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LAB[au] laboratory
for architecture and urbanisme
M.Abendroth
J.Decock
A.Plenneveaux
< e.motion space
>
http://www.lab-au.com
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e.motional space
When entering into electronic environments we perceive space through
specific points of view: externally we perceive space on the flat surface
of the screen, and internally through electronic eyes, cameras, both
conditioning our understanding of e.space. Conceiving electronic space
is thus working on specific modalities of perception, external or internal,
and its direct correlation to cognitive processes - mental space.
According to the issue of e.space, this article intends to underline
the relation between perception and cognition through specific techniques
of camera settings, movement patterns and montage techniques in relation
to electronic space constructs. It is an architectural reading of e.space
drawn out of the kinetic experience of space; from motion to emotion,
e.motional space.
e.motion, the kinematic construct of space :
" our ability to transfer cognitive artifacts into an experiential
mode is a powerful tool for thought "
Paul Anders : Envisioning cyberspace page 23
Considering e.space perceived through the electronic eye of the camera
on a flat screen conducts us directly to the cinematic experiences of
space through motion. Motion is the key parameter to produce the feeling
of 'insidness', as a relation between subjects and objects, in real,
filmic or electronic space.
Indeed, the invention of cinema has lead to a large development of techniques
setting the viewer into motion, fusing modalities of perception, camera
movements with sequential space, montage, techniques. The sequential
techniques of the cinema thus describe space as a segmented world in
which each fragment maintains its own independence. In this manner,
each frame being placed in continuous movement, inscribing motion through
the rapid succession of frames switching between different camera movements
such as shots, travelling, pans, orbits … and different montage
principles such as frame by frame, overlays, fade-in/out … techniques.
This vocabulary has turned into the basis of kinematic narration, where
dynamic motion is experienced and perceived by the senses while categoric
motion, moving abruptly from scene to scene, is cognitive and imagined.
Involving perception and cognition thus produces new space experiences
further introducing space as a disembodied, mental, construct reversing
entirely the physical relation between body and space.
In this manner the filmic techniques of continuous and discontinuous
space-time have produced new forms of expression, meanings, in the experience
of space/narration. The electronic eye of the camera has thus turned
into our sensitive apparatus, a sense, affecting our perception and
cognition establishing through motion patterns specific space construct(ions)
from physiological to psychic and emotional ones.
Film analogies are relevant to the discourse of 20th century architecture
since the cinema was the first media to introduce temporal and spatial
discontinuity. For example the frame by frame montage inscribing dynamics
and tension through static or categoric motion has been the base of
the constructivist understanding of space describing the latter out
of borrows and arrows as a balance of weight and movement which even
includes states of mind being translated into visual displays. Architects
like Bernhard Tschumi for example have transposed the filmic discontinuous
space-time construct of montage to the architecture of the 'parc de
la villette' where the overlaying of different programmatic, geometric
and functional elements are used to generate a system of inter-connected
elements, thus building up a complexity of meaning. In his writings
and works about de-construction Bernard Tschumi often refers to Sergei
Eisenstein's technique of 'dialectic montage' in the construct of e-motional
space as a subjective cutting of multiple 'narrative' elements interconnecting
and representing different layers of stories, all parallel in time and
space. This post-structural linguistic analysis of Sergei Eisenstein's
montage technique overcomes the investigation of cinematic fiction to
a general understanding of the contemporary state of disembodied space
experiences.
According to this conception of space, 'e.motional space' is a specific
setting of meaning in mediated space-times. Cinematic means of perception,
of connecting space and time, of representing human memory, thinking,
and emotions has become the main vector of diffusing and representing
cultural data.
windows of perception
:
As computer culture
is gradually spatializing all representations and experiences, they
become subjected to the camera's particular grammar of data access:
we now use these operations to interact with data spaces, models, objects
and bodies. Cinema's aesthetic strategies have thus become basic organizational
principles of computer software. The window in a fictional world of
a cinematic narrative has become a window in a datascape. In short,
what was cinema has become human-computer interface.
Lev Manovich, in
;' cinema the cultural interface'
The involvement
of filmic technologies in the constitution of e.motional space according
to patterns of perception and cognition, thus allows to ponder on the
potential of visual and spatial transcription of information processes,
computation and communication, in the form of electronic space. Similarly
to the cinematic 'realm' where specific techniques have turned into
the narrative structures of a media, the transcription of information
processes now becomes the basis of e.space constructions. The comparison
of filmic space to electronic one should not be seen as a metaphoric
transcription but as a general reflexion on how movement and camera
settings produce e.motions in discontinuous space-time constructs, fictional
space. E.space, besides recent developments in video games, is not a
narrative disposal but a visualization of information processes in non-linear
space-time, networks and computation, a system depending on the direct
implication of the user, interactivity, in its proper formalization.
"aesthetics begins as patterns of recognition."
Friedrich Kittler in Literature, media, information systems 1997 page
130
As information exchange
is directly linked to human experiences, acting in cyberspace thus defines
space settings at the surface of the screen, perception and cognition,
as a process mainly depending on the users implication, differentiating
the truly virtual from the simply simulated: immersion, navigation,
and interaction. The combination of these three criteria are the main
elements throughout which e.space constructs will emerge as a complex
language linking new space-time parameters, communication and computation
to specific modalities of perception and cognition.
As previously mentioned, the experience of Cyberspace and the notion
of 'being there', imply the setting up of specific, yet variable parameters
according to camera movements, physical behavior, as well as the setting
up of perceptive ones, electronic ears - listen, body-fragments - touch…The
variable setting of these elements allows not only to conceive new space
constructs such as behavioral, generative and zero gravity spaces but
already constitutes a huge palette of elements throughout which e.motional
space can be produced out.
