PERCEIVING SPACE

The book I have been reading recently, House of Leaves, shows a different concept of space changing in response to what a character is seeing/expecting. It refers to dark corridors and staircases that expand and contract in response to characters' fears and anxieties about it.

Some critics believe the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it. Dr Haugeland asserts that extraordinary absence of sensory information forces the individual to manufacture his or her own data.(...) the house, the halls, and the rooms all become the self - collapsing, expanding, tilting, closing, but always in perfect relation to the mental state of the individual.

Experienced or concrete space:                                                                                                          It has a center which is perceiving man, and it therefore has an excellent system of directions which changes with the movement of the human body.; it is limited and in no sense neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous, subjectively defined and perceived; distances and directions are  fixed relative to man...

Both here and in Repulsion we deal with space that changes when seen by different people, or even the same people in a different state of mind. There is a few differences such as the scale of changes to spaces and whether it is space that is haunted or a person, but at certain level both come down to how the space is perceived.       

BETWEEN YOU AND I

Recently I have seen Anthony McCall exhibition. Four of his light films were projected in a dark space. The light cut through darkness of the exhibition hall marking lines on the floor and moving slowly. What was the show's main strength was its simplicity, all the elements including the interior space were minimal and this only highlighted the projected films and forced the viewer to focus on them and follow the movement of the lines.

The darkness filling the room also forced one to focus on works in a more direct way - not only the works stood out but also were the only point of reference for the viewer. Coming from bright spaces into a dark area as such, it took me about 10-15 minutes to fully adjust and be able to see anything other than the projections. This may be linked also to films' duration - they are all about 15 minutes long.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

The German word Gestalt means essence or shape of an entity's complete form. This theory deals with the perception of reality as a whole rather than sum of elements. The Gestalt effect is the form-generating ability of our senses to recognize forms and figures rather than collection of lines and curves.

The whole is greater than the sum of parts.

Principle of totality: the conscious experience must be considered by taking into account all the physical and mental aspects of the individual simultaneously.

We order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetric and simple.

Gestalt laws:

Law of closure - the mind experiences elements it does not see in order to complete a regular figure.

Law of similarity - the mind groups similar elements into collective entities or totalities.

Law of proximity - spatial or temporal proximity of elements may induce the mind to perceive a         collective or totality.

Law of symmetry - symmetrical images are perceived collectively even in spite of distance.

Law of continuity - the mind continues visual, auditory and kinetic patterns.

Law of common fate - elements with the same moving direction are perceived as a collective or unit.

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

During my research I came across some interesting optical illusions that also make one look closer at how we perceive things we see.

The most striking one, however simple, is Kanizsa triangle:

In the drawing we see a triangle although it is not drawn. The effect is known as subjective/illusory contour.                                                                        Also, the nonexistent white triangle appears to be brighter that the surrounding area but in face is the same brightness as the background.                          In a broader context this makes one wonder how much of what we see is objective and how much of visual information we receive is actually our brain's personal response to what we see.                              That then leads to two conclusions: firstly how we perceive the world around us is subjective; even if we share the same response it is likely that it will not be the same exact thing we are looking at.

Secondly, it is sometimes more important what we do not see but understand clearly from the picture. As the brightness of the triangle in the drawing suggests what we do not see becomes more apparent than the visible.

Another interesting optical illusion is Necker cube:

with all lines of equal weight there is no indication as to which is the front and which is the back of the cube.                                                              There are two possibilities as the two bottom drawings show, however the cube in its simplest form does not show which of them is correct.
This leads then to confusion and forces one's mind to skip between the two possibilities, as explained in Gestalt psychology theory.

PSYCHOLOGY AND SPACE DEPICTION

The theme for this project is the link between mental condition of a protagonist and space depiction in cinema, based on Polanski's Repulsion.
While researching the connection between space perception and psychology I came across several interesting points. While not all of them relate to the project topic directly, I find them worth mentioning as they enrich my understanding of how we look at and see objects. Also, while some of the information appears obvious at its core, making it explicit forces us to realize the mechanisms of how we respond to some visual data.

