Re-imaging the Environment

This paper represents a study of selected visualisation and investigative methods that facilitate the exploration and expression of human emotions and perceptions within real world environments during the design development stages of a project, repositioning exploration and visualisation in spatial design education. It puts forward an outline for an iterative enquiry around human experiences in order to assess the value of alternative cognitive tools for spatial design students in higher education. Established tools such as orthographic drawings, axonometric projections or scale models equip spatial designers with the consistency they need to investigate and represent physical attributes of space but don't always constitute the best methods to explore the perceived environment, even though it is a key contributing factor to the way we experience our surroundings. It is therefore in the interest of design educators to investigate complementary interpretations that enable students to consciously explore less tangible aspects of design such as emotions and multi-sensorial modalities. Projects developed using tools and techniques ranging from digital 2D and 3D image making, photography, film, animation and performance provide an insight into the possibilities offered by exisiting visual technologies as dynamic study devices of human experiences and contribute to the generation of alternative processes in spatial design education

Animated Urban Surfaces: Spatial Augmented Reality in public discourse

Today´s projection art on public surfaces developed from the mutual approximation of painting, architecture, and lighting during centuries. The terms “Spatial Augmented Reality” (SAR) and “projection mapping” describe mostly temporary large screen projections on urban surfaces. The façade architecture becomes the screen for the content, mostly projected 2D and 3D animations. In essence, many of these artworks generate illusionistic clips deriving from the existing façade structure, allowing reality and fiction to merge audio visually. Artists, architects, curators, and institutions are increasingly aware of their responsibility related to this form of the mediatization of architecture, as shown, for example, by the Brazilian artist group Visualfarm. Their members approach their work as a counterpoint to the commercialization of public space in its appropriation by industry, propaganda, and advertising. But on the other hand, they also make a living from commercial assignments. Artists and architects often see themselves as pioneers and experimental researchers for possible developments in the coming digitized cities. By presenting various examples by selected artists like Corrie Francis Parks, Pablo Valbuena and Robert Seidel, the role of animation in connection with an alternative approach to the concepts of augmented realities within this process of social and urban evolution will be discussed. These artists try to integrate digital content into the cityscape in a harmonious sense

'The Greek Fall: Simulacral Thanatotourism in Europe'

The paper explores the socio-cultural dynamics of Greek demonstrations in 2011, suggesting that their function exceeds that of social movements as we know them. A form of what I term ‘simulacral thanatotourism’, including marches and demonstrations to Greek cities in protest for austerity measures, actualised in this context a form of mourning about the end of Greece’s place in European polity. This mourning, which places Greece at the centre of a withering European democratic cosmos, inspires in today’s dystopian Greek Raum two conflicting forms of social action: one is geared towards consumption of the country’s political history in terms similar to those we examine as ‘tourism’. This symbolic consumption of history re-writes the European past from a Greek standpoint while simultaneously promoting relevant entrepreneurial initiatives – in particular, the global circulation of imagery linked to riots and protests and thus the movement of the abject aspects of Greek culture in global spaces. The second form of action is directed against the image of contemporary Greece as a corrupt topos that does not deserve a place in Europe’s political Paradise; this places the blame for the nation’s demise on its political factions. The two forms of action may be antithetical but do coexist in Greek social movements to the date, articulating a cosmology of nostalgia for Greece as an idyllic tourist object. The paper explores these themes through the proliferation of imagery in recent demonstrations, highlighting how a tourist-like marketing of activist visual culture partakes in reproductions of theological ideas rooted in Europeanist discourse

Compositional structures in mural design : towards a site-specific deconstructive mural methodology

