Spectacularising the Unspectacular: Architecture for the Distracted Collective

Abstract

Globalization, in every sense of the word, has undermined the significance of the city. Denis Cosgrove calls for a rethinking of appropriate ways to represent our world of “contingent and unstable” spaces and connections. This thesis analyses the effect of the modern dissolution of time and spatial relations – a state of ‘distraction’ – on our experiential perception of the urban everyday. The cultural ‘collapse of time and space’ is visually recorded as the material for investigating the effects of spectacular media (particularly the moving image) on the embodied image of architecture. The architecture that is technically displaced by the camera represents the ‘collapsed space’ of the contemporary city. The investigation thus poses the critical question; at what point does the space of the moving image intercept the experiential reality of architecture? This ‘collapsed space’ is the material of the three projection installations of this thesis that explore the potential of a shared tectonics between the experience of architecture in the public realm and that of the moving image. The three projects intend to intercept the attention of the disillusioned urban inhabitant to directly interrogate the effect of spectacular media on our spatial perception as a means of unfolding this critical question. The outcome of the three installations of this thesis is to generate what I term the ‘perceptual nudge.’ The installations achieve this by the disruption of the viewer’s spatial perception by the intervention of architecturally considered moving imagery. The outcome of the work suggests that the contemporary human condition of ‘distracted reception’ allows for this kind of moving imagery to be implicated into the practice of placemaking.