…in Las Vegas
Inspired by the studies and publications “Learning from Las Vegas” by Dennis Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, the students of MA Visual Communication embarked on the same journey, 53 years later. And since today’s technology makes it possible, the journey took a virtual form: we “drove” down the same—but utterly changed—section of Las Vegas Strip on Google Maps.
We started by exploring and collecting. Each student independently drove the defined route of the Las Vegas Strip and had a 360° view of it with the help of Google Street View. Being a purely visual travel, small, apparently unimportant details came to the foreground, and fundamentally shaped the experience of the journey. The students had their individual focus and collection of such details and views.
Based on this, the next step consisted in retelling elements, fragments, and stories of the virtual journey experience in an editorial form. How can I present observations and findings? Do I have to take the direct route from A to B, or can I go via C? How can I use other, more unusual language to describe a fact, to create a narrative? And then, how do I communicate the content within the layout in a page sequence? How much can I emphasize, bring in, and support the content through the design?
Inspired by the two “Learning from Las Vegas” publications, we tried to enter a different visual world, and developed new forms of visual or textual language for the narrative. The publication “… in Las Vegas” presents the students’ work in individual chapters created during the three-day workshop.
