The kino-eye in digital pedagogy

Abstract

“I am the kino-eye” states Dziga Vertov in his classic movie The Man with the Movie Camera (1929). The relationship of the cameraman, the subject, and audience is a dynamic that he investigates through cinema. It is also a dynamic that inspires an innovative way for advanced digital media to be explored in architecture pedagogy. This paper is focused on three ways to translate the cinematic relationship developed in Dziga’s work to digital media in architecture: the way designers capture and manipulate digital media to make architecture; how the discourse of film and architecture can be informed by an understanding of the manipulation of digital media; and the role of digital media production as a form of research for architecture. The film is noteworthy because it is not a typical narrative screenplay, rather it is a visual experiment. In standard films the perceptions of space are manipulated through the camera and through other means, but the audience is rarely aware of it. However, Vertov is acutely aware of this dynamic and engages the audience by self-consciously using what would otherwise be considered a mistake – the viewer is aware that the camera looks at his/her own relationship with film not just the relationship of camera and scene. The translation of this into the classroom is that the same tools allow designers to be critical of their relationship with the medium and the way media is used to make architecture. This concept can be applied to any medium, but in this class it is applied to how students relate with produced motion images and editing that into a video production. The three elements described in this text are key aspects of not simply producing short films, but an opportunity to actually be introspective of architecture through an alternative media. Student projects include video montages that develop a cultural perspective on design and projects that are self-conscious of technology and how it impacts the production. The film-work necessary to achieve these productions is simultaneously conscious of the way in which the author relates to the scene and conscious of how that scene is edited in the context of the production.