1. What is perception then? The most brief and to-the-point definition I have found states that it is the process  of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. This is a very broad definition, however it addresses the matter immediately. It is not restricted to vision specifically but addresses the main specifics of perception in general, whether visual, auditory etc. Since one gains understanding of a piece of information at hand, it will be a personal comprehension of such. Therefore this definition not only points what perception is but also describes it's qualities. It also suggests that all personal (if different) responses are theoretically correct.

2. We perceive the whole of a physical structure when only parts of it are actually seen. This is called amodal perception. This is part of our everyday experience that we take for granted but having read it made me realize how little attention we pay to this phenomenon. If we see someone behind metal bars we perceive them as a whole object rather that parts that are actually visible through the fence. It comes so naturally that we barely realize it unless we try to draw it.

3. Objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard or touched. This is the rule of object permanence. Again, while we assume it as obvious, how many time have we forgotten about an issue at hand as soon as we did not see it/listen to it? The old saying out of sight out of mind seems to reflect it perfectly.

4. Another interesting concept related to space perception is holism, stating that the properties of a system cannot be explained or defined by its parts alone. This derives from classical philosophy with Aristotle's Metaphysics statement: The whole is different from the sum of its parts. While it partly relates to amodal perception, it also suggests that spaces (in this context) are not defined merely by the lines and contours. The perception is of space is affected by additional factors such as ambience and these add to all the elements alone, frequently changing the whole perception of the given space.


All of the above information have been sourced from Wikipedia, with own comments and reflections.

SITC SPACES

SPATIAL STRATEGIES

Towards the end of previous project I realized I wanted to focus more on the filming techniques.

I would like to look into how different ways of filming an object or space  can affect the way we see it, alter the mood and perception.

Recently I have been looking at early Polanski's films, focusing on representation of space and its meaning. My research is still in progress, however I have seen his early films shot during his Film School studies and also two of his early feature films.

The films I have seen so far are:

A Murderer (1955)

A Toothful Smile (1957)

Break up the Dance (1957)

Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958)

The Lamp (1959)

When Angels Fall (1959)

The Fat and the Lean (1961)

Mammals (1961)

Knife in the Water (1962)

Repulsion (1965)

One characteristic that most of them have in common is the way the space is shown. Whether the set / locations are spacious or small, they are often represented as small, dark, crowded. This gives them a claustrophobic, almost oppressive appearance, especially in Repulsion.

On a closer look I have realized that this is not because of actual spatial restrictions. It is in fact purposeful director's decision to show them in this manner to accentuate the mood, make the ambience of the film more apparent.

By using close-ups and mid-shots when filming interior spaces the director instantly makes them look smaller than they actually are. They are often filled with people to the point there is no space left between them which also gives the impression the locations are too small, at the same time indicating a change in plot / an important moment in the film.

Another means of manipulating the way we view the spaces in Polanski's films is the way light is used in them. They are covered in darkness at moments of tension and bright during peaceful, uneventful scenes.

Repulsion (1965)

Knife in the Water (1962)

Another interesting idea of how we perceive space in film came from a friend.

We were watching one of Polanski's shorts, Mammals, below and we clearly had a very different understanding of the space within the film:

Some time throughout the film, she noticed that there was no real space there. This immediately rang a bell - what she saw as a flat was a perfectly normal winter landscape for me. It gives another insight into how we understand spaces we see depending on our experience and knowledge.

SITC PROJECTIONS

I continued my experiments with SITC movie, this time projecting it onto a simple three-dimensional installation and filming it. The result looks like a split screen video, consisting of several separate elements. This has especially strong effect on the time lapse part where I was no longer watching what was happening (purpose of our activities) but focused on movement instead.

What did not work as expected is lack of perspective in the film. The video I have made looks flat and requires further experiments. I will test how it works with different distances for depth as well as light and perhaps a better camera as possible. I will also look for opportunities to project it onto existing buildings and spaces to get a real spatial effect.

