Jeffrey Landman

Screen Time

Jeffrey Landman Advisor: Rania Ghosn Readers: Enrique Walker. Hans Tursack

In Times Square, architecture is inextricable from mediated representations. The place is dislocated by the screens that envelop its buildings and the other screens, around the world, upon which its image is ceaselessly presented. The neighborhood itself is named after the Times Tower, which was opened in 1905 as the office and printing press of The New York Times, and remains at the center of the square today, entirely empty, voided by the advertising value of its screens. But this condition is not a contemporary anomaly. If the screens, flowed through by consumer desire, currently vaporise the building’s edge, in 1904, before it was even occupied, the building summoned the city with the results of the general election, broadcast to the metropolis via searchlight. The building has always extended its edge, projecting public messages while concealing private concerns.

This thesis understands the building as one actor in a media apparatus: a network of interconnections between broadcasting devices, infrastructure, public and political events, development policy and financial structure. The Tower indexes 20th century architecture’s participation in this media apparatus, telling a story in which communication and the distribution of power predate and outlast inhabitation, a story in which occupation is not part of the program. The thesis tracks the tower through six innovative broadcasting devices which the building sponsored, including the world’s first moving electric sign, the New Year’s Eve Ball, the world’s first changeable architectural screen, and the world’s largest open architectural competition.

The form of the thesis is a short movie that uses found footage and computer generated animations to apprehend the Tower amid its myriad images. In designing for animated representation the thesis is positioned in a lineage of paper architectures, proposing a form of architectural production which embraces and redirects the forces of the media apparatus. The movie reconfigures, misaligns and misuses its historical sources to reproduce and subvert the Screen Time from which architecture can now never be distinct.

Image 1 (Opposite top): 00:08:03:07, Screen Shot, from Screen Time

Image 2 (Opposite bottom): 00:08:58:22, Screen Shot, from Screen Time. Both images are courtesy of the author.