Yet, working on e.space and movement patterns, such as jump nodes (abrupt
point to point navigation) and switch nodes (abrupt file to file = space
to space navigation ) also allows to produce discontinuous space-time
experiences close to the filmic technique of montage. The combination
of these elements are perceptive and cognitive disposals in correlation
to space, directly influencing the action and reaction of the user in
a specific space-time constellation of psychic and emotional settings,
and thus produces immersion and interactivity. But in the same way different
techniques have set up a various visual languages in the cinematic culture,
specific codes involving computation and communication processes need
to be established in order to build an understanding and production
of complex space-time constructs, e.space. And yet, as in the cinema,
the quality also depends on the relation between the techniques and
the modalities of expression and narration which, in our case, is the
correlation between the form and the function.
In fact, the experience of space, 'insidness', is mediated by information
formalization processes, invoking perception, semantic inscription (cognition)
and the mental representation. Communication and computation technologies
therefore project us into new electronic spaces where the construct
of 'hyperspaces' determinates a new relation between information and
the individual, by combining the perceptual with the conceptual, the
concrete with the abstract. By transforming modalities of perception
and augmenting our cognitive potential, technology thus becomes the
direct extension of our sensitive and mental systems affecting deeply
these "senses", on the one hand because space-time structures
and their representations are being transformed (developing new "sense"-significance),
and on the other hand because immersion and interaction affect our "sense"
of perception; it is a hybrid construct between space and body, placing
the human within information spaces through mental processes in e.motional
space.
www sites:
The Aspen Movie Map
http://www.triptyk.com/crisf/aspen.htm
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Naimark.html#
Andrew Lippmann
and his MIT Architecture Machine group developed in 1978 what is probably
the first hypermedia system of non-linear access to photographic images
in virtual space. The Aspen Movie Map system was a surrogate travel
application that allowed the user to enjoy the city of Aspen. The recording
of the city was done by means of four cameras which have taken every
3 meter pictures in 4 direction. In this manner the specific camera
shots and the indexing of image in time and space allowed a continuos
ride through the city in form of picture sequences and thus allows the
user to navigate interactively the electronic cityscape at different
times of the day and different seasons of the year. The system has been
combined with a map navigator using each decision point ( street intersection
) to have a continuos navigation or to use the switch nodes of the map
to do a point to point jump in the city.
Eddie Elliot , The
video streamer
http://ic.www.media.mit.edu
- The interactive cinema web site of the MIT
http://ic.www.media.mit.edu/Publications/Thesis/sdallasMS/PDF/sdallasMS.pdf
Eddie Elliott developed
the "Video Streamer" software back in 1994 in the Interactive
Cinema section of the MIT medialab. In order to give a visual representation
of the time and motion elements of a video stream, Elliott used the
third dimension. Each frame would overlay the previous one with a slight
offset thus forming a block on which front side displays the "normal"
view of a video, while the sides would display the edges of the video.
Cuts, movement, pans, zooms would become immediately apparent as patterns
on the side of the block. Such a development inspired several follow
ups among them, one could name ..... and the diva software.
ART+COM , the invisible
shape of past things
http://www.artcom.de/projects/invisible_shape/welcome.en
The Berlin-based
Art+Com bureau created in 'The Invisible Shape of Things Past' an innovative
3D interface for accessing and visualizing data about Berlin through
historic film sequence. The interface renders the camera movements,
perspectives and focal length by placing the records of cinematic vision
back into their historical and material context. The trajectory through
time and space taken by a camera thus becomes spatial objects so called
"filmobjects", correspond to documentary footage recorded
at the corresponding points in the city. As the user navigates through
the 3-D model of Berlin, they come across elongated shapes lying on
city and thus experiences the urban space through cinematic motion.
Extended to a 'on line ' interface users now can transform film sequence
into electronic 3D shapes in order to investigation space-time base
information access through virtual space and navigation.
VRML, cosmoplayer
needed
Lev Manovich ,
http://www.manovich.net
Lev Manovich is
an artist and a theorist of new media with computer animation, digital
cinema, digital photography, and interactive multimedia since 1984.
The web site of Lev Manovich give access to the writings and projects
about the key categories and forms of computer culture according to
the cinematic one, such as cultural interfaces, database narrative,
spatial montage, meta-media, macrocinema.
The ambiant machine
http://www.ambientmachines.com/AmbientPlayer.html
The project of Marc
Lafia, the ambient machine, explore the setting of visual language,
on the surface of the screen according to cinematic techniques. As a
compositing, recording and playback device the user get involved with
the 'generative grammar' of cinematic gestures such as montage in order
to experience the computer screen as a multilayered two dimensional
space.
Space, emotional space
http://www.lab-au.com/space
The new project,
sPACE, of the belgium office LAB[au] is an online project investigating
the impact of NTCI and particularly, modeling languages and 3D Real
Time renderings (such as VRML) on the notions of space-time constructs.
In order to this the website offers to get confronted to theoretical
research, writings, as to several electronic environments, e.space,
and thus constitutes a space of reflection and experimentation. In particular
the 'emotinal space' files offers the user a specific experiment of
cyberspace by mixing music throughout space and navigation, by modifying
in real time camera settings and editing its movements the user produce
a continuos travelling, an acoustic space architecture. Working on/in
electronic space - architecture - thus extend the experience and understanding
of new space-time conditions fusing body and mind as a hybrid interplay
of architecture, music and cinema.
"blaxxun contact"
vrml plugin downloadable at: http://www.blaxxun.com
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