ACTION! On the Real City: Parkour: Audiovisual Imaginaries of Urban Play

Abstract

Layers of diverse design logics determine the built environment, resulting in a heterogenous field of surfaces, materials, and objects. How do they contribute to a sense of play in the city?Students will respond to this questions through short, experimental films that will aim to articulate how cities today may be reimagined and reappropriated by its inhabitants in new and inventive ways.

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 built environment as a field of potential urban play. Through repeat observation, students will collectively create 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 compose 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