Zarbscape

Implicit or explicit, rhythm is very much integrated into our daily life. In this regard, visual rhythm, too, is quite essential for us and the patterns we see all around us are probably the most important part of our visual atmosphere which creates the sense of visual rhythm.

Although some patterns we come across, like the pattern on the wall covering or the table cloth that we choose to decorate our living spaces, or the patterns in an art work that we engage with, create a more or less conscious visual experience, most of the visual patterns in our lives are neither of our choice nor within our conscious perception. The ways the surfaces in our environments are covered with certain patterns are mostly out of our control, moreover in many cases, we do not pay much attention to them. In addition, not the visual aspect but other concerns like the economic, structural or functional ones take precedence in their appearance or construction. For instance the flooring in closed spaces, the pavement designs, the road lines all come in certain patterns and hence create a sense of visual rhythm for us, but we hardly ever notice them. Not all people, for example, could tell what the pattern of the tiles covering their bathroom floor looks like from their memory, although it is a place they visit a couple of times every day.

Hence, the patterns are everywhere, we live within them, we glide through them, we walk on them every single day and they are a part of our lives. However, we hardly notice or make much of a connection with them. Zarbscape intends to make visible what is unnoticed by showing the world "through the window of" those patterns.

The name of the work is a compound made with "zarb" and "scape". “Zarb” is a concept related to musical rhythm. In the Persian Classical Music, it is the name of the main and most important percussion instrument. Similarly, transformed to "Darb" in the Turkish language, it denotes each of the strokes in the rhythmic cycles, or the "usul"s of Turkish Classical Music. The second part of the compound word, "scape" is almost self-explanatory. The work, after all, intends to show the “rhythmic-scape” within the landscape, the city-scape or even the home-scape.

This idea of making the patterns in daily life visible can be implemented in various ways and mediums. In this implementation of the project, the preferred method was a two-dimensional photo story and the medium was print. For this, I started by taking five photographs of some monuments or places which I thought would be well known to the audience. This familiarity with the subject matter of the photographs was important since it would be much easier for the audience to engage with the work if there was something in the photographs they could relate to immediately. The expected audience was members of Bilkent community, especially from the Communication and Design and Graphic Design departments. Three commonalities between them were Ankara, Bilkent and to a lesser degree METU. Therefore, the photographs were chosen to be images either iconic of or reminder of these places.

First one was the photograph of the statue located at the meeting point of Sakarya Street and the Ataturk Boulevard, one of the central locations which almost everyone living in Ankara has gone through a couple of times in their lives. The second one was the Baraka building in the METU campus. I was guessing that the most people who would come to see the exhibition would have some connection with METU and this small structure is an iconic part of METU campus. The Third one is the bus stop near the dormitories in the central campus of Bilkent. Rather than being iconic, this place has a functional importance. Some of them taking busses to go to the downtown from here, this place would establish a spatial and mental connection between Bilkent and Ankara for our expected audience members. Fourth one was one of the iconic city monuments which gained a renewed importance and recognition due to unfortunate mine "accidents" which happened in 2014: the miner statue located at the Kültür, or as it is more widely known, Olgunlar street. And the last photo was taken in another one of Ankara's iconic places, which recently gained a different meaning: Kuğulu Park. Targeted by the mayor in the recent years and saved from partial destruction by the people of Ankara who diligently protected it at that time, Kuğulu Park has reinforced its status of being a place with which the residents of Ankara identify themselves by becoming one of the central locations of the Gezi movement in the city. Apart from that, being my favorite public place to spend my time in Ankara, it also has some individual self-reflexive value for me.

Along with making it easier for the audience to engage with the work, the familiarity with the locations in the photographs was a key feature also because the project, as stated above, intends to make visible that which they walk through in their daily lives but hardly ever see. Thus, the locations had to be places which the audience members had supposedly been before. Not only this, but also the locations had to have some distinctive, conspicuous pattern in their surroundings. This also dictated the angle and framing of the photographs: those patterns had to be clearly visible in them. This part, indeed, proved the most difficult part of the work: finding iconic or familiar places with conspicuous patterns around them and taking photographs which were both esthetically appealing and also somehow displaying those patterns.

Last part of the implementation was superimposing the patterns in the images onto the photographs. This brought in the second, the vertical dimension of the photo-story. At the top photo, the pattern consisted only of thin lines and in the following four photos, with the lines getting thicker and thicker, patterns, as intended them to be, became more and more visible. The photographic image in each repetition became more compartmentalized with smaller and smaller "window"s or patches of it remaining. 

The horizontal ordering of the photos was also done according to the patterns. The pattern with the most straight edges and pointed corners was chosen to be the first one and pattern of each photo to the right became more round or curvy, ending at the last photo with a totally circular one.

The audience reaction at the exhibition proved that the choices made about the locations were for the most part corroborated. The "entry point" or the "initial connection" for many a people who beheld the work was one of the photographed locations. In several incidents, the first reaction was "oh, isn't his place...?". This also helped carrying them to the second level of appreciation process: curiosity. They knew something about what they had in front of them, but they did not know the entire story. What they knew about it, however, compelled them to find out what was not manifest readily. They did not know why the photographs were incised with ever more thickening lines; they did not know what those lines and the patterns formed by those lines meant. This made them curious and attracted many either to come closer to find a clue or approach me to ask.

Since I believe that discovery, and the joy that comes with it is an essential part of art appreciation, and also since I am a firm believer of the principle that learning and exploration is an individual experience, I would prefer the audience members to find out the pattern-photo connection all by themselves without feeling any need to ask me. However, I accept that it was not as easy to make the connection at first. In this regard, I think it would help If I included some sort of written statement, may be the first three paragraphs of this very text, available to them near the work so that they could make all the connections and find all the clues, all and only by themselves.

Finally, as I said before, a two dimensional photo-story is only one of the ways through which the basic idea of Zarbscape can be implemented. An animation with a very similar approach could be another idea. This time, after a full image fades into the frame from white, while zooming in the image to a part of it with the pattern, the lines of the pattern would emerge on the image, just like in the photographs in the printed implementation, and they could become thicker and thicker, covering, at the end the entire surface and making the frame pure white upon which the next image fades in. This could be played in an endless loop. Another idea could be connecting not the visual but the auditory signs with the patterns. This time, again in an animation, certain patterns from places with distinctive auditory signs would appear visually on the screen while accompanied by the audios recorded at those places. Especially, public transport units with announcements and crowd noises could be a good candidate for this kind of approach.