Experiments in the space…

Above are some screenshot examples of the kind of graphics I have created to be overlaid in the space. I used Adobe After Effects CS5 for this, consulting this book:

and various online tutorials for help. I am new to After Effects, so part of the practice in this research project is learning this software. The software acts as the gateway into my research findings: without an effective use of motion graphics, the research will be limited in its findings. If I can learn the processes that will enable me to experiment with how the space can appear as though it is morphing through mixed-reality, then the project’s outcomes will be much more reliable and worth investigating.

As part of practice, I have utilised a literature search and video tutorials as a method to mimic, refine and explore the practical processes involved in creating the visuals needed for the project. My next step, in creating a short piece of graphics, was to experiment with how these demonstrated my aims and objectives by projecting them in the space. I have chosen this particular area in the church for a number of reasons, some practical, some artistic and some theoretical. Firstly, I was somewhat limited by power supply, length of extension leads, appropriate surfaces on which to place the projector (which proved to be a difficult task if I wanted the projected area to cover the area I had designed graphics for), light (will the orange glow of a streetlamp infiltrate the space?), and a space big enough (and safe enough) for an audience to stand. This was my first step. I then, from this deduction, articulated my theoretical concerns (which, in some instances, were mutually dependent on the practicalities of space, for example, light): is the area going to be dark enough for the projector to be visible, and create a series of lighting conditions? Artistically, I wondered whether the area embodied enough of the church’s architectural and artistic features for me to augment, and whether choosing a corner of the church would neglect the rest of the space.

In this first experiment, however, I was limited by the light conditions, as I could only access the church during the day. I am allowed access at night, but circumstances in this instance meant that I couldn’t conduct the experiment then, so I have had to shift my focus away from lighting conditions and towards geometric mapping of the features of the space. Determining this early on, I deduced, is essential for me to create graphics that will be geometrically accurate. If I can map the co-ordinates of the space early on, I can move on to experimenting with light and shadow rendering techniques, which will culminate in a further experiment within the site, which will take place at night.

So I set up the projector, inserted the graphics into MadMapper, and experimented with configurations to best fit the co-ordinates of the space. Crucially, I discovered that my graphics were flawed. I had created them over the top of a photograph I had taken of the given space, but the photograph was taken at an angle and was thus skewed. I presumed that MadMapper would rectify such a warped perspective, but asking the software to firstly adjust the perspective of the graphics and then the skewed perspective of the projector in the space was simply too much to ask. I could never reach a satisfying result: if I moved one corner, it would throw off the balance of the rest of the graphics:

In Spatial Augmented Reality: Merging Real and Virtual Worlds (2005), Bimber and Raskar propose three geometric rendering components: projector model, display portal and user location (96). Projector model outlines how the projector geometrically projects light outward, display portal, or display surface, is the spatial qualities of the projected surface, and user location outlines the location of the projector in the real-world co-ordinate system. If I can align the perspective of the graphics with that of the projector model, MadMapper can consequently adjust the co-ordinates to align themselves with the display portal as a result of the user location.

Result: I must, in Photoshop, adjust the perspective of the photograph to create a flat perspective, and experiment with this result using the same user location. If satisfying results are not reached, experiment with other user locations. Once I do this, it remains for me to analyse how the meeting of the real and the virtual ‘interact and continuously contaminate one another’ (Giannachi 2004: 99). The abstract and virtual qualities of the white lines served originally to highlight the structural qualities of the space in the dark. I wanted to explore how the real space might embody qualities of the virtual lines, how the lines clearly embody qualities of the real space and how each thus co-depend on one another. In order to experiment with notions of disjunctive time, I suspect that I must experiment with more realistic graphics, to allow the virtual to firstly embody the temporal framework of the space, and to consequently reappropriate it.

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BIMBER, O. and RASKAR, R. (2005) Spatial Augmented Reality: Merging Real and Virtual Worlds. Wellesley, MA: A K Peters, Ltd.

GIANNACHI, G. (2004) Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

MEYER, C. and MEYER, T. (2010) Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: Essential and Advanced Techniques. 5th ed. Oxford: Focal Press.

The site of St. Nicholas

Here are some pictures I have taken of the site I have chosen for this research project: St. Nicholas Church, Leicester.

St. Nicholas is the oldest church in Leicester, dating back 1200 years, and sits next to Jewry Wall, the largest Roman structure of its kind still intact in England. Underneath the church’s foundations, some fifty inches below the floor, indicate that there was a colonnade east of Jewry Wall.

Parts of the church date back to Saxon 900AD, although it wasn’t the first church to stand on the site (the first incorporating Jewry Wall as part of its architecture, which is why that part of the wall still stands today). Through into Norman times, the church saw several additions, notably the (now partly restored) Norman tower, a rebuilding of the original Saxon tower. In the Middle Ages, the Early English arcade was built. In the 16th century, the timber-framed porch was added, which was restored in 1975. Renovation continued through to the 19th and 20th centuries, seeing the addition of a typically Victorian archway in the church.

