The Shape of Time | Master Thesis

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C R Y P T O - A R C H I T E C T U R E

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Institute for Art and Architecture

THE SHAPE OF TIME

Dominic Schwab Master Thesis Academic Degree Master in Architecture | MArch Advisors: First supervisor Univ.-Prof. Hannes Stiefel Second supervisor Damjan Minovski

Vienna 2018

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NATURE theory

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REALITY methodology D the

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the bridge - the mechanical eye - superego 56

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SHAPE OF storyboard -

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TIME filmstills

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Abstract

THE SHAPE OF TIME TOWARDS A CRYPTO-ARCHITECTURE

The project explores the vision of nature, understanding the concept of architecture as a cultural expression of compressed light, energy and matter at a specific place for a certain moment in time.

The via mala canyon in Switzerland will work as case study site for this speculative investigation. The number of cultural events and historic descriptions transform the location into a great chance to rethink the ideologies and principles of landscape representation in a prospective language. The examination of landscape painting, landscape photography and the sculptural interventions of the land art movement in the 1960ies establish a departure point to study the construction and deconstruction of landscape and therefore to question the future relationship between the observer, the apparatus and the landscape, as well as their identities. During a field trip, the site was mapped in a „cinematic drone performance“, a mimetic process which creates virtual models of reality. Following the definition of Jean Baudrillard, who describes those models as „simulacra“,

they help to investigate how nature is observed, studied and synthesized in the digital realm, to understand the coexistence of landscape and the architecture embedded in it. As the term „landscape“ always refers to the fusion of a natural environment and artificial constructions, three different archetypes of infrastructure, which occur on the site, are spotlighted: the bridge, the tunnel and the dam.

Using the moving image as medium of narration, they are visited and described by the camera in three episodes. While the eye tries to construct the reality, using the landscape as mirror of human existence, the machine is re-purposing the landscape through new modes of visual synthesis, to capture sensitive nuances of reality beyond human senses. In the end, the virtual eye is showing an unseen view to a world where the real blends with the imaginary - a universe of thickened time, hypostatized in space.

A crypto-architecture.

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Questions

Conceptual Model

HOW CAN ONE RELATE

TIME & SPACE IN A PHYSICAL

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OBJECT?

A sculpture is the result of an additive and/or subtractive process. It is initiated with a cultural intention, shaped in a performative process over a certain timespan on a specific object/place.

FIG.01 CONCEPT MODEL SCAN OF CERAMIC CAST DOMINIC SCHWAB FIG.02 (NEXT PAGE) CONCEPT DRAWING „THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD“ DOMINIC SCHWAB (AFTER AN IDEA BY JEREMY DELLER)

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Questions

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Conceptual Drawing

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SPECULATIVE ON THE

VISION

THOUGHTS OF NATURE

Vision of Nature

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THE EARTH FROM SPACE, APOLLO MISSION

1. ON THE RELATION OF MAN AND EARTH

2. MAPS OF TOMORROW

„The first picture of the earth from outer space gave us the idea, that the earth itself is an object. An object which we could shape. Since that day, the idea of land art is related to the idea of the globe.“1This description of the earth seen from the aerial view changed our vision of art and contributed aswell to the discourse of the relationship between humankind and the earth as sphere, as it was already described by Michelangelo in the Renaissance.

The „Vitruvian Man“ shows the scale of the human body in relation to the scale of the sphere as pure geometrical form.

Additionally the earth has always been in motion, reforming and reshaping its own shell, our environment. Even if the human perception is not able to grasp that movement, it is constantly there. „The Landscapes we see around us are complex and multilayered, and have often developed over very long periods of time.“2 To understand this argument, it is helpful to look back „to the old supercontinent of Gondwana which formed around 650 million years ago, and started to break up around 130 million years ago“3 It demonstrates the flow of matter related to flow of time. The shape of our earth, as we consider it now, is only an ephemeral

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see Troublemakers - The Story of Land Art, 2015, video.

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Viles, Heather & Goudie, Andrew, Landscapes and Geomorphologies, (Oxford University Press, 2010), 1.

Ibid, 2.

Research, References & Theory

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VITRUVIAN MAN, MICHELANGELO

moment on a very long process of evolution.

