Jasmine abu hamdan third year

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Jasmine Abu Hamdan

Shifting Proscenia Jasmine Abu Hamdan Intermediate 9 Tutor: Nerma Cridge

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Jasmine Abu Hamdan

Space and use, the set and the script, and objects and events all have a complex relationship. Both urban and natural landscapes are often described as a compilation of performances. They offer temporal spaces for events and encounters to occur and should not be mistaken for permanent or static spaces. Here, I will look into the correlation between the architectures of the landscape and the city and the architectures of the canvas and the screen correspondingly, analyzing the proscenium, or frame of view for each. “The proscenium represents a decisive step towards the complete separation of audience and stage, and towards the notion of the ‘absolute autonomy’ of dramatic fiction”1, thus to put it simply, a proscenium in cinema is usually a rigid vertical frame that separates the audience from the events being screened.

In the films of the early 20th century, we view characters and events in play simultaneously on a prescribed field or ‘set’ through the rectangular boundaries of the screen. The camera here serves as a fourth wall, a static element, merely a window for the audience to unanimously watch a series of events happening in a fixed place. This simultaneous play of elements within a composition relates to the use of the proscenium in 18th century picturesque landscape painting and ultimately in 18th century landscape design. After the 1920s, a new dimension was added to films; we view a series of subproscenia where the camera is in motion, constantly shifting in perspective, moving iteratively between close-ups, long shots and wide shots, etc. However, the audience is watching this alteration through a larger proscenium, the frame of the screen, so they all maintain a unified viewing perspective. The proscenium in the city, on the other hand, separates the observer or the flâneur from the crowd and backdrop, be it a building or a street, each viewer is offered a unique perspective. The proscenium as a boundary becomes thinner, expandable and more virtual in the city, where the observer and the participant roles are interchangeable. In this essay, several examples of proscenia in post-Renaissance painting and in film are analyzed in relation to proscenia in landscape and the city. Both landscapes and cities serve as incubators of dramatic events, and perform as a basis for the development of a cinematic language of overlaps, rhythms, distortions, visual tension, transitional shots, close-ups, long shots, pans, open and closed frames.

Such cinematic jargon has developed from the study of classical paintings and their respective compositions. In the 17th century, Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals was a pioneer in composing a painting to control the sequence in which a spectator observes his work. In his piece ‘Regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms House’, “each woman stands out with equal clarity against the enormous dark surface, yet

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Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama, p.22.

(Hals, Frans). ‘Regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms House’ Oil on canvas, 1664.

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Jasmine Abu Hamdan

they are linked by a firm rhythmical arrangement and the subdued diagonal pattern formed by their heads and hands. Subtle modulations of the deep, glowing blacks contribute to the harmonious fusion of the whole and form an unforgettable contrast with the powerful whites”2. The formation of a virtual diagonal line acts as a path or a prescribed route for viewers to follow as they observe the piece. Yet, the simultaneous presence of the painting allows one to briefly divert from the prescribed path to look closely at certain details. Hals painted within a closed frame, thus the whole image is condensed into the proscenium. No element pushes out of the vertical and horizontal boundaries, although in depth, the contrast of heavy whites and deep blacks give the illusion of an extended three-dimensional space. These notions of composition and framing have been developed further in the 18th century under the Picturesque movement.

Derived from pittoresco, the term picturesque defines a view (Turner, J.M.W.) ‘Hornby Castle from worthy of being included in a picture. 3 This Tatham Church’, 1816-1818 movement postulated a conceptual framework Watercolour on paper with which to perceive landscapes. Landscapes were condensed to fit into a picture. However, an open frame is maintained, with objects in the painting pushing and extending outwards, giving the illusion of an extended panoramic view. In Turner’s painting of Hornby Castle, the stillness of its elements and the recording of a particular ephemeral moment in time, allow the viewer to speculate beyond the captured timeframe. The tree branches on both sides of the painting are cut off, alluding to the continuation of the landscape past the confinement of the frame. The castle itself, the subject of the work, is portrayed vaguely in the background; a mere ruin perched on a hill, as a means of highlighting a new dimension and depth to the work.

English playwright, Joseph Addison identified ‘Greatness’ as “not only … the Bulk of any single object, but the largeness of a whole view, considered as one entire piece…Our imagination loves to be filled with an object, or to grasp at anything that is too big for its capacity… The mind of man naturally hates everything that looks like a restraint upon it, and is apt to fancy itself under a fort of confinement” 4. Fort implies advantageous strength while confinement implies unwanted restriction, thus, the human mind is quite paradoxical in the sense that it enjoys feeling as though it is uninterrupted, but likes to set a periphery for itself.

