A/V Mappings and Notationsinvestigations in motion, time and space

Clemson University School of Architecture4th Year Studio and Undergraduate/Graduate Seminar Work

Directed by Professor Martha Skinner

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Students:

Donna Horne

Knox Jolly

Addison Woodrum

Fraysse Lyle

Mason Edge

Sheldon Lovelace

Jonathan Pitts

Marc Leverant

Mike Stopka

Isaiah Dunlap

Akiko Matsumoto

Cole Stamm

Simons Young

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Architecture, spaces, cities... are not static, but rather dynamic and ever entities. It is the activities, the patterns of use, the fleetingencounters that so intrinsically constitute place. Digital audio/videorecorders have the potential to capture, study, measure, and understand thetemporal conditions of place. The capacities of this device as investigativeare found through the exploitation of its features, camera techniques, byembracing the camera as an extension of our body, and by understanding andrethinking our more common (architectural) drawing conventions via theconventions of the moving image.

In this 4th year architecture studio the students started by carefullyconstructing, precisely capturing, observing, and measuring a domesticactivity at dawn and at dusk with the video camera as well as withphotography and drawing. Time lapse, duration, and speed were explored asrevelatory of otherwise imperceptible moments. Camera features such as traileffect, night vision, exposure changes and filters were used to isolate orexaggerate the focus of the investigation. These 2-d studies were thenreassembled as slivers of time that combined along an axis created amotion/space CAT Scan – a 3-dimensional analog to the initial study. Thesewere done via laser cuts and 3-D printing, both processes involving anassembly of layers. The third step transformed these mappings into4-dimensional inhabitable representations of these studies.

The work of this studio was conducted this semester in conjunction withthe A/V Mappings and Notations seminar/studio that Skinner also teaches andwhich aims to merge the vocabulary of the moving image with the vocabularyof drawing.

Motion/Space MappingsMartha Skinner

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Threshold study in 3-D combining photography, model and video projection

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Time-lapse photograph examining a threshold condition

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Sound and video installation documenting a threshold condition from night to day

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A threshold from night to day using video projection, sound, model, photography and drawing combined

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Motion study in charcoal drawing

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Motion studies in photography

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Motion studies in photography and charcoal

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Installation that maps the movement through space

Both doors open Library door open Both doors closed

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LCD screens and Plexiglas boxes documenting and exhibiting a walk up the stairs.

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Time-lapse photograph and drawing documenting a walk up the stairs

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3-D model photographs depicting time and space of a walk up the stairs

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Body movements of the act of making the bed are amplified by the volumetric stages of the sheet in video and 3-D modeling

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The act of making the bed - 3-D printed models of the sheet volumes

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The act of making the bed - computer model of volumetric sheet

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Video and tactile installation describing the spatial act of making the bed

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Examination of the body in motion by the deformation of a projected grid

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Photo and video of a 2 1/4 mile run at dusk

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Photo stills of segments in time of a 2 1/4 mile run at dusk

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Laser cut model (CAT scans) of the 2 1/4 mile run broken down into individual revolutions of the cycle

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Installation of 2 1/4 mile run at dusk - a moving interactive projection

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Video and installation exploring the unconscious behaviors of people

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Sleeping - motion study with drawing, video and 3-D printed models

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Displacement of space by a living object through video, drawing, photography and installation

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“...our experience of the city, and hence our response to architecture, is almost exclusively conducted through the medium of the automobile: the car defines our space whether we are driving, being driven or avoiding being driven over. The car has been an integral part of metropolitan life for so long that it has become part of the urban fabric.” Jonathan Bell, Carchitecture.

The issue of time and of the bodyʼs relationship to space and an activity which was explored in the work of the previous chapter are carried to another scale in this exercise. A common organizational condition of our cities which is de-rived from our car culture - a culture in movement is studied. The car is seen as an extension of the body into the space of our city(ies) and as a mechanism, a ʻmedium ̓for reading and measuring place. The car/body is exploited as a measuring tool, and as means for discovering and understanding our places of transition.

The students turned their own cars into audio/video apparatuses, instruments for reading and measuring by carefully framing views and collecting sounds via the various apertures of the vehicle as related to the contracting and ex-panding experience of the space around them from within their car.

The documents were choreograph as a kind of section through the city where the line drawn, the section cut, is the trajectory of driving. The space(s) of the car/city are dissected as a way to understand organizational patterns in time.

