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.
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.
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.