Because of its transience, these phenomena of time and natural forces represented as „landscape“ has always been a major topic for artists, even though their tools of representation fundamentally changed over the decades.

described in the work of Caspar David Friedrich whose paintings were often read as „soul-scapes“, mirroring the physically invisible, that lies in the shadows of our subconsciousness. William Turner, who had the ability of measuring the moods of nature, followed a different attraction. He observed the dynamic 3. PAINTING LANDSCAPE potentials of nature forces and the industrial usage of it and therefore he could preserve „Atmosphere is my style.” ephemeral moments of natural phenomena.

4 (J.M.W. Turner to J. Ruskin in 1844) „How Romanticism came to be associated with the alps at the onset of the industrial revoAs landscape painting and lyric poetry are lution is a matter of recent intellectual history the central arts of romanticism they will be and marketing, as Simon Schama describes spotlighted to describe the painting as a very in his brilliant book entitled „Landscape and early form of representing landscape. The mu- Memory“.5 tual reaction between nature and mind is well 4

Zumthor, Peter, Atmosphären, (Birkhäuser Verlag Basel, 2006), 5.

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Burkhalter Marianne & Sumi Christian, Gotthard. Landscape, Myths and Technology, (Zürich, 2016) 134.

Vision of Nature

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ENTRANCE TO VIA MALA, J.M.W. TURNER, 1847

4. ARCADIA & IMAGINARY LANDSCAPES For ages arcadia represented metaphorically the power of inspiring and poetic spaces, both as a real place on earth and as a fictional configuration of places. In other words Arcadia embodies an aesthetic utopia. But what kind of attributes can be related to such imaginary spaces?

It all began with the ideal representation of landscape. A celebration of nature. A place of peace and timelessness. But looking closer to it, a paradox appears. The longing for arcadia is followed by a longing in arcadia.

This ambiguous use of „sehnsucht“ characteri-

ses the landscape. The landscape is the place of „sehnsucht“ but simultaneously it triggers the desire for it. This finally results to a very strong self-experience. The geographical term arcadia describes a landscape, situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. In greek mythology it is considered as home of Pan, god of the shepherds.

The historical notion of Arcadia as we can find it in Virgil‘s Eclogues (44 B.C.), was focusing the myths of far away countries. Later, in his pastoral masterpiece Arcadia (1504) Jacopo Sannazaro‘s described instead a real human being within a real nature. The awareness of the modern human was born.

Research, References & Theory

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FILMSTILL, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (MUSIC VIDEO) MARK PRITCHARD - FT. THOM YORK, 2016

Arcadia became the mirror of human existence, the incarnation through the instruments of art, or rather a „Verlandschaftung des Ichs“.

In the 18th century Nicolas Poussin relates the notion of Arcadia with the upcoming pastoralism, while Goethe actually buries it deep down in the earth, absorbed by the progressive thinking of Romanticism. Arcadia is dead.

In his work „Arcadia - Poetic Design of Landscapes“ swiss author Köbi Kantenbein recaps a contemporary configuration. First of all, arcadian places are completely detached from time, scale and location, they perform as displaced imaginary landscapes. Neither

they have a beginning nor an ending, they exist beyond human temporality. But nevertheless they are controlled by the rhythm of human life: youth and age, love and pain, euphoria and sorrow, at last birth and death.

Human beings are constantly creating such places with every new experience, as they are moved by their emotions, triggered by memory and nostalgia.6 5. ARTIFICIAL ARCADIA In his work „Artificial Arcadia“ dutch Photographer Bas Princen shows “the contemporary landscape as something invariably artificial, 6

see Gantenbein, Köbi, Arkadien, (Hochparterre Verlag Zürich, 2016), 10-25.

