MANNERS
on essayism, architecture and fried arguments
#VR #Essay #Dinner #Scenography #Film
This semester we will look at the Essay as a form, as a modality of thinking and as a specific way of staging spatial arguments.
Most people know the Essay from literature. But the Essay as an academic and artistic expression has established itself in many creative practices and genres beyond written language, such as in documentary filmmaking, film studies, stage design, performance art, installation art and exhibition design, to name a few.
Our starting point will be the film director Peter Greenaway and his idiosyncratic cinematic work. One film in particular, namely ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’ will serve us as a context of study, as a site of intervention, as the material to be appropriated and staged, and as the substrate into which we immerse ourselves in order to formulate a spatial utterance in response.
Inspired by a diverse spectrum of essayistic expression, each group of students will be asked to design a virtual environment guided by an argument as a response to a specific architectural theme encountered in Greenaway’s film.
The idea of the course is to investigate a space-making that is liberated from rigid tectonic constraints but rather sets its foundation on intellectual and sensual building blocks. Therefore, we will try to imagine a spatial condition as flexible, as fast, and as explicit as the spoken word.
The design part of the seminar will include film screenings, workshops, lectures and roundtable discussions.
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The aim of the seminar is to equip students with the knowledge and skills to work with Game Engines and Virtual Reality applications in a practical and theoretical manner. Each student group will be asked to design a full scale Virtual Reality Experience according to their thematic exploration which will be exhibited by the end of the term alongside with the outcome of the course Exarch F.O.O.D.
First meeting: 17th March
Location: ./studio3
Time: 10:00 am