FRAME[D] ARCH + FILM
M. PRUETT SMITH FALL 2018
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CNN Broadcast Live Footage 9/11 | Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham | Britney Spears’ breakdown 2007 | A Man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, NASA | “I Voted,” Alex Kail, 2018 | Blank Screen | President Trump, CBS News
circumstance image culture
PERVASIVE IMAGE RATE OF CONSUMPTION
The roots of cinematic image lie in Cartesian space. Film would not exist without the developments of perspective, the challenge of perception brought on by the Renaissance. It is fundamentally grounded in what we know, what we see—light, depth, and image. Yet, it is more. Film has surpassed what Cartesian space is capable of representing. We no longer think of our world as a static image, a perfect singular moment in time where all is symbol. Our world is moving, changing, adapting, reacting: reacting to stimuli much greater than anything we have ever attempted to understand. It is time for another shift in perception—a reflection on what film can do to challenge our perspective on the world, and the spaces within it. image culture is pervasive. It has changed the way we consume space
at 24 frames per second, the moving image is exceptionally powerful there is an urgency in our relationship with image, and, in turn, with space
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// Tschumi // Architecture and Disjunction // All sequences are cumulative. Their “frames” derive significance from juxtaposition. They establish memory—of the preceding frame, of the course of events. [165] // Koolhaas // Junkspace // Junkspace is postexistential; it makes you uncertain where you are, obscures where you go, undoes where you were. Who do you think you are? Who do you want to be? [20-21]
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Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera, 1929
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KINO-EYE
Our perceptual shift starts with the revamping of static space. We must recognize that there are flaws in our representational system. Euclidean [static] space does not examine the overlap of experience and layers of events that are inherent in the life force of an architecture. Convention is falling short of expectations and design in the contemporary world is reflecting this shortage. If we were to use film as a means through which design could reflect contemporary culture, the disconnect between our contemporary filmic conditions of life and the static spaces where life plays out would dissolve. Film puts forth a truth, inaccessible to there human eye, yet reflecting on it. Film opens our minds to alternate readings and challenges our perceptions. The architect must move forward by wielding film as a design tool. this project recognizes the flaws of Euclidean space + the shortcomings of convention we represent our wold as a static place, and, therefore, we design this way film provides an access point, a way to engage image culture and design space which reflects the cultural conditions of our time it yields a vision of truth, that which is inaccessible to the mere human eye
circumstance static space + kino-eye
DISCONNECT
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// Vertov // Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov // I am kino-eye. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I’ve created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it. In this room there are twelve walls shot by me in various parts of the world. In bringing together shots of walls and details, I’ve managed to arrange them in an order that is pleasing and to construct with intervals, correctly, a filmphrase which is the room. [17]
// Leach // Anaesthetics of Architecture // The world of the architect is a world of image… The space of lived experience has been reduced to a codified system of signification, and with the increasing emphasis on visual perception there has been a corresponding reduction in other forms of sensory perception. “The image kills,” as Henri Lefebvre observes, and cannot account for the richness of lived experience. [10] // Tarkovsky // Sculpting in Time // It is an extraordinary thing, this image! In a sense it is far richer than life itself; perhaps precisely because it expresses the idea of absolute truth. [112]
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D. W. Griffith, The Girl and Her Trust, 1912
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circumstance flatness
INOCULATION
FLAT IMAGE VS. FLAT IMAGE This is the resistance to Koolhaas’s junkspace. We can no longer live in shells made merely to hold our lives. These architectures are static, they do not resist banality, they do not reflect contemporary culture. Opposed to stasis, this project attempts to engage a more authentic representation of space to design engaging work. Events are not singular. They overlap and occur in simultaneous sequences across a wide spectrum of public to private, intense to relaxed, clarity to confusion. The flat [static] image must be inoculated by the flat [moving] image. Contemporary culture rallies around speed, overlap, urgency, and image. Film loosens up the shortcomings of convention that do not reflect its fundamental qualities. Crossing scales, from the bedroom to the site, film, as a medium, counteracts the autonomy of the [static] image. this project is opposed to stasis it recognizes not only the event, but the overlapping of events that occur in simultaneous sequence it resists banality and architecture as spaces to fill with 'things; it inoculates architecture against the flat [static] image with the flat [moving] image
