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Introduction | Campus Obscura | cam·pus (kam’pes) (n.) : campus latin for “field”
a. principal grounds between buildings of college or university b. a yard, field, or park-like space at a college
ob·scu·ra (ob-skyer’a) (v.) (adj.) : obscura latin for “dark”
a. shrouded in or hidden by darkness b. indistinct to the sight or any other sense c. to conceal
FADE IN: EXT.
UF Campus - Day/Rain
Series of shots, Montage Campus Life. - Pedestrians rush under black umbrellas - A Bus idles in a puddle - Century Tower chimes 3 pm. INT.
Slow tracking into Dwelling
Male Student, silhouette, stands motionless near window. Shot widens, revealing the room as a Camera Obscura
*Shutter Snaps*
(Thinking to himself). The Campus is a device, a camera. Conditioned inhabitants search for an unconscious or sublime goal, observing light as truth. The camera controls the eyelid, the focus, of a dilated unflinching eye. I have been slowly awakening to the fact that I am under the spell of this place, in its shadow. I have built my own camera, and become a voyeur, observing from a distance. And with every shutter snap I follow this process of awakening and seeing. I am a voyeur in the Campus Obscura . . . .
This thesis, Campus Obscura, is written by an estranged voyager. A familiar stranger, who has become a voyeuristic urbanite. He embarks with an observer-participant dialectic. He is a student, a sightseer, a photographer, a tourist, but above all a traveler. The term Campus Obscura implies a departure from a defined or normative path, a deviation from a route, a departure from principlesan act of making the course obscure and utlimately go astray. The two words Campus and Obscura bind this juxtaposition, layering the familiar itineraries of campus against alien detours. The UF campus therefore becomes a terra incognita, beneath the mask of the familiar. Campus Obscura investigates film as method of image/sequence construction. The projected image is a means of cognitive mapping, allowing travel through spatio-temporal boundaries. The film is therefore a window or vessel that transports. The film is also intrinsically linked to the architectonics of the space in which it is projected. Film theaters present a diverse variety of potential cinematic experiences, and therefore a variety of methods of mapping spectatorship. The conception of the film is altered by the space and architectonics of the cinema. We, as spectators, can participate differently given that a variety of models of specatatorship are built into the architecture of the theater itself.
