A Place to Explore Film December 2014 Film+Architecture Studio School of Architecture Carnegie Mellon University
Ashley Wong
The project is an exploration of architecture and of film. Of architecture, since there is no predetermined sequence of moving through the building. There are multiple ways to enter and multiple paths to discover throughout. The user must explore the architecture to experience it. The project is an exploration of film, because it uses spatial interpretations of film-making techniques to guide audiences to critically think about what they are watching. To that end, each space has a filmic analogy and a critical thinking aim. The user explores film to watch it. The investigation of both architecture and film reengages the body and revives active thought in movie-watching. The categories of critical thinking were taken from variations of Bloom’s taxonomy of fundamental educational objectives.* This project uses perception, observation, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Perception is set in a combination theater and editing suite, with the filmic analogy of resolution. Observation takes place in another theater, with the analogy of zoom and focus. Analysis takes place in a contemplative passageway, with the analogy of panorama and duration. Synthesis takes place in an interactive passageway, with the analogy of montage. Evaluation is in a jungle gym with the goal of conversation. These are determined, keeping in mind the fluidity between “levels” of thought and acknowledging that users will use all of those categories in some degree in every space.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom’s_taxonomy http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/03/new-blooms-taxonomy-planning-kit-for.html Anderson, Lorin W, and Krathwohl, David R, A Taxonomy For Learning, Teaching, And Assessing. Allyn & Bacon, 2000. Print. Simpson, Elizabeth J. (1966). “The classification of educational objectives: Psychomotor domain”. Illinois Journal of Home Economics 10 (4): 110–144. According to Anderson, et al. the revised categories of thought from lower-order objectives to higher are: remembering, understanding, analysis, application, evaluation, and creation. Using an online guide for related objectives in each category, I reinterpreted the heirarchy as: observation, comprehension. analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Because there is a heavy focus on engagement of the body in my project, I also looked to psychomotor objectives that were developed as an addition to the original Bloom’s Taxonomy from Simpson. The most basic psychomotor objective, perception, substituted the comprehension category, and resulted in critical thinking objectives that I could use as a guide for the project’s program.
PERCEPTION || RESOLUTION THEATER
OBSERVATION || ZOOM + FOCUS THEATER
ANALYSIS || DURATION CORRIDOR
SYNTHESIS || MONTAGE CORRIDOR
CONVERSATION CLIMBING
VERTICAL CIRCULATION Mass model
Flowchart of possible sequences of movement through building
The project begins with collaboration between Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Maryland Film Festival. In the Station North Arts and Entertainment district of Baltimore, a building nearly a hundred years old is being renovated as of autumn 2014, a design starring the Johns Hopkins-MICA Film Center. Beginning as a car dealership in 1915, the building was repurposed in the 30s as a theater, divided into bank offices in the 50s, and gradually it fell into dilapidation. Now, the transformation into a film center on the second floor—complete with classrooms, editing suites, sound stages, etc.—comes with plans for a location for the Baltimore Jewelry Center and two restaurants on the ground floor. This is in line with a series of arts-focused developments in the area designed to inject creative opportunities into the neighborhood, enhancing the lives of residents. In that spirit, this studio project adds an intervention on the renovation site to further connect the locals with works of the two institutions, whose main campuses are just outside the neighborhood. This proposal attempts to counter the conclusion that the Frankfurt School came to in the 1930s: that movies are standardized works that spread only the dominant ideology, numbing the minds of consumers and stifling their human potential for creativity. Thus the goal is to attract the consumers of the jewelry center shop and of the restaurants and passersby from the streets—and to encourage them to think critically in order to create as well as consume the works made by the Film Center.
