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Gisela Garrett

Gisela Garrett

FLOOR PLANS

In a series of case studies, I asked participants to attend four distinct events that all took place in some kind of temporary environment. Immediately after each event, I asked the participants to draw a floor plan of the event space, all of which are exhibited here. I originally expected these floor plans to be a physical manifestation of each participant's cognitive map -- an expression of subjective spatial experience that could be studied objectively. I ultimately realized how blurry the lines can be between the subjective and the objective, and between art and science. Existing theory has taught me how the function of our spatial representation systems -- being "used by the human memory system to represent the locations of objects in the environment" (Shelton and McNamara 275) -- is simple enough, but the ways that this is achieved remain fascinatingly complex. These floor plans, and this project, are intended to shed additional light on this persisting puzzle of spatial cognition.