Two boulders have been taken from Cornwall and placed in London, the idea of removing an object from one environment and placing it in another contrasting one is certainly not a new concept. Although this extends that idea with multifunction, and has caused people to view the sculpture in a different way, depending on the viewers perspective and existing mental-models. To many people this may be considered modern art, certainly not to be climbed on…
Archive for the 'Production of Space' Category
Visualization into 3D will hopefully happen, by creating XML from this then using one of 3 possible applications I have been looking into.
Following My previous post, it so happens that architects have considered the cross between climbing and building design. One halls of residence in Holland, now has a climbing wall on the outside, with about 2500 bolt on holds. Its nine stories high and over 30m, making this the second highest climbing wall in the Netherlands.
(pictures source: http://noquedanblogs.com/?p=4230)(udine.net)
Rock climbing has traditionally been kept to crags, sea cliffs and boulder fields on moors etc… Although, Urban climbing, or sometimes called ‘buildering’ is climbing on man-made structures. In its self this is a re-invention of the space created, and a new way to interact with the environment.
The proliferation of such activities has led to the existence of a world championship. For videos and info on the 2008 world championship visit: udini.de
Buildering WC 08_the pictures from Flow Media on Vimeo.
“At the end everybody involved won. We all had a great day of climbing together, Chrissi Benk defended his title, the area has some new five star problems now and Daniel Pohl, who scoped out the locations, the satisfaction of organizing an a unique “situationist” event in the urban wilderness of the Puhrpott.” (Udine.de)
Taking buildering one step further, is Alain Robert; now famous for free-climbing skyscrapers. Few people are likely to follow in Alains footsteps, for obvious reasons. Although, it does beg the question, could this type of activity become more mainstream? Could you protect a route that may be 20 meters high or more? Surley this is’nt a design feature of the architect!…but then, would such a thing be that ridiculous?
Alain Robert has been arrested numerous times, and no doubt has breached various health and saftey laws. Part of the attraction of rock climbing is the feeling of freedom. In a strictly governed nation of excess health and saftey, climbing is a way to break free from the ‘nanny state’ and take responsibility for your own actions, however dangerous your decisions are.
If the majority of people were to start climbing in public spaces, no doubt they would soon be stopped by police; but if a building was deemed private land legally, and was designed to be climbed on. This may reduce any negative stigma. Perhaps even increse the popularity of climbing as a sport!
Gathering people bio-signals whilst they climb seems perhaps not quite as black and white as get a device, go record.
I have spent half a day at tor bryan, to achieve what I have set out to do with this project. I acquired a nexus device for gathering bio-signals, which is semi-portable. Well, so it transpires I encountered some problems, beyond the expected.
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The stills camera Len’s isn’t wide angle… and it is more or less impossible to get the entire climbing route in shot
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setting up the nexus to work in portable mode doesn’t seem quite as straight forward as the manual made it seem
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working with ‘Biotrace’ software to interpret signals, has various setting, although I am still very new to it, and setting up exactly what I wanted (gsr and resp combined) didn’t seem obvious either
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my laptop ran out of battery, thus rendering it impossible to gather any data
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GSR may not be ideal whilst people are belaying
All that said, I must remain optimistic and use this as a learning experience, I still have enough to create various models for my presentation in a week or two. I may use Electrocardiogram as my main source (on the climber or belayer) therefore perhaps being able to gather information such as an answer to “what are the hardest/scariest moments”.
I will go back with a wide angle lens if I can find one, I will look more at the ‘BioTrace+’ software and nexus device.
I downloaded ‘Pure Data’ this evening, which is an open source application that is similar to max MSP… I have done one video tutorial. For a start it sounds atrocious, as expected to be honest… but it barley does what its supposed to according to the tutorial either… So headache inducing all round! Oh dear, still a long way to go!
I wish to produce a video of one rock climbing route at Torbryan Quarry, Dartmoor in Devon. The video will be different to every other climbing video that exists at the moment, being as it will focus heavily on representing the emotional states that are experienced during a climb.
So, using this location as my space to work with I am going to try and consider the co-relation between people and space. In this context, the extreme physiological changes to the belayer. The belayer is at the bottom end of the rope, and his or her job is to ensure the safety of the climber, to the best of their ability. Torbryan is sport climbing, where one person will lead, usually there has to be a lot of communication between belayer and climber, to shout advice or climbing calls.
The reason I am doing this project is to look at this space in a way that no one else has before. Instead of just taking photos or video, I seek to gather bio signals using varying technology to then visualise it within the final video. Almost a map of where the most intense parts of a route are, and illustrate the reactions/relations between the natural environment, the people and how
I want this project to be my creative interpretation of a space and the interactions and experiences over a relatively short time period. I hopefully will be able to show how this space specifically can be perceived in a new way, using multi-modal inputs. Also to produce a new aesthetic, usually not considered within climbing videos, guides or magazine.
