CHANGING PERSPECTIVES

KYRIACOS ELIADES
KYRIACOS ELIADES
2014
Cover photo: Anthony McCall - Line Describing a Cone (1973),
Available at: http://openfleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/antho-
ny-mccall-line-describing-cone.html
Collage by author.
CHANGING PERSPECTIVES
KYRIACOS ELIADES
BA Architecture Dissertation, FT year 3
Tutor: Marco Jobst
University of Greenwich
2013 2014
ID: 000614091
Except where stated otherwise, this dissertation is based entirely on authors own work.
ABSTRACT
Perspective has an inherent architectural history and a signifcant relation
with the spatial perception from the observer. Tis dissertation traces
the history of the relationship between the perspective, the spectator and
the infuences that shaped its use during the historical development. It
also reveals explicit attempts by artists to create a diferent experience to
the observer in relation to space. Finally the paper demonstrates through
late twentieth century art installations of video flms within gallery
spaces, and museum walks how perspectival the potential relationship
with the spectator can be. Te paper concludes that perspectival art
installations blur the actual representation of space in buildings and act as
an alternative way of experiencing spatial perception with in that space.
Figure 1: Perspective Grid - Viewpoints
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my tutor, Dr. Marco
Jobst, for his patient support through the construction of this dissertation,
and most importantly, for his critical feedback which helped me improve
my skills and work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
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Chapter 2: TWENTIETH CENTURY
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INTRODUCTION
Te discovery of perspective is one of the most powerful forces behind
the development of the representation of space in the pictorial arts or
any other area that one wants to use images to illustrate information
(Marcussen, 2010). Since its conception, the placement of the spectator
in relation to perspective and its surrounded actual space has shown a
major embedded architectural issue.
Te decoding of space from the observer starts with a linear proportional
representation, where the spectator has to be in a specifc viewpoint in
space in order to comprehend its depiction. However, the infuence
from the historical intricacies around that subject and from the
explicit endeavors by artists to change the conventional order of this
representation in relation to space and the spectator, leads to a confict
between reality and appearances.
Eventually, this concept of distortion will lead in the technological work
of flm projection, where the perspective plays a dominant role and the
artists that deal with it, ofer complex relationships between the depicted
space, viewpoints, and the spectator.
Te aim of this dissertation is to describe the relationship of the observer
and the perspective from its depicted space through a historic trace of
artistic examples and major infuences. Finally the intention is to ofer
some speculations of how complex the potential relationship of the
observer and the depicted space can be by analyzing some of the late
twentieth examples of installation arts of flm, museum walks, and to
show what efect might have in the architectural space.
CHAPTER 1: THE HISTORY OF PESPECTIVE IN THE RE-
NAISSANCE PERIOD
Leonardo da Vinci manifests his design as a mathematical model of
reality and not just as a depiction of a man but a system of proportionality
(Fernandez, 2013).
Figure 2: Vitruvian Man
Te Renaissance was a period of cultural shif which developed around
the 14th17th century. New concepts of knowledge were taking place,
particularly in Italy, diminishing the infuence of the Dark Ages. Te
arts philosophy and other sciences of the classical world were actively
studied and integrated into Modern life infuencing artists who strove to
advance their art (Haughton, 2004).
During the fourishment
of that period there was an
abundance of symmetry and
proportionality infuenced
from the human body. Te
Vitruvian Man derived from
the treatise, De Architectura
of architect Marcus Vitruvi-
us was a notion of inspiration
regarding symmetry and pro-
portions in relation to human
body and several architects as-
similated this conception into
their architectural repertoire
imposing a specifc language
in the Renaissance period
(MacDonald, 2013).
Artists and architects studied the way that a spectator could observe their
work through the discovery of linear perspective. Tis was due to its
its mathematical system of representation that Filippo Brunelleschi and
aferwards Leone Battista Alberti, modifed illustrating that the parallel
lines of a painted scenery on a canvas where converged to a single point
in the horizon which is placed opposite the observer (Ambrose, 1994).