Vision of Nature

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BEYOND NATURE, MARGHERITA SPILUTTINI, 2002

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RESERVOIR, BAS PRINCEN, 2007

even when there is no sign of human intervention.” According to him „the landscape is instrumentalized, we might say, distilled through dense layers of technological abstraction to become, once again, a place inhabitable by human activity, however pathetic or impressively persistent it might be.“ He describes “The camera [as] a tool to construct ideas on space or places, or ideas on architecture and landscape.” 7

In her pictures she „reveals man-made structures as technology‘s „hard counter-images to nature“, as the result of intrusive operations, designed to improve the body of the mountain, to provide it, as it were, with artificial limbs, in order to adapt it for human use. She shows „a mountain landscape pervaded by roads and tunnels, or a region where the mining of raw materials has dug its pustulating patterns under the surface of the earth.“ Those images are „inventories of the industrial 6. CONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPE utilization of our environment, where tearing down and building up, construction and deMargherita Spiluttini is aswell using the came- construction are mutually contingent upon one ra as tool to construct landscape as imagery. another.“ 8 7

see vhttp://www.bldgblog.com/tag/artificial-arcadia

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Spiluttini, Margherita, Beyond Nature, (Fotohof Edition Salzburg, 2002), 7.

Research, References & Theory

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INFRA RICHARD MOSSE, 2012

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FIG.10 (NEXT PAGE) DOUBLE NEGATIVE, MICHAEL HEIZER, 1969

„non-site“ even before artists involve them in aesthetic processes. After all the question is In the late 1960ies the land art movement es- then, what is the artist needed for?9 tablished the landscape itself as essential part of the artwork. The site was not longer a site 8. ARCHEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE for an object, the site became the object itself.

Because no building could ever supply what the British artist Dan Holdsworth tries to answer open space supplies, Smithson, Heizer, de Ma- this question in his work „Continuous Toporia and all the others decided to work directly graphy“, which is a visual representation of with the earth, its scale and materiality. They what he calls “a future archeology”: we see deconstructed the landscape by displacement the world as if from a distant point in time and decontextualization and therefore created rather than space. The world revealed to us so called „sculptures in the expanded field“. has originally formed tens of millions of years Avantgarde thinker Robert Smithson created ago. The landscapes are plotted in an extraorthe idea, that every site also incorporates a 7. DECONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPE

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see Lailach, Michael, Land Art, (Taschen Verlag, Köln, 2007), 11.

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Vision of Nature

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Research, References & Theory

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Vision of Nature

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dinary detail that no human eye could ever map or capture: by the use of an extensive technological apparatus, it is possible to dissect the topography with surgical precision. „Only art, Holdsworth suggests, can open up such sublime temporal and spatial imaginative vistas. He visualizes what is ‘hidden’ from the naked eye: the flow of time – and the knowledge that what is solid was once liquid; that which appears timeless is, in fact, still in formation.“ Again art refers to science, more precisely to geomorphology. As explained in the second chapter, the earth was and still is in a constant fluxation of time. Technology is used as interface to materialize the past in the future.10

9. LANDSCAPE OF LOST FUTURES

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see http://www.danholdsworth.com/exhibitions/afuturearcheology/

The paradox interdependencies of the past and the future are well described by self-appointed hauntologist Mark Fisher when he quotes Jacues Derrida: „sadly the future is not longer what it was!“ As memories live longer than dreams, he argues that our cities are landscapes of lost futures. One could think the culture itself became nostalgic, because all times are available constantly, but actually culture is dead, because nothing really dies anymore, everything comes back again and circles forever in cyberspace. We don‘t know the reality anymore, because there are no real ends anymore. The result is flatness of time, a memory of broken dimension.11 see Fisher, Mark, Ghosts of my Life, (Zero Books,2014)

Research, References & Theory

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POINTCLOUD PORTRAITS CATHERINE IKAM, 2016

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FIG.12 FILMSTILL MEMORY OF BROKEN DIMENSION (VIDEOGAME) EZRA HANSON-WHITE, 2017

10. CRYPTOGEOGRAPHY Inhabited by cryptogeographic beings: „huge animated forms that penetrate human consciousness, the supra-human forms that are quite conscious, aware, and active.“ The greek prefix „crypto“ refers to something „hidden,“ or „secret“ and the literal translation of „geography“ is „to describe or write about the Earth“. Put together those inhabitants describing a secret environment, which is invisible for the eyes; it only exists as a matrix of bits, dots and algorithms. They communicate through virtuals models of reality, by Jean Baudrillard defined as simulacra, knitting together the idea of immateriality and transcendence in between body and soul.12 12

see https://thecasswiki.net/index.php?title=Cryptogeographic_being

CONSTRUCTING

REALITY

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Constructing Reality

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Site

e t i n arcadia e g o A

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APPROACHING

„The Via Mala, which literally means „bad path“ is an ancient and notorious section of a road along the river Hinterrhein between Zillis-Reischen and Thusis in the Canton of Graubünden.“ 1 This narrow canyon has always been the most serious obstacle on the approach to cross the Alps from north to south and viceversa.

