Neighborhood Narratives London

Last week, I was really impressed with the GLobe theater. The theater has played an important role in the history and development of the British theater and most of all, it was home to exhibitions of the works of Billy Shakespeare. The one aspect of the Globe that really fascinated me was the spacial environment of the theater. Three thousand spectators was the norm for Shakespeare’s plays and in a relatively small theater, this large amount of people could have a major effect on the actors because they were just footsteps away from the crowd.

The concept of traditional and non – traditional narrative was definitely on display throughout the course of the day last week, in that a traditional narrative like one of Shakespeare’s plays, required people to physically travel to a theater and sit in their seats for over 3 hours and watch a performance. I would say that our narrative was spacious, in that viewers from different parts of the world will be able to view it without much effort and our narrative was comprised out of a wide variety of topics and locations.

I liked how we used the plague of cholera to expose the importance of networking and how networks are communicated. In this case it was communicated by a central location: the dreadful water pump. The idea of networking was tied together with mapping very nicely, in that mapping and networking come from the same family of concepts. For example, people map their way through cities when sightseeing to find their way and also to find the best and most meaningful locations possible. Networking is a term commonly used in the job field and business world, commonly known as the practice of getting to know people that know people that can help you in some way. So both ideas can be interwined in that when you are networking in the business world, you are actually mapping your way through and instead of mapping your way through the city, you are networking your way in and around the city.

I really liked the Cradle to the Grave exhibit and I feel like it really represented the notion of a “Changing World.” I liked the way the exhibit was presented, using a wide variety of different pills and family photographs to display the effort people make to live longer and the many different changes people undergo at different stages of their life.