background image from google.com/maps
Film Center Site
Station North district
Site map
Pittsburgh’s 33rd Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh showcased works by Sight Unseen, a Baltimore-based filmmakers collective, including a minute-long film by Jimmy Joe Roche titled BEAM SPLITTER. The film comprised a continually distorted series of images, possibly of a man with scraggly hair holding something that may be an instrument or may be a weapon. Our studio previously had established that resolution of a distorted image, particularly of an anamorphic projection, evoked a sense of triumph and delight; however, the clear images that momentarily appear in BEAM SPLITTER are still ambiguous and brief enough to provoke more unease than the flowing distortions did. Thus, resolution and distortion revealed their power in film. In the RESOLUTION THEATER, an audience can choose the resolution of their image of filmmakers. Speaking to the directors of Sight Unseen brought up the fact that a large portion, possibly a majority, of Baltimore’s avant-garde filmmakers insist on a ‘traditional’ theater for their audiences: that viewers must sit still as they watch the entire duration of the film on a single screen with full sound. This theater affords them all those arrangements, but also gives a chance to see into editing suites. The stepped surface that divides the audience from the editors is translucent with occasional transparent or opaque patches. The audiences can climb down and sit on this surface, so how they choose to move through the theater determines how they hide from, reveal to, or peek at the editors and what they are working on. Just as the audience can keep in mind the filmmakers as they watch movies, filmmakers are reminded of the consumers of their works.
background image from BEAM SPLITTER by Jimmy Joe Roche, 2011, Digital, black and white & color, sound, 1 min
PERCEPTION || RESOLUTION Sight: Full view of screen; clear-translucent-transparent views of editing suites Sound: Full, surround sound Movement: Climbing down steps and platforms to seats Curated: Film and sound playing User-controlled: Seating location and views to editing suites
RESOLUTION: View of screen from inside editing suites on ground floor; audience visible on either side of translucent glass
Another film from Sight Unseen is used to demonstrate the purpose of the second theater. Alan Resnick’s 5 1/2 minutelong film 8===>~~~~( . )( . ) comprised a sequence of shots of a man in a virtual space communicating with someone who appears to be the controller of the environment he inhabits. The screen is broken down into discrete quadrants: a recording of the man’s face in one corner, his typed messages to the controller in another, and a chatroom like display of the virtual conversation in another. The chat is the only dialogue in the film; there is no speech. While the virtual environments the man experiences are invisible to the viewer (all we can see is the man wearing motion-capture dots in front of a green screen), what seems to be the sounds he hears is audible the audience. The sound adds another layer of understanding on the typed conversation to make up for the invisiblity of the man’s experience. Were one to only focus on a particular section of the screen, the film would still tell a complete story, but the interpretation and comprehension of the work would change. The ZOOM THEATER highlights the opportunities to read a film differently when only viewing certain portions of the entire screen. Views are deliberately obscured and revealed in different parts of the theater. Point-source speakers are strategically located (and are movable by curators) to produce bubbles of sound, different soundtracks for each speaker, that fade when moving away from the privileged positions. Depending on where the audience chooses to position themselves and how long they stay in that particular spot, they can get a very different experience of the same film. The theater prioritizes the reengagement of the body in the movie-watching experience and encourages the audience to actively examine the value of their position and its contingent view and sound.
