The explorations of my project at racetrack playa involve speculative hypotheses about the functionality of Suburbia as a navigational interface. The processes of navigation subsequently include various forms of cultural computation that are defined by existing control structures. Edwin Hutchins' book, Cognition in the Wild, has provided a significant theoretical framework through which I aim to interpret Suburbia as a cultural space for computation and navigation. Suburbigation, in the physical realization of the project, uses the desert landscape of racetrack playa to foreground and denaturalize the ways in which Suburbia as a cultural interface mediates ways of ideological and physical navigation through both individual and social structures of cognition.

Navigation, as defined by Hutchins, revolves around answering the foundational question of “Where am I?” (Hutchins, 12). Along with the establishment of positions in space, navigation also involves directed movements through that space (Hutchins, 49). Essential to the functionality of navigational practices are the representational depictions of space, and the negotiation of that space (Hutchins, 12). In his studies on surface ship navigation, Hutchins compares various cultural differences when creating interpretive and representational frameworks for answering the questions of navigation (Hutchins, 50). These representational frameworks subsequently channel the ways through which navigation and space are understood (Hutchins, 50). Thus an interpretive interface is created through physical and ideological maps, directing the ways in which a cultural group carries out their navigational experiences.

In the same way, this notion of navigation can be applied to suburban culture. Suburbia, as a form of organized settlement, has formed a cultural interface of its own as it has grown and expanded since its American origins in the 1930’s. Boosted by post-war government housing contracts and the baby boom, an American subculture was created through tract housing, government subsidies, and the post WWII desire of Americans to lead a ‘normal’ life (Friedman, 31). Suburbia as a physical interface for navigation consists of various architectural and functional control structures that serve to standardize space negotiation and channel the ways in which individuals and communities exist in the suburban space. Differing from the compacted and dense spaces of urban environments, and from the open and isolated space layouts of rural living, suburbia exists in the consolidation of both urban and rural design. In their writings on suburban sprawl, Matthew J. Lindstrom and Hugh Bartling offer that suburban development can be characterized by “restrictive zoning, automobile-centered transportation, [and] a preponderance of single-family residences on large lots” (Lindstrom, xi). Lindstrom and Bartling subsequently speculate on the social and ideological implications of the suburban space, proposing that the suburban interface functions as a representational material environment that reflects and propagates certain political and cultural perspectives (Lindstrom, 1). These perspectives stem from the origins of a largely Caucasian middle class that inhabited the suburban space during its conception ( Lindstrom, 1). In this way, suburbia exists as a propagation of a particular interpretation of the ‘American Dream’; birthed from a commercial and capitalistic parentage.

In answering the questions of “Where am I?” and “How do I get from here to there?”, suburbia offers a unique cultural interpretation of life, success, identity, and purpose. Cultural navigation, as seen through the suburban interface, is therefore engaged with an identity revolving around consumption and ownership, where the suburban home acts as a centralized storage space in which individuals and family units seeks to increase their material possessions as a reflection of identity and success. Suburbia answers the question of “Where am I?” with the promise of the realized ‘American Dream’ where one possesses the ideal home, family, television and motor vehicle. The question of “How do I get from here to there?” is translated to navigating the cultural path for success. Suburban success consequently revolves around the further acquisition of possession and space. Capitalism and commercialism provide the ideological framework for cultural navigation and computation. Thus the interpretative space of suburbia becomes centered on the individual unit in the pursuit to consume and own as a means for success and identification.

Also important to the cultural space of suburbia is Hutchins interpretation of cognition as more than just an individual process, but rather a social and communal collaboration (Hutchins, xiii). The ideologies of suburbia do not merely exist within the individual unit, but rather, they are filtered and propagated through the working social cognition of the suburban culture as a whole. Just as navigation involves more than an isolated unit, the social cognition of suburbia serve as both a network of units for individual navigation and also as a community of working parts that cognitively combine towards group computation and navigation. In reference to ship navigation, Hutchins deconstructs the components of a large ship’s social organization structure (Hutchins, 175). Cognition, computation, and navigation are thus seen through the larger computational system of team performance (Hutchins, 175). In the same way, suburban social organization offers structures of cooperation and collaboration that begin with the family unit, and branch out into the ways in which neighbors and neighborhoods interact with each other.

These hypotheses and speculations on the interpretive space of suburbia provide a framework for further research and analysis of the suburban cultural landscape. The implications of the suburban interface on American culture and cognition also remain to be further explicated. Suburbia as a navigational interface thus offers innumerous faucets for further pursuits of cultural excavation.

The cognitive and computational elements of suburban navigation are foregrounded through the visual construction of Suburbigation. Suburbigation, the physical realization of my hypothesis and research on suburbia as an interpretive space, uses the barren landscape of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley as a context in which the representational qualities of suburban space can be denaturalized. Far from embodying the entire significance of suburbia’s cultural computation, my on site installation/performance works with the limitations of the particular space in order to emphasize the ways in which suburbia operates as an culturally interpretive framework for space and space negotiation.

Essential to the significance of my installation/performance piece are the rules and regulations of Death Valley National Park, and more specifically those of Racetrack Playa that pertain to visitor conduct while on the premises. Essentially, the space of Racetrack Playa can only operate as a tourist attraction where tourists act as careful and respectful observers. Neither physically nor interpretively can the Playa be used for any means outside of sightseeing and tourism. Racetrack Playa rules and regulations act as both physical and interpretive restrictions for the use of the playa’s material and ideological space.

Operating under these restrictions, my concept for Suburbigation involves the interpretation of Racetrack Playa as a tourist space for suburban vacationers. Because suburban culture and environments provide a framework through which communities and individuals interpret, navigate, and computate within culture and space, Suburbigation thus is the implementation of this cultural interface onto the space of Racetrack Playa. The Playa, traditionally known for its ‘mysterious sliding rocks’, is a popular tourist attraction amidst the barrage of breath taking landscapes in Death Valley National Park. Following the prompt to reinterpret the space of Racetrack Playa, Suburbigation utilizes the cultural representations of suburbia to recreate and renegotiate the space of the playa into a sunbathing spot for suburban vacationers. The physical and ideological space of the playa is thus transformed into luxury and recreation. This particular form of space negotiation reflects the ways in which suburban culture is underlined by values of recreational time and architecture typified by televisions, pools, and station wagons. The sunbathers reflect a sort of imperialistic encroachment upon the desert landscape, appropriating the space of the playa for their own forms of consumption. Even the layout of the sunbathing suburbanites reflects the reoccurring patterns of standardization in tract housing.

Aesthetically, the choice to costume the suburban vacationers in 60’s like beach attire is significant in creating a sort of homage to a time period where suburbia was a burgeoning and promising cultural trend. The contrast between the barren desert and the colorful suburbanites creates a provocative analytical space for the notions of suburban culture and interface.

Rather than creating a non-site where elements from the outside world are brought into the gallery space, Suburbigation appropriates Racetrack Playa as a different sort of analytical and critical ‘gallery’ that serves to display and foreground the representational qualities of suburban life. This grafting of suburbia onto the space of Racetrack Playa thus functions as a decontextualization of the suburban space in order to realize the computational and navigational qualities of the suburban cultural interface.

Grace Hwa.June:2004.ghwa@ucsd.edu