SP_2008
Advisors : Jill Stoner / Nicholas deMonchaux / Ananya Roy / Lars Lerup
in the contemporary global city, there exists a proliferating but semiotically invisible spatial collision that hovers tenuously between the intentionally programmed spaces of private interiorities and the 'useful' infrastructures of the moving city. often living near the intersections of linescapes, these stop.spaces are forgotten remnants, rarely rendered.
however, it is precisely the programmatic and geometric ambiguity of these 'useless' leftover spaces that allow a perceptually thick experience of the city. at such unexpected points of haptic encounter, where speed meets stasis, body meets machine, and the temporal meets the geometric, an opportunistic and fleeting inhabitation of what exists is possible. the explorative re-presentation of such perceptually-charged but seemingly invisible urban stop.spaces is the challenge of this thesis which asks: how might re-presentation be creation, and creation, preservation?
The project began with a textual analysis of a 63,000 word blog which I kept during 9 months of global travel research [http://actofroute.blogspot.com; see diagram below]. The most frequently occurring words unique to each global city were then used as a verbal cue in defining a stop.space within each city. Each city was also documented on site through cumulative cognitive traces [see drawing below.]
however, it is precisely the programmatic and geometric ambiguity of these 'useless' leftover spaces that allow a perceptually thick experience of the city. at such unexpected points of haptic encounter, where speed meets stasis, body meets machine, and the temporal meets the geometric, an opportunistic and fleeting inhabitation of what exists is possible. the explorative re-presentation of such perceptually-charged but seemingly invisible urban stop.spaces is the challenge of this thesis which asks: how might re-presentation be creation, and creation, preservation?
The project began with a textual analysis of a 63,000 word blog which I kept during 9 months of global travel research [http://actofroute.blogspot.com; see diagram below]. The most frequently occurring words unique to each global city were then used as a verbal cue in defining a stop.space within each city. Each city was also documented on site through cumulative cognitive traces [see drawing below.]
Each stop.space was then exploratively RE-presented via boards/drawings, video, and 3D models. Above is one example from a stop.space in Sao Paolo -- a set of stairs that connect a park to an underground freeway. The site was modeled in MAYA, and the velocity dynamic of the site was abstractly captured via both an animation sequence and two fabricated models. For the final thesis review, I set up an installation in an unused hallway and stairwell of Wurster Hall, thereby activating a usually-ignored site within our building.