background image from 8===>~~~~( . )( . ) by Alan Resnick, 2012, Digital, color, sound, 5.5 min
OBSERVATION || ZOOM + FOCUS Sight: Pieces of the screen Sound: Point-source speakers, bubbles of sound Movement: Climbing, ambulating, lying down Curated: Film and sound playing; volume of sound User-controlled: View of screen, bubble of sound
OBSERVATION: View of screen through window in West side of ground floor wall Image for theater screen from 8===>~~~~( . )( . ) by Alan Resnick, 2012, Digital, color, sound, 5.5 min
OBSERVATION: View from the bottom of the screen Image for theater screen from 8===>~~~~( . )( . ) by Alan Resnick, 2012, Digital, color, sound, 5.5 min
The two corridors in this project are places for reflection and expression. The DURATION CORRIDOR on the second floor is a contemplative space for personal reflection. It does not connect destinations, since the intended movement is to stroll down the hall and turn around and come back. There are no speakers and no curated sound, silence but for traces of traffic outside and soundtracks bleeding from the theaters. The hallway is completely dark, except for a window high up on the Southern wall of the double-height space, throwing a rectangular patch of light onto a panoramic, collage mural. The moving frame on the enormous, still image makes another kind of moving picture. The dark and quiet make a space to mull over one’s thoughts on the films just watched, alone. The opportunity to walk back and forth gives the body a simple, automatic task while the mind can wander more freely. Perhaps, some visitors to the space will sit on the carpeted floor to watch the patch of sunlight slide slowly across the hall. In the summer, when the sun angle is too steep to cast light on the mural, the conversation box outside might be the more comfortable place to linger. On the ground floor, the MONTAGE CORRIDOR draws visitors from the commercially-driven first floor of the Johns Hopkins-MICA Film Center. It connects the film center to the two theaters and out to the conversation box. Swiveling, sliding, semi-transparent LED curtains hang throughout the hallway. Curated moving images can be overlapped and placed next to each another to put various actions in different settings. Directional speakers can be swiveled and slid to direct different tracks of sound to different spots. Visitors can choose to simply weave between the screens without touching them to move through the space, or they may choose to move screens to experiment with the relationships between each moving picture.
background image: Observatory Time: The Lovers by Man Ray
ANALYSIS || DURATION Sight: Darkness; patch of sunlight on a panoramic mural Sound: Silence; bleeding sound from theaters on either side Movement: Walking, sitting to watch sunlight Curated: Panorama User-controlled: Amount of time spent in passageway
DURATION: View from dead end of corridor; sun path during winter solstice marked at the top of the mural, spring equinox sun path along the bottom Image for mural by Sara Bone, 2014, Digital photography and Photoshop
SYNTHESIS || MONTAGE Sight: Overlapping, rotating, sliding, translucent LED screens Sound: Line-source speakers, directional sounds; different soundtracks from different parts of a film Movement: Dodging screens; pushing/pulling screens; finding sounds Curated: Film and sound playing User-controlled: Screen overlap, soundtrack overlap
MONTAGE: Overlapping, translucent LED screens; people entering and leaving entrance to the Observation theater Images for screens by Sara Bone, 2014, Digital photography
The CONVERSATION BOX has no filmic analogy, but this project proposes that all films are better understood when discussed with other people. LED screens sandwiched between clear glass make up the floor panels in this space. The content of these screens is controlled by a user accessing a website from a mobile device, and the activation of a patch of screens creates an implied space for a group to congregate and converse in. The box is an enormous jungle gym, with a smaller grid within the regulating structural grid of the building proper making up a series of ladders and monkey bars to climb up, lean and sit on, and hang from. The center of the second floor is open, so visitors from the open ground level can climb up into the space via the pipe grid. Even if there is only one occupant in the conversation box at any given time, the visibility of that occupants screen and movements from the prominent East North Avenue street and sidewalk itself creates a dialogue.
EVALUATION || CONVERSATION Sight: Floor panels displaying moving images Sound: Users talking Movement: Climbing, leaning. sitting, resting Curated: None User-controlled: Display of each screen; talking
CONVERSATION: View from screen-floor of the jungle gym on the second story, looking toward the building Images on screens from: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by Robert Wiene, 1920, Film, 71 min Ghost in the Shell directed by Mamoru Oshii, 1995, Animated, sound, 82 min Tron: Legacy by Joseph Kosinski, 2010, Film, sound, 127 min Box of Jelly by Ashley Wong, 2014, Digital, color, sound, 2 min
SECTION 3
SECTION 2
SECTION 1
Image for mural in Section Two by Sara Bone, 2014, Digital photography and Photoshop
SECTION 3
SECTION 2
SECTION 1
ROOF PLAN
THIRD FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST BASEMENT PLAN
SECOND BASEMENT PLAN
SITE PLAN