simultaneous reconstruction
According to Tony Hiss, author of The Experience of Place,
"Our habitual style of thinking, it is often said, is a stream of consciousness pouring and pushing its way through the present. Both the pinpoint of ordinary perception, which lets us shut ourselves away for our surroundings, and the broad-band focus of simultaneous perception, which keeps us linked to our surroundings, are inherited skills built into each of us. Simultaneous perception helps us experience our surroundings and our reaction to them, and not just our own thoughts and desires."
I agree with Hiss in the power of places as emotional experiences. I want to help others become aware of these places through altering their perceptions, and make them conscious for others to see through framing and reconstructing the visual landscape.
I drive. The road horizon seldom varies, and the freeway rarely turns. Four hundred miles to Los Angeles. I drive south, and watch the gradually evolving landscape fly by the window. It is mesmerizing in its mundaness. There is nothing there; yet, I am enchanted. This collection of moments along a fixed routes transforms and evolves. I stare and drive.
Much has been written about driving. Driving along empty stretches of roads, along fields, and through cities. The tilled fields and the tiled rooftops resemble each other in the patterns they construct for the moving eye. But what about those non-scenic by-ways? Those unnoticed un-landmarks in a city? What about the gridlock of a traffic jam? What about congested Foothill Boulevard, a street with non-descript one story wood frame construction? What is scenic about these non-scenic places?
I love moving through space and the feeling of freedom and opportunity that motion provides. The world is not moving. I am moving in the world. Here space and time are codependent and interactive. Through time, the body moves through space. The circulation, the path, the moving along a designated route becomes the source for inspiration. The journey rather than the destination becomes the focus of the studies of circulation. By walking along these sidewalks, and driving along these freeways I become the narrator and the translator for these circulation paths. I experience them, and make them into other experiences. It is a simultaneous reconstruction.
I do not experience this space, this freedom, from quantitative diagrams. Those are abstract notations about the geography, maps that translate topographical features into icons far removed from the experienced moments. With my methodology of working, I am in the site, moving and documenting. By taking photographs, I am not only analyzing, but responding.
My photographs construct new spaces through their layered perspectives and multiple vantage points. They are documenting existing places but then layering those individual sites in new ways which reconstruct them. I am building with photographs rather than with walls. I want to build dimension, and pedestrian experience. I also want to capture in a compressed format what is normally perceived in a longer duration. Extending the moment and compressing the moment, as a way of defining space are my approaches for this reconstruction. The place becomes the character, the setting becomes the story. The moments become the sequence, and the repetition and multiple perspectives become the space. The fragments becomes the wholes, the isolated instants become the linked compositions.
Most graphic design tries to communicate a message in the easiest, most comprehendible route possible. I want to extend that communication—that moment of translation—into an experience in itself. I want to create a dimensional space—a multi perspective, multilateral space—in a medium which functions usually linearly and flatly. I want the picture to communicate, without a necessary verbal narrative. I want the space of my page to interact with the viewer how a building’s space interacts with its participant.
The subject matter I chose to accomplish this with is exterior landscape. If I can reconstruct an everyday, or non-destination place and let it transform on the page, the page will become dimensional. On the surface it looks like any nondescript street scene, but things are not what they appear at first glance. They are layered, multiplied, contrasted against each other’s scale. According to Rudy Vanderlans, "The iteration of the images so leveraged simulates a spatiality that transcends the ordinary two-dimensional page."
A person does not fully comprehend their world from one point of view, one simple glance, or one photograph. They understand it by putting together puzzle pieces—differing perspectives, and seemingly incongruous facts and moments. They construct their own reality based on the addition of these separate elements. And, this is where that new space, or that new interpretation is interactive and subjective. The photographs are fairly representational in their nature; only in their reconfiguration does the documentation transform the landscape into something new. I want people to notice something that they have taken for granted by reconstructing it.
"Our habitual style of thinking, it is often said, is a stream of consciousness pouring and pushing its way through the present. Both the pinpoint of ordinary perception, which lets us shut ourselves away for our surroundings, and the broad-band focus of simultaneous perception, which keeps us linked to our surroundings, are inherited skills built into each of us. Simultaneous perception helps us experience our surroundings and our reaction to them, and not just our own thoughts and desires."
I agree with Hiss in the power of places as emotional experiences. I want to help others become aware of these places through altering their perceptions, and make them conscious for others to see through framing and reconstructing the visual landscape.
I drive. The road horizon seldom varies, and the freeway rarely turns. Four hundred miles to Los Angeles. I drive south, and watch the gradually evolving landscape fly by the window. It is mesmerizing in its mundaness. There is nothing there; yet, I am enchanted. This collection of moments along a fixed routes transforms and evolves. I stare and drive.
Much has been written about driving. Driving along empty stretches of roads, along fields, and through cities. The tilled fields and the tiled rooftops resemble each other in the patterns they construct for the moving eye. But what about those non-scenic by-ways? Those unnoticed un-landmarks in a city? What about the gridlock of a traffic jam? What about congested Foothill Boulevard, a street with non-descript one story wood frame construction? What is scenic about these non-scenic places?
I love moving through space and the feeling of freedom and opportunity that motion provides. The world is not moving. I am moving in the world. Here space and time are codependent and interactive. Through time, the body moves through space. The circulation, the path, the moving along a designated route becomes the source for inspiration. The journey rather than the destination becomes the focus of the studies of circulation. By walking along these sidewalks, and driving along these freeways I become the narrator and the translator for these circulation paths. I experience them, and make them into other experiences. It is a simultaneous reconstruction.
I do not experience this space, this freedom, from quantitative diagrams. Those are abstract notations about the geography, maps that translate topographical features into icons far removed from the experienced moments. With my methodology of working, I am in the site, moving and documenting. By taking photographs, I am not only analyzing, but responding.
My photographs construct new spaces through their layered perspectives and multiple vantage points. They are documenting existing places but then layering those individual sites in new ways which reconstruct them. I am building with photographs rather than with walls. I want to build dimension, and pedestrian experience. I also want to capture in a compressed format what is normally perceived in a longer duration. Extending the moment and compressing the moment, as a way of defining space are my approaches for this reconstruction. The place becomes the character, the setting becomes the story. The moments become the sequence, and the repetition and multiple perspectives become the space. The fragments becomes the wholes, the isolated instants become the linked compositions.
Most graphic design tries to communicate a message in the easiest, most comprehendible route possible. I want to extend that communication—that moment of translation—into an experience in itself. I want to create a dimensional space—a multi perspective, multilateral space—in a medium which functions usually linearly and flatly. I want the picture to communicate, without a necessary verbal narrative. I want the space of my page to interact with the viewer how a building’s space interacts with its participant.
The subject matter I chose to accomplish this with is exterior landscape. If I can reconstruct an everyday, or non-destination place and let it transform on the page, the page will become dimensional. On the surface it looks like any nondescript street scene, but things are not what they appear at first glance. They are layered, multiplied, contrasted against each other’s scale. According to Rudy Vanderlans, "The iteration of the images so leveraged simulates a spatiality that transcends the ordinary two-dimensional page."
A person does not fully comprehend their world from one point of view, one simple glance, or one photograph. They understand it by putting together puzzle pieces—differing perspectives, and seemingly incongruous facts and moments. They construct their own reality based on the addition of these separate elements. And, this is where that new space, or that new interpretation is interactive and subjective. The photographs are fairly representational in their nature; only in their reconfiguration does the documentation transform the landscape into something new. I want people to notice something that they have taken for granted by reconstructing it.
posted by agnes at 9:55 PM
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