Te single point of perspective or otherwise point of view meant that
experimentation could be liberated between the observer and the pro-
portionate representation.
Figure 3: Leone Battista Alberti s perspective device.
One of the breathtaking examples that followed from the experimen-
tation of perspectives that created an illusionary efect between the
spectator and the perceiving of space was from the painted ceiling of
St. Ignatius of Loyola church in Rome. Andrea Pozzo (16421709) was
commissioned to paint the apotheosis of Saint Ignatius on the ceiling
and through the use of perspective, Pozzos ceiling fresco demonstrates
that Reason, which sought to order the world into a mechanistic system
of rules and laws, could be used in the service of emotion. Perspective is
employed to extend the space of the church beyond the earth-bound
ceiling and upwards to the ethereal sphere of angels, saints, and the
Trinity (Murphy, 2005). Pozzos illusionary perspective is manifested
only from a particular viewpoint into the churchs foor (Tomitsch, 2008),
From elsewhere, the logic of his forced one-point perspective falls apart
and the image becomes a chaotic composite of collapsing columns and
disorienting fgure relationships (Waterhouse, 1962 , cited in Murphy,
2005).
Ultimately, this suggests that the experience of the position of the person
who is inside the building is completely dictated by something that is
painted and because is painted for a particular position in the space. Te
observer is forced into a position in the actual building, because that
piece of art is totally unreal and its representation of space is designed
just for that one position that shows that there is an important relation
of the positioning of the observer in real space and the depicted space to
decipher the experience.
Figure 4: Pozzos Illusionistic ceiling painting frame.
Figure 6: Pozzos paint-
ing on the ceiling in the
church of St. Ignazio.
Figure 5: Pozzos ceiling
away from the correct
viewing location.
1.1: From Renaissance to Baroque period
Afer the depiction of the Renaissance period there was a gradual shif from
the order of symmetry, geometrical harmony and disposition which was
called Mannerism (UML, 2013). In this notion of movement, a mannerist
painter Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (1503 1540) also know as
Parmigianino, was interested in distortion. According to Glover (2010)
,Parmigianino was concerned with the body components that when they are
shifed away from the eye, they would seem to elongate and in order
to amplify this captivation he used a convex mirror in his self-portrait
to manipulate the view from the perspective of the spectator to cause
wonderstruck. Te explicit attempts by artists to distort, reconfgure
or create diferent perspectives of the Renaissance order reveals a new
era of cultural shifings, meanings and experiences on the spectators.
Parmigianino,
self-portrait in
a convex mir-
ror.
Figure 7:
Following the period in European history when a transition from the
ordinary understanding of space could be considered, the Baroque was
similarly a period in which the cosmos was perceived in mechanical
expressions. Temple (2007, p160), notes that within this reoriented
cosmic vision, the conventional sealed universe of the medieval age and
its ensuing humanist revisions in the Renaissance, were swapped by an
additional rational and systematic vision of order.
Baroque architecture departing in the early seventieth century in Italy
was aiming to unfold the triumph amongst the absolutist church and
nation (Rahmatabadi and Toushmalani, 2011). Te infuence of Baroque
architecture provided a divine link between the spectator and the
perspective. Temple (2007) notes that a substantial infuence during
the Baroque phase was from the evolution of apparatus for representing
and measuring the motion of heavenly bodies, such as armillary spheres
and orreries, led to certain corresponding relations to the cosmological
representation of space and domes. Apart from this, the author reports
that this relationship was fetched about, in part, by the gradually sovereign
role by churches as instruments for designating the fuctuating date of
Easter. Temple, point outs how the understanding of architecture, as a
representative tool for substantiating concordance amongst the church
and the motion of heavenly bodies, with the perspective formed part of
a much profound onto-theological institution.
In addition, Baroque style also emphasized the use of perspective and apt
communication as it developed from the Mannerist art view. Although
Michelangelo cannot exactly be described as a Baroque artist, his work
included some important ideas which could also be termed as being
in the Baroque spirit. Te main appeal of the baroque was to the inner
senses of the human being, rather described as a sort of enlightenment
and communion with God, who although on a higher level than man
was inherently munifcent (Gardner, et al, 2005).
