Immersive Ecology

I found a really good book on this subject that I checked out from the Library. It is called "Living Systems: Innovative Materials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture." It has some incredible projects and technology stuff, I can drop it off tomorrow if you want to look at it.

On another note, I know I never posted much but I am going to try and put some stuff up over the next couple days.

Here is something I am thinking primarily about:
When breaking down the history and evolution of camera movement and editing in film, the long take and the montage take on more clear purposes that are easier to see when you look at the emergence of editing. In my argument right now, I am aligning the montage with understanding and the long take with experiencing. The montage is a collective. It is a synthesis of collected images and film that are edited together to provide an "objective" understanding of an event, emotion, concept etc. The montage is supposed to enable comprehension of something whereas the long take is primarily concerned with experience - it is a reproduction of the past, that we understand and experience as present.

In applying this to our movement through space and in thinking about landscape urbanism, you can break movement through space, or maybe even the development of space itself, down in to the two categories of understanding and experiencing.

Also, in terms of mapping, the montage and long take fit well into work over the past semester. The montage is the conventional map - it is concerned with enabling the viewer to understand as much as possible - which seems objective. However, the objective appearance was still shaped by a cartographer or graphic designer just like the montage is shaped by the editor. Whereas, the "newer" mapping projects we have been going over (the san fransico cab website, the barcelona bike website, even the NY A/V project) are concerned with the individual "subjective" experience of moving thought space, as a mapping strategy. The long take is about the experience of an individual - the montage is about collective understanding.