DESIGN PROCESS II

PROJECTION TESTS

As part of experiments i projected  different videos onto the model, some were works by Tina Frank and some were the films I have made throughout the year. None of the footage links directly to the project, but the results were interesting and brought life to the model, moving over it and exposing the angles and surfaces that sometimes may disappear when looking onto an all-white surface. On a more practical level, it also taught me what a receptive material white perspex is for projection purposes in general and how to light it to some degree to avoid too much reflection.

CONCEPT MODEL

Following the completion of my model i tested several ways to use it through motion image. I filmed it moving the camera along as if a person walked by and experimented with different kinds of blur to get the result of focus on the central part only. The first films proved interesting, however the camera angle is not correct, it is pointing directly at the model when it should look at it from the side. In the last two videos I manipulated the camera angle to get different perspective.

MODEL MAKING

Since I could not find a successful way to draw my idea down, I decided to make a model of it. It was during the making process that I understood some of the details described in Design Process post and also made the decision as to how specifically to plan it. The model is still in the process of making, however it is at the stage when it begins to show what the space would look like.

DESIGN PROCESS

Analysing my research I identified the main points that were interesting for me, also being the turning points that influenced what I looked at next:

psychology and space depiction

amodal perception

surreal spaces

All this lead me to an idea of making a film of a walk through South Bank, from my point of view looking at what I see. The video was filmed handheld and the camera pointed in the direction I looked. I tried to keep the architecture of the place in the frame as that was the main element of the site I was interested in.

Once I had the footage, I exported it as stills at one frame per second and mapped the position of the buildings within the frame. I realised how much the perspective, angles and positions change from one frame to another. While this is because the I held the camera in my hand while filming and obviously the video was shaky, I realised that when we walk this is what happens to our eyes - with every step they change position, viewpoint etc. Even though our brain balances what we see into a stable image, I would argue that what we second after second is just as out of balance as a handheld film. 

I decided to try and replicate this idea and show how a plain building changes over time and space as we walk past it.

Based on the stills from my video, I created a series of drawings to test how to best apply it. During this process I got more and more confused and I realised how difficult it would be to depict this idea in a 2D environment.

One of my options would be to show the same building over and over again in a line, with changes to perspective and angle - however, as soon as I started drawing it I understood this was not what I was looking for. I was more interested in showing it as a single form changing in space.

I arranged the stills in line at equal distances that are relative to the overall size of the building in scale (I assessed the scale based on the foreground image in the frame). This was logical to me as it is the way we view films - the image is framed onto the screen in front of us. I then mapped the position of the building in each frame and drew the line along the bottom right edge of it.

Each part of the broken line represents a segment of the model and links the positions of the building in two stills. I then started building up a model based on that. I used the heights and widths  as a starting point for each of the segments based on the dimensions in the front of the image. The end point is the size of the following frame for them to align. The following drawing is a quick simplified model, however it is not fully accurate and I need to draw another, more detailed one.

PROJECT SYNOPSIS

I started this project  by exploring the link between depiction of space in film in response to protagonist's state of mind. I was interested in the subjective view of spaces as seen by the camera lens. I also looked at the ways we perceive spaces and objects. One interesting concept I came across, Gestalt psychology, explained how a fragmentary view of space is processed by our brains to be understood as a coherent whole. Therefore if we see a fragment of a building behind railing we will know it is one object rather that reading it as a series of elements as seen between the bars. Likewise, as we walk past places and objects, we perceive them as whole entities while in reality we only see fragments and, moreover, their position against us changes every step we take through the space and over time. This, as a space-time relationship brings us back to film where seeing a part of a location, we place it in context to understand it, we assume the continuation of this location off-screen. However, watching surrealist films, especially Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali I noticed that just by blurring the edges of the screen into black, we isolate the space we see and it appears to exist in void, it does not extend off-screen. These notions eventually lead to an idea where I revert the process of turning fragmentary view into a coherent whole and break down a building I pass by into sections as ween by camera lens, frame by frame. I then, using a camera lens, fragment a coherent architectural entity into segments relative to its position in frame, second after second. This relates to Muybridge's photo experiments of horses in motion, however in this instance it is a person that is moving along a building that remains in its place. The proposed depiction of an architectural object becomes an installation showing a space normally perceived (however not actually seen) as a whole entity. It thus represents the changes in what we see as a building over space and time, as we move past it.