This is the main text for my Media 3 studio this year Ghosts and Space – Mediating Place. The book is written by Tim Cresswell. Interestingly before even beginning the first chapter the dedication “For Yi-Fu Tuan” already interested me. After a little research, I found out he was a humanistic geographer. Firstly, what even is a humanistic geographer or geography and since when did that exist?

The definition?

Humanistic Geography studies how humans interact with space and their physical and social environments. Most importantly though, humanistic geography stresses people’s perceptions, creativity, personal beliefs, and experiences in developing attitudes on their environments

Yi-Fu Tuan also has famously defined PLACE and SPACE in a new way.

• PLACE is defined as a particular part of space that can be occupied, unoccupied, real, or perceived (as is the case with mental maps).
• SPACE is defined as that which is occupied by an object’s volume.

Tim Cresswell sums it up in Yi-Fu Tuan’s definition as space to movement and place to pause – stops along the way.

As I have only read the first chapter introducing us to the definition of place which is debated across many disciplines. A brief mention of the term ‘placelessness’ also caught my attention, which is talked about more in chapter 3. It argues that because of our increasingly mobile world and globalisation we also lose a sense of place. This is will be interesting to explore as the course progresses.