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Murals have been the formal visual interpretation of the cultural, social and political life of all ages. Throughout they have been consistently combined with their architectural setting, for example, in ancient Egyptian tombs, in Renaissance churches and on the external walls of buildings in Mexico in the twentieth century. This is a central feature of mural painting. However many contemporary murals do not integrate with their architectural settings, in other words, do not fulfil the site-specificity of the architectural spaces for which they were made. This means that the most important aspect that distinguishes murals from other types of painting is absent. I studied and analysed a number of murals produced in the Italian Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo as this particular period is considered to be not only one of the most significant in the history of art but also a period in which painting and architecture were very closely allied as practices. In particular the radical developments in painting of pictorial space took place along side the developments in architecture. I argue that Renaissance murals could be described, using the terminology of contemporary art, as site-specific art. By identifying the relationship between pictorial space, architectural space and compositional structure I was able to test, through my own practice, the importance of these relationships in understanding the site-specificity of the compositional structure of murals. To address the issue of sitespecificity in murals, I investigated and developed a set of compositional structures through my mural practice that could be applied in the design, execution, and teaching of contemporary mural design. I have developed the notion of a deconstructive method of mural design in which the illusory space of the mural derives its compositional structure from the architectural space in which it sited. I have applied it, tested it and refined it through the execution of a number of hypothetical and live mural commissions. I believe that the approach to the study and practice of mural design I have developed from the perspective of a practice lead researcher contributes to the furtherance of mural design as both a profession and field of study. In particular the identification of compositional structures in mural design and the proposal of a deconstructive method contributes to our understanding of what a mural is as well as current notions of site-specificity in contemporary art

Play in the city: Parkour and architecture

The ability to play freely in our cities is essential for sustainable wellbeing. When integrated successfully into our cities, Urban Play performs an important role; physically, socially and culturally contributing to the image of the city. While Urban Play is essential, it also finds itself in conflict with the city. Under modernist urban approaches play activities have become progressively segregated from the urban context through a tripartite of design, procurement and management practices. Despite these restrictions, emergent underground play forms overcome the isolation of play within urban space. One of these activities (parkour) is used as an evocative case study to reveal the hidden urban terrains of desire and fear as it re-interprets the fabric of the city, eliciting practice based discussions about procurement, design and management practice along its route

Magical urbanism:Walter Benjamin and utopian realism in the film Ratcatcher

Deploys Walter Benjamin to discuss fantastical representations of childhood and class in the film Ratcatcher

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Perspectival generation in/within the Sala della Pace: broadening the viewfield of spatialised images

It is everyday experience to look at a picture on a wall, (or on a computer screen) from a position that is out of alignment with its perspective, and then make a mental adjustment so as to allow for and ignore the distortion which results. To understand the limits and problem of this compensation it is necessary to look at works where there is an explicit attempt to relate the space of an image and the space in which the image exists. One such exemplar is the Sala della Pace, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338-40. The Sala della Pace may be of particular value today in helping us understand and evaluate the rapidly developing capacity of digital technology to represent dense visual and spatial information. Through Lorenzetti’s amalgam of multiple zones of extromissive generation within the images of the Sala della Pace, Lorenzetti‘s work suggests a potential compositional technique that subverts the reduction of spatial representation to a singular point of perspectival generation by broadening the viewfield in which to receive and construct multiple spatialised images. It is the aim of this paper to explore spatial concepts in Lorenzetti’s painting that may inform the way in which we conceptualise the spatial representation of both real and fictive space in/within images

Modalities or Surfaces: Postmodern Poetics and a Riddle

This article will examine the playing with aesthetical surfaces in postmodern theatre and how itreflects the poetics and the cultural logic of late capitalism. Surfaces are examined as aestheticelements of the postmodern culture of the image. This culture is not neutral as it seems toreject the modern spiritual depth, for instance, sense of history and hermeneutic depth. Thearticle examines the riddle concerning how the absence of these aspects of human thought insurfaces generates the spectators' need to produce coherent individual activities, trajectories,and eventually acoherent culture. This reflexive mechanism of surfacesis analyzed within theframework of Donald Norman's (2005) cognitive principles of design. Starting from thepremise of Gilles Deleuze's and Felix Guattari's (1987) and Lev Vygotsky's (1978) notions ofplay, it is interpreted that postmodern stage and culture works, metaphorically, like the plane ofimmanence, the way of thinking in which an agent is able to move, make transitions andcrossings in a revolutionary way without restrictions of reality's conditions. However,culturally the blurring of boundaries between play and reality may lead to delirium andill-founded practices. Theatre and art examine these ill-founded practices but involve in theirpoetics a strong dimension of reflexive level of human cognition. This reflexive level is anexplanatory perspective, which helps spectators examine theatre's mechanisms as metaphors ofcultural logic, to achieve a critical position extrinsic from the flux of postmodern culture. Thispoetics is examined in several cases of theatrical representation including Sofia Coppola's filmThe Bling Ring (2013), The Need Company's production The Lobster Shop (2006), KristianSmeds' production The Unknown Soldier (2007) and in several casesof postmodern art and stagedesign