Splace

As I began reading the assigned sections, I have to admit that the governor from Oakland’s quote made almost no sense to me upon my first reading. I can’t say that I understand it completely now but I do think that I’ve been able to glean some sort of new meaning from it. The discussion of space versus place raged on in the reading and although I was presented with several new and interesting insights on what the relationship between the two was, I can’t say I agree with it completely. I think that because I love to create, my views on what space and place are slightly skewed. I think my preconceived notions about what the two are actually influenced how I read the selections. Basically, I see space as just that: space. To me, space is like a blank canvas. It exists but it’s waiting to be populated and used. As the spaced begins to be inhabited, I believe this gives it greater potential for life experiences to occur in that space. But the moment at which space becomes a place is when that particular unit of space houses an event that means something to somebody. Take a house for example. It’s more or less a neatly connected series of wood with insulation. It’s hardly a place, it’s just taking up space. However, once a family moves in and begins to have memories (ie where Dad accidentally stepped on the overturned shower drain cover and had to get stitches or where the baby drew on the wall) then it becomes a place. All place is space but not all space is place in other words and all space has potential to become place. In the article about China town, I saw that place was kind of the focus and that the experiences that one had in the specific space transformed it into a place. China town is a place because we know that people inhabit it and experience real life within its boundaries. But before they settled in that particular plot, was it anything more than just a place? Here’s a question that’s interesting to me: Does a location become more and more place-y over time? Imagine the evolution of a plot. This plot gets bought up and a family store is built upon it. After it’s built, the family has several meaningful experiences with it. A son inherits it and sells it to another owner. This owner is an extortionist and imports indentured servants, who each have their own experiences which in turn makes a new sense of place for each of them. So can ‘place’ evolve? It seems to me almost like it’s a living entity, a character to a certain degree with a past, potential for improvement and something that the audience can identify with. I look at a lot of social media like this. Youtube or facebook is essentially just memory waiting to be filled with data which can be interpreted to say something. These sites can evolve in their own way and help show us something about them and about ourselves.