By Julie Funk, XDM MA Graduate.
In Canada, “A greyfield classification is applied to shopping malls with less than CDN $150 in sales per square foot [per year] and a vacancy rate of at least 10-15% (Parlette and Cowen 2011). A greyfield indicates a dead space. An infrastructure void of life. Inspired by the dead mall phenomenon of the twentieth century, this project is interested in practices of spatial interaction that “misuse” or subvert the intent of the space’s original design.
Greyfield/Brightfield asks the user to engage critically with their everyday spacial practices. Using Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory from The Production of Space, this project situaties itself at the disjuncture between representational space (the ideological or symbolic), represented space (the engineered and designed), and spatial practice (the everyday use of space). Users are asked to engage with the digital display, with their movements being used to control the color saturation of the screen, as a way to think about how the interface changes the way they interact with the space.