The simultaneous co-existence of elements in picturesque landscape painting allows the viewers to wander through the foreground, middle ground and background in their

(Berger, John), Ways of Seeing, p.13.

“The Sublime, The Picturesque, The Beautiful.” Blanton Museum, The University of Texas at Austin.

4 (Addison, Joseph). The Spectator, p. 66.

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own individual trajectories. This translates into static filming in the early 20th century where the camera angle remains at a constant viewpoint targeting a stage set where characters enter, move around and leave the scene. This is evident in Georges Méliès’ film Le Voyage dans la Lune in 1902, where the stage set is curated in a forced perspective with the camera filming at a frontal angle. The perspective view makes the camera lens the centre of the visible field. Everything inside the proscenium converges on to this eye as to the vanishing point of infinity, thus visible spectrum is carefully curated for the spectator. However, despite a prescribed target in the scene, the spectator is still given the freedom to divert and focus on particular elements and details.

Much like the way nature is manipulated, exaggerated and condensed to fit into a frame in painting, landscape design intends to consciously manipulate nature, through the construction of foregrounds, middle grounds and backgrounds to highlight certain provocative formal elements. William Kent, 18th century British landscape designer, perceives the garden as an event in which the spectator participates as a co-author. 5 The spectator moves through the landscape on a prescribed path, similar to the path of the observing eye. In Hal’s paintings, scenes are revealed gradually, uncovering a constant shift in proscenium from narrow pathways with framed hedges to wide panoramic views. Kent studied British landscape, its geology and vegetation and condensed these elements into the design of his gardens. Thus, in the same way that 18th century picturesque painting fit a landscape into a frame, Kent’s gardens are a fitted framed view of the British landscape. The difference however, is that his gardens are blended with an extended panoramic view of the actual British landscape. As we saw in Turner’s depiction of Hornby castle in the background of his painting as a perched ruin, Kent, nearly 100 years later, designed in his Rousham masterpiece, a folly that appears to look like a medieval ruin, designed to be seen from a specific viewpoint from the house. This gives an additional visual tension to the landscape, a means of drawing the spectator in. The landscape at Rousham appears more infinite within the periphery of the view. Therefore, Kent designed steep slopes within the landscape that distort our perception, making the landscape look much grander than it is, and implemented the ha-ha wall, a recessed landscape design element, that creates a vertical barrier dividing a garden from the surrounding landscape, while liberating it, maintaining visual continuity within an infinite proscenium of landscape. The ha-ha wall acts as a disguised threshold blurring the differences between the natural and the curated. This idea of an expansive proscenium in landscape is applied in the more contemporary work of Hans-Peter Feldmann ‘Horizon’, a series of open frame landscape paintings that transcend the confinements of the (Feldmann, Hans-Peter). Horizon,

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Don, Monty. Episode 2: The Secret History of British Gardens .

2014.

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frames, blurring the proscenium of each painting so that the work is seen as a series of composed frames at one point in time with a continuous horizon line running through them rather than individual paintings.

In contrast to how paintings have framed and composed images of real time and place, the moving camera lens in film drastically changed our perception of virtual time and space. “I’m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. This is I, the machine, maneuvering in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations freed from the boundaries of time and space, I coordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be”6. The camera displayed that the notion of time passing was intrinsic to the experience of the visual. What a spectator views depends on his or her position in time and place. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as on the vanishing point to infinity as in the static filming period of the early 1900s. In the reproduction of images, a detail of a painting is isolated from the whole. This detail is transformed. When a film camera reproduces a painting, it becomes material for the filmmaker’s argument. A film that reproduces images of a painting leads the spectator, through the painting, to the filmmaker’s own conclusions, so the role of the spectator becomes more passive. A film unfolds in time while a painting takes a moment in time and makes it timeless. In a film, the succession of images in their frames or subproscenia builds an argument, which becomes irreversible. In a painting, all its elements are there to be seen simultaneously. The viewer moves iteratively back and forth through the details of the work, thus the painting maintains its own authority, remaining inconclusive.

Film Montage as a cinematic language has found its way into the language of the city and has been used as a basis for transcribing an architectural interpretation of reality.

