CRADE ET VIVANT

Dirty and Alive

7th to 12th of September 2015 – Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia – Workshop

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Abstract

This workshop has been an exploration of the city of Barcelona as a series of kinetic moments. It confronted the disciplines of cinema and architecture, mixing medias such as film, photography and digital fabrication. Set up as a collaboration between Michel Gondry, Edouard Cabay and the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, the workshop’s objective was the creation of a short film in which each frame was physically fabricated using robotic technology, treating each image as a constructed object.

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Workshop description

This project is framed as a cinematographic experiment relating film, architecture and their respective medias. The film consists of a series of images played as a continuous sequence within a defined period of time. The workshop was an opportunity to work on a process of translation of these individual images as physical constructs. By re-constructing an image, the quality of the original film could be highlighted and emphasized until it becomes the subject itself. In that sense, the media in which we film plays a role, working with analogue tools (or non-professional equipment) that produce imperfections, or noise, creating a certain texture which is already a quality in itself. Our main subject was situations within the city, which feature continuous cyclic movement, without neither beginning nor end, and a certain glittering effect, where light or movement of multiple elements create a dynamic pattern. Thus, the work explores the relationship between the continuous and the sequenced. A continuous and homogeneous movement is the composition of a multitude of heterogeneous moments or images. A line understood as a succession of points; a sheet of paper as a series of folds, a fabric as a field of knots…

The process of the workshop is axed along 4 actions – filming / making / shooting / editing. As a starting point, students filmed short 10 seconds clips in the city, based on the description written above; they then “manufactured” all of the stills in the material of their choice, using numerically controlled machines (see description below); all of these constructed images which they then photographed to reconstruct the initial 10 second clip; as a final act, all the clips were mounted together in 3-minute film.

TheInstitute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia explores the future of architecture strongly based on technological advancement, in terms of materials and means of making leading conceptual innovations. The workshop gave occasion to the repurpose of untraditional tools for the construction of images. As a result, accidents or unexpected results consequently emerged, such as the laser cutter transforming sugar into caramel, hence a white powder becoming a yellow liquid; a 7m long robotic arm planting 300 nails in a 10cm by 10 cm foam surface to represent the image of a person riding a bicycle in the city, strangely reminding us back to pointillism…

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Making Of

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Outcome
A 3’30’’ film.
As 6 clips of 6×5 seconds of 12 frames/second.
6 x 60 = 360 physical constructed images

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details
Workshop by:
Michel Gondry – Workshop Director
Edouard Cabay – Workshop Director
With:
Alexandre Dubor – Tutor, Digital Manufacturing
Marike Thery – Workshop Assistant
Rodrigo Aguirre and Anna Popova – Digital Fabrication Assistants
Sebastien Dubor – Filming and documentation

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Participants
In order of projects:
Nails: Sophia Bengebara and Alejandro Conde
Sugar and Cork: Pedro Dias, Deepti Dut and Hasti Valipour Goudarzy
Foam: Hashem Joucka and David Scott
Clay: Amani Baqer and Carla Tabora
Paper: Chiara Casco and Pauline Charles

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Project Film

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Project description
Clip 1:
Nails – 5’’ film of bicycles – robotic arm
The images were treated as a series of points, constructed using nails planted in a 10cm by 10 cm foam surface using the robotic arm. Each one of the 60 images consisted of 300 nails. The process of construction for the total of the images lasted approximately 12 hours.

Clip 2:
Sugar – 5’’ film of ripples in water – laser cutter
By using the laser cutter, we discovered that the surface of sugar would be heated and transformed into caramel. The laser beam, when “drawing” the curves that define the ripples on a water surface, created areas of the frame with a burned texture that resulted in the effect of different tonalities.

Clip 3:
Foam – 5’’ film of a train in a tunnel – cnc milling
The original film is a sequence of images taken from a train going through a tunnel. Each of the images was constructed by carving out foam with a milling machine and re-photographed with retro-illumination. Using 3d software, each image was abstracted into a topography-like surface; the darkest parts of the image being the highest level of the surface.

Clip 4:
Clay – 5’’ film of the surface of a tree – cnc routing
A tree skin and a painting in the background; by dramatically increasing the contrast of the images, 3 tonalities emerged: black, grey and white. The construction of the images was made as flat layers of wet clay in which a nail, oriented by a numerically controlled robot, would create a line, or trench, through the matter with more or less depth depending on the colour of the original image.

Clip 5:
Paper – 5’’ film of an escalator – laser cutter
In a clip composed by an escalator and a staircase featuring people moving, lines appeared as the best way to show movement and static; lines of the static staircase, of the moving steps of the escalator and the outline of the moving bodies. By using an algorithm, the images were then converted into vectors, and by using the laser cutter, the vectors became cuts in 60 surfaces of paper.

Clip 6:
Cork – 5’’ film of the shadow of a child on a swing – laser cutter
The film features the shadow of a child on a swing, the shadow moving on the sand is cyclical, it has neither beginning nor end. Each one of the images were made out of a cork cut out on a wooden board, the material was slightly burned by the laser while being cut, adding unexpected texture to the material.

“Crade” and “Vivant”, both refers to the fact that the city – and our world in general – can not exist without time and motion and that it is imperfect. Filming with analogue tools and recomposing images with unusual technique and materials lead to a number of accidents and unexpected results. This was kept as such, no filters were used, no polishing of the resulting outcome.