A seminal fgure in the advent of modern science was the late six-
teenth-century humanist and occult thinker, Giordano Bruno. In his
world-view, the universe is conceived as an infnite expanse of numberless
entities sufused with a world-soul, and this represented a departure
from the traditional transcend view of cosmos where divine authority
is communicated through a preordained hierarchy of heavenly and
terrestrial intermediaries (Temple, 2007).

In one sense Brunos philosophy could be seen as providing a new
rational perspective of Cusanus idea of the coincidence of opposites.
Brunos quest required the reduction of the enquirer to an instrument
for contemplating and ultimately revealing Gods purpose. Curiously,
this rational emphasis was driven by a magical view of the world
(Temple, 2007). Apart from this temple notes that, Brunos recasting of
traditional theological and philosophical ideas into a universal science,
using alchemical and hermetic principles, led to new ways of interpreting
the cosmic order. Brunos model of the world-soul paved the way for
the establishment of the principle of unity in multiplicity that was
to characterize Baroque concepts of order. In this notion, which will
serve as the main theme in this chapter, the cosmos comprises inter-
connected parts, whose individual natures constitute distinct horizon
of being. Te principle of unity in multiplicity provided a background to
the establishment of distinct areas of enquiry in the seventieth century,
such as astronomy, geology, cartography, numismatics, archaeology
and linguistics. Implicit in these varied felds of study was a common
communicative domain, rooted in all-encompassing divine authority
that ensured a rich cross-fertilization of ideas.
Understood in comprehensive terms, these multiple felds of examination
through the Baroque period could be said to formulate analogous
manifestations in the spatial and emblematic intricacies of Baroque
architecture. Te seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries could be
characterized as a constellation of elements, typically confgured as
a succession of inter-related spaces, within which the drama of sacred
of perspective event unfolds and culminates in a unifed spectacle for
collective involvement (Temple, 2007). Tis manifested the crucial role
of perspective between the spectator and architecture.
Te importance of Baroque Period is that everything that was structured
and in order in the Renaissance Period starts being distorted, which in
the end will lead to all the twentieth century all manners of complex ideas
about perspective and the spectator in relation to the viewpoints in space.
Chapter 2: TWENTIETH CENTURY
2.1: Cubism
Te departure of cubism theory had a substantial infuence from Paul
Czanne. Laporte, (1949,p:245) asserts that Czanne was the frst to
comprehend that the unifying factor in the painting is not one point of
view to which all shapes, sizes, and proportions the objects represented
are to be referred. Te theorization of Czanne sat new boundaries to
the western perspective, as it was initially established in the ffeenth cen-
tury questioning how the spectator will receive spatial representation.
Tis marked a transition in the early nineteenth century, were Pablo Pi-
casso in collaboration with George Braque believed that art had to do
something more as it seemed obsolete, and as a result it led to the unfold-
ing of the Cubist movement in the years before World War one, which was
perhaps the key episode in the development of modern art (BBC, 2012).
During the early Cubism (1906 1909), the fact that in the arts there
was no longer an imitation of nature and therefore it wasnt, in the arts
,the main issue that was heavily linked to them, for the reason that their
compositions acquired a reality of their own in which they are no lon-
ger constrained by a single perspective but through a confguration of
multiple perspectives captured while the artists where viewing the sub-
ject (Grosenick, 2006). Apollinaire et al (2010) state that the artists no
longer painted an object viewed from one perspective, but rather layered
views from many angles in order to capture the subject from all sides.
Tis kind of interpretation by the artists had a particular signifcance on
how the spectators would perceive their work in relation to the space, as
it broke the conventional interpretation of the single viewpoint regarding
the observer.