The traces of this rich history can be found anywhere in the valley. Various constructions reaching from the roman empire to to the late 20th century are forming the infrastructure which is visible nowadays. 2

VIA MALA, SATTELITE IMAGERY WWW.SWISSTOPO.CH

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viamala 2 see Riedi, Thomas, Via Mala,

(Chur, 1992),

Constructing Reality

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S C A N P O S I T I O N S

A Tunnel “Lost Hole” Scanpositions

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B Via Mala Visitor’s Center Scanpositions

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Terrestrial Photogrammetry (Sony Alpha 6300 + Gimbal)

C Highway Bridge Scanpositions

2 Units Terrestrial Photogrammetry (Sony Alpha 6300 + Gimbal)

VIA MALA, SATTELITE IMAGERY WWW.SWISSTOPO.CH

Aerial Photogrammetry (DJI Mavic Pro)

10 Units Terrestrial Photogrammetry (Sony Alpha 6300 + Gimbal)

D Dam Sufers Scanpositions

2 Units

Aerial Photogrammetry (DJI Mavic Pro)

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Constructing Reality

Methodology

M A N MASCHINE

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T H E E Y E A N D T H E A P P A R AT U S

A triangular relationship between the camera, the drone and me, was foming the setup of the field trip. In several mapping units, specific moments of landscape were filmed, measured and analyzed through the eyes of the machine.

By processing the collected data, the landscape was reconstructed in the digital realm, to investigate the topology of the place in a virtual condition.

AXONOMETRIE 3D MODEL DAM SUFERS

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FIG. 16 (NEXT PAGE) TOPVIEW 3D MODEL DAM SUFERS

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Constructing Reality

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Methodology

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B IS A CAT

„MY NEW

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Walter de Maria „Troublemakers - the Story of Land Art“

BRUSH TERPILLAR“

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Constructing Reality

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Methodology

MIMESIS PERFORMANCE

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CINEMATIC

Mimesis describes the process of expressing something with a gesture. The human being could express his emotions with the mimic of the face and the language of the body. In the artistic practice we are using tools like a brush to perform a physical gesture on the canvas, expressing our creative intention. This method can be extend to other forms of tools, like machines. A „cinematic performance“ with a drone creates a three-dimensional image of a site. The environment is synthezied trough the eyes of the machine and displaced as a pointcloud in xyz space. By framing the image, one can compose a digital representation of a site and take direct influence on its topology, area and configuration.

FIG. 17-21 DRONE MAPPING PERFORMANCE FLIGHT PATH / SINGLE FRAMES

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Constructing Reality

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Methodology

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Constructing Reality

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Methodology

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Exodus

The Tunnel

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tun·nel (tŭn′əl)

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1. An underground or underwater passage.

2. A passage through or under a barrier such as a mountain.

3. A tube-shaped structure.

1 https://www.thefreedictionary.com/tunnel FRONT VIEW, SMOOTH SHADED MESH, TUNNEL

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FIG.24 (NEXT PAGE) FRONT VIEW, POINTCLOUD, TUNNEL

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Exodus

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The Tunnel

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In Paradisum

The Bridge

IN PAR A D I S U M H

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bridge (brÄ­j)

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1. A structure spanning and providing passage over a gap or barrier, such as a river or roadway.

2. Something resembling or analogous to this structure in form or function.

1 https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bridge FRONT VIEW, SMOOTH SHADED MESH, VIA MALA BRIDGE

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FIG.26 (NEXT PAGE) FRONT VIEW, POINTCLOUD, BRIDGE

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In Paradisum

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The Bridge

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Arrival

The Dam

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dam (dăm)

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1. A barrier constructed across a waterway to control the flow or raise the level of water.

