INTER[SECTIONS]. A Conference on Architecture, City and Cinema Conference Proceedings. Porto, September 11-13, 2013
The aesthetic of the zeitgeist develops with and is perhaps shaped primarily by the technological tools available. Creative processes are in fact subordinate to available resources and languages. We unconsciously and instinctively make work to fit pre-existing formats. In a sense, we work backward, either consciously or unconsciously, creating work that fits the venue available to us. That holds true for other arts as well. In a sense, the space, the platform, and the software “makes” the art, the music, or whatever. (Byrne, 2012, page 14) It’s not difficult to make a case for the fact that the films “Avatar” (2009) and “Brave” (2012) were greater achievements for the animation and 3D modelling techniques developed for their production than for their plots. It took Pixar over a year to develop the new hair simulation software for the 2012 computer-animated fantasy film, used to simulate hair and fur realistic enough not to, according to the studio, pull audiences away from the story. Yet, funnily enough, the film’s promotion greatly revolved around the new animation tools developed during its production. Stories are there as direct emotional connections with the observer, evoking the deep symbolism of the essential and universal that runs across all of them and makes them tell something about every Man. But there is, to begin with, an intrinsic meaning of the images themselves that does not require the mediation of the verbal and is directly connected to the technologies, visual languages and aesthetic codes that produced them. Therefore other kinds of visual production (such as architectural visualization), strictly classified as non-narrative, cannot be disregarded in their importance for the understanding and collective building of visual culture, especially when they now undeniably form part of the ubiquitous and fundamental repertoire of the production of moving images. 3D video renderings of architectural designs, as films and as video games, require sustained attention from the viewer, lead his visual and sound perception, and open a window to another space/time. They too, have become in essence immersive and narrative devices. Just as a genealogy of visual and sound effects can plot a timeline of film history, so can a genealogy of tools of representation and visualization draw a particular history of architecture. Having met and crossed repeatedly in the past, these two timelines have
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