Elements of the 1st Floor Male toilet

1) What is the size and shape of the space?
It is made up of one rectangle which is around 14ft long and 10ft wide. The front of the rectangle has a square where the toilet cubicles are. The flow of the room is blocked off by two running walls.

2) What is the quality of light (natural or otherwise)?
Electric lights are available at the command of the users of the toilet. they are mostly off during the day as the large windows, although frosted, allow a lot of natural light in.

3) What is the nature of sound in the space?
Good acoustics really, slightly block of flow due to patrician walls, but overall not bad. Sounds filter through the toilet but rarely out from it.

4) What is the material nature of the space (colour, surfaces etc)?
White walls. Quite dusty, like its natural state is dirty. Not so much from use or lack of cleaning, it just knows its a toilet. You get lots of designs to make people think that taking a shite in the toilet is the last thing you do. This toilet doesnt pander to any such phalisey. Its floors are scuffed and black and fading.

5) What is the conventional use of the space?
Defication, urination and the subsequent, yet worryingly optional, cleansing of the hands.

6) What histories are attached to the space?
Don't as of yet know.

It makes sense in a porcelin world type way. You get people writing things that they would never say aloud, you get folk starting a discussion with a stranger in the intimate surroundings of a bog, and further than tresspassing upon that privicacy with opinions or a well worded quip, they are asked to engage with the discussion.

Toilet Humour

To further the idea of anonymous creativity I went into the toilets.

Anonymity

"Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown."

I like the idea that in a space that is occupied by artists and creators that their are so many marks no one had laid claime to. I understand that its a a bit of a twee notion but there is something so sincere about the process that allows these marks to come into place. They are creations of those within a building that promotes creativity. They possess form and tone. But they are not themselves possessed. They are claimed and owned by no one, and unified by the motion of randomness that caused their creation, and thusly none of them share anything more than that.

Bona Vacantia

Bona vacantia (Latin for "ownerless goods") is a legal concept associated with property which does not have an owner.

Exploring the Barnes

The marks we don't mean to make whilst making marks we mean to make are made from marks we we meant to make.