Victoria

- Had kickoff class with Gabriel
- We were put into groups, only Nadja and I were the only people of the group

- I made a teams chat for the group for us to talk to the other half of the group
- Introduced ourselves to each other, and I made us a Whatsapp chat for more efficient communication

-We met online to talk about our ideas for the project and what type of spaces interested us.
- I suggested to the group that we should explore uncomfortable spaces. After sharing each others spaces, we arrived to the conclusion that the skatepark in Blaak West intimidated us as "non-skaters".

- New wave events are a way to experience the skatepark in this safe space, usually what is intimidating is the men skating who are experts, however at this event it was mostly women. Although it was more of a fun space I was still hesitant to perform tricks since this is a very foreign atmosphere for me. I gave myself the goal to try a small ramp, I tried three times and failed. If the goal was to try, I guess I was successful.

-We asked ourselves what it was about the Blaak West skatepark which made it so unapproachable. (location is sandwiched between too very busy streets, demographic are young adult to teen men, cliques of friends are there making it hard to go alone, implied dress code)
-Interesting how skater fashion is a subcategory of street fashion. There is an essence of non-conformity, however, in this small area, they have all conformed. Expression of individuality becomes uniform.

-The idea was to go to space and map people. This seemed like the most interesting feature to focus on considering all four of us are outsiders to that community.
-How we would do this is by looking at their "uniforms" and seeing what constructed them. It would be interesting to create some sort of archive from it. Furthermore, observe how it clashes with our own.

-Tried to go to the park on Friday but it was raining heavily which meant that nobody would be skating in the conditions.
-There was an added pressure to the project because we were already tight on time. We could not visit the site to conclude anything.
- Rest of the group sent pictures of empty skateparks.

- I updated my group about the experience at the new event. We then divided the photography tasks between the group members so that we could better our chances of collecting data.

Victoria -> pants
Nadja-> shirts
Nina-> shoes
Suzie -> hats+hair

-Again I wanted to meet with the group so I organized a team call for us to discuss the work.
-We met after Nina went to the park. It was nice to hear how she managed to collect data and what she observed.
- What was the most interesting to me hearing her talk about it was how she exposed herself to the uncomfortable.
- Her strategy of approaching people as well as her expectations.
- Then Nadja also joked how she was extremely nervous and thought of taking a shot of alcohol before going. So I think a future way of exploring this space is taking it from our experience.

- I tried to focus our conversation from that call to planning out the time we still had. As Well as the form. We had spoken about making a video, a collage or a poster with the archive. Alas, I shared the example of this instagram called "shit bloggers post".
- This instagram showcases images that are almost dientical posted by different "bloggers" and I thought it was an interesting form to also publish the archive of the skaters fashion.
- We created the instagram called "hewasaskaterb0y_"

- When posting on Instagram we thought of making the feed look like grouped outfits so we could try to match peoples clothings with eachothers.
- So we took turns posting three images at a time that were thematic.
- First three posts looked very similar but then became more random due to our archive not being big enough

- My day to collect data arrived at 6:40. Luckily no rain and active park. I was feeling very excited to have people there so that meant I could have something for the project. I think it was quite interesting to add another layer of stress due to not only having the deadline but also having to interact with the skater folk.
- I was scared I was not going to be very approachable since I was wearing a face mask and communicating in English. The more people I conversed with, the faster it went. Regardless, I photographed 23 people.

-Overall I think the instagram was VISually an interesting way to map the people we interacted with. Also because of the roulette posting technique, we still unexpectedly had outfits that worked.
I think we still needed to develop our concept further and deeper. Since we were more focused and wasted time on how to collect data and information.
-Also in the group there were different points of interest with the space and I think our results would be different if given more time to produce.
-Nonetheless, I am proud of us for getting out of our comfort zones and accomplishing some level of mapping, be it superficial or not.