Preston Project...

Volunteering to take minutes for our group meetings was a) a good thing as I enjoyed doing it b) a bad thing I as ended up with the most obscure item from the list to look in to/research. It turned out to be really interesting though. I had to look in to Temporal Rhythms of the city. Even though I had an idea of what temporal and rhythm mean, I had no idea at first where to start.

My first thought was the passage of time and its rhythm over time, since Preston began. My first foray into the internet was met with page upon page with information about Temporal Rhythms of the brain…. Not quite what I wanted but I did learn a new fun fact: The Temporal area of the brain and skull is on the side of you head above your ears – so called because this is generally the first area that greys so showing the passage of time. :D Stef Bow: serving the public with useless bits of information since 1983!

But then I stumbled across a journal article that contained the term ‘Temporal Rhythms’ in reference to the ratio of time parents spend at work/with their children and how this varies with the seasons. This actually opened up my thinking to other rhythms or cycles including seasonal, night & day etc. Searching for ‘City Rhythms’ led me to a Wikipedia article that mentioned economy and religion.

Much better! I think studying the seasonal rhythms of a city is too long and term project for this one, but would be interesting – how the city changes visually through the year with the change in greenery and light and the volume of people making use of the outside areas and so on.

Daily rhythms would be interesting. The ebb and flow of people in and out and through Preston, the rhythms of different shops and businesses opening and closing, the different (yet constant) sources of light.

We’ll see.