welcome

Augé, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso, 1995.

Choy, Timothy K. Ecologies of Comparison: An Ethnography of Endangerment in Hong Kong. Duke University Press, 2011.

Davies, Jane. “Travelling Through Liminal Non-Places: Gozitan Buses as a Non- Place for Socializing.” OMERTAA: Journal of Applied Anthropology , 2019, http://www.omertaa.org/archive/omertaa0083.pdf. Accessed 2019.

Helmreich, Stefan. “An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, Submarine Cyborgs, and Transductive Ethnography.” American Ethnologist , vol. 34, no. 4, Nov. 2007, pp. 621–641., Accessed 3 Dec. 2021.

This project began as an ethnographic study of the City of Davis Unitrans Bus Transit System. In the study, I focused on how the bus itself functions as a moving non-place (a place/space with no inherent meaning or identity) that traverses several identifiable places. While this project was interesting, I found the bus to be rather restrictive when it came to artistic expression. I also believed that such an idea was too ambitious for the scope of this portfolio. Therefore I decided to switch gears and instead investigate solely on non-places in a multi-media project.

In this project, I focus on how individuals create meaning in non-places. I am focusing on these places in particular:
The maze-like hallways that occupy the social sciences and humanities building at UC Davis, the abandoned remains of former Fourth & Sea on Fourth Street in Petaluma, California, and the empty parking lots and catwalk around East Washington Place in Petaluma, California; deathstar, abandoned, and catwalk respectively.

Nostalgia & Endangerment

Timothy Choy's chapter "endangerment" from the book ecologies of comparisons delves into the concept of endangerment, particularly on how it relates to the declining pink dolphin population in Hong Kong and the village of Tai O. I wanted to focus on salvaging nostalgia and its role in endangerment.

Choy ponders about nostalgia and its implications for endangerment in the following quote: "For what is endangerment if not an anticipatory nostalgia? It
figures a lonely Old, threatened by the New. The threat to Tai O’s present is
glossed as a potential loss of Hong Kong’s past. Endangerment invokes a need to protect Hong Kong’s present from the future. The past is to be protected from the present, while the present is to be protected from the future;
both are to be sheltered from the movement of history. $is is a nostalgia
that is almost impossible to wash onesel! clean of. It saturates the senses" (Choy 2011:38).

I will attempt to examine how nostalgia and the sense of endangerment through the lenses that Choy provides. The abandoned building will be the primary site in which I examine how the endangerment of local restaurants amid the covid-19 pandemic has triggered nostalgia for the now gone fourth & sea.

Non-places

a term developed by anthropologist Marc Augé, exhibits liminal characteristics. Augé describes non-places in the following manner: "Spaces which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate the earlier places: instead these are listed, clasffied, promoted to the status of ‘places of memory’, and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position […] non-places are the real measure of our time; one that could be quanitified – with aid of a few conversion between area, volume and distance” (Augé 78-9).
In simpler terms, non-places are insignificant spaces that sit in-between places with significance. The most prominent example includes transportation hubs (such as bus stops, airports, train stations), which only serve to take individuals to their final destination, a place with significance and identity.

Liminality

Much of my inspiration for this project began after reading an article by Jane Davies. In their article, they describe the buses of Gozo, Malta as liminal spaces that the residents of Gozo would inhabit that make meaning of said space.

The concept of liminality goes back to Arnold van Gennep's 1909 book The Rites of Passage. Gennep talks of liminality in the context of rites of passage, which are periods of one's life in-between the lack of status displayed during childhood and the status given in adulthood; liminality is transitionary.

The concept of liminality later became a concept with general usages, which can be used to describe a subject with the charactieristic/attribute of transitionary or in-betweenness. In the case of spaces, liminal spaces are transitionary spaces.

We are Now Leaving the Station

Now that we've laid down our mission and the concepts, we are now ready to embark on our journey through some non-places. remember: navi is the landing page, which also serves as the main hub that will transport you to each non-place. simply click on the place you want to go to, and once you want to pick a new place, click on navi at the bottom of the page to transport back to the hub. safe travels!

Transduction

Ethnographer Stefan Helmreich's "an anthropologist underwater" explores how the immersion of being underwater is created through the transduction of soundscapes and vibrations. Transducing, as helmreich says, is "converting,transmuting—sound from the medium of water into that of air, and about what an anthropology of such transduced
sensing can make explicit about the conditions that permit immersion (and, I maintain, that create senses of presence as such), whether people speak of immersing themselves in water, sound, or the medium of culture" (helmreich 2007).

I will be using the concept of transduction to explain how non-places evoke certain sensations and feelings through immersion; noises such as car passing back, or the lack of noise, can create a sense of immersion in a non-place. I will also be implementing playlists consisting of ambient music to further employ immersion.

This portfolio's is intended to be an immersive experience through which the viewer can catch a glimpse of what it feels like to travel through these non-places. The immersion within this portfolio is crafted via the multi-media content occupying each non-place such as photography, music, notes, and poetry. All of the content in this portfolio is meant to reflect the concept of non-places, however the anthropological concepts of liminality, transduction, and nostalgia will also be covered. The web design is curated specifically to convey the feeling as those individuals passing through one place to another.

navi
- the landing page, which also serves as the main station that will transport you to each non-place. simply click on the non-place you want to go to. once you are ready to travel to the next non-place, click on navi at the top left or bottom of the page to transport back to the hub. from there, you can select a new non-place to visit.
welcome center
- you're already here dummy! but just to clarify, the welcome center provides information on the essentials, such as the project introduction, ethnographic concepts and definitions, a key/map for navigating the portfolio, and a references page.
deathstar, abandoned, and catwalk
- these are our three non-places. here you will find photos, music, poetry, and notes that document these non-places and what they are about. on the top, you can either travel to the next place, or use navi to head back to the transport hub.