Walking around St. Nicholas, it is easy to see the many layers of history embedded into one place; from the small saxon windows to the 21st century kitchen, one sees how, over the years, the place has adapted to each time in history, yet still retained the impression of each period that preceded it. St. Nicholas feels like a meeting-point of many locations and times, all interceding in multiple layers; where Roman worshipper may converse with a visitor born in 1991; where, if you look, you can imagine the candlelit vestiges of century-old worship, or if you put your ear against the stone, you hear the faint traces of hymns once sung.

It is apt, therefore, for me to stage this research enquiry into mixed-reality performance in such a place that already has the qualities of a mixed-reality, without artistic augmentation of any type. For me to further deconstruct and reappropriate the complex mesh of location and time seems to add to the church’s sense of multiplicity. When I first visited the site, it was pleasing for me to see the sheer scale of adornment dedicated to people’s beliefs over many hundreds of years, and it seemed to me that despite what people have believed – Krishna, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha or Jesus Christ – they all seem to be pointing in the same direction: toward the unknown, the Other, and each are given human form in a vast fractal of beautiful representations in architecture, art and scripture. With this assumption in mind, I aim to gratefully give thanks to one very tiny example of the Other given form in St. Nicholas, and to show how one such example need not be the authoritative example of spiritual representation. It remains for me to explore how, through deconstruction of the church as a site, we may lift some of the negative (and perhaps fearful) feelings we have towards the church (in general) in regard to the heinous acts certain individuals have committed in the name of their beliefs. Is it possible for me to inspire a transcendental and spiritual encounter, by pointing towards a place that has traditionally been the only place to do so, but, paradoxically, in doing so, to suggest that such a place need not be the only place to do so?

 

 

Space as practiced place

Using philosopher Michel de Certeau’s reflections on the relationship between ‘place’ and ‘space’, I will be analysing the virtual’s role within this paradigm. Specifically, de Certeau’s notion of space as a practiced place, i.e.  realised by spatial practices, to deduce whether, by extension, the virtual becomes a practiced place, and whether the interdependent relationship of real and virtual, introduces new relationships between space and place.

Place, de Certeau asserts, in his 1984 text The Practice of Everyday Life, is realised through a system of spatial practices. Giving an example, he proposes that: ‘the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers’ (de Certeau 1984: 117). He further suggests that place must adhere to a specific set of rules, that ensures the order of place, e.g. two places cannot exist within the same location (place). Spatial practices, however, may give rise to multiple expressions of a place, thus allowing several spaces to exist within a single place; people may walk, talk, sit and jump in the same place. He suggests:

in relation to place, space is like the word when it is spoken, that is, when it is caught in the ambiguity of an actualization, transformed into a term dependent upon many different conventions, situated as the act of a present (or of a time), and modified by the transformations caused by successive contexts. In contradistinction to the place, it has thus none of the univocity or stability of a “proper”. (.: 117)

In this respect, space is thus open to transformation through practice; it need not succumb to order and rigidity, it cannot be fixed. Space implies movement, or transformation. Audience members realise a space through a multitude of individual spatial practices, further complicating the place through transitory acts. Additionally, Nick Kaye suggests in Site-Specific Art (2000), that space ‘is realised in a practice which can never rest in the order it implies’. Thus, spatial practices imply an absence from place, ‘in their inability to realise the order and stability of the proper’ (6). In consequence, Kaye suggests an antithesis between space and the presence of place/location, just as representation presents itself as a removal from the object it represents; it removes itself from the presence of that object.

So what does this mean for a space augmented with spatial projection-cased mixed-reality performance? It certainly suggests that, as previously discussed, such practice has the ability to introduce new spatio-temporal frameworks to the place. This is due to the spatial practice of the virtual, it’s being an act within the place. The removal of this act from place, however, needs to be questioned. If, as suggested, spatial projection-based mixed-reality performance contains within it the parameters to hybridise the spatio-temporal frameworks of the place (the real) with the space (the virtual), is this really a complete removal from place? Does this mode of performance problematise space’s removal from place, if the place itself becomes practiced?

Or at least, it seems to be. If the level of augmentation is geometrically and optically accurate enough, the projection allows the space to become deconstructed – it optically merges with the place, and produces effects convincing enough to have us (sometimes) believe it has ontologically merged with the place also. This hybridisation introduces an element of interdependence, it would seem, between place and space. The place still adheres to its ordering system, but introduces elements of space’s multiplicity, and has us believe that place truly can defy the ordering system into which it is placed. The removal, however, has not completely disappeared. For it is precisely this removal, the inability for the projection to realise the ordering system of place, that allows us to deconstruct that very ordering system, and introduce new realities and temporal structures.

