Constructed Social Spaces -OR- How To Be Romantic and Get To Know Nature:
Living Rooms Edition
I have been working on this project I’m calling Tree Connection, which is mostly an installation exploring how people are social/romantic and how that might relate to trees, revolving around 3 themes: living room, state park visitor center, and tv game show. This blog post is an attempt to work through some of those themes. (and this one doesn’t have anything to do with nature)
I’ve been using these three spaces as three constructed social spaces, at different scales. Living rooms are at the smallest scale — living rooms are often occupied by small, intimate groups — people you know well, family members, lovers, etc. I often associate living rooms with awkward small talk, forced social time with family, or illicit teenage make-out sessions while pretending to watch television.
Living rooms:
Folks may use their living rooms not only to host guests, but also for their own solitary uses, as well as for sharing time with partners. The living room may provide opportunities for intimacy between dwellers and their partners, as well as between dwellers and their guests.
Screencap from Friends
Ikea re-made some iconic tv living rooms
Living rooms generally contain objects that are highly meaningful to their owners. It is suggested that objects in the living room are used to instigate and mediate contemplation about significant others (this journal). The objects become important parts of creating the social space — two couches facing each other allow for casual conversation; a coffee table provides a space to have snacks, or books for conversation starters; a lamp may set a certain type of mood. The general “vibe” and ability for socialization is mediated by the objects in the space.
More Ikea re-makes — The Simpsons
A typical Western living room may contain furnishings such as a sofa, chairs, coffee tables, bookshelves, electric lamps, rugs, or other furniture. Televisions are often a main fixture in American living rooms. These are all objects that serve to mediate a social experience in the space.
Plastic couch covers are a common denominator of 1960s and 1970s American family life and identity. I’m interested in these couch covers as a sign of a highly mediated social space, and then their connection to smaller, home-scale greenhouses.
Baby on a plastic couch
Plants in a plastic house
On a related note, I am putting on a game show event for this installation on Thursday, February 13th on Temple’s Ambler campus. Please come!!! More info here
