WRITING
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2023 Architecture and Film Symposium
Written by Brandon Bergem, Ariana Fernandez-Chesquin, James Macgillivray
This paper aims to define a subset of so-called “structural films” from the 1960s and 70s which juxtapose a cinematic spatial structure inside the structure of an architectural interior. Two examples of this type of film are Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967) and Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity (1970). By using the techniques of architectural representation, we analyze how the apparatus of the film camera and its spatial projection interacts with the specific context of the rooms in which they take place. After establishing this subset of structural film as a type, the paper traces how it influenced two filmmakers far from the American scene: Chantal Akerman and Takashi Ito. We note the change in Akerman’s work after she saw these films when she lived in New York in the early 1970s. The paper considers the film La Chambre as a turning point in her work, reconfiguring how she approached mise en scene and space in subsequent films, the most important of which being Jeanne Dielman. In Ito’s case the relationship is less direct but the resulting films are far more spatially complex. We consider the films Spacy and Grim in the context of Snow and Gehr’s work, but also that of Ito’s mentor Toshio Matsumoto.
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107th ACSA Annual Meeting | BLACK BOX: Articulating Architecture's Core in the Post-Digital Era
Written by Vivian Lee, James Macgillivray
2019-03-29This paper looks at a recent developments in digital knowledge and design towards what the authors call “raster” based surfaces and away from “vector” lineaments. The authors present this turn in relation to the historical context of facade composition, drawing an analogy between the beaux-arts understanding of facades as a consequence of plan and section and the auditable and verifiable scripts of parametric design. In contrast to the vector, the authors present contemporary developments in machine learning and perception that privilege an interaction with the world based on surfaces and pixels. Lastly they present the potential for the raster digital as a design tool, using artificial intelligence to synthesize hybrid facade designs in a digital dream state.
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Robert Beavers (Austrian Film Museum)
Written by James Macgillivray
2017-04-02From the publisher's website: "In a career spanning five decades, Robert Beavers has distinguished himself as one of the most important American avant-garde filmmakers. From My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, his cycle of 18 films made across Europe since 1967, to Pitcher of Colored Light (2007) and The Suppliant (2010), intimate portraits shot in the U.S., Beavers has produced a deeply original film language framed by his use of colored filters and mattes. His investigations of the handwork of anonymous artisans complement his dialogues with Ruskin, Leonardo and Borromini in Ruskin (1975/1997), From the Notebook of... (1971/1998) and The Hedge Theater (1986/2002). This volume contains critical investigations of Beavers' most important films and a collection of the filmmaker's own writings. Occupying a unique space between poetry and philosophy, his aphoristic meditations vivify his own work and generously illuminate the art of film. The essay contributors include Tom Chomont, Don Daniels, Luke Fowler, Haden Guest, Kristin M. Jones, James Macgillivray, Gregory J. Markopoulos, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Jonas Mekas, René Micha, Susan Oxtoby, Rebekah Rutkoff, P. Adams Sitney, and Erik Ulman."
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Digital Aptitudes: Proceedings of the 2011 100th ACSA Annual Meeting
Written by James Macgillivray
2012-03-01Within architectural practice, the lopsided relationship between cinema and architecture has prompted an evasion as response. The notion of translation, of making a “cinematic” architecture, has displaced the possibility of confrontation and replaced it with the pursuit of mimesis. Unlike the modern painters who responded to the photograph with an open abnegation of the realism it entailed, architects in the age of film have consistently sought inspiration in the greater synthetic powers of their cinematic rival. From Le Corbusier’s promenade architectural, to Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts, and recently Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid, the persistence of the cinematic analogy in architecture is to a certain extent more important than its success or failure as a premise. Whether or not the moving camera can in a satisfactory way be equated to an ambulatory sequence through a building, or if an elevator’s trip through disparate programs in section could be likened to a “jump cut” is immaterial when faced with the resulting building. The persistence of this cinematic metaphor in architecture constitutes the basis for this paper. That the base of the metaphor, the medium of film, is in the last throes of a transmutation into video complicates and at the same time transforms the architectural product. By looking at two recent cinemas that conceptually straddle the “death of film” this paper will clarify how the metaphor works and outline how cinematic buildings make their case. [On Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid Cinematèque and Thomas Leeser’s Museum of the Moving Image.]
