847175 Urban Studies

Sommersemester 2011 | Stand: 20.07.2011 LV auf Merkliste setzen
847175
Urban Studies
SE 2
2,5
Block
jährlich
Englisch
All these Cities (about the place we know best) Students will be encouraged to observe, develop, test and apply methods of reading, defining and visualizing site/ non-site territories. The studies will cover diverse fields and disciplines and require to work across media, scales and interests. - What objectives of urban society can be anticipated for the near future? - Who will set parameters, shape the urban mind? - What other knowledge can be generated by the interaction of these fields?
All these Cities (about the place we know best) Los Angeles as one of the most prominent cities on the planet projects its image into societies and cultures to be picked up as lifestyles and ecologies. The entertainment industry, commonly referred to as The Industry, provides us with imagery and patterns. Advanced into trends they result in cross-cultural movements or simply a new commercial idea. The actual place Los Angeles is another one than the projected. The actual Los Angeles is a test field for commercial ideas as much as the perfect surface for fakes, cover-ups and denial, all interdependent and therefore powerful. The projected Los Angeles is the familiar déja-vu, a ready-made for the Industry with little changes*, again powerful.** Much has been said about the invisible of cities. This series of studies looks at what is visible, the visual city. Urban Studies will focus on the image of Los Angeles (Image City) and the visualization of actual realities in Los Angeles (Visual City). * The ready-made as we know it from Duchamp to Ai Weiwei has already introduced us to those little changes, in the form of out-of-context placement and spotlight. ** This is a phenomenon not new to the world of imagery: Dutch Landscape Painting, initiated by a group of successful 17th century portrait and war scenery painters, projected a view of the local landscape to come. Once the country’s commercial initiatives thrived, the land would change accordingly. The painters acted as aids to this early industrialization by presenting what they thought would fit the new image. Fascinated by a possible other history than that of wars and societies, they added new city outlines to distant horizons or exchanged existing landmarks (cathedrals, town halls) when they didn’t fit their imagination of a place.
Image City As LA-based feature film production has dropped to less than half since 1996 the City Council considers the creation of the Los Angeles Film Commission to re-install and market the city to the film industry, offering tax reductions, on- site services and an endless range of locations to production companies. Taking up the importance of the city as a filming location for image reasons this study will focus on the commercial and entertainment image that creates the recall value. The image that makes us feel part of it, Los Angeles as lifestyle. It will establish locations, their limits, fringes and spatial effects within the real city. The in- and exclusion of areas will give information on common hard factors (property values, community incentives, safety, etc.) and identify soft factors (image, community sense, near future outlook, etc). Visual City The second study deals with our altered perception as it focusses on controlling and monitoring operations in Los Angeles. Our current sense of reality now includes instant weapon detection and gunshot monitoring systems, traffic flow surveillance, “Always There” home monitoring systems, “assisted GPS” cellphone tracking etc. These operations increasingly substitute the city as a built entity. As we lack the capacity to imagine the territorial range these systems operate in, we are even less aware of actual surveillance density, overlays, conflicts of interest... . The aesthetics of monitoring are the new form of representation, shaping environments, landscapes, future architecture and urban density through programs and screens. Urban Studies: Site / non-Site Beyond planning and design, the objective is to cast light on the sites and representation of an emergent urbanism as a condition rather than as a physical location, and test possible modes of engagement.

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