Several of the cubists works portray objects, surfaces and meanings con-
structed from multiple viewpoints. Johnson, (2013) describes that George
Braques Still Life with Fan (1910), that the form of a bottle is represent-
ed by a composite image from multiple viewpoints. Te vertical form is
surmounted by an ellipse, a traditional Western device for depicting a
cylindrical object. With regards to verisimilitude, however, the ellipse
would only be visible at the cylindrical base, rather than at the rounded
top. Furthermore, the far edge of the ellipse is fattened into a horizontal
line, suggesting that the bottle is actually viewed at eye-level, calling for a
two-dimensional image. However, despite the clashes of perspectives in
this work, it does not appear to obscure the sense of the outline and vol-
ume of the subjects, but rather to give a diferent perspectival experience
to the observer, as he will be simultaneously in various positions in space.
Figure 8: Still Life with Fan, by George Braques, 1910.
On the other hand, the
work of Pablo Picasso
called Te Poet (1911),
seems to be more as an ab-
straction compared to Life
with Fan (1910), as men-
tioned above, but still bits
of the paint gives an un-
derstanding of the com-
position. Picasso visually
dissected and reconstruct-
ed elements in the paint-
ing and presented them
from multiple views cap-
tured around the object
(Guggenheim, 2013).
Here, Picassos technique
appears to give a fragmen-
tation of perspective views
in order to reconstitute an
experience through the
recognition of fragments,
which are assembled by
the the viewer to create a
single composite image in
space.
Figure 9: Te Poet, by Pablo Picasso, 1911.
Despite that the two artists followed a diferent tactics to their paint-
ings, most of their works have a similar approach. Te authors, Gleizes
and Metzinger (1913) described that the objects are constituted by an
integral form, which in order to present it, we should suppress the con-
ventional perspective view since the objects have multiple geometrical
forms; it is consistent as many as there planes in the region of perception.
Terefore, the spectator might have multiple perspectival experiences at
the same time without being a mobile observer.
In conclusion, what cubism ultimately seemed to be doing, was the
making of a complex of the potential relation between the viewing point,
the observer and the object in space. Te spatial experience and the
conventional relativity between the spectator and his view point position
in real space have been broken down from the depiction of Cubism work,
as the observer is transcended to several positions in the represented
space from the perspective of real space, due to the fact that the object
was constructed while been captured from multiple points of views. Tis
is clearly illustrated in the work of Still Life with Fan (1910) of George
Braques where elements of the objects are a composite image from
multiple viewpoints, giving the chance to the spectator to experience
each element from its composition from its captured view from the real
space.
Figure 10 - 13: Cubism Works.
10: Nature morte (Fruit Dish, Ace of clubs), by Georges Braque, 1913.
11: Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, by Pablo Picasso, 1910.
12: Le Portugais/Te Emigrant, Georges Braque, 1911 1912.
13: Girl with a Mandolin, (Fanny Tellier), by Pablo Picasso, 1910.
2.2: From Cubism to Film perspectives.
Marcussen (2010) expressed that perspective plays a dominating role
in diverse areas of visual communications such as the flm industry.
Perez Gomez and Pelletier (1997, p:374) pointed out that Te projection
of a pyramid light through the darkness of a cinema inverted the
Renaissance visual pyramid of perspective and altered it into an allegory
of extormission, with its own window on the world. Cinematographic
projection illustrates the reciprocity of light and shadow as an analogue
of the complementary of presence and absence, and it disrupts the fxed
gaze of the perspective During the cinematographic projection, we sit
immobile between the light and the projected images, in the enduring
present of a space . Tis indicates that the projection of flm has a
capability of giving a prospective spatial representation between the
viewpoint of the observer and the projection.
Apart from this, the authors mentioned that since its inception, it was
concerned with the dimension that exists amongst an evoked metaphoric
space, as they called it the poetic space of montage, and the creative
experience of the spectator through that space, where sequences follow
a narrative form that opens up a space amongst each juxtaposition and
involves the spectator at a spatial and temporal level. Tis technique
seems to open the potential of new spatial representation in the projected
perspective of flm where the spectator can experience a nonlinear
architectural space of the conventional projection.

