MAK exhibition Los Angeles

scale . scape . scope MAK Schindler residency Los Angeles, 2011
research project for “a cartography from a roadtrip-point-of-view”

scale. Exploring infrastructural landscapes, it becomes obvious that infrastructure not only provides the framework for moving patterns as such, but foremost informs the very patterns of perception. When passing by in a car, the view on the surroundings is rendered a cinematic experience. Landscape becomes an ephemeral and transient projection from a floating perspective, its scale becomes loose.

scape. Historically landscape is a framed view on a piece of land. 18th Century English garden architecture arranged pavilions, ruins, trees and lakes in the garden, accentuating certain views on idealized nature informed by landscape painting. Current discourse treats landscape as a continuous field without distinction if man-made or natural. It is characterized by the loss of figure-ground relationships dominating 20th century urban design, which directly associated building mass with a determined function. Space is rather treated as a continuously mediated field, thus negotiable and takes into account a presence of the participant. Space is not a vessel, it is produced / practiced by its protagonists, creating their very own space-time.

scope. A -scope has always been a tool for inspection, i.e. telescope, microscope, kaleidoscope. We face an age in which the human sensory organs and physical body get inextricably interconnected with their media extensions. Gadgets and prostheses allow for accessing hyperspaces. Virtual and geographical realms overlap, are even coextensive. A GPS in a car, Google Earth, Street View and such applications create their own space intersecting with the geographical. This current state exceeds the three-dimensional, redefining what falls under the scope of the architectural. How might it be mapped / drawn? What might cartography from a moving point of view be like? With the car being the tool for examination, a car-scope, what does it reveal?

sound by abby lee tee, live gps: Claudia Slanar