After many years of looking intently at this tiny patch, the lady discovered 100’s of previously unknown insects and types of grasses. It just goes to show that you don’t need to go very far to make amazing discoveries.’

So I decided to map 1m2 of my favourite coffee shop – Simon’s Place.

I arrived with a bag of pens, graph paper, a set square, a scale ruler, a measuring tape, a camera and notebook ready to make my discoveries. I wanted to record everything in the 1m2 that extended above and below me. I tried to imagine that I had gotten a square shaped apple corer and gouged out this piece of the city for intense examination. I measured, surveyed, listened photographed and recorded everything that I could. It overwhelmed me. There was so much happening and everything changed constantly from one second to the next. My mind went fuzzy as I tried to figure out how even a tiny piece of reality could every be recorded properly.

I tried to focus myself again – but again my mind went blurry with the intensity of information around me.

Then a lady sat down beside me. We got chatting. It turned out that she loved ‘Simon’s Place’ too. I wondered if I should record our. She was not within the 1m2 in a physical sense, but her words and stories were , as they floated through the air.

I decided that I would try and record things in theme....starting with what I heard. I tried to map this to where I thought the sound originated from.....

I recorded what I saw, second by second....

I recorded the materials around me....

And the things that I sensed were present, but that I could not see....

In the end, I concluded that it is very difficult to map everything, even in only 1 m2

And

if in the future someone did manage to map re-ality, in four dimensions, in all its detail, I don’t know where they would have the space to store all the data.

The End