VIRTUAL Barcelona

Abstract

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This contribution aims to highlight the value that artistic renderings of place can add to an understanding of how cultural practices influence the urban environment, on the premise that concentrated observation within the act of drawing can create new perceptual or tacit knowledge. Culture, in this sense, borrows from Raymond Williams’s definition as ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period, a group or humanity’ and that ‘culture is ordinary’. There are numerous 2d, 3d and digital graphic techniques used by urban scholars to visually represent spatial development and land-use, however most fail to capture the ‘sense of place’, now commonly used to describe the atmosphere and quality of the environment. These methods also often exclude the inhabitants of the space who are largely responsible for bringing about cultural transformation of the environment. The subjective and sensitive experience of seeing the city in person, amplified by seeing it through drawing, can result in a deeper understanding and produce a rich narrative description of the urban spatial condition. The study is contextualized in the heritage suburbs on the periphery of the historical inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa. These rapidly densifying, non-gentrified residential neighbourhoods attract many local rural and foreign immigrants due to low rental costs and proximity to basic services and job opportunities. Selected artworks will be analysed using a visual content analysis method, and an interview with the artist will be conducted to better understand the interpretative process used in this form of visual meaning-making.