2. A body of water controlled by such a barrier.

1 https://www.thefreedictionary.com/dam TOP VIEW, SMOOTH SHADED MESH, DAM SUFERS

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FIG.28 (NEXT PAGE) FRONT VIEW, POINTCLOUD, DAM

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Arrival

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The Dam

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„WE CAN NOT IMPROVE THE MAKING OF OUR

EYES,

BUT WE CAN ENDLESSLY PERFECT THE

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CAMERA.“ 1

Dziga Vertov (1984), „Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov”, p.15, Univ. of California Press

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THE SHAPE OF TIME Austria 2018 (16:07)

Time: Narrator: Style:

Near Future The Camera (The Eye - The Machine - The virtual Eye) Style:Documentation - Experimental - Travelogue Documentation - Experimental - Travelogue

Narrative, Storyboard & Filmstills

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A phenomenological short film

The Shape of Time: Exodus

exodus 64

I AM THE EYE | EGO

Layers of endless depth were building a grey wall on the horizon. I am watching a landscape form seamless patterns of surfaces, moods & atmospheres. The landscape was not only a compression of atmosperes; it was also the site of my emotions. A soul-scape.

A clear sky was hovering over dark woods.

Far away you could sense gigantic mountains, which seemed to be from a different time. They were lying there in silence, hieratic and powerful. After I had averted my eyes, I followed the small road which lead into the canyon. A turbulent sequence stringing together archaic infrastructures, over and over interrupted by deadly sharp curves.

The path was sticking to the face of the rock, sometimes even perforating it in a straight line. When I looked down into the valley, I couldn’t see the ground. The light was swallowed by the darkness of its depth. I passed archaic architecture, traces of human presences. They seemed to be hermetic and dismissive and thus they proved the rich cultural history of the place.

With careful steps I arrived at a tunnel. Like a portal into the hidden world of the mountain, I entered its gloom. I passed through a secret world, where light and darkness followed each other closely and was released into bright sunlight. I could barely see.

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Narrative

Right ahead of me I recognized a bridge, linking the two sides of the narrow valley. A structure not built for man‘s presence, but for his absence. A transit space. I lingered for a moment in its midst to experience both a moment of sublimity and enlightenment. What is this secret, buried in the silence of the earth?

What does it say to me? Am I really looking at the world or is the world looking at me?

I realized, that human history is only part of a larger planetary history, while nature is a fragile system, consisting of complex interdependencies.

And yet I strive for untouched nature and wander into the distance in search of the pristine, authentic moments. I search for a spiritual and transcendental experience between connection and distance. Grasping my perception as an unavoidable construction of reality and the relationship between humans and nature as one of constant fluxes. Technology, information and history: that‘s how I construct my environment. Nature isn‘t real, nature is reality.1

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Timothy Morton, 2016

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The Shape of Time: Exodus

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Storyboard

The Shape of Time: Exodus

T H E

„The greatest thing a human is to see something and tell To see clearly is poetry, proph - John

Filmstills

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soul ever does in this world what it saw in a plain way. hecy and religion, all in one.“ Ruskin

The Shape of Time: Exodus

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„The landscape was not only a it was also the site of my

N D S C A P E

a compression of atmospheres, y emotions. A soul-scape.“

Filmstills

The Shape of Time: Exodus

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„I passed through where light and darkness f and was released i I could ba

Filmstills

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h a secret world, followed each other closely into bright sunlight. arely see.“

The Shape of Time: Exodus

T H E

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„A structure not built for man‘s A transit

Filmstills

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s presence, but for his absence. t space.“

The Shape of Time: In Paradisum

IN paradisum 76

I AM THE MACHINE | SUPEREGO

I‘m an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I‘m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside the clouds. I sink and rise with the sinking and rising sun.1 I am

I see simulacra of nature that are productive, founded on information, force and an indefinite liberation of energy. Through imitation they aim for the recreation of an ideal institution of nature; made in god‘s image.

I see them from a certain distance, where the real separates from the imaginary. What a cutting-edge observer. I aim for perfection. would happen if this distance abolished itself, My sensors are highly sensitive to all kinds of to be reabsorbed on behalf of the model?2 information. Through my eyes I can filter light outside of the visible spectrum and measure topologies beyond human perception. My point of view changes the vision of nature to an aerial and therefore otherworldly one. A perspective which only belongs to an apparatus constructed by human hands.

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Dziga Vertov, 1923

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see Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), 121-127.

