This is quite often how I see the world, especially in shopping malls.
Things just get blurred. And I don't take in the detail.
Until this week, I thought that I was crazy.
Then came a blinding light.
Social scientist Monica Degen and geographers Caitlin DeSilvey and Gillian Rose have studied people's experience of a shopping mall in Milton Keynes, England. (God help them!)
In a recent paper, they wrote up their research and drew attention to what they call manoeuvring:
a broad surveying gaze which is used to move around objects, which acknowledges objects but does not engage in any depth with them.
In other words, focus-pulling on the move:
In this 'thin' or unfocused look, objects exist as part of a scene to be passed through, blurred together into indistinct background with little sense of form and detail. When one has a specific destination in mind, it is very easy to blank out the intervening content. A 'thicker', more engaged look appears when we approach the final destination of our walk and our eyes zoom in: a person we expect to meet, a specific shop, a desired object, a possible purchase perhaps - pull out from the stream of material stimuli.
All of this may be obvious to you.
But to me, it's near Biblical.
In effect, the potential qualities of a specific space are animated by how we engage with it.
This is another reason why places should be designed in ways that allow for accidental looks.
Why environmental phenomena like desire lines are so revealing:
And why, when you move through a landscape, it sometimes feels like you create your own space.
In other words, to steal a technique from long-distance swimming, you create your own water.
Image of Berling courtesy of dreasan. Desire path by Fin Fahey.