Te alternative experience of space, led artists and particularly surrealist
flmmakers became aware to the means of exposed non neutrality,
and gave them the possibility to permit to the humanity to render its
perception of space in a new order.
One of the profound artists is Peter Greenaway who is using cin-
ematographic montage combined with computer techniques,
is capable of conveying a disruption of the spatial and temporal
perspective that is considered normal (Perez Gomez and Pelletier,
1997, p.376) to this projective art.
Tis is clearly seen in the work of his flm, called the Prosperos Books
(1991), which is a cinematographic reformation of William Shakespeares
play Te Tempest (1611) and it is an outcome artifact that is fusing art
and technology. Helene and Atik (2011) pointed out that, Greenaway
abandons the literary preferences of numerous directors in the proce-
dure of adaptation of classic literary texts, which is the narrative seam
of the Shakespearean transition, but as a substitute he alters it to create a
mosaic of images, speeches and texts.
In order to achieve this manifestation, the images that appear on the
display do not follow the reproduced faithfully sequence of events in the
dramatic text, and the flmmaker virtually alters certain passages of the
source text, by superimposing images to the actor reading of the plays of
the original version, and subsequently making the play literally audible.
Apart from this, the author mentions that by the use of superimposition
technique of the montage he transfers narrated events which were ap-
peared in the frst part, intentionally to the two following ones aiming as
a result an amalgamation of memory and imagination. Greenway difers
from what occurs in most cinematographic adaptions by the means that
he is not transferring the chronic order of the source text, but he is creat-
ing act afer act, blending scene afer scene.
Goristiza (1995) explains that by superimposing three images simulta-
neously or texts that are being said about each one of the characters, the
metaphor and reality can be experienced instantly. Te director relates
this narrative method with Cubism, in which multiple perspectives and
aspects of the same object are represented instantaneously (cited in He-
lene and Attic, 2011). Tus, in the form of a metaphorical Tempest of lyr-
ics, images, and voices, Greenaway suggests an endless system of space
puzzles, a maze of emblems in motion which indicates to the spectator
discovery or identifcation of allusions, passages, dislocations, words un-
derneath words, images beneath other images, and each of these artifacts
Tat is to say, the observer through this process is not passive but
inventively participates in the reconstruction of an embodied, subjective
spatiality advocated by the montage, creating a potential model for
appropriate architectural creation of space and perception.
Te cinematographic montage along with the projection has a crucial
role in the perspectival development amongst the spectator and its
depicted space, Merlau Ponty, (1962) described that this efect of
adding or subtracting a fraction of dimensionality to our experience...
evokes the experience of an embodied subjective spatiality, and thus may
be construed as the experience of architecture as it could be (cited in
Perez Gomez and Pelletier, 1997).
Last but not least, the projection of flm with the cinematographic montage
reveals to the perception of the observer an alternative architectural
representation of spatiality, ofering the potential to transcend the
observer in a diferent reality of space within the depicted space in the
real space. Te cinematographic projection is ofering the spectator the
experience the enduring presence of space fxed in a position in the
physical space but when is fused with the cinematographic montage which
relates to cubism, the metaphor of the depicted space and reality can be
experienced instantly triggering a creative experience of the spectator
Figure 14: Image from the flm
Prosperos Book, showing the
superimposition of text on the
actors.
has its own meaning and function through each passage of depicted
space.
within that passage of the depicted space. Te cinematographic projec-
tion is ofering to the spectator the experience of the enduring presence of
space fxed in a position in the physical space but when is fused with
the cinematographic montage which relates to cubism, the metaphor of
the depicted space and reality can be experienced instantly triggering a
creative experience of the spectator within that passage of the depict-
ed space. Tis is conspicuous in Greenways work, called the Prosperos
Books, where the proposition of an endless system of space puzzles,
allusions, passages, dislocations, superimpositions, each of one hav-
ing its own meaning lead the spectator to perceive a potential model
for appropriate architectural creation of space and perception within
each passage by rendering the perception of the space in a new order.