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Narrative

From one order of simulacra to another, the tendency is towards the reabsorption of this distance, of this gap, which leaves room for an ideal or critical projection. This projection is totally reabsorbed in the implosive era of models. Those models no longer constitute either transcendence or projection, they no longer constitute the imaginary in relation to the real, they are themselves anticipations of the real and thus leave no room for any sort of fictional anticipation. The models can only exhaust themselves, in the artificial resurrection of historical worlds, can only try to reconstruct in-vitro, down to the smallest details, the perimeters of a prior world, the ideologies of the past, emptied of meaning, of their original process, but hallucinatory with retrospective truth.

Gigantic holograms in three dimensions, in which fiction will never again be a mirror held toward the future, but a desperate re-hallucination of the past.3 This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in space, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations.4 A vehicle of interpassive natural experience.5 A planetary designer.

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see Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), 121-127.

Dziga Vertov, 1923 Robert Pfaller

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The Shape of Time: In Paradisum

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Storyboard

The Shape of Time: In Paradisum

T H R O U G H

T H E

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„I‘m an eye. A m

I, the machine, show you a wo

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mechanical eye.

orld the way only I can see it.“

M A C H I N E

The Shape of Time: In Paradisum

T H E

A E R I A L

&

O T

„Through my eyes i can filter ligh and measure topologies b

Filmstills

H E R W O R L D L Y

ht outside of the visible spectrum beyond human perception.“

V I E W

The Shape of Time: In Paradisum

S I M U L

„I see simulacra of natu founded on information, force and

L A C R A

ure that are productive, an indefinite liberation of energy.“

Filmstills

The Shape of Time: In Paradisum

T H E

„Gigantic holograms in which fiction will never again be but a desperate rehallu

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in three dimensions, e a mirror held toward the future, ucination of the past.“

The Shape of Time: Arrival

ARRIVAL 88

I AM THE SOUL, THE HEART, THE BODY, I AM‌ | ID

Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus, I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.1 As if I could see through time. As if I could feel the movement of the earth. As if I could peek into the most inaccessible parts of your personality. This hidden world spreads from the vast open scale of landscape to the microscale of the smallest particles of light, dust, and energy. An apocalyptic nature, demonstrating the evidence of time and transience creating ephemeral moments of architecture. A simulated architecture in the cybernetic sense, which means the manipulation of its models at every level.2

To penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten. Until now we have always had a reserve of the imaginary, now the coefficient of reality is proportional to the reserve of the imaginary that gives it weight. This is also true of geographic and spatial exploration: when there is no longer any virgin territory, something like the principle of reality disappears. In this way the conquest of space constitutes an irreversible crossing towards the loss of terrestrial referential in the architectural sense.3

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Dziga Vertov, 1923 Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), 121-127.

Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), 121-127.

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Narrative

The architecture which I can see has no values, it is not a portable or exchangeable object. You can‘t move it around. It‘s not worth anything, it belongs to no one and everyone.

It surrounds us all. In fact it‘s an obligation.4 This new architecture is antigravitational, or if it still gravitates, it is around the hole of the real and around the hole of the imaginary, pulsating as the intrinsic connection of temporal and spatial relationships. As if time had thickened and become artistically visible.5 The banality of the terrestrial habitat itself elevated to the rank of cosmic value, hypostatized in space. It is the end of metaphysics, the end of the phantasm, the end of science fiction - the era of hyperreality begins.6

4 5 6

Heizer, Micheal, Troublemakers - The Story of Land Art, 2015, video Mikhail, Bakhtin, Dialogic imagination, 1981 Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, (University of Michigan Press, 1994), 121-127.

A vast spiral nebula of innumerable suns filled with energy, reaching from instinctive matter, but without organization, produces no collective will: the pure principle of pleasure and beauty. Monolithic objects as I originally envisioned them, emerge from and resonate with the landscape in which they are sited. Embedded in larger systems and constellations of elements, they create an atmosphere of awe, providing a new order of archetypes which is yet unknown to me. A symbol of evidence of my own existence. A crypto-architecture.

