Polarizing obstacles. Project Book. Fall 2020-2021
Marc Ayoub Drawing architecture, Situational Sites, Procedural Worlds
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Week 3 P.3 Week 5 P. 9 Week 5 P. 13 Week 7 P. 21 Week 8 P. 23 week 9 P.25 Final Result P.27 References P.29
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Week 3 One Minute Film. Sequence 1
Intro Scene: Two shots are presented side by side, the first one being from AM/PM, and the second one is Casablanca’s introduction to the café. In AM/PM’s shot, the symmetric space articulates the constant entry and exit of spectators or casino visitors. People on a conveyor belt doing little to no effort in moving themselves. Instead, they are passively going through. .the casino’s serving spaces. The scene in Casablanca’s café is a panning shot that takes the viewer to the center of the entertainment, the pianist. in doing so, we get a glance at the general ambiance of the room. These two scenes have in common the fact that the presented spaces both exist for the same outcome: Entertainment.
Between these frames, a third introduces itself; a segment from mac DeMarco’s music video, “My kind of woman.” The artist presented is in a secluded space away from the spectators and is getting dressed. A procedural site simultaneously takes place as the multiple situations, building up to an upcoming clash of events.
When the panning movement of the camera settles on the performer, on the other side, the other half of the split screen shows a movement of a girl walking on a bridge. She seems however as though she is standing still and the bridge is moving. 3
A relationship is established between the present performer and the people being moved through space. It suggests a procedural site that leads to a situation. In that example, the spectators are guided to be seated, and the artist performs.
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Sequence 2
First we see claire from le dossier B turning on her television, the space changes as she does so and interacts with the tape’s content. Along side to it, there’s the right escalator going up, towards the entertainment.
All events build up and we get to a synchronized verision of sam mendes’s american beauty ending. One gunshot that links characters and differnt spaces into experincing the same event.
The last scene involves the same frames as the introduction to the sequence. This time, however, the man in the VCR says goodbye, and claire is seen in the reflection of her tv screen. While simultaneously in the AM/PM shot, people are exiting via the left escalator. These events go from point A to point B but come back to point A or at least a very similar situation to point A. The situation is in perpetual existence, or a loop. 5
“Bonjour Clair. I can call you Clair can’t I? Afterall... We’ve already met.”
“You will never know the secret Clair. Au revoir Clair. Au revoir.”
In both these sequences, the space is activated when Clair inserts the tape into the VCR. The man who claims knowing the secret suddenly appears and replaces the reflection of herself on the television’s glass. Clair is no longer alone. However After the tape has played. The light is shut and Clair is back with her reflection.
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Sequence 3
Series of scenes fading into one another. Scenes of verbal description of spaces or secret spaces.
Spaces that incite curiosity. In some scenes, when Clair asks questions about the spaces she’s trying to discover, we can feel the curiosity around that space. The Faded Scene of a door closing is a symbol of the event in which decisions are made to protect specific spaces’ secrecy.
The final scene is the ending scene of Sam Mendes’s American Beauty. A Panning shot reveals the truth about the murder by stopping the motion of the camera when we see an open closet in which guns are stored. This spatial discovery gives out information that secret/forbidden spaces try to hide. 7
Outcome of the ďŹ lm.
The camera movement is a key element in spatial discovery, the panning shots are durational, they can only show a certain ammount of information at a time. In its turn, the information gets built up and the viewer can construct the space in his/her mind.
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Week 4 One Minute Film.
As a subtheme, the ďŹ lm proposes an aspect of vertigo or disorientation. It touches on the idea of secret spaces and secrecy in spaces. The camera’s motion and its shots fade into one another. By the nature of the spaces in the images, one could think of the secrecy of decision making spaces (perhaps a political space) a room where decisions take place away from the public (behind closed doors).
The Film also Explores the notion of presence in space. The state of existing in a space and affecting it. Unlike characters, statues are solid objects. However they share a few things in common that can emulate a sense of presence. By moving the point of view around a statue it creates a weighted situation, centralized on the idea of a character, thus achieving an effect of presence.
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Outcome of the film.
On Presence: The notion of Presence is also expressed the room lights up when the tape is playing. This situation is similar to the current situation (the pandemic) with online meetings and video conferences. On the same note, when Presence ends, or alternately put, when absence occurs, the effect is also one that weighs greatly in space. In other words, a lack of Presence is also an effect explored in the film. By closing doors, fading the subjects away, and turning the Television off. On Secrecy: Separation, enclosed, division. These are terms deducted from the film. When putting together various images of subjects attempting to find something, obstacles are edited in. This solidifies the concept of unattainable spaces.
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Week 4 Collages. Created using images from the film.
Collage 1 The Other Side.
The image uses Symetry. The upper square indicates the presence of the man who has the secret Clair is looking for. In the bottom we see Clair’s reflection on the screen. The idea is that on the same surface, we see two related subjects that are in a sense symmetrically opposed. The information being chased on the other side. In this image it’s on the other side of the screen. 11
Collage 2 Ascension
Also from the ďŹ lm, what seems to be a train opens its door and ascends to an unknown places. The curtains retain us from knowing more. However, catching that train might be an opportunity to ďŹ nd the unknown. (?) 12
Week 5 one minute film 1. Title: “Subject presence”
Frames from the coronation of the queen manipulated to emphasize hthe weight of her presence in the chappel and on screen during the televized event. In the ceremony, as she moves from the side of the abbey to the center near the throne, the queen is accompanied by her maidens who carry the veil for her. In a sense they become a whole entity that affects the space magestically.