Finally, these projective arts will ultimately end up in the late twentieth
century, to a much more profound fairly complex set of relationships
between the spectator, space, and its depicted representation.
In this chapter, I will be looking the late 20th century versions of what
is happening to perspective and the spectator through the means of flm
installation art, cinema and museum walks.
Since the technological developments of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, artists and scientists were introduced to a new radical
world of representation. Tis included Cubist works of Picassos which
foresighted the abstract paintings and experimental flm works to come
in the next few decades as a starting point from photography and flm
(Welsby, 2011). As a result, new modes between the perspective and the
spectator were ready for exploration.
One of the ways that artists attempt to heighten the viewer experience is
from installations in these media, either immersive or experiential. Film
theorist Giuliana Bruno (2009) mentions that as a painting attempts to
represent the original space of architecture in perspective, the digital
screens animate this technique and replace the painting with recombined
perspectives in shifing viewpoints, moving over architectural surfaces
to rebuild the physical existence of the space as it would be in proper
three dimensions. Apart from this, the author explains that this kind of
installation might be interpreted as the late modernist equivalent to the
late Renaissance/Baroque anamorphosis, where the anamorphosis, itself
of an exquisite and polished machine for illusion. Tis explanation by
Bruno signifes that the physical representation of space in paintings with
a proportionate rate of depth, are replaced by the screens which have
the capability to represent this technique of paintings with recombined
perspectives in shifing viewpoints, representing the space as it would be
in real dimensions over the actual space making it a modern technique of
illusion and more. Nevertheless the nature of viewing artworks produced
from these media, alongside with their subjective impacts, rests mostly
unfathomed leaving the question what happens to space when these
machines of illusion blurs with the actual space along with the spectator?
CHAPTER 3: LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY EXAMPLES
In one approach that artists attempted to break the experiential
perspectival efects on the spectator was to reverse the
conventional projection, but moreover, they do so again in 3D
space, in Architecture. Anthony McCalls work , called Line
Describing a Cone (1973), is a flm projected in gallery space,
where the conventional settings required, such as separation
amongst projection space and observers, seats, and screen, where
abandoned and replaced by a light beam from a projector that
projects a white circle on a black background surrounded by a
difused mist in the space (Michaud, 2011). Apart from this, the
author mentions that in contrast to the conventional cinemas or
theatres, McCall substitutes the spatial perspective space of the
screen with a projective space where it acts as an inversion of the
perspectival ordinary arrangement behind the screen, unfolding
the perspective depth to the actual depth.
Ballard (2007) while examining McCalls work contents that the
frst tentative eforts are met with black shadows, interruptions to
the surface of the cone; gradually whole bodies become suspended
within the boundaries or spaces of the light. Te fragments of
bodies breaking the beam become disconnected from anything
outside of the beam and the room appears to shrink, becoming
encompassed by the artwork. Tis installation opens up real
perspectival experiences between the mobilized spectators and
the projection, where the spectator can participate by going inside
in an inhabitable projected space. In addition it justifes that the
depicted space of McCalls work defnes how the observer perceives
the space within the actual space according to his viewpoint.
Figure 15: Anthony McCall. Line Describing a Cone, 1973. Installation view
during the twenty-fourth minute, the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Figure 16: View towards the projector.
Figure 17: People enter in a habitable space.
In additon, one of the late twentieth century examples is Michaels Snow
flm installation, called Two Sides to Every Story (1974), which is con-
sisted of two analogous color flms each projected simultaneously onto
both surfaces of a rectangular aluminum screen suspended in mid air
at the center of a faintly lit gallery room. Te two flm projectors are po-
sitioned on the top of black stands and situated at opposite ends of the
otherwise empty gallery space projecting the two separated flms in the
same distance as the cameras were, when recording the scene projected,
representing a single mundane event. Snows work, as seen in Moloch
(2010), focuses on apocalypses and that spectators when countered with
this unfamiliar confguration they must negotiate an improvised path
between the two sides to probe the connection amongst the simultane-
ously views and in order to reveal snows organizing logic of installation,
it only becomes apparent when the spectator is in ambulation and ob-
serving from a multiple points of perspectives. Tis kind of installation
encourages an unchoreographed dance between the dueling projected
planes and the physical placement of the spectator, so as to decipher the
depicted meaning - space. Additionally, Snows work is emphasized on
how it is set up in space, giving a distinction in the actual space and the
viewpoints of the observer that starts as an ambulation and ends up as
separation of space through the perception of the spectator.