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// Antunes // The Multisensory Film Experience // there is no such thing as a purely visual—or purely audiovisual—experience of film. What we see, or what we call seeing, is multisensory in its nature and remains multisensory, even in the final stage of what we consider consciousness: that supposed moment when perception lightens and the marvel of awareness comes about. [3] // McGinn // The Power of Movies // when mind and movie come into contact, it is like one mind finding another; we see ourselves in film--our very consciousness stretched out before us... The movie screen is consciousness externalized, reified. [68]
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// Vidler // Warped Space // For “the cinema incorporates time to space. Better, time, through this, relaly becomes a dimension oof space... unroolling under our eyes its successive volumes ceaselessly returned to us in dimensions that allow us to grasp their extent in surface and depth” The “hitherto unknown plastic pleasures” thereby discovered would, finally, have the effect of creating a new kind of architectural space, akin to that imaginary space “within the walls of the brain” [102]
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spe c
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filmic analysis
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gin ima tion r cep per bserve o
designed object
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orthographic projection
Robin Evans, “The Arrested Image,” 1995 [altered with filmic positioning & transformations]
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DYNAMICS + PROJECTIONS By incorporating film into the design process, this project questions current modes of methodology within the discipline. Film should become the diagram, the parti, the essence of the project reflected in image[s]. Reflecting the multiple readings required by spaces for contemporary culture, film contributes significantly to the transformation of a project from 2-dimensions to 3-dimensions. Film will enhance the development of design work that reflects the overlap of the many: from narrative to landscape to program to actor to experience. Robin Evans discusses the projective transmissions of drawing methodology that affect architecture in his diagram for the Projective Cast titled “The Arrested Image.� This diagram ‘s analysis of design thinking provides a platform for engaging filmic representation and interpreting its influence on other modes of representation. this project reassesses modes of methodology by proposing an alternative design method which understands multiple readings + contributes to the translation of 2-D to 3-D the film is now involved in the design process, engaging the overlapping of the many narrative | landscape | program | actor | experience
methodology dynamic image
THE MANY
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// Vidler // Warped Space // For “the cinema incorporates time to space. Better, time, through this, really becomes a dimension of space... unrolling under our eyes its successive volumes ceaselessly returned to us in dimensions that allow us to grasp their extent in surface and depth” The “hitherto unknown plastic pleasures” thereby discovered would, finally, have the effect of creating a new kind of architectural space, akin to that imaginary space “within the walls of the brain” [102]
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35mm
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45’
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MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE
Film is able to engage our human experience in a multifaceted way through multisensory stimuli. Known to most as an audio-visual medium, film impacts its audience not only through aural and visual modes, but also can neurologically impact the body in other channels. For example, films affect our emotions. They excite us, sadden us, scare us. But they also make us jump and cry. Films can make a person’s heart rate rise and fall with the images flickering on screen. Physiologically, they engage us in a cohesive and comprehensive [personal] experience. The flat [static] image falls short. film is a multisensory medium it engages physiological responses to space and time it is the most authentic representation of human experience personal experience of architecture has been lost in a world of endless options and generic sheds, film gives us more
methodology perception + multisensory experience
PERCEPTUAL SHIFT
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// Sterling // Shaping Things // how deeply can I, or should I, engage with this object, or any object? There are limits there, but not just limits of how much I can afford. They are limits of how much information I can process, and how effectively I can Wrangle that information into personal activity. [70] // Virilio // Lost Dimension // couldn’t we also equally legitimately consider the absence of consciousness, the picnoleptic cut, as a dimension of time, a dimension of that “depth of time” that no longer concerns itself with the indispensable accounting of the effects of observation on the observed processes, thereby contributing to the renewal of the experience of space and duration? [102] // Friedman // The World is Flat // Globalization 3.0 is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time...the force that gives it its unique character—is the newfound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally. [10]
