This project is based in the intersection of architecture and film. My reading and research directed me to create architecture as a representation of the human body. Its goal is to create a comfortable, luscious environment for its users. For first time visitors, it should be a consciousness of the comforts and discomforts of the human body.

 

Film has consistently eroticized the human form. This project takes a stand against the sexism that allows humans to passively consume ideal body shapes through looking. It’s differing textures have tactile beauty, and a somewhat disturbing reality. Simultaneously luscious and disgusting, this environment makes the pleasures of flesh obvious and inescapable.

People are comfortable indulging in the human form through film. Can it be similarly comforting when exhibited in reality? Should it?

 

 

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I presented the following videos during my mid-semester review. The video with water overlay within the human stick figure came first, and was a gesture to ambivalent gravity, looked at volumes created within the figure, and was an After Effects learning experience. 

 

The second film's goal was to qualify space as both inside and outside the figures. What is body and what is body absent? It questions what are the boundaries of our own bodies, and the shape of the space between our bodies and others. We are not only aware of our bodies in space, but others as well. 

 

The "essential" stick figure is a representation of the body in a minimal form. My thought were that if I break down the body into an essential form, I can build up clearer emotions and reactions. The two figures create the exsistance of the other--human life cannot be claimed without the existance of other lives. 

 

Through twisting, revolving, and directing the camera, I created a sensous movement over and within the bodies, slowly forming a relationship that envolpes the viewer in the space within and between the figures, as well as to the membrane separating them. Given the elastic quality of the membrane, it defines boundary as a flexible object. The flexible membrane helps define the space between the figures by characterizing that shape as changeable, reachable, shapable.

 

NEXT STEPS/FUTURE: I'm going to spend more time on the membrane aspect of this video, through physical sketch models, documentation, and drawing. How does changing and exaggerating the relationship between figure and the membrane lead to a reaction that acknowledges the presence of the space between bodies, and questions what the shape of that space is, along with the strength of its presence.

 

 

The following models were created after watching the movie "House by the River" (1950) directed by Fritz Lang. This black and white noir film created a strong displacement between the set/props and its actors. This translated into model form as a box/objects vs. being/feeling. These models are experiments of how to represent the conflict between being and surrounding, or physical reactions to one's surroundings.

 

 

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A Machine for Destruction--this interactice piece was created in response to the Japanese anime "Metropolis" (2001) directed by Rintaro. After a detailed anaylsis of the symbols and characters to extract the themes of the movie, I was left with a strong cyclical impression of the way the world is built, destroyed, and rebuilt. Therefore, this machine's only purpose is to tangle string. By nature of the way the individual parts move, the string forces deformation of each part and it's cycle. If one keeps turning, the machine will eventually collapse.