Sergei Eisenstein’s radically transformed filmmaking with his introduction of film montage in the 1920s with iconic films such as Battleship Potemkin. Film montage is the phenomenon of taking a series of selected independent representations of a general theme, plot, movement or narrative, and placing these elements in juxtaposition to develop a sequential exposition to portray the theme and evoke in the perception of the viewer, a complete image of the theme itself. This was the start of a more dynamic film era, shifting the proscenium from wide shot, to close-up, to medium shot to close-up again, etc. Subsequently, Eisenstein’s 1929 montage ‘The General Line’, was a course of individual shots at different scales, interweaving diverse themes into one whole movement, the formation of a projected line. The scenes all show the uninterrupted flow of milk through mechanical processes from the cow to the bottle. Each scene has to build onto the projected total line as well as to continue the movement within each of the themes. This linear continuity speculates how, through montage, form can be built and projected through time, where an individual movement in one scene influences

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(Vertov, Dziga),1923.

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other movements in consecutive scenes and while these movements remain physically detached, start to construct a greater whole. This continuity is also projected through space, where elements push out of the confinement of the frame boundary and the depth of screen to form a three dimensional virtual space. Eisenstein tested his approach by tracking eye movements of viewers throughout the sequence ‘The Battle on Ice” from his film Alexander Nevsky. He documented how certain compositional elements script the visual trajectory of the spectators and how the spectators rarely diverge out of this path.

Such projections of movements through space and time have influenced Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts. Looking into the noncoincidence between movement and space, The Manhattan Transcripts outlines spaces and maps the movements of different protagonsists, who are the intruders on the architectural stage Diagram of audio-visual set. Individually, objects, movements and correspondences in the sequence ‘The Battle on Ice’ of Eisenstein's Alexander events are simply discontinuous. Only when Nevsky (1938). they unite do they establish an instant of continuity. This implies a dynamic definition of architecture as opposed to a more static definition. The Transcripts’ mode of notation highlights the relationship between the event and the architectural space. Photographs record the action, plans project the architectural manifestations, and diagrams document the movements and patterns of the (Tschumi, Bernard). The Manhattan Transcripts, 1981. main protagonists, all of which work together to define the architectural space. The objective of this tripartite mode of notating events, movements and spaces in a composite succession of proscenia was to arrange the order of experience, time, intervals and sequences within the city. The narratives developed through these composite sequences of frames may be linear, deconstructed, or dissociated. The Transcripts illustrate distinct timeframes and deconstruct forms and movements then add, repeat, accumulate, insert, fade in and distort discontinuous moments, much like film montage.

Both film and the Transcripts share a frame-by-frame technique, the isolation of moments of action. In both, spaces are constructed and manipulated through time so that an event in one shot is perceived as a moment in an overall evolving trajectory.

While Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts works as a physical translation of cinematic tropes, the 1951 Festival of Britain was a temporal sequence of pavilions or framed sets, with perspectival viewpoints, merely designed and built precisely so that its experience could be recorded and documented, to build a lasting legacy for decades after its

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demolition. The festival consciously amalgamated and manipulated elements of the British landscape, such as the seaside and countryside in such that they are condensed and fit into the confinements of one pavilion, and hence, into the proscenium viewed by visitors, but without giving the illusion of an infinite space. Situated in the South Bank, the area has no processional way or ceremonial road; the exhibition was meant to appear as part of London’s urban fabric and not an eccentric event. While the festival is set within a confined play field, its periphery is blurred. Sitting on the Thames, the river acts as a ha-ha wall, a physical boundary separating the exhibition from the surrounding urban fabric, yet maintaining a sort of liberating visual continuity, widening the proscenium of the spectators out of the parameters of the pavilions. The exhibition itself was unlike other festivals around the world that prioritized a symmetrical, repetitive and grandiose architectural style; this festival was more intimate. The transition between one pavilion and another was made by the narrow opening between the buildings. Much like in film montage where movements in frames remain physically detached, their order in sequence constructs a greater whole through a timeframe, as one walked through the sequence of pavilions, every individual space contained the hint of the one to follow or the memory of the one just passed. Each pavilion differed in size, shape, colour, form and character and changing levels, so that the proscenium in which the spectator viewed the festival was constantly shifting from eye view to bird’s eye view, to ant’s view. As shown in the plan view featured in the Festival’s pamphlet, Ralph Tubbs’ Dome of Discovery provided a set route for the spectator to experience the sequence of objects on display inside the Dome, where at every step, the proportions, shape and viewpoint transformed. The Skylon on the other hand, a “Festival of Britain Map.” A London in massive and ambitious suspended structure, Heritance, London, 1951. was viewed from an ant’s view angle from a marked point on the ground. Thus, we could say that the proscenia in this festival were ultimately constructed as a means of projecting events through space, in this case the British landscape and urban fabric, and time throughout British history.