Mapping the City in Movement:The Car as an A/V ApparatusMartha Skinner

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A video mapping of the social activities that occur within and outside the car

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The mapping of a small downtown street in six time lengths - car drives

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Across-section - a sliver of the city moves as if pushed by the speed of the car

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Car video apparatus investigating the signals of cars and city that guides our car’s movements

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Automoscope: movement through the city as guided by red, yellow, and green lights

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51inter[sur]face - the city captured as reflections interfacing with the inside space of the vehicle

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Stills from video drawing entitled Transient Hives, a proposal harnessing movements of the commercial strip

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For Spot on Schools, an international exhibition sponsored by iMage and the University of Florence in Italy, an inhabitable projection was proposed by the School of Architecture at Clemson University which took the explora-tions of the A/V Mappings and Notations studio and seminar to a full-scale experiment. The installation which presented individual student projects also mapped the activity of people as they interacted with the student work pre-sented during the period of one week - the length of the exhibit.

Beyond Media: Spot on SchoolsMartha Skinner, Doug Hecker

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For an international exhibition dedicated to schools experimenting with new media, an inhabitable projection was proposed. The installation which presented individual student projects also mapped the activity of people as they interacted with the student work presented during the period of one week - the length of the exhibit. Like the body of water in Moholy-Nagy’s example, a fluid inhabitable volume was created. By using 18 miles of string threaded and hanging from laser cut patterned panels of varying densities a thickened penetrable space was formed. This space was made luminous and also measurable by the projection of slowly changing colored light and moving horizontal lines which penetrated the space at different densities marking time at three different rates.

Ryuji Sibata, “Parallel,” 1937: This illustration is a photographic proof of the statement that “distortion may mean vision in motion”- from L. Maholy-Nagy’s Vision in Motion

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The volume of string and the projected lines were deformed by the movement of people as they passed and engaged with the work embedded within the string volume and playing on two small LCD screens. These defor-mations were captured with daily video recordings and re-projected into the volume during each following day in a layered process which developed a video drawing of the motion and activity through the space in time over the course of a week. Visitors who came to see the student work imbedded within were drawn to the silky tactility of the surface of the volume, quickly disappearing into it while others already inside would suddenly reemerge while interacting with the disappearing and reappearing ghosted projections of the previous users of the space. The light and colors of the projection filtered through the various densities of moving string creating from without a luminous inviting solid and from within; an experience like that of being submerged in water. This effect which was phenomenological for the visitors, took the experiment back to the Mogoly-Nagy “space-time synonym” exam-ple that inspired the work. The string volume experiment while being a mapping through the revelatory deforma-tions of a mass is also like water as an experience. The project submerged people into a space of refraction, light, color, depth, movement and fluidity.

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Early mock-up experimenting with light patterns

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Drawing of laser cut templates for string pattern

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Drawing of laser cut templates for string pattern

Assembly of installation

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Diagram describing video cycle of the motion and activity in the space through time

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Approach to the installation

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The Spot on School Exhibit is part of the BEYOND MEDIA international festival of architecture and media. It is promoted by the University of Florence and organized by iMage. 2005 Spot on Schools was curated by Paola Giaconia. The Beyond Media festival was curated by Marco Brizzi.

The work presented in the installation by the School of Architecture Clemson University included a collection of projects from the Southern Cities studio led by Doug Hecker and work from Martha Skinner’s A/V Mappings and Notations studio and seminar.

Clemson University students and alumni represented in the exhibit:Brooke Barr / Emily Cox / Matt Clarkson / Dan Culbertson / Sandra Doyle / Isaiah Dunlap / Mason Edge / Hans Hermann / Donna Horne / Knox Jolly / Losse Knight / Marc Leverant / Sheldon Lovelace / Fraysse Lyle / Akiko Matsumoto / Jona-than Pitts / Alicia Reed / Thad Rhoden / Lindsey Sabo / Peyton Shumate / Cole Stamm / Mike Stopka / Cleve Walker / Matt Warner / Addison Woodrum / Simons Young.

Clemson University students who worked on the installation:Mason Edge / Donna Horne / Knox Jolly / Marc Leverant / Sheldon Lovelace / Fraysse Lyle / Jonathan Pitts / Cole Stamm / Addison Woodrum.

The other schools which participated in the 2005 Beyond Media Spot on School exhibit:Architectural Association / Carnegie Mellon University / Clemson University / Columbia University / ETH Zurich / Fabrica / Hosei University / Instituto Superior Técnico / Miami University / NABA / National Chiao Tung University / Pratt Institute / Princeton University / SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) / Uc Berkeley / Università La Sapienza / University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Photo credits:Mason Edge / Doug Hecker / Knox Jolly / Martha Skinner / Raffi Tomassian

Index

Edge, Mason - pgs. 4-7, 22-23, 40-41

Horne, Donna - pgs. 32-33, 44-45

Jolly, Knox - pgs. 24-27

Leverant, Marc - pgs. 12-15, 36-37

Lovelace, Sheldon - pgs. 28-29

Lyle, Fraysse - pgs. 8-11

Pitts, Jonathan - pgs. 30-31, 40-41

Stamm, Cole - pgs. 46-47

Stopka, Mike - pgs. 50-51

Woodrum, Addison - pgs. 16-21, 38-39

Young, Simons - pgs. 48-49