SITC FILMS

Waiting for the new design project to start, I have gone back to the film material from our Six and the City workshop. We have been editing it since the workshop and now I found more time to work on it a little more. The following videos are by no means the final versions, however they shows the progress and direction the film is taking.

THINGS TO CONSIDER

While an idea of motion triggered light installation has been with me for a long time while working on this project I could not narrow down the form or function for it. The proposal has to answer four key questions

Where?

Why?

What?

How?

and no specific idea/solution I came up with answered all of them together, there was always a detail that did not match, the ever present question without an answer before the glimpse of an idea even developed to a presentable form.

As a result of that I became more and more critical and started asking more detailed questions, trying to find what was the mistake in my thinking. I came back to my human traffic analysis I gathered through my animations and only then did I realize I had asked a wrong question altogether: there is no one form you can give to peoples' movement as it is random and temporal, in constant flux. Therefore, any arbitrary form placed on site would be out of context.

SCRATCH FILM

Last week we were experimenting with scratch film making to explore the materiality and physical qualities of film that we are so used to in digital form. What started as playing around and scratching emulsion off the leader, without any plan as to what we wanted to show through it, gave quite surprising results:

I started doodling shapes based on the light shapes from the film and animated motion around them as a basis for motion directing piece of architectural furniture.

MOVEMENT AND CONTEXT

Following my first attempts at motion tracking I decided to put them in the context of the whole site. Again, what i was interested in is to try to identify any patterns or recognize places where people take most turns and move in different directions rather than following the path along the river.

There are two main groups of people passing through South Bank: the first being people going to/from work, mostly there from Monday to Friday in the mornings and aftenoons and the second: tourists and people coming there for arts, sightseeing and walks. While the first group usually rushes past the site to get to their workplaces on time, the second has a more leisurely way of walking; meandering and taking random turns, clearly enjoying themselves and soaking the atmosphere of the place. 

PRESENTATION

MOTION TRACKING

SIX AND THE CITY

AE EXPERIMENTS

STEP BACK, ZOOM OUT

After the first experiment with motion sensor torches I realised how limiting my chosen site was and decided to take a step back and have a wider look at the South Back area. While Arena was interesting in how it directed peoples' movement along the river, it was also restricting it to several paths. The next step to take is to map the traffic along the riverside with focus on locations where people walk in many different directions rather than along the river only, where they intersect and cross the sidewalk. I would also like to present it in a presentation encompassing both the film of the site as well as time based graphic representation/animation of the visitors' flow along the site, as inspired by the following work by Quayola called 'Natures'

Natures 3B from Quayola on Vimeo

The mapping I'm going to undertake will give me basis for further project development and additional light experiments based on the information from the mapping exercise.

MOTION TRIGGERED LIGHT EXPERIMENT

MOTION AND INTERACTION

I spent some time last week thinking how to get people to interact with Arena, what it is that encourages them to slow down and notice it. Not only kids, who immediately want to run around it but people of all ages. After looking at other places where one can see people gathering just to sit around I noticed that fountains, or any structures with water running through them for that matter, tend to attract people. However, since the site already runs along the river this solution seemed not only too obvious but also not the most appropriate.

At some point I gave up and took a step back. And then it struck me: what I really want to propose is not a solution that will get people to actively interact with the sculpture and site but rather something that will involve them as they rush past the place.

I started looking at interactive art for some more indirect and abstract solutions and ideas. The first I came across was the impressive work of an architect and artist Thomas McIntosh,  called Ondulation. The 'temporal sculpture', as the artist referred to it, translates sound waves into a visual experience. The artist placed sound speakers under a huge basin filled with two tons of water. The sound waves from the speakers trigger the water to ripple into more and more complex waves as the music becomes more complex too. This is lit and projected onto the wall for the viewers to have a full audio visual experience.