The following scene is from AM/PM. Both vehicles alter the shape of the gas station when they stop there, suggesting that the space is only activated once the cars are present.
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Scenes from Eisenstein’s Ivan the terrible that also play with the presence of an important subject. In the top picture, the subject lays inanimate in his bed but has his guards enter the room and gather around him. The bed alone would not be able to create this effect of centrality. It is only when the subject lays on it within speciďŹ c conditions (death or illness) that this space gets activated and generates a polarizing effect
In the shot above, Ivan enters the room, and his shadow is projected on the wall, amplifying his image size.
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Week 5 Collages from one minute film 1. Title: “Subject presence”
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Week 5 one minute film 2. Title: “Presence in spatial configurations”
Pan Shot from the bottom to the top showing the depth of the space.
The shot catches Clair looking for something on an elevated platform.
The space Clair is trying to find is behind a wall.
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Obstacles arise when the search gets deeper. Walls were built over existing stairs to prevent the public from entering.
Pan Shot from top to bottom showing infrastructure of a controlled staged area. Even though the infrastructure is seemless, it is noticeable nevertheless.
The shot takes the viewer down to a point of view that is relatable to the human scale and ends with a transition image entering the frame of a garden that is so elongated in shape its vanishing points almost reach inďŹ nty. 18
Week 5 one minute ďŹ lm 2. Collages from the ďŹ lm
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Outcome of the ďŹ lm. The spaces from this ďŹ lm are almost cannonical to the remaining phases of the project. the collages are an abstraction deducted from the ďŹ lmic spaces and attempt to reconstruct a solid image based on the information gathered from the panning shot. 20
Week 7 Project positionning
Production mode. In the ďŹ rst attempt i created a solid object made of plaster that solidiďŹ es the spaces in which clair is able to access. The model was then set in a controlled lighting envronment and photographed with low exposure to blen in with the black background. the second step was to make a digital overlay in vector lines of the spaces that are presumably unattainable. 21
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Week 8 Design update
Production mode.
The solidified object is now the wall that keeps obstructing clair from finding what she is looking for. In one of the previous images regarding the film, the stair case is closed with a partition in order to prevent the public from accessing a certain secret space. In my opinion, it is that same wall that inhabts the staircase by means of volumetric substractions and/or additions. This creates a setting in which the object is present but inaccessible. obstacles and inaccesbilities are themes that i will keep researching. On the otherhand, the line work has been assigned to the infrastructure, such as lighting and services for the passerelle that Clair determinately walks on when she is out on the hunt for her secret spaces aswell.
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Week 9 Design update
Production mode.
On that take i tried to amplify the “point of view” effect by making the passerell and the infrastructure extend to infinty. That way, the desired effect results in a crossing between these elements and creates a node when they meet around the wall’s area.
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Week 11 Design update
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Production mode.
In the previous attempts, i tried to capture the essence of the spaces extracted from the ďŹ lm. However i was limiting myself with the abstraction of some elements. Many things were left out thus reducing the information that the drawing should be presenting. This week i reconstruct, using the same ďŹ lm and panning shots, the setting i edited in. Not to mention the statues that, as already established, emulate the notion of presence in space. The result is an augmented version of the previous images. But instead of photographing a model, i switched to a digial medium allowing me to work with more precision. The overlayed lines are precisely put, more accurate and represent a bigger ammount of architectural detail. Therefore, the infrastructure is still a seemless object, yet noticeable. It does not cast a shadow upon the solid spaces. It only serves them. 28
Referential landscape. Sarah et Charles: Their work is focused on theater space.
In their work, Sarah et Charles constantly make sure to portray the “behind the scenes� aspect of theater by showing portions of the infrastructure that works together with the installations such as lighting and scaffolding. Therefore, the images are made for the viewer to be aware of the theater space. In the end it creates an independance within the elements like a free standing column or a room with out the fourth wall. But somehow, the whole constitutes a composition that harmonizes using both the foreground (what to showcase) and the background (infrastructure). 29
Xavier Veilhan: Some of his works is centered on statues and their impact. He populates spaces with sculptures mounted on pedestals.
What I exrtacted the most out of those installations is the focus on the way the podium is formed according to the statue mounted on its top. Its morphology is set to exist in the space as though it is more important than the sculpture itself. It is this imposing aspect of the podium that I use to populate the situation. 30
DRDH Architects: The ability to work with abstraction of form where spaces are generated by substraction and/or addition
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L’annee derniere a Marienbad: the cinematic way to navigat through the hotel where the action takes place was a great way to observe a camera movement through space. It inspired aswell to use statues as having an aspect of presence in space. Le Dossier B. The main idea of the film in which the protagonist Clair is searching for a hidden space and the way its executed pushed me to extract a few shots from it. they were very formative for the design phase and they influenced the idea of the obstacles. Birdman: The Way the Film is shot is interesting in the sense that there are very few instances in which shots are cut. the panning movement of the camera helps the viewer recreate a mental image of the space and immersing them in the theater space where the plot of the movie takes place in.
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