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...for Fall |
Fall is an interactive video-based project designed for the interior of a freight elevator.
Viewed from inside, passengers see a large video image projected onto the shaft wall.
The video shows human-size figures falling as if gravity-free and moving in sync with the elevator's movements.
As the elevator goes up, for instance, you may see a man tumbling slowly downwards;
when the elevator descends, he rises upwards;
and when the elevator stops, he freezes in suspension.
The result of watching the video while being enclosed in a moving elevator creates a strange sensation,
as if the figures actually share the same space and time.
This sense of timelessness evokes a remarkable awareness of one's own physicality.
|
how an interactive art exhibit came to be built inside a freight elevator
by David Warne & Paul Raff |
Detournement & Psycho-geography
Since our background is in architecture many of our interests are based on how space affects human experience.
This has led us to combine architecture and virtual space explore the synergy between the real and the imagined.
Within this, a new situation emerges, one which allows new experiences and new perception.
Since the outset of our work, we have adopted and adapted the theories "psychogeography" & "detournement",
two terms that originated out of the Situationist International movement of the 60s.
Simply put, detournement is a process of revealing.
It implies the process of intervening between a found condition or situation
as a way to reveal hidden or implicit precepts.
One Situationist artist, for instance, transformed kitch oil paintings by over-painting bold, irregular brush strokes.
Psycho-geography refers to the imagined space, or one's mental construct of space.
The space where one dreams is the most obvious example of psycho-geography.
But the term also refers to a state of mind that can alter one's sense of place.
For instance, while watching a movie one can become so enthralled by the drama that
the darkened space of the theatre is forgotten, and one dwells mentally within the movie.
This sensation is similar when reading a compelling book, and
it is also what underlies the "space" in cyberspace.
We have integrated both of these ideas in our work.
Through detourement, we shape our tangible surroundings and
with videographic means we shape our psychogeography.
Together, we may reveal new modes of their integration.
| 
PostCard |
Unbuilding Ways
In an earlier collaborative in 1995, a work entitled UNbuilding Ways, we enacted a large scale detournement by demolishing an abandoned house. The house was cut in half and undermined.
The front portion was incrementally rotated into the ground over the course of four months,
so that the house appeared to be slowly descending into the ground at a sharp angle.
During that period, the public could enter into what seemed to be a collapsing building.
The experience within was remarkable.
The visual orientation of the floors and walls was skewed from the familiar orientation of gravity,
so your eyes told you 'up' was one way, and your body told you it was another.
When confronted with a conflict of perception like this,
the mind becomes acutely self-aware.
This hyper-awareness is required for the mind to adapt,
so that it can recalibrate its psychogeography with the altered environment.
| 
House from Outside
House from Inside |
FALL
Fall also incorporates this sense of recalibration.
In any elevator the passenger cab is entirely sealed and the enclosed space tends to be clausterphobic.
With the intervention of falling video-characters projected inside,
the phenomenal space of the elevator and shaft is revealed and
the space visually opens up to suggest a much larger space.
In order to create a realistic sense of weightlessness in the figures' movements,
we use an isolated spotlight and filmed the characters underwater.
Smaller figures rise/fall slower than larger ones, creating a sense of spatial depth and parallax.
Fall incorporates different methods to merged the video image with the elevator.
Initially, we modelled the elevator environment in VRML, a web-based VR plug-in.
Here we tested different ways in which video can be spatialized.
In VRML a video can be texture-mapped around a sphere or made to revolve about the viewer.
In doing this, the dynamic interface was tested and refined.
(See VRML model & movies.)
| 
VRML Model of Elevator |
Mini-tower
Our first attempt to physically spatialize video followed.
We constructed a six foot-high scaled version of the elevator, called the Mini-tower.
A small television monitor was mounted on a motorized pulley contained inside the Mini-tower's shaft.
The monitor travels up and down, in-sync with the elevator cab's movement.
Since the TV image was a replicatation of the actual motion of the cab,
one could see what floor the elevator was on simply by where the TV was located in the Mini-tower.
The TV displayed a live image from within the cab itself,
so that one could also see the passengers.
Here, the television image was made to correspond to the physical world in real time and space.
|
 Testing System |
Wired Cab
The interactive element of FALL is operated by the same actions that are usual in an elevator.
Simply by pushing one of the elevator buttons, the entire project becomes activated.
Installed on the top of the elevator is a computer and VCR.
The computer is hooked up to a mouse that is attached to a bicycle wheel,
which leans against the shaft wall and rolls along with the elevator.
Once a button is pressed, the directions of the wheel's turning is registered through the mouse,
to the computer, which then signals the VCR to play:
forward if the elevator moves up and reverse if down.
|
Inside the Installation |
Projection & Oculus
Within the cab, the projected video can also be viewed through an oculus embedded in the cab wall.
Peering into the oculus is analagous to looking through a peep-hole in a door or HMD interface --
you see an image through the lens, but you cannot see the room you are in.
With the physical context of the elevator removed, only its sound and jolting start/stops tell of its motion.
This effect is disorienting since the physical sensation is still in correspondence with the virtual.
Altough the oculus view is analogous to the VR experience,
the pure mechanical presence of the elevator itself -- the heavy brick wall and jolting movement --
evoke a strong bodily sense of presence.
The falling video-characters are in far greater danger in this setting,
while their falling motions further enhance the passenger's own bodily feeling of descent.
|
Thru the Oculus |
Beyond
Our urban and architectural landscape can profit from these hybridizations.
We can integrate media and enviroment, the effect of which can enliven both.
A five storey fresco-like video projection is both an interesting design intervention and
a unique experience such that stays with you as a bodily memory.
This memory informs other experiences in the city.
Future elevator rides will carry a sense of being on a journey, reminiscent of Icarus.
|
The myth of Icarus tells of a young boy who,
when strapped to wings constructed
of feathers and wax,
was overcome with enthuiasm.
Icarus flies too high, against the warnings of his father.
The wings melt in the heat of the sun and the boy crashes back to the earth.
This myth conveys a need to embody our technologies. |
|
Fall had its premiere on April 1998 in the freight elevator at
401 Richmond Street West in Toronto.
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