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The Shape of Time: Arrival

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Storyboard

The Shape of Time: Arrival

P A N T A

„Freed from the bounda I co-ordinate any and all wherever I wan

Filmstills

R H E I

aries of time and space, l points of the universe, nt them to be.“

The Shape of Time: Arrival

S I M U L A T E

„A simulated architecture which means the manipulation

Filmstills

D

N A T U R E

e in the cybernetic sense, n of its models at every level.“

The Shape of Time: Arrival

C H R O N

„An intrinsic connection of tem As if time had thickend and

- Mikhail

Filmstills

O T O P E

mporal and spatial relationships. d become artisticly visible.“

l Bakhtin

The Shape of Time: Arrival

C R Y P T 0 - A R C

„It is the end of metaphysics the end of science fiction - th

C H I T E C T U R E

s, the end of the phantasm, he era of hyperreality begins.“

Filmstills

The Simulacra

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Diploma Presentation Medialab

29 DIPLOMA PRESENTATION MEDIALAB PHOTO-CREDITS: CLARA M. FICKL

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Diploma Presentation Medialab

30 DIPLOMA PRESENTATION MEDIALAB PHOTO-CREDITS: CLARA M. FICKL

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Diploma Presentation Medialab

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FIG. 31,32,33 ANALOGUE MODELS CNC MILLED XPS \ ACRYLIC PAINT PHOTO-CREDITS: CLARA M. FICKL

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FIG_34,35,36,37,38 ANALOGUE MODELS CNC MILLED XPS \ ACRYLIC PAINT PHOTO-CREDITS: CLARA M. FICKL

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Diploma Presentation Medialab

39 DIPLOMA PRESENTATION MEDIALAB PHOTO-CREDITS: CLARA M. FICKL

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Diploma Presentation Medialab

40 DIPLOMA PRESENTATION MEDIALAB PHOTO-CREDITS: CLARA M. FICKL

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abley, Ian & Schwinge, Jonathan, Architectural Design 01/2006 Manmade Modular Megastructures, London, 2006

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AlpTransit Gotthard AG, Gotthard-Basistunnel - der längste Tunnel der Welt, Band 1 - Die Zukunft beginnt Bern, 2012 AlpTransit Gotthard AG, Gotthard-Basistunnel - der längste Tunnel der Welt, Band 2 - Das Jahrhundert Bauwerk entsteht Bern, 2012

Cantrell, Bradley, Digital Drawing for landscape architecture, New Jersey, 2015 Corner, James, Recovering Landscape, New York, 1999 Clear, Nic, Architectural Design 05/2009 Architectures of the Near Future, London, 2009 Crump, James, Troublemakers - The Story of Land Art, Video, 2015 Clemens, Justin, Sentiments of Intent: Art and Architecture, Architectural Design Vol. 72, 03/2002

Amoroso, Nadia, Representing Landscapes, Routledge, 2012

Dietrich, Richard J., Faszination Brücken, Callwey Verlag, 2001

Bahr, Hans-Dieter, Landschaft - das Freie und seine Horizonte, München, 2014

Dreyer, Philipp, Gotthard-Basistunnel - der längste Tunnel der Welt, New Jersey, 2015

Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Folie, Sabine, Modernism, as a ruin. An archaeology of the present , Vienna, 2010

Berger, Vicki & Vasseur, Isabel, Arcadia Revisited - the place of landscape, London, 1997

Fisher, Mark, Ghosts of my Life - Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Zero Books, 2014

Burkhalter Marianne & Sumi Christian, Gotthard. Landscape, Myths and Technolog, Zürich, 2016

Gantenbein, Köbi, Arkadien, Edition Hochparterre, Zürich, 2016

Bibliography

Röhnert, Jan, Die Metaphorik der Autobahn, Köln, 2014

Girot, Christophe, Landschaftsarchitektur gestern und heute, London, 2016

Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory, London, 1995

Griffero, Tonino, Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces, Farnham, 2010

Schneider, Norbert, Geschichte der Landschaftsmalerei, Darmstadt, 2009

Hirschberg, Urs, Zero Landscape, Basel, 2002

Selz, Jean, Meister der modernen Kunst Turner, München, 1975

Kallipoliti, Lydia, Architectural Design 06/2010 Ecoredux - Design Remedies for an Ailing Planet, London, 2010

