82 © Corbin Fraser
fig 52
MODEL 5: CITADEL HILL Left: Citadel Hill, Halifax, NS; right: paper model of Citadel Hill showing the existing topography in grey, and possible changes (mutations) to the topography in orange, white and yellow
5.3.1 Digital DNA / Strata In figure 50, route data from the test journey is separated into the above categories and assigned a stratified pattern, much like DNA banding. Multiple participants could generate enough data to begin observing certain patterns (as Nold observed in his biomapping projects). In this thesis’ simplified memorybased version, the generated visuals could be stored as hidden “digital DNA” to enact change above or below street level. At the corner where the test participant experienced a strong wind tunnel, for example (see figure 51), stored stratified data could generate heat exchange on the sidewalk immediately following the wind tunnel, as sensory compensation for the shock of the strong wind. 5.3.2 Malleable (Modular) Topographies In an informal phone interview in November 2011, artist Alison Creba described the theory underlying the Citymail project that she initiated in Halifax (see page 22). She notes that in the documentation of a relationship by an ephemeral form like a letter, this physical token of the relationship itself creates a greater perception of the physical dimensions of the world around us. Letters affect our emotional landscape, leading to an awareness of how the shapes of things affect us by blocking or revealing pathways. Along these same theoretical lines, the route data could also be stored as a set of modular instructions that could enact change on the landscape itself (figures 51 and 53). This is the most literal translation of biography into tangible form: that the layering and complexity of an everyday experience could, in fact, shift the shape of a city structure (in the example case, the shape of Citadel Hill in Halifax) to suit a personal desire or mood. This proposal for the storage of digital DNA has a rhetorical power that responds back to the initial thesis investigation into hidden and invisible spaces; in addition to intervening into existing spaces, the storage and harnessing of the collective patterning of citygoers could contribute to a fluid, mobile vision of a city that shifts not only with the passage of time (and with the growth or decline of population), but with individual and collective needs and narratives.