Furthermore, the immersive nature of such mixed-reality performance, even suggests that my audience, by extension, become hyridised with and inextricably implicated within place. Their practices, in this instance – their immersion in the mixed-reality performance – can never truly be antithetical with place. There appears to be another practice emerging from their involvement in the piece, namely the path (or trajectory) each individual chooses to pursue and experience in the performance. The trajectories each individual follow through the hypersurface are somewhat limited by the pre-determined nature of the piece (i.e. not interactive or open-ended), but each individual’s transformative trajectory, or encounter with the Other, will be deeply personal and subjective. In this sense, spatial practises refuse to adhere to the stability of place. Perhaps the place becomes a location where multiplicity can exist, where the audience can traverse through the hypersurface and thus question what is real and not real, where they are, where they have come from, and where they are going. Perhaps the transformative power of the hypersurface extends beyond spatio-temporal, and crosses into experience, which, as with spatial practices, refuses to be singular.

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DE CERTEAU, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

KAYE, N. (2000) Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. Oxon: Routledge.

The technological sublime

In attempting to represent the non-demonstrable – the ‘Other’, the ‘sublime’, the ‘spiritual’ – I look to Jean-François Lyotard’s ‘Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime‘ (1984) to consider how the painter’s question, ‘What is painting?’ could be applied to my research. I will thus ask the questions: what is the nature of the sublime within the technologically mediated world of mixed-reality performance? What ideologies does the technological subvert and/or perpetuate? What ideologies does the church subvert and/or perpetuate? and how do these two interact?

I will firstly begin with a definition of the sublime. Philosopher Immanuel Kant led an inquiry into what the experience of an emotional synthesis with the Other was like. Kant initially describe the sublime as ‘an experience of being overwhelmed and of losing control’ (Kul-Want and Piero ). To illustrate this experience, Kant used the example of our awe-inspiring and often fear-inducing encounter with wild nature: volcanic eruption, lightning storms, the seemingly limitless ocean, etc. The sublime, he concluded, was unrepresentable, as it exceeded the identification of cognition and feeling. Additionally, it is not dependent upon any object, and cannot be represented ‘because to represent is to make relative, to place in context within conditions of representation’ (Lyotard 1984: 134).

The emotional experience of the sublime is described as transformative, often because ‘we are faced with something we do not have the capacity to understand or control – something excessive’ (Morley 2010: 16). So within our experience of the excessive, which lies beyond our imaginative capacity to measure and interpret, ‘we come to a recognition of our limitations, and so transform a sense of negative insufficiency into a positive gain: such experiences serve to establish our reasoning powers more firmly within their rightful, although diminished, domain’ (.: 16). In this sense, the transformative coincides with the terrifying, if we are to be thankful for the return of our cognitive abilities in returning from the sublime. But, what of a transcendental experience of the sublime? What transformation takes place here? What is our consequent perception of this ‘rightful, although diminished, domain’?

Lyotard considers the artist’s attempt to represent the unrepresentable, and in his 1984 essay, maps a historical perspective of the artist’s painting, and how this transformed once the industrial revolution paved the way for photography and other such technologies to interact with and pursue the sublime.

Lyotard considers how the ‘I see, therefore I am’ rational perspective within painting captured the ideology of the time.

Optical geometry, the ordering of colours and values according to a hierarchy of Neoplatonic inspiration, and the pictorial rules that captured and crystallised the heydays of religious or historical legend helped install a sense of identity in the new political communities – the City, the State, the Nation – by allotting them the fate of seeing all through reason and thus making the world transparent (clear and distinct). The narrative, urban, architectural, religious and ethical components of these communities were given order on the pictorial plane by the painter’s eye (Lyotard 1984: 130).

Just as these principles have guided the painter, church architecture has been guided by theological principles of knowledge and thus captures such paradigms of thought in stone. The religious artworks of the Renaissance allowed the worshiper an identity within and mastery over the harmonic universe depicted in painting. The tradition of classical spatial design, with its focus on symmetry, harmony, order and control, is evident across the architectural history of churches, museums, civic buildings and monuments, and was structured by the historical social, political, cultural and economic principles prevalent at the time.

But with the industrial revolution, and the technological development of the camera, what would become of this pictorial representation of space and time within the Renaissance painting? According to Lyotard, photography achieves this programme of socio-political ordering. ‘In a single-click, an ordinary citizen, whether amateur or tourist, can organise his or her identifying spaces and make a picture that enriches the cultural memory-bank’ (.:131). The instantaneous image, produced from the techno-scientific programming and industrial processes of the developer, contains within it this paradigm of knowledge. They are a product of a rational and objective perspective of the world, one that evaluates the intuitive and spiritual perspective of the world but does not consider them constituent elements of the psyche. This perspective has allowed us all to contribute towards the cultural bank, and is somewhat more free now of hierarchy.

