One more entry from last semester...this paper was for a film seminar i took on post-war landscapes. I also submitted it for my MED committee review at the end of the semester. The page numbers start on 11–I've ommitted the first ten pages since they were a lenghty bibliography for my larger project.

I doubt anyone will actually have the patience to read this, but here it is...

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These drawings are made from a GIS model, so the real value is in having a simulation that I can continue to develop and query throughout the course of my research.

The pattern for the stainless steel screen was directly sampled from an Albrecht Durer woodcut, and the height source for the wood surround was derived from calculations based on the same engraving. I've been fascinated by this old woodcut for years...as has just about any other architect with research interests in representation. The idea here is to play the implicit pictorial depth within the original wood cut against the deep space visible through the screen, as well as the shallow surface relief in the wood surround. Its supposed to be a reconfigured version of Durer's perspective machine–illustrated in the original woodcut.

The piece is going to be in a show of digital fabrication going on here at the SOA. I'll post some images of the whole show once its installed.

Over break, I collaborated with Mark Linder from the SUSOA on an entry for the van Alen Istitute's Urban Voids competition. The entry built off of GIS modeling techniques we've been developing for years now...

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On May 11, 1896 William Heise, a cameraman for the Edison Company, recorded seventeen seconds of film in New York City's Herald Square using his employer's newly developed portable camera. This was the first recording of New York City street life. The genre of the film produced, dubbed an "actuality", was intended (as the moniker suggests) to be an honest registration of actual events before the open lens. Glancing with the benefit of contemporary eyes, one may feel inclined to accept this description. However, through an aesthetic analysis of the motion image itself, apprehending its agents within the ostensible image culture of the time, a more thorough description may be derived.

As was the essence of the new medium, the most obvious element captured in the film was a hectic motion montage. Blackened, grainy, phosphorescent figures shift about the screen in a syncopated figure-ground choreography. As the film progresses, the blackened blurs begin to decode themselves. Two male figures emerge in the foreground, walking at different speeds towards the left of the screen, while a trolley moves at an accelerated rate in the same direction- occupying nearly the entire space of the frame and smearing the anonymous silhouettes of its contents across the screen. As the trolley clears the frame it reveals a busy urban intersection with one road running slightly off parallel to our plane of vision, and the second at a perpendicular angle to the first. A crossing guard takes three slow steps backwards (momentarily disturbing the temporality of the short) while simultaneously a boy darts across the street. In the background we see more trolleys speeding through the intersection, horse drawn carriages, and a wealth of men and women in period apparel populating the scene. The buildings of the square, not completely in focus, seem rigorously geometric and are cropped at their tops in a way that makes indeterminate their heights and relative sizes. Vaguely rendered in the space between the buildings is a pedestal topped with statuary, no longer monumental in comparison to the surrounding buildings and only intermittently visible between passing trolleys and carriages. Men and women cross the intersection from all directions. From the left of the frame enters a second trolley running along the street roughly parallel to our plane of vision. Again, it occupies the entire space of the screen, spelling as it passes Y-A-W-D-O-A-R-B. Through the windows of the trolley the silhouettes return, as well as dark patches we now recognize as the fenestration of the buildings beyond. By the time the trolley wipes the screen to the right, it reveals an entirely new cast of figures. A man in a derby hat begins crossing the street. Walking towards us, the man lifts his head and glares directly into ours eyes before exiting the frame to the right and ending the film. Of course, the man was not looking into our eyes. He was, rather, looking at the camera- the first of twin monocled devices that negotiate the image dissemination of this cityscape.

Early films such as Herald Square were made public in turn of the century Nickelodeons, storefront theatres, and traveling carnivals. It is safe to assume that by 1896 most of those who viewed the film were familiar with city scenes such as these through photographic documentation. However, the impact of the motion image cannot be overstated. By giving the viewing audience what was likely their first motion glimpse of New York City, the film brings to pointed crisis a wealth of latent audience expectation. Whatever urban mythologies the audience has brought to the screening were quickly supplanted or embellished by the "fact" of the motion image. Elements that are easily digested today, such as the grain of the film and the aspect ratio of the screen, would quickly have to be rationalized and processed in this light. The entire 17 seconds being filmed from a stationary point, the images connote an objectivity that effectively effaces the subjectivity of the camera. The city inhabitants seem busy, purposeful, and internalized-curiously aloof to their filming. The city seems equally kinetic, positively writhing with activity.

Some questions are left unanswered by the film. How could it be that the city crowd was so aloof to their filming? Surely in 1896 Edison's new camera would have appeared remarkable. Yet save for the one derbied man, no one seems to notice. Were they acting? Further, why was Herald Square chosen for this filmic experiment? Was the square particularly conducive to the intended theme of the film, or simply accommodating of the practical necessities of a film shoot (lighting, space, depth of field)? What happened in the seconds before and after the camera aperture was opened?

At the edge of the filmic frame lies the threshold to the mythic construction of the city. The truncated buildings are topped with elaborate gothic statuary or they continue into the clouds. The busy city inhabitants work on Wall Street or they sing in Vaudeville or they are mugged on the train. The feigned objectivity of the shot is in fact complicit in the meticulous grooming of the space exterior of the frame. The singularity of the view renders the "facts" on screen ubiquitous, and the city becomes a field of repeated hyperbolic configurations of these elements. The narrative transcends the film, branching in space and time into the construction of the other of each individual who views the film. The implicit question: How do these constructions reinsert themselves, and to what extent will these narratives prefigure future constructions, material and mythic?

As advertised, the program requires a research thesis of an indeterminate format. While this is technically the case, I've found in my first semester that most professors involved in the MED program know precisely what they think the format should be. Usually this is a lengthy written piece of scholarship accompanied by visual supporting material. I aspire to have more of a balance between visual analysis and written work. It's going to be a battle.