Drawing from Perec’s means of describing ‘The Street’ from Species of Spaces and Other Places, I preceded my experiments by assigning myself a system of rules & constraints to help me begin to document my visits of the prayer room:
- attend one prayer a day, at different times
- record a voice note of the space/people/experience after leaving
- take a photo of the clock at each visit – documenting passage of time
- take a photo of the prayer rug you were at after each prayer – documenting changing positions in the space
- other photography limited out of respect for the space/behavioural norms
- one primary orientation to see & experience the room
- make note of the number of people in attendance
- make note of entry/exit times
Based on this, I kept a daily log for each of my visits in order to try and notice any patterns.
For the first experiment, I did an inventory of every item in the space, to get a sense of what objects are required to fit the purpose of the room, and what could be thought of as decorative, superfluous or secondary. The main idea of the experiment was to try and recreate the space with these objects, rather than simply taking photos of them.
For the second experiment, I started collecting patterns I was noticing around the room, specifically the arrangement of the prayer rugs, which seemed to change everyday, as well as my position within this arrangement.
Time is also a really significant aspect of the space; the clock on the wall in a way dictates the space’s usage, since people come in at the specific prayer times. Additionally, given that the prayer times are based on the lunar cycle, the prayer times shift very slightly everyday, along with the shortening of the days in general. Thus, a pattern started to emerge of the prayer times slowly moving closer to each other and getting earlier.
Lastly, the third experiment used the arrangement of the prayer rugs as a base to extend a grid across the floor area of the room, which I used to mark down the colours of the different objects and surfaces in the space. I then used this as a framework to map the movements of four different individuals (including myself) through pastel drawings, noting which part of the room they occupied and for how long. I then superimposed these onto each other to demonstrate the various patterns of movement across the space and what parts were more frequently used. Additionally, compiling the movements into 20 minute fragments, also done in pastel, began to paint a picture of a sort of “frequency” of these movements/usages.
Feedback:
- Try going to the same prayer on multiple days to notice if there’s a pattern
- The notion of time within the space & the specific angle towards Makkah are two important aspects that are worth further exploring
- Research the significance of the rugs’ patterns, colours etc
- Utilize the clock in some way
- Importance of time: time when you pray, time when you go to the prayer room, Islamic vs. Gregorian calendar
- Dogville -> precedent
- Constantly looking down as a way to experience the space