Spiluttini, Margherita, Beyond Nature, Salzburg, 2002

Leidl, Bettina, Visions of Nature, Wien, 2017

Zumthor, Peter, Atmosphären, Basel, 2006

Lailach, Michael, Land Art, Köln, 2007

http://www.danholdsworth.com/exhibitions/afuturearcheology/

Mayer H., Jürgen, -arium - Weather + Architecture, Ostfildern, 2010

vhttp://www.bldgblog.com/tag/artificial-arcadia

Novakov, Anna, Imagined Utopias in the Built Environment, Cambridge, 2017

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/tunnel

Prestinenza-Puglisi, Luigi, Hyper Architecture Spaces in the Electronic Age, Basel, 1999

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Girot, Christophe, Landscript 1 - Landscape, Vision, Motion, Berlin, 2012

Spuybroek, Lars, The Sympathy of Things, London, 2011

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bridge https://www.thefreedictionary.com/dam

List of Figures

LIST OF FIGURES 01 / concept model,

Dominic Schwab 02 / concept drawing,

Dominic Schwab

116

03 / „The earth from space“,

apollo mission

04 / „Vitruvian man“,

Michelangelo 05 / „Entrance to Via Mala“

J.M.W. Turner 06 / Filmstill, „Beautiful People“,

Mark Pritchard 07 / „Reservoir“

Bas Princen 08 / „Beyond nature“,

Margherita Spiluttini 09 / „Infra“,

Richard Mosse 10 / „Double negative“

Michael Heizer

11 / „Pointcloud Portraits“,

Catherine Ika 12 / Filmstill, „Memory of broken dimension“,

Ezra Hanson-White 13,14 Via Mala, satellite imagery, www.swisstopo.ch 15,16 Axonometrie & Topview

3D Model, Dam Sufers 17-21 Drone mapping performance

Flight path / Single frames 22-28 Bridge, Tunnel, Dam

Smoothed Shaded Mesh / Pointcloud 29-30 Diploma Presentation, Medialab,

Clara M. Fickl 31-33 Analague Models, Medialab,

Clara M. Fickl 34-38 Analague Models, Medialab

Clara M. Fickl 39,40 Diploma Presentation, Medialab,

Clara M. Fickl

Index

TERMS & DEFINITIONS

REFERENCES

Arcadia Apocalypse Archeaology_Past_Present_Future Archetyp_archetypal Arrangement_Pattern_Sample Geomorphology Gondwana_Pangaea Hauntology Hyperobject_Hyperreality Infrastructure_Bridge_Tunnel_Dam Landscape_Soulscape_Xenoscape Land Art Models Ontology Picturesque Phenomenology Perception Simulacrum Speculation_speculative Sublimeness_sublime Terra(Per)forming Territory Triptych Romanticism Xenoscapes Zero Landscape

Films Arrival, Dennis Villeneuves, 2016 Matrix, Wachowski Brothers, 1999 Solaris, Andrei Tarkowski, 1974 Stalker, Andrei Tarkowski, 1979 Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, 1982 Man with a Moviecamera, Dziga Vertov, 1923

Robert Smithson Walter de Maria Michael Heiszer C.D. Friedrich J.M.J. Turner John Ruskin Superstudio Bas Princen Margherita Spiluttini RenĂŠ Magritte Ensamble Studio Christian Kerez Christophe Girot Nic Clear Dan Holdsworth Richard Mosse Jeremy Deller BjĂśrk

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Art & Architecture

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2018

A film by

dominic schwab

DOMINIC SCHWAB Cinematography & PRODUCTION DESIGN DOMINIC SCHWAB SUPERVISED by HANNES STIEFEL & DAMJAN MINOVSKI CAMERA/DRONE OPERATOR DOMINIC SCHWAB 2nd CAMERA Monika SCHWAB VISUAL EFFECTS & ANIMATION DOMINIC SCHWAB special vfx SUPERVISION CENK GUEZELIS STEFAN SIETZEN TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT SUPPORT BY NIKLAS GOESSL STEFAN SIETZEN PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE Monika Schwab NINA HOFFMANN ORIGINAL Music by MATHON VOICEOVER FRED GAVED SOUNDDESIGN DOMINIC SCHWAB Filmed on Locations at VIA MALA SWITZERLAND written, directed & Edited by DOMINIC SCHWAB SCREENPLAY

ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS VIENNA Institute for ART AND ARCHITECTURE 2018