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Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1927
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CULTURE + PRODUCTION Architects develop the product of cultural interaction. Using cinema as a model, we can interpret the effects of filmic space and its cultural influence. Using analysis of filmic themes, the effects of filmic space, and its manifestations in contemporary culture, this project will inhabit 3 realms: internal, intermediate, + external. These realms embody the essence of our ultimate experience of the globalized world, where a google earth city is king. In a film centric society, identity, disassociation, and picnolepsy define our experience, no matter the [lat, long]. this project will inhabit 3 realms: internal, intermediate, + external its programmatic elements will reflect clearly identified cultural conditions, influenced by the study of cinema as a model sited in a google earth city, this project will reflect a globalized society
program culture + production
TRIPTYCH
TRIPTYCH
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DEPARTMENT OF ANONYMOUS IDENTITY
CHAMBER OF DISASSOCIATION
REFUGE FOR PICNOLEPTIC MINDSPACE
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DISTINCTIONS
Working with the medium of film, these 3 realms will be programmed and designed as scenes which usher in a new world, a contemporary space that reflects our current cultural situation. They will be a world in the sense of a building. This space as any space. The Department of Anonymous Identity // Our lives are plagued by the paradoxical condition of belonging to a collective: an anonymous identifier in society. The Chamber of Disassociation // The cognitive load brought on by this cybernetic world is overwhelming, and we long for escape and distance. The Refuge for Picnoleptic Mindspace // Memory is not linear, neither is film, nor is the picnoleptic world that we engage every day. We must adapt. external, a paradoxical condition, a society of anonymous individuals plagues the earth we are there but we are not there. we are ourselves but we are part of the film. we are in the crowd but we are not anonymous
intermediate, a distraction from strife, understanding + assessing only what is framed in a
globalized society, our cognitive load is overwhelming and we ache for escape
internal, collapse of 3-dimensions, time + place adaptations to our cultural environment governed by temporal instabilities we are elliptical
program external + intermediate + internal
APPLICATION
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Elliot Volkman, Hurrican Irma Footage from Snap Maps, 2017
Bodhi360, CCTV multi screen security footage, 2015
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SIMULTANEOUS VIEWS
We live in a culture where simultaneous views are not only recognized, but exalted. The signify money, safety, justice, and the collective conscious of the people. If simultaneous views produced programmatic records, we could understand and interpret a multitude of events and their overlapping characteristics. As an actor in this realm, simultaneous views signify both the anonymous assumptions and personal identity. simultaneous views, act as programmatic records of overlapping events the drone acts as prosthetic for distancing at the scalar threshold
editing software acts as spatial engagement for inhabiting alternate readings of space
program actors + department of anonymous identity
PROGRAMMATIC RECORDS
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Jacopo de’ Barbari, Bird’s Eye View Map of Venice, 1500
Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, U.S. Airforce Handout Photo, 2012
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SCALAR THRESHOLD
Opposing stasis at all scales, form the bedroom to the site means moving across scalar thresholds—we demark them based on our closeness to the subject and the necessity of committing time. The scalar threshold allows us to distance ourselves, become less aware [or] circle closer to enhance our cognizance. We move through the world as a drone. Far from those things we feel cannot [should not] be touched. Far from the surface of the earth where we are limited by our physical bodies and our human experience. simultaneous views, act as programmatic records of overlapping events the drone acts as prosthetic for distancing at the scalar threshold
editing software acts as spatial engagement for inhabiting alternate readings of space
program actors + chamber of disassociation
DISTANCING
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The Washington Post, Watch Two Versions of Acosta Video Side-by-side, 2018
VR GIF, GIPHY, 2016
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SPATIAL ENGAGEMENT
In an elliptical world, we must recognize that time and space overlap, fade, and shuffle. We have picnoleptic minds— minds that do not exist in along a linear, flat [static] plane. Each experience of each individual is personal, singular, and absorbing. Acting as a spatial reader, editing software can permit us a view into alternate readings of space. simultaneous views, act as programmatic records of overlapping events the drone acts as prosthetic for distancing at the scalar threshold
editing software acts as spatial engagement for inhabiting alternate readings of space
program actors + refuge for picnoleptic mindspace
ALTERNATE READINGS