Hammond, Felicity (2020) Image, material, site, screen : reflections from a world capital. (PhD thesis), Kingston University, .
Abstract
This practice-based research proposes an artistic methodology for approaching sites of urban redevelopment, within which computer-generated architectural visualisations are central. I define these images as propositions, a term that has emerged through a developing material understanding of digital architectural images of profit-driven building projects: they do not just visualise future urban space, but also play an active role in its production. This concept is established by turning the lens of my camera towards the image, enabling the printed material to become digital once again. Through my artistic process the computer-generated architectural proposition is pulled back and forth between pixel and material, a process that, as this thesis determines, mimics the feedback loop between image and built space that is generated by digital architectural images of commercial urban development projects. My artistic methodology both emerges and is tested through a series of material investigations that contribute to the artworks that I have produced as part of this PhD submission. The aim of this practice-based research is to provide a toolkit of methods for approaching sites of urban change to further understand how they are networked both digitally and materially. This toolkit contains a combination of methods that mimic the interplay between image and material in these sites, of which photography, collage and mimicry are identified as key. I employ these methods in seven artworks produced between 2016 - 2019 through which a process emerges that determines how the built environment and the computer-generated architectural proposition are part of a chiastic structure in which the screen is a key component. I bring these methods together in World Capital: an installation that demonstrates how the artistic methodology that evolves through my research can be applied in practice. The written component of this PhD articulates my working processes, analysing my art works through a close examination of their development and drawing upon key ideas and concepts including site-specificity, placemaking, indexicality, the reverse gaze, and re-enactment. This analysis is both supported and intercepted by an accompanying narrative that recalls my encounters with the materials that this research investigates and transcriptions of two conversations that took place during this PhD. The findings of this research contribute new knowledge to an emerging discourse into the relationship between digital architectural images of commercial urban redevelopment projects and the built environment through the interrelated fields of artistic practice, architectural representation and visual culture.
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