Loss of aura is the negative aspect of the hardware involved in producing the machine that produces the photograph. The amateur has to choose a subject, but the look is controlled by the manufacturer. Experience is that mass of affects – of projections and memories – that must perish and be born for any subject to attain the expression of its essence. The body of amateur photography has almost nothing to do with experience and owes almost everything to the experiments of industrial research laboratories. As a result, it is not just beautiful, but too beautiful. Something is inherent in this “too”: an infinity; not the indeterminacy of a feeling, but the infinite ability of science, of technology, of capitalism, to realise […] The hardness of industrial beauty contains the infinity go techno-scientific and economic reasons (.: 132).

Lyotard’s trust in science and capitalism’s seemingly infinite ability to progress technological capacity and increase capital are problematic when considering the use of technologies in my work. I propose that, within the capacity for technology to fracture perspectives of linear time and space (perspectives that align themselves with the rational, scientific worldview), and the capacity for the technology to connect us back to the sublime, to one another, and potentially our environments, its use has the potential to subvert, and not perpetuate, the rational and materialist worldview. Through immersion in a mixed-reality world, my audience can enter into the sublime, and come out with a renewed sense of the world, of their immediate surroundings. It’s experience can become efficacious, in this way, and inspire future action, to reinstate the intuitive, qualitative, mythical and spiritual aspects of being back into the socio-political arena.

Furthermore, I must reference Herbet Marcuse here, to challenge Lyotard’s proposition that within the technological, there exists no capacity for aura or experience. Marcuse realised that, ‘[i]n the light of the capabilities of advanced industrial civilisation, is not all play of the imagination playing with technical possibilities, which can be tested as to their chances of realisation? The romantic idea of a “science of the imagination” seems to assume an ever-more-empirical aspect’ (Marcuse 2007: 263). Whilst this seems to perpetuate Lyotard’s proposition, Marcuse points out that in our current social reality, the imagination is denied its rightful place, and is used for the ends of the military-industrial apparatus, and its focus on dominance and security. In this way, I must highlight the potential to use these technologies to restore the potential for a renewed and transformative sense of our connection with each other and the world in which we live.

‘In the current state of techno-science and accumulated capital in the developed world’, writes Lyotard, ‘community identity requires no spiritual allegiance, nor does it demand a grand, shared ideology’ (.:133). But with mixed-reality performance, and its capacity to realise individual trajectories through a complex structure of time, space, interfaces and performance roles, each audience member can thus immerse themselves within a transcendental experience, but feel as though they are sharing this experience within a community of audience members. In this way, I hope that my audience can connect and interpret the spiritual connection with the Other, and enter into a two-way dialectic, one that is not indoctrinating or hierarchal, but inquisitive and inviting. Similarly, I wish to reinstate the uplifting experience of the church as a historical site for inner sanctuary and spiritual connection, without the attached dogma of the patriarchal belief system. In seeking to break down the hierarchal structure of the historical church institution (a structure that still feels somewhat prevalent today), I hope to create an experience like that of Krzysztof Wodiczko; whereby the work exposes the building’s ideological masking function. Additionally, I hope to create a level of immersion that creates a symbiotic relationship between immersant (audience member) and the space.

Like Marcuse, Lyotard proposes that: ‘[s]cience, technology and capital, in spite of their matter-of-fact approach, are also modes of making concrete the infinity of ideas. Knowing all, being capable of all, having all, are their horizons – and horizons extend to infinity. The readymade in the techno-sciences presents itself as a potential for infinite production, and so does the photograph’ (.: 132). For Lyotard, the sublime is the realisation and solidification of this objective infinity, with the consequent socio-political emphasis on growth, knowledge, data and wealth. But I cannot ignore the potential for technology, in an immersive mixed-reality environment, to demonstrate the existence of the sublime – the indemonstrable – through the abstract.

Unlike the photograph, motion graphics projected onto a surface can attempt to ‘make the perceptible represent the ineffible’ (.: 134) through the deconstruction of the church’s spatio-temporal frameworks and ideological signs. In striving to reconstruct a transcendental experience within the techno-scientific, my research currently tends toward the representation of a lost absolute, one I hope to reconstruct and reimagine. What remains for me is to ascertain whether light as a spiritual manifestation, in deconstructing the space through the hypersurface, is appropriate to realise this aim. If unsuccessful, I hope that, as Lyotard states, ‘a pure gratification will emerge from the tension’ (.: 134). Whether successful or not, my priority is to articulate notions of hybrid time and mixed-realities, and so I must begin to experiment with the potential for light to realise this capacity.

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LYOTARD, J-F. (1984) Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime. In: MORLEY, S. (2010) The Sublime. London: Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press.

MARCUSE, H. (2007 [1964]) One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London: Routledge.