a landscape of multiplicities
nominated for the AIV master thesis prize
2020
Short film featuring a landscape of multiplicities.
This project begins by taking a walk around the city and noticing objects that pop against their backgrounds. Then, the 3D scanned model of the object is taken into
digital space
and multiple cameras are
positioned looking at the object from multiple perspectives. The images from the cameras are all projected and collapsed onto a singular picture plane set within the VR headset making a flat collage of sorts.
In her book Cinema and Sensation
: French Film and the Art of Transgression, Martine Beugnet writes about haptic images taking the example of the controversial french film La Vie Nouvelle. She says that we can speak of the haptic each time vision discovers in and by itself a tactile function that belongs to vision and vision alone and is distinct from its optical function. Haptic images draw attention back to tactile details and the material surface where figure and ground start to fuse.
In order to introduce a sense of tactility to the collaged image, to encourage a mode of visual perception akin to the sense of touch, a cutting plane is attached to the picture plane of the VR headset. As the subject's body moves in space, the cutting plane cuts through the object in digital space thereby increasing the hapticality of the image.
In order to introduce a sense of tactility to the collaged image, to encourage a mode of visual perception akin to the sense of touch, a cutting plane is attached to the picture plane of the VR headset. As the subject's body moves in space, the cutting plane cuts through the object in digital space thereby increasing the hapticality of the image.
Much like Adolf Hildebrand’s discourse on the problem of depth in relief sculptures; in the flatness of the image, similar questions arise when depth is revealed through the act of cutting.
The qualities of the collage namely- visual ambiguity, frontality, restricted palette, stratified space, contradictory spatial dimensions are all configurational principles of phenomenal transparency. It is important to note that cubism and the collage aimed at suppressing depth of the image. But, with the technique of cutting through the image, suppressed depth is revealed on the moving picture plane. This revelation is a key step in activating the full potential of ungrounding the subject.
If there is depth, there is space. If there is quantifiable space, there will be form. By applying the texture of the collaged object onto the revealed depth-form, the whole act is brought to an end.
If there is depth, there is space. If there is quantifiable space, there will be form. By applying the texture of the collaged object onto the revealed depth-form, the whole act is brought to an end.
In an average gaming environment, the user is offered a maximum of 3 views- the first person view, the third person view and the God’s eye view. But what if they are offered more than these set views? And what if these additional views collapse onto the first-person view of the user. What happens when this environment is experienced in Virtual Reality? This experiment deals with concepts of collage, cubism, aesthetic theory, kinesthetics and ungrounding in the immersive condition of VR.
multi-perspectival
perception models
2020
As a second step attached to the experiment above, two Maison Domino models are charted every second in 3-dimensional space. The position and rotation of the models depends on the position and inclination of the subject’s gaze (headset) in VR.
Over time, cartography has become increasingly rigorous and demanding, to the point that the pictographic and decorative elements that were important features of earlier maps (ex: Dutch maps from the 18th century) have been virtually eliminated. We are left with the highly precise road map of practical value that is constantly being updated to inform our reality.
This body of work is an exploration of ways of mapping, navigating through space and ways of seeing- touching upon concepts of formlessness and ungrounding in the medium of VR.
groundless maps
2019
Fictional environment designed using a low resoluton scan of the garden.
Drone view of the garden site that was mapped.
Divorced from the ground, the objects in the garden only have relations to each other in their adjacencies.
The medium of re-presentation in this project is the smooth space environment in VR that was created using 3d scans of the gardens obtained from a depth perception camera. Mapping the garden with/in smooth space means showing how it feels and looks to be in the garden, in being a part of it in a bodily manner.
Snapshots of the fictional environment.
Comparitive analysis showing the differences between the experience and movement in the actual garden and the shared experience and taangential movement in the VR map.
The experiment is repeated in 3 gardens varying in size and design.
Smooth space has no homogeneity. It is a space of contact or manual actions of contact, rather than a visual space like Euclid's striated space. Smooth space is irregular, chaotic, unstable, mobile and temporal. It is a field wedded to a very particular type of multiplicity: nonmetric, acentered, rhizomatic multiplicities that can only be explored by moving through it. They do not meet the visual condition of being observable from a point in space external to them. An example of this is the system of sounds, as opposed to Euclidean space.
Mapping with/in smooth space not
only helps in understanding the spatiality of perception but
hints at the intrinsic geometries inherent in the spatial structures.
The irregularity of the grid or rather the absence of a plane in the smooth space is realised by the
movingness of the map- a map that puts the body in motion: a map that "takes the body with it."
This way of mapping the gardens departs significantly from Western notions of mapping prevalent since
the Renaissance. There is no longer any privileged sense of looking on from above or of seeing from the side.
It is rather a matter of going through—where going implies "engaged bodily motion”.
hints at the intrinsic geometries inherent in the spatial structures.
The irregularity of the grid or rather the absence of a plane in the smooth space is realised by the
movingness of the map- a map that puts the body in motion: a map that "takes the body with it."
This way of mapping the gardens departs significantly from Western notions of mapping prevalent since
the Renaissance. There is no longer any privileged sense of looking on from above or of seeing from the side.
It is rather a matter of going through—where going implies "engaged bodily motion”.
This project takes on the Barcelona Pavillion designed by Mies Van der Rohe as its main subject. It situates the pavillion within the line of experiments and themes worked on in the garden experiments. Fittingly, the pavillion itself is a garden as defined by Caroline Constant in her essay titled ‘The Barcelona Pavillion as landscape garden: Modernity and the Picturesque.’ Bodily presence and corporeal movement are combined with the architectural procedure of cutting in this VR landscape.
In order to navigate, one needs to physically move their gaze and cut sections/peel through the layers of the garden (pavillion). This project is an ongoing enquiry of ungrounding the subject in areas of spatial perception and visual form.
cutting through the
miesian garden
2020
