Site Immersion as Generative Design Process
Beginning the process of layering our understandings of the Tideflats with our video narrations of the process of how the place flats became and is becoming what it is today with our visions for how the Tideflats’ resources might be repurposed in more generative ways.
Soon these design visualizations will be layered into moving film footage to give a better sense of how they might feel on the site.
A reflection tonight. Why video, rather than say virtual reality or even on the other end of animation, a still image?
After months of reading the site to understand its processes, how it feels to walk its streets, bridges, wetlands, beaches, abandoned parking lots, we’ve come to understand the Tacoma Tideflats in a series of themes that represent our understanding of the major forces and processes that have shaped the site to become what it is today:
STREAMLINE
EXTRACT
FABRICATE
We know we’ll be working with video and physical material for this project to tell much larger stories/threads about the site. Joining the two is a fun challenge. Here is a thought:
Videos should try to show how we stumbled on the object/story/material at this point in its lifecycle(s), and then how much of our understanding of the material is by association of knowing the thread history.
This has been a focus of the process, but this is a note to selves to hit this hard: something small can trigger a much larger story.
Continue reading “Looking at Small Things, Learning About Big Things”
We continually revolve around the question of how to tell the stories of that which we discover on site?
We went on a boat tour and it sparked many thoughts, both about the site itself and how we can continue to try to tell stories about it and work with it.
Physi-Digi, Models and Vodels, Mideos and Videos, Milmic Design,
For video and model making, we’re considering picking out site characteristics and following through with them in the way we usually do in the design process. It kind of begins with a gathering process then churns into:
Continue reading “Modeling and Video-ing Site Characteristics?”
Video seems to be our opportunity to show things entangled and as messy as they actually exist. It might be a mistake to push video to show things too analytically, for example. Considering the fabrication/deconstruction theme, materials are experienced on site as a big homogenous mixture of lifecycles. It would be impossible to entirely separate a material from other materials to tell its full story without telling a portion of another material’s story (this really taps into the wicked site thing too). With video, we can really rely on the wild speculation and mystery that we ourselves experienced when we first discovered these different scenes.
Why this? Always a challenging question to answer concisely. So…..