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/video.php?NumObjet=19030

What this triggered, was an idea of linking different elements to get a new and unique solution. I also liked the directness and simplicity of the work, done without digital translation but by purely mechanical means and thus very direct.

I realised what kind of solution/proposal I had been looking for: an installation of lights triggered by the movement of people passing by.

To begin with I returned to my records of the site to find if there is a traffic pattern around the Arena and, indeed, people do tend to walk around it along four main paths, ignoring the remaining, less direct ways to pass it.

That would give an initial ideas how to locate sensors and lights to trigger and place the installation.

I have thought of several triggers worth consideration and giving different results:

shadow
movement
noise

There are also many ways in which the lights can be placed as well as the kind of lights to be used, again leaving me with a whole array of choices and results that I could get.

One thing about the installation idea is that it brings me back to my initial points of focus: light and shadow as well as drawing peoples' attention to the site. This time, however, it is visitors' actions that trigger the lights and effectively surprise them.

The best place to begin with is to place the lighting in the overshadowed areas of the sculpture, where it rises off the ground creating dark corners.

Another way to do it is to have the light projected upward or at an angle and moving, sweeping the area. With this option it would also make sense to install the cameras to film the movement, however this again raises a number of questions regarding programming the movement and its direction.

At this point what I'm left with is extensive research both into the site possibilities and technology/setup limitations and options.

INITIAL PROPOSAL IDEAS

The Architectural Furniture to be proposed my Arena, my chosen site is, as yet, undefined in shape and form.

Its function, however, will be to explore the light within the site and encourage the playfulness that comes from innocence as these are the two most striking characteristics of the site.

Visiting the site and observing people interact with it, I found it amazing how only children actually step on it and play around it. It reminds me how restricted adult people can be, following forms and unwritten rules that only children, unaware of them, break. On occasion I would see groups of young people, probably students, taking a seat on Arena and relaxing, however not once did I see there older people or tourists - they always choose to sit on benches.

DREAMING...

Odd as it may sound, I has a dream about the site and project (need a break?). In my dream, the waved form of Arena was brought to flat surfaces, like a bench, or a table. The broken circle was there as is but with more rectangular, if curved in a circle, shapes. Also, it was placed on a sort of revolving plate with metal rail around it keeping it in motion, slowly but ceaselessly. I still remember the feeling I had - of surprise, I was aware it wasn't what it should be, and disbelief but at the same time it seemed perfectly real with the constant motion and light and shadow changing as it rotated...
Quick sketch model of the structure:

EXPANDED CINEMA

Expanded cinema is a form of art where the viewer not only watches the film as in the cinema but also engages with it.

What started as films involving other forms of art and technology, as in Stan VanDerBeek's films such as Wheeeeels No. 2, 1959

http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/vanderbeek_stan_wheeeelsno2_1959.mov

developed into a new art form, taken out of the confines of movie theatres where the audience is passive into the public areas with the audience becoming participators in creation, as in Anthony McCall's films/installations of light projected onto a room where people entering it would also enter the film space and alter it with their presence, as in Long Film for Four Projectors and Four Projected Movements as well as the more recent Between You and I:

Not only is McCall's work interesting in terms of experimental film/art/installation but also its focus on light and shadow, within the space ad in relation to people moving around it.
One interesting concept about light is that it can define and modify space and our perception of it. It can define space same as objects placed inside even though it is not a material object itself.
One can see that clearly in Rosa Barba's installation using old, loud projectors filling a room with light and sound. The projectors are arranged with consideration for space, filling it and giving it ambience that is only enhanced by constant whirring of projectors, immersing visitors fully upon entrance.












The theme of light and shadow in space is ever present in film but there are also artists who deal with light as such. One of the big names is James Turrell. His art deals with light in spaces and as such modifies and defines them. However, his interest in light is broader than spatial definition, it really is light in all its aspects.