Looking at the proscenium as a means of projecting an event through space and time, it is evidently still relevant in our present day. Similarly, to William Kent’s translation of 18th century picturesque landscape painting into physical spaces through his manipulation of the British landscape to fit into his gardens, landscape design today consciously manipulates nature, condensing elements from the natural landscape into the periphery of the garden, and setting prescribed routes for spectators to walk through and interact with the garden. On the other hand, as cities evolve, so does the proscenium. It shifts, expands, shrinks, extrudes and morphs in the same way that a city

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does. The city works as a montage, a sequential exposition of fragments that evokes in the perception of the viewer, a greater whole. The city of today is increasing vertically in scale and is becoming more condensed. Consequently, the proscenium of the flâneur walking through the city is shrinking in aperture, with thinner pavements, larger roads, and tall skyscrapers that restrict opportunities for panoramic, liberating views.

Conversely, the proscenium is increasing in depth as a result of the increasing density of the city, which is ultimately allowing for more opportunities for encounter.

In contrast with Turner’s Hornby Castle, that allows us to speculate beyond the captured timeframe we now have views composed with multilayered proscenia as seen in DUMBO7, New York, where the cityscape is restrained by narrow urban vistas, albeit with similar depth to Turner’s distant view of Hornby Castle, as the (Förstner, Oliver). “DUMBO.” Empire State building trades places with the Castle and vaguely appears, not in an open landscape, but framed by the overpass of Manhattan Bridge. The proscenium in its various manifestations is and will essentially remain an observational utility of place. It will shift as the landscape transforms around us no matter how intense or superficial that landscape may be. If our cities are getting taller, then perhaps new elevated proscenia will be appear and evolve.

The architect’s resolve to maintain the city as an incubator of events is limited to the few pockets of his own intervention, noting that the dynamic that guides the city’s transformation is often outside the architect’s sphere of control. What we can do as architects however, is maintain the much needed awareness and innovation to help us reinvent ourselves and the environment in which we subsist.

DUMBO, a neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York. The name is derived from (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

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Bibliography: Addison, Joseph. The Spectator. Dent, 1979.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 2008.

Casson, Hugh and Patrick O'Donovan, directors. Brief City - Festival of Britain, London 1951.

Don, Monty. Episode 2: The Secret History of British Gardens . William Kent's Elysium: Rousham House and Garden, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4pS-NdLL7A. Eisenstein, Sergei, and Jay Leyda. The Film Sense. Faber and Faber, 1986.

Feldmann, Hans-Peter. Horizon. 2014, Voorlinden Museum, Rotterdam.

“Festival of Britain Map.” A London in Heritance, London, 1951, alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/the-festival-of-britain-south-bank-exhibition/.

Förstner, Oliver. “DUMBO.” Alamy, New York, 18 Nov. 2016, www.alamy.com/stock-photo-newyork-united-states-of-america-november-18-2016-pillar-of-manhattan-126975565.html.

Gutmann, Peter. Classical Notes - Classical Classics - Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, 1952, www.classicalnotes.net/classics5/nevsky.html.

Hals, Frans. Regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms. 1664.

Turner, J.M.W. Hornby Castle from Tatham Church. 1816.

Méliès, Georges, director. Le Voyage Dans La Lune. 1902.

Owen, Jane. “William Kent's English Landscape Revolution at Rousham.” Financial Times, Financial Times, 21 Mar. 2014, www.ft.com/content/0333f618-adc3-11e3-9ddc-00144feab7de.

Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000.

Smith, Tim J. “Audiovisual Correspondences in Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky: A Case Study in Viewer Attention.” Cognitive Media Theory, http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/12587/1/Alex_Nev_CogMediaTheory_2014_timjsmith_figs.pdf.

“The Sublime, The Picturesque, The Beautiful.” Blanton Museum, The University of Texas at Austin, blantonmuseum.org/files/american_scenery/sublime_guide.pdf.

Tschumi, Bernard. Manhattan Transcripts. Academy Editions, 1995.