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The Journal of Modern Craft, Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2012, pp. 179-202
Written by James Macgillivray
2012-07-07The article looks at the material aspects of film and film editing within the context of the American avant-garde. In particular it examines the work of two filmmakers, Gregory Markopoulos and Robert Beavers, and shows how these artists’ interactions with film itself, and the craft of editing, informed their artistic process in productive ways.
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Article first appeared in The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Issue 11.2, Fall 2002
Written by James Macgillivray
2002-10-10Works of art and architecture are always subject to a process of translation and reinscription when they are depicted in cinema. This process is demonstrated through a detailed analysis of a scene in Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia which features the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca. While analyzing the effect of suture and cinematic space on architecture, the author shows how Tarkovsky consciously changes the meaning of Piero's fresco and its surrounding architecture as he reinscribes them in his film.
Subsequent publication in "Tarkovsky" Black Dog Publishing, March 2008, ed. Nathan Dune. pp.163-177
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PLAT Journal 1.5 (2011) pp. 8-15 , and Dimensions 25 (2012) pp. 185-192
Written by WH Vivian Lee
2011-07-08The article expands on the labor and craft issues involved in the production of a site specific installation called Hair Spikes, Cattail, and Turkeyfoot. The project seeks to discover new construction drawing conventions by exploring the oral tradition of thatch alongside the representational demands of digital fabrication. It combines two methods of construction – digital and oral – to explore the role of sequence-based drawing in current architectural practice. The article summarizes the production of the pavilion and elaborates upon the issues that it raises for the discipline.
Subsequent publication in "Tarkovsky" Black Dog Publishing, March 2008, ed. Nathan Dune. pp.163-177
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SCAPEGOAT: Materialism, Issue 02, December 2011
Written by James Macgillivray
2011-11-17A review of Volker Sattel’s 2011 film Unter Kontrolle, the article looks at nuclear power through the lens of materialism and by comparison to Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker.
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The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center: Proceedings of the 103rd ACSA Annual Meeting
Written by Vivian Lee, James Macgillivray
2015-02-03In its latest resurgence, architectural ornament has evolved from a responsibility towards symbolic significance to the ambition of sensual communication through affect. In some cases the visible aspect of affect is accomplished through the tectonic consequences of digitally fabricated assemblies, which though they are non-linguistic are nonetheless exceedingly complex and dense. At the same time the oscillation of attention and distraction that epitomizes internet culture has created an accelerated appetite and pressure for novelty which constantly requires new operative modes for decoration and visual expression. Art and media practices of the current moment engage in far less complex strategies for decoration and ornament, relying on the expedient layering of ready-made image and pattern without syntactic or semiotic relations but with new rationales for composition and arrangement capable of containing “literally anything at all”. The following paper presents the potentials of this nascent “seapunk” ethos as a conceptual framework for architectural ornament. Methodologically, the authors have experimented, with students and in practice, to borrow techniques from surrealist automatism, optical art, and aqueous craft techniques. The results of these endeavors outline unique approaches to composition, craft, labor, and optical fascination in ornament.
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Dimensions 26
Written by James Macgillivray
2012-04-06This work lays out a handful of filmic spaces as in a cabinet of curiosities. Spheres, pyramids, tapestries, lattices and prisms among others – all are latent in film. By bringing these figures out of the dark, fleeting confines of the cinema and into architectural representation, the project points towards unforeseen as yet untapped potentials for view, projection and enclosure.
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Shaping New Knowledges: Proceedings of the 104th ACSA Annual Meeting
Written by WH Vivian Lee, James Macgillivray
2016-03-07This paper first outlines installation scale projects where latent in the design is an attempt to bring back the voice of the craftsman while providing authorship to the student labor force. In large, building scale applications of computational design however, contemporary practices have evolved to create a new expertise crafts-force that combines an emphatic and integrated voice of designers, engineers, fabricators, and builders. The second half of the article describes these collaborations, and demonstrates the advancement of workflow between computational design, fabrication, and building delivery through detailed case studies. Much of the research is gathered through in-depth interviews with project managers, consultants, and engineers to describe the current landscape of architectural practice and the resurgence of an expertise craft in the labor of building.