I understand new ideas and theory best when I apply them to a set of real-world situations, and , Cambridge, is a rich place for the experiment.

Hanging Out, Reading Media

Central Square, like many urban centers, has had its ups and downs. A bustling retail district in the early part of the 20th century, the area saw a decline in business and real estate during the 1970s and 1980s. That, and perceptions

Holmes Block, 2000 credit: Natasha Freidus

of the area as unsafe, paved the way for a series of revitalization campaigns during the late 1980s and early 1990s, which resulted in the placement of much of the street lighting, benches, and bike racks I see now. It also led to the arrival of newer chain stores, among them Au Bon Pain in 1994, then Starbucks, and, in 2000, a Gap. The Holmes building at the corner of Magazine and Massachusetts Avenues went up in 2001. Change continues to arrive in Central Square, with the closing of Cezanne Café & Bakery and the apparent advancement of city plans to convert the lot of an old Shell station at Main Street and Massachusetts Avenue with a public park. Urban change brings people of different backgrounds and walks of life together in a densely populated space; the resulting culture can be vibrant and charged. I surmise that Central Square's human assortment helps bring about the kind of media cacophony I am witnessing.

The area is also an apt choice simply because I travel Massachusetts Avenue every day on my way to other places, especially MIT. I am a relatively new resident, having arrived in Central Square in August, 2003. I see the area with the eyes of a curious newcomer, and my newness (though not my curiosity) fades with each passing day. One day not so long ago, I took a camera with me and wandered around to see what I would find, part of an openness to ambiguity that I am trying to cultivate in other areas of my life as well. I have already described the rich media environment I found, one that in some ways is better displayed visually than verbally described. What I hope to do with this thesis is to assess, using a number of different methods and domains, what my camera and my eye capture over the course of the project. Of course, I'll need to design the process of information gathering and assess its implications. What does it mean to photograph something, especially something potentially ephemeral? I make decisions about what to take, what not to take, and how to frame the image.

Here Today	Where Tomorrow?

More than that, as the person wielding the camera, I must be sensitive to the effects of my own presence as a multiethnic woman who wanders around rather than resolutely passing through. Already, strangers have invited me to lunch, sold me a newsletter, handed me a flyer, whistled at me, and stared at me. While I don't want my research to be dominated by these encounters nor my record of them, they are real. But they are hardly unique. I am a flâneuse in a field historically dominated by male flâneurs. This is acknowledged by English professor and feminist scholar Deborah Epstein Nord:

For women observers of the urban scene... femaleness itself constitutes an object of curiosity and subverts her ability to act either as the all-seeing eye or the investigator of public life. To see without being seen, or to be seen without becoming a spectacle is rendered impossible. ²²

Concurrent with the information gathering, I will pursue answers to the core question driving my work, which is to identify the producers of some of Central Square's media and gain insight into their motivations for making their mark on the publicly accessible spaces. Local residents, municipal employees, corporate media and retail interests are the obvious contributors to the everyday cacophony. But the circumstances of their production and distribution, and their motivations for doing so, are inevitably varied. I expect to be surprised by what I find, which is why I cannot yet posit what I will do with the information.

On the other side of this is the media consumer, in the broadest sense of the word. What are the conditions of reception? Who walks quickly, or slowly? Who wants to read their environment, and who is immune to the voices around them. Does what people see register in any profound way? Does anyone act on what they see, and are they aware of the connection between their reception and their actions? Here, Simmel's description of the blasé urbanite could prove useful, as would James Carey's distinction between the transmission view of communication and the ritual view, the former being formed, interestingly, from "a metaphor of geography or transportation." ²³ I do intend to keep my focus on the producers, but the line separating producer from consumer won't always be so clear, and I expect that my research into production will give clues that point to the identities of some consumers as well.

Neither production nor consumption in Central Square are unconstrained: The cityscape, however free it might first appear to a law-abiding citizen, has many rules. Cambridge's municipal code clearly prohibits the defacement of property.²⁴ The array of plastic and metal news racks along well-trafficked areas is not happenstance; it is the product of a deliberate process between producers and municipal governance, specifically, John Trant, compliance officer for the City of Cambridge Department of Public Works.²⁵ Trant also oversees the removal of graffiti and postings from Cambridge's public areas. His database of warned and cited offenders will prove invaluable to me in my quest for interviews.²⁶ There are regulations for storefront signage, especially in the case of stores that wish to be eligible for city funds.²⁷ Even community bulletin boards, like the one hosted by 1369 Coffee House, have rules, though they are rules set by the manager of the private space, publicly accessed.

The more I learn about media producers, consumers, and the regulations ordering their interactions, the more I will learn about Central Square. As Guy Debord writes in his declarative montage style:

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among peoples, mediated by images.²⁸

If the producers and distributors of media are constantly garnishing city surfaces with their vast amounts of materials, then the urban space must be contested turf. Message-board postings like this one are explicit articulations of what such contestations can look like when they aren't frozen in print, but instead played out between parties, in person:

Memory Effect: Nixon Mural Painted Over

Last night around 9:15 pm, I was riding a #70 bus headed for Central Square, when I noticed about 25 young people picketing the Cambridge police headquarters on Western Avenue.

After getting off my bus and walking back to Western Avenue, I talked to the picketers. They told me that eight of their friends were inside the police station, having been arrested for "trespassing" on the site of an abandoned Shell gas station at Lafayette Square (Main Street at Mass. Ave.) The "trespassers" were planting trees and flowers in an attempt to beautify the site and turn it into an impromptu park.

Years ago I remember reading that Cambridge had bought this gas station in order to realign streets and create a public park. The city has obviously dragged its feet, and the site has become an eyesore. So why arrest citizens who are trying to do what the city has failed to do?²⁹