The urban landscape can define the identity of a community.
Fractal Worlds
Discovering fractal worlds through
psychogeographic experience in the community of Mação, Portugal.
The present work is an artistic research that discusses aspects of the natural and social habitat as manifested through a fractal model. Starting from the idea that a city, or a community, possesses a fractal identity, I have conducted a psychogeographic experiment in order to expose through four visual narratives the emotions of the fractal discovery of the city and community in Mação.
Therefore, in order to understand the spirit of a community, it is often necessary to pay more attention to the small things and details because these small parts of the whole sometimes form another world with its own stories and experiences, a world waiting to be discovered.
Therefore, in order to understand the spirit of a community, it is often necessary to pay more attention to the small things and details because these small parts of the whole sometimes form another world with its own stories and experiences, a world waiting to be discovered.
Sometimes we don't realize that we are part of a whole. The physical, biological and social universes represent unity, a unified living organism, just like the human being that incorporates a community of cells. From this holistic perspective, cells of the human body like the human communities, have a single purpose, to sustain the whole. I visualized the inhabited community as an anthropomorphic form because I was inspired by the poetic work of the Italian writer Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (2011) to perceive communities and cities in this way. Calvino builds the image of his cities with a fantastic imagination. Fractals belong to the science of fragmenting the whole. The more I look at any part of Nature or the City, the more I discover small worlds whose details reveal other details in a fractal manner. Following my research as a visual artist, I discovered these fractal qualities of details. Thus, moving from the whole to the detail and from the detail to the whole, I was carried away by the pleasure of discovering the everyday universe by experiencing this way of perception.
Visual narratives through the psychogeographic experience
Mação was a new environment for me. In 2019, for two months I carefully explored everything I encountered at every step. The more I analysed the details, the better I outlined the whole thing. Starting from the hypothesis that a psychogeographical exploration of the urban landscape can define the identity of a community, I have transposed the Flâneur's own experience into visual narratives, thus trying to reveal the spirit of the community of Mação. In my daily explorations, I was particularly drawn to anthropomorphic elements, which reminded me of Calvino's anthropomorphic approach. My visual artistic research reveals the emotions of discovery and my vision of the small fractal universes that make up parts of the identity of the Mação community, by presenting four visual narratives that materialize the psychogeographical experience of the place. The four visual narratives follow the fractal model.
The first one shows an overview of the City and its communion with Nature, and the second and the third one, presents the life inside the City and the action of Time on it, penetrating as deeply as possible into the structure of matter revealing micro-communities. With the fourth visual narrative, I will return to the big picture, this time presenting the City in celebration, full of colour, with its dynamics to integrate all fractal components. With this last narrative, I tried to recompose the whole image of the community of Mação.
The City and Nature
The whole universe is built on the laws of fractal geometry; life itself unfolds following similar patterns and we can best see these patterns in Nature.
For me, the first contact with Mação was a revelation of the “natural” fractal structure of the City and its community.
I perceived the City as a continuation of Nature, a twinning of human creation and of the natural environment.
Observing the cobbled streets bordered by inhabited or uninhabited buildings with surprising architectural details in which Nature cohabited, the gardens with olive trees, oranges and lemons, or the quiet clusters with beautiful wooden and stone pergolas on which the hanging plants displayed their flowers, it was difficult at times to distinguish where the city ended and where the true Nature began.
The forms of Time
The expanding Nature, the old walls and the sunlight introduced me to a fascinating world, enticing me to look for smaller and smaller details. The more I analysed the details, the better I outlined the whole thing. I set out in search of Time, capturing its manifestations in fractal images.
I searched for Time on the facades of buildings, watching the transformations of matter. I analysed how Nature regains her rights and discovered how the forms of Time can generate imaginary worlds. Even a simple crack in a wall in which a small plant has made its place and expanded to form a small community can have its own story. Perhaps the narrow streets where the walls of the ruins transformed into real art galleries were the ones that signalled this temporal-fractal perception to me. Nowhere else could I have better observed how Time erodes human action, as I had the opportunity to analyse the facades of the houses in Mação their resistance to Time.
Light, colour and texture
To understand the spirit of a community it is necessary to pay attention to every little thing. For two months, I observed the urban landscape and studied the action of light on the shapes, colours and textures of various architectural elements or natural forms. I watched as their volume was highlighted by the play of light and shadow. Sometimes I resorted to the imagination to enter into a visual dialogue with light. I let myself be guided by it through outdoor or indoor spaces, following the details of places that the light placed before me at the same time with the invitation to discover their stories. Under the action of light, static forms came to life. Exploring the environment I can say that I witnessed a real show in which the buildings, the flowers, the trees full of fruit, and the crumbling walls, became the stars of a certain moment of the day under the action of light. The multitude of shapes, colours and textures that complete the urban landscape of Mação, has been my guide in shaping the image of the community.
Community and Feast
The fractal structures of Nature, as well as of social life, take place in a cyclical form: the seasons follow the same cyclical form and the days and nights transform the everyday universe into a repetitive sequence of events. Festive moments unite the community every year, and this revival of the same moments is an occasion for celebration. The daily life of Mação itself took place in a fractal form, the quiet days alternated with moments of celebration full of dynamism and colour, where we could notice a communion of all the elements that make up the habitat: Nature, people and their homes. People decorated their homes during the festive moments; I noticed the presence of Nature in the decorations present on the facades of buildings and even on the streets, transforming the cobbled roads into colourful carpets of flowers and beautiful smelling plants. Like the groups of people who wore wonderful colourful clothes, the City puts on its own festive clothes animating the quiet streets.
The visual discourses that accompany my text represent a kaleidoscope of feelings and at the same time are materializations of some moments of joy and delight that I had during my psychogeographic experience in Mação, presented in a fractal form.
Exploring the urban environment of Mação was an intense spiritual experience that reconfigured my perception of the world around me and determined me to create an all-encompassing picture of everyday life in Mação.