Figure 18: Two Sides to Every Story (1974), 16mm colour flm loop, two pro-
jectors, switching device, and aluminum.screen.
Figure 19- 20: Two Sides to Every Story (1974).View from each side.
Te spectator cant see both sides at once, you have to move around and see
the image in new ways to understand the representation.
Similarly, Chantal Akerman celebrated the idea of the montage of space
- perspective with the physical presence of the body in it. A protrusive
example of her work is the decomposition of her flm called Dest (1993)
into an art installation form. Te flm is literally dislocated: made to
reside in triptychs of twenty four video monitors spread across the
gallery space. Te gallery viewer is therefore ofered the spectatorial
pleasure of entering into a flm as she physically retraverses the language
of montage (Bruno, 2007: p9).
Akerman is also interested with the physical presence of the mode of dis-
play and its relationship to the body of the spectator, In the installation
with the video screens, people can come and go as they like. Tey stop for a
moment, they continue and so on. You can always see something diferent
and in another way (Dercon, 2005, cited in Jenkins, 2007). What seems
that Akerman portray to us to us is a new mode of addressing the specta-
tor, shuttling him with modes of deconstruction that it undergoes in the
subsequent sections of the installation as he moves around the space and
through the screens with the montage, emerging him from a fractured
language of perspectives in order to have a diferent perspectival experi-
ence of space in relation to his viewpoint, screen, and movement in space.
Figure 21: Chantal Akerman. Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akermans DEst,
1993/1995. Installation view. 24 channel video installation, 16mm flm (color,
sound).
In summary, these fairly complex set of relationships between the
screens, the spectator, and how artists organized these art installations,
through space in relation to the viewpoints, are invading the actual
buildings. Tat is because that these kinds of art installations seem to be
completely destabilizing the line that separates architecture from a piece
of art, since the observer perceives a diferent space within the actual
space; thus the movement and perception of the spectator is completely
dictated by these art installations. Moreover, it ofers us a new way of
thinking between the perspective, position of the spectator in space with
the complex ways of organizing those two through these art medias.
Te discovery of perspective has a major role in the representation
of architectural space. In the Renaissance, where it was advanced
through the infuence of its cultural shif, it was concerned to depict a
proportional representation of space in relation to the perspective of the
observer. However, what started in the as a linear representation, signs
of the upcoming periods and by the endeavors from infuencial artists,
triggered a more distorted exploration and aferwards complex way of
representing space in relation to the spectator within the real space.
Tis notion of distortion and exploration opened up new possibilities
that led artists to render its representation of space and spatial perception
in a new order in relation to the spectator, its position in space, and the
depicted space. Nevertheless, each example dealt with space and spatial
perception but focus with diferent approach with these relationships
and how they would present it.
An important part, produced from these trajectories, is that the spatial
experience and the conventional relativity between the spectator and
his view point position in real space have been broken down from the
conventional depiction and set up, questioning the spectator how he
will receive spatial perception. Tis privileged feature is only for the
spectators that will question the architectural perception of space, either
intentionally from the artist purpose or unintentionally by an individual
subjective point of view.
CONCLUSION
By the time we arrived at twentieth century technologies and digital
media in particular screens and flm projections, lead to a more profound
complex relationship that ofers us a new way of thinking about spatial
perception. Tese installations art pieces invade the representation
of the actual space and completely destabilize the line that separates
architecture from piece of art. Yet, it gives an alternative interpretation of
architecture, a new way of sophisticating the relationship of perspective
bewteen the spectator and the depicted space that could give architecture
a new interpretation.
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