ACTION! On the Real City: The Audiovisual Poetics of Circularity

Abstract

Giving audiovisual form to the concept of ‘circular economy’, we will encourage students to think about the socio-economic relations that constitute our cities, through the use of digital media. Students will develop new forms of urban literacy in the process, combining ethnographic social research methods with filmmaking (using smartphones and Adobe Premiere Pro) and other forms of digital media.

Objective

Through a combination of practical exercises in video and audio techniques in parallel with the study of seminal observation-driven texts like, this course aims to equip students with the basic tools and core principles to create short but complex portraits of urban space. This approach will be applied to the study of the concept of ‘circular economies’ in an era of social distancing. Students will reflect on and project visions of how production, consumption and trade can continue developing, based on ‘thick’ analyses of physical locations where such production and consumption takes place. Through repeat observation, students will collectively speculate on what the ‘circular economy’ actually means through mosaics of their impressions, manifested through film. Using widely available recording tools and editing software, students will turn their fieldwork into short video or audio works of about 3-5 minutes.

Content

The course will composed of lectures, practical crash courses in media use and storytelling, and fieldwork sessions. The course will be a laboratory in the creation of short media works that aim to inform the architectural design process, working between the city and the studio in ONA. Students will be expected to complete all required work within the hours that the elective meets, with few requirements outside of the class hours.

Resources