The American West is an unusual landscape, a conflicting vision of Wilderness and Wasteland. Overlapping regions of the Arizona Sun Corridor and the Sonoran Desert include some of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in America with planned development in the most environmentally delicate, diverse, and uninhabitable zones.
The NO_PLACE is the currently unrecognised territory perceived as having no specific designation, program, or value. Environments within the NO_PLACE are culturally qualified as Wasteland, simultaneously containing all of the objective characteristics of Wilderness. Perspective determines ones understanding: Wilderness is a place, Wasteland is a NO_PLACE.
Wallace Stegner states, “No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments”.
With this inspiration the goal of this work is to create such legends in the NO_PLACE, to alter the perception of this magnificent landscape, and create a sense of fascination and cultural value.
The solution is to promote exploration, equipping the individual with proper methods and tools: Map, Collection, Legends, Exploratory Devices. The development of recording devices intends to produce subjective individual experiences and generate new data and knowledge of the No_Place. These devices allow the contemporary explorer to interact with the landscape, bringing the scale into perspective, uncovering qualities and details otherwise never revealed.
