I must start actively digest architecture into art and find those shining moments when the two discourses actually relinquish themselves into each others' arms. More difficult than one would immediately think.
Just stumbled upon www.couchprojects.com. Not sure exactly who authors this site. Found it through a link of Angie Waller's work on Outpost's website, an alternative art organization in LA. Interesting little video project titled New Babylon not so much for what the video accomplishes (though it is nice in its immediacy and scale), but the interesting comments and texts that support it. The video begins with the concept of the simulated fly-through, an architectural and real estate tool that animates a virtual architectural space. The artist makes the connection to Leni Riefenstahl, Aleksandr Medvedkin's 1939 film, Novaia Moskva ('New Moscow'), and Chris Marker's 'The Last Bolshevik'.
What strikes me here, is the multiple fictions and utopias embodied within architectural space. Firstly, there is the massive and revolutionary potential of utopian spaces, the space of pure imagination and pragmatic horror. Secondly, the fictional space of filmed architecture, curated and directed views of space- a space never quite experienced, only fixed and viewed through the camera. Then there is the fictive space of simulation- a doubled space, both of the eye and of the model. Fly through's are usually virtual spaces not yet constructed, and only rendered through modeling software. Also, the vantage points and sequences are smooth circulations that a traveling human being could never assume. For example, the 'camera' swoops down through a stairwell, zips upwards into an atrium space, penetrates a partition wall, and flies out into the landscape.
Here, the collapse of fiction, reality, historic event, and architectural potential seems quite fertile. An animated montage of all these elements...
