Expanded Architectural Awareness Through Locative Media

Abstract

Moving Image projections onto architectural surfaces can be considered a powerful form of locative media. The interplay of real space and virtual image can highlight overlooked relationships, we have with architecture and make one hyper-aware of the location of one’s physical body and the space one is within. The types of installations discussed here are very different from locative media that use gps, virtual mapping or other locative devices, and contemporary mapping projection practices onto buildings, which may aim to transform the look of a façade with illusion and spectacle. Instead, this low-fi approach has its dual lineage in both: experimental architectural practices that aim to examine or subvert relationships to architecture, such as works by Dan Graham, Bernard Tschumi, Diller and Scofidio; and installation practices that employ awareness of self and the projection environment as by UK Expanded Cinema artists William Raban, Nicky Hamlyn and Tony Hill. Referring to these historical examples, six contemporary installations by the author will illustrate how various locational relationships to architecture can be explored with moving image projection. They will examine how such a practice enables a shift in the experience of the body between the architecture and moving image. That is, the practice holds the attention at a point of wavering between moving image and architecture, between haptic experience and habituated expectations. Within these works a heightened experience of location emerges, this can be thought of as a disjuncture between the architecture and the re-presentation of a new relationship with the architecture.