[One of two rigs used to capture the images displayed in The Impossibility of Understanding. Once captured, images are made into stills sequences, and then processed and composited using Processing. A second rig (not pictured) is attached to the wheel well and wheel of the car and is used to obtain position and time data. This data is used to pull the correct stills from the stills sequence.] The Impossibility of Understanding in the Path of a Torontonian is the first installment in The Mother City. By collecting sectional information for each metropolis in the broad scoped Mother City, and representing these sections through emerging data visualization aesthetics, I am attempting to document the nuanced individual and collective identities of Canadian and American cities. Many architects of the 20th century claimed that it was "through architecture and urban planning that ... urban social crises could be resolved" (Pinder, 62). Historically, and in the Modern era, architecture and urban planning moves have been clearly rooted in ideas about humanity and how the world should operate. As a result, our cities rest on ideological foundations. Moreover, in our young North American cities, the built manifestations of these ideologies were not entirely impeded by existing historical fabric. Consequentially, the plans of these architects were able to manifest in the physical forms of buildings and urban design in a manner not possible in Europe. Furthermore, these manifestations have not been obscured by as many of the erosive effects of time, such as fire, floods, wars, etc. There exists a need to not only document these forms for generations to come (and the ideologies embodied in them), but also for our present generation to experience the entirety of the metropolis—to be consumed by the forms of the city in a way that one cannot achieve by merely existing within the city itself. Edward Tufte, a preeminent authority on data visualization, writes about the necessity for data contextualization. He states that humans understand complex entities best when presented with as many contextual elements as possible. Additionally, this data is best understood when it resides within the same visual space (Tufte, 6). A metropolis is an inherently overwhelming and complex entity. Its scale is non-human, and as such it is a nearly impossible task for humans to conceive of all of its parts simultaneously; our conception of the metropolis is fragmented.
Via sectional representation, The Mother City offers an opportunity to witness the form of the city as a whole, providing an entry point for understanding the relationships of its fragments. Furthermore, by looking at multiple cities in composited and side-by-side typological form, the viewer can begin to understand the formal archetypal components of the metropolis. The form of the metropolis can now begin to be conceived of as an integrated whole. References Cites Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1960. |
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