To better understand the architectural mind set, I thought I would take advantage of this exhibition happening on campus; so went along and took a few stills.
The idea behind these structures is embodiment, and abstract architecture. The common link between each of models is that the inspiration has come from several sources… these sources seemed to range from sound, to shapes made from sporting activities, to compact disks; in fact anything and everything, so long as the concept was developed. I liked a lot of the creative thinking and representations at the exhibition, certainly a novel way to re-consider space.
I have the option to create a physical artefact based on an idea, or a dataset. I intend to create a model; although this model will hopefully take on a slightly more unconventional form. At the risk of failure, I want to be more experimental in my interpretation of the complexities of space; employing ideas of the embodiment of previously un-considered existent correlations within space
Below are 9 things i find strange, interesting or exciting and relate to our perception and production of space… different ways that space could be interpreted and technology that sits along side it.
The like below is a website that i think deals well with art and social space, different peoples interpretation of certain spaces and how they could be used. Flash mobs are large groups of people that participate in the same activity in certain spaces, such as using dorm room lights inside a building to make the building look like a game of tetris was happening outside, very successfully to in my opinion:
Video on a DSLR, well this is important all sorts of levels, only this year has technology progressed this far. Photography has been a way to portray events, people and spaces for a long while now. Integrating video into a DSLR means that you can have high quality video and high quality pictures using the same len’s and filters. Also important for capturing video for immersive cinema, as many len’s don’t fit HD cameras sensors:
The next clip is a guy who modified a series of cameras so that he could get 360 degrees of video at once! this is a difficult project to have pulled of successfully:
To carry on the running theme, below is another way to look at 360 degrees in a photo, and using flash let the user rotate around, looking at various labeled information about climbs etc:
Below is a video about some fascinating technology that let you use photography to stabilize video, using a 2d space like it was 3d, compositing certain bits together to create something better:
Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.
Below is self-explanatory, how to physically compose a scene:
using a bar as an interactive space:
The video below is a good example of ‘match moving’ , creating the illusion of a 3d space, when it has been created in a 2d space. Also the space implies a narrative or idea of memory within a space, which i think is conceptually quite interesting:
Subconscious activity, interactive architecture and temporization.
“your concious life in short, is nothing but a post-hoc rationalization of things you really do for other reasons” (2004, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran)
Recently I have been looking into developments within neuroscience and the subconscious mind, something else that had interest’s me is behaviours of people within a given space. Its originally one of Sigmund Freud’s theories that people act on mass, for subconscious reasons, his nephew Eddie Bernaise was the first to capitalize on this theory, by inventing public relations and exploiting people subconscious desires. So maybe it exists on a smaller scale… The table below is an example of different spaces, where behaviours are ubiquitous:
| Space | Common Behaviours: |
| Tube, London underground | Unfriendly, no eye contact for long periods, morose, reserved, seemingly formal, quick movements |
| Football stadiums | Loud, friendly, a certain animality present, chants, celebration, team spirit |
| pub | Loud, friendly, drunk, relaxed |
| Student library | Quiet, busy, less fast movement |
| Meeting room | Formal, talkative, reserved |
| Gigs | Singing, dancing, friendly, screaming, throwing underwear on stage |
So…. my point is that people in groups act exactly the same; there is a well established etiquette for certain
spaces/activities, but why? For example, many students go to the library to work due to less distractions, furthermore if everyone else in the library is helping create a distinct atmosphere then it is easier to do as the others and behave similarly…. Football stadiums is another example where two lots of people will act exactly the same…the people wouldn’t be anywhere near as excitable and boisterous if the game they witnessed was in with significantly smaller group and setting….the park perhaps, with only a few people watching! There are seemingly obvious reasons why people act a certain way in a given space, but how did it this space develop over time, how do architectures alter peoples subconscious behaviours?
In my work I wish to look at this idea, especially within the Immersive environments, and find out whether I can measure peoples behaviours or emotional states over a given time frame, to later visulise this, potentially measuring peoples reactions to certain content, what variables are there? Age? Seating position? Context?
“My plan is over the next few weeks to establish how I could transform visualisations on a dome screen using nothing but the people in there watching; along with their emotional and behavioural states.”
Inputs might include a galvanic skin response, movement or heat sensing… the data and scientific findings are secondary; my aim is not to prove a sociological theory (primarily) but instead to explore different avenues of various developing technologies, interactive architecture and the subject of temporality within the aforementioned context.
My plan is over the next few weeks to establish how I could transform visualisations on a dome screen using nothing but the people in there watching; along with their emotional and behavioural states.
In the next few weeks I have various people to contact about my idea, and find ways of using the inputs to control a visualisation… this could be pre-recorded data or perhaps, real time. I also need to look into technology required to implement such a thing.
