Notifications Board: McMillan Hall Taskscape
This is the Notifications Board on the second floor of McMillan Hall. Students and teachers alike post information and important events that will occur on campus or even around St. Louis in the upcoming weeks. The notifications board is a small part of the “taskscape” made up by McMillan Hall, Wash U campus, and even St. Louis as a whole. The terminology “taskscape” was coined by social anthropologist Tim Ingold, and is defined as a “socially constructed space of human activity that incorporates related activities”1. For instance, on the board is a poster about an upcoming photography contest in the area. While it may appear at first to be only a piece of paper, it represents much more than that. Someone could walk by the notifications board, and be drawn to the idea of taking photos and submitting them into the contest. And then they will go out into the community, take photos of major monuments or people around them, and then come together with other photographers at the location of the contest. So while it is a piece of paper, it represents the interaction of people who share a similar interest. Every one of these flyers shows how people in the community are interacting with one another, often for a common purpose. Further, this notifications board represents the taskscape of the larger Wash U community because it shows where people will be going together and what they will be doing. Finally, McMillan Hall was originally the women’s dormitory and retained that purpose until the 1960’s. The McMillan Hall "taskscape" has changed dramatically since the early 1900’s, as interactions that take place in academics buildings vary greatly from the human interactions found in a college dormitory.