Some if his works are holograms with their eerie colours, partly resembling the results one gets when using pinhole cameras - blurred shapes and exaggerated colours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography

Holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object were still present, thus making the recorded image (hologram) appear three-dimentional.
This technique was invented in 1947 by Dennis Gabor, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971. The discovery came as an unexpected result of research into improving electron microscopes.The technique, as originally invented, is still used in electron microscopy, known as electron holography, but holography as a light-optical technique did not advance until the development of the laser in 1960s.

However, this is just one way of looking at light. Since the game of light and shadow is ever present on my chosen site, with its curves taking the opposites of fully lit by sun or covered in deep shadow depending which side you look at it, that is one way to explore the possibilities of developing the project around that.

JOHN MAINE SCULPTURE

During my visit to South Bank I was immediately attracted to the broad display of street art: the performers posing to the public, musicians, skate park with its colourful graffiti and youth using it as well as the sculptures lining the riverside walk. This art is more direct and accessible to public as opposed to enclosed in gallery spaces, theatres and concert halls. It prompts visitors response and engages them, whether they visit the site to enjoy it or just to have a stroll along the river.The tourists will pose with the performers, listen to the music, watch skaters perform their tricks and take pictures next to the sculptures.

The Arena sculpture, most architectural of the works of art along South Bank, though, triggers the most direct response. Depending on time of the day there are kids running on it trying to keep balance on the curved surface or students sitting there enjoying their lunch - people not only watch it or pose next to it but actually utilise the sculpture for their enjoyment. Without as much as noticing it as a work of art they engage with it. Perhaps they see it as a more fancy bench, the same giving it a new purpose.

The sculpture was created in 1983-88 by a British sculptor John Maine for the Sculpture Show, commissioned by South Bank Centre. Arena, a large broken circle of stone blocks does not immediately appear as a work of art, more like an integral part of the area. This is no coincidence: Maine's works, many of then being outdoor sculptures, show strong links to landscape and architecture and are integral parts of their sites such as another of his sculptures designed for the Winchester Cathedral:

SOUTH OF THE RIVER...

The South Bank walk is a buzzing place, filled with people every hour of the day: visiting galleries, enjoying an afternoon stroll along the river or simply rushing to get their lunch. We go there to see a performance, exhibition, movie, the list goes on. It is the small things in our way that we usually take for granted and fail to notice. How much attention do we pay to sidewalk patterns or bench design? Unless it is forced onto us by being particularly eye-catching, we will pass it by without as much as a glance.
What I would like to do this year is to show such things using film, at unexpected angles and close-ups, taking them out of their proportions and in a new form, adjusting lighting and colours. I will add to and subtract from them, creating new entities. It is by surprise that we learn to notice these elements and often all it takes is a minimal intervention that gets us out of our comfort zone, forcing us to look aside or take a step left perhaps.
Film, as abstract and often indirect means of representation is a platform that will allow me to express and possibly design the subtleties and as such, aided by other techniques, will effectively lead to developing a richer, fuller project.

SITE ELEMENTS

ARCHIVE

In this project, researching a series of gallery/museum shops I tried to investigate the means of showing a three dimensional space within the constraints of photography (above). What was especially interested for me within the project is the deconstruction of spaces through separation of elements of design such as shapes, colours, light etc.(below). By studying each of the elements separately we learn more about them and can see spaces in a new light (metaphorically). While this is one of my first works and the quality of the drawings could be improved, I still find the concept of creation through deconstruction interesting and hope to come back to it at some point.

The above photographs were my first attempts at using a pinhole camera. The shapes are blurred and colours exaggerated. Again, by these simple means one's attention is immediately drawn to the beauty of these images. Below is a series of drawings of a leftover spaces project construction for which the above photographs were also taken.


The two technical drawings show a project where part of the sidewalk was wobbly, getting the passers-by to act a performance of trying to catch balance and prevent falling over.

This picture shows an earlier stage of the above project, with actual actors performing at the raised-level slabs. The image, with its exaggerated contrast, gives an illusion of light when trying to capture the movement.