1. be firmly grounded in a close and careful understanding of your site; some suggestions:
- your site’s specific phenomenal qualities (views, tones + colours, reflections + refractions, surface textures, sound qualities, sense of enclosure vs. openness, …etc). And let’s think of our windows beyond a thin layer of glass between frames; instead as a space. Does your site, from window to the gallery wall behind it, form a bright shallow space in contrast to the darker situation of window + deep space of the canteen area? Next session, you will map yourwindow in relation to solar movement in plan and section.
- the specific qualities of light at your window. Think of light as a material. What colour is light there? What tones? And on which surfaces andaround which corners (e.g. the glass mullion vs. metal rail)? How can you shape light there? Look closely at how (bright) light behaves around edges; revisit / research light movements in physics. How can you direct light, reflect /refract it, ‘squeeze’ it, …?
- the activities / movement of bodies afforded or suggested by the window itself and those unfolding around it for other reasons (walking-by, sitting, standing / leaning, looking / looking-away; … ). Do views though your window stop people in their tracks (even if for an instant) to look at something beyond? Is there a subtle alignment (with tree, with ramp, with distant skyline, …) that is unique to this window-frame?
- Does your window reveal something unique about the courtyard and its landscape (trees, bushes, …) , the canteen area or the city – because it affords unique views? Does your window frame bodies in ways which present them differently? For instance, seen from the courtyard or the canteen, bodies walking through the gallery may evoke the effect of a cat-walk in a fashion-show. Bodies are usually dynamic behind the gallery window, while many are static right behind the canteen ones (sitting, lunching, …); facing southwest, the shallow space of the gallery is brighter than the northwestern and deeper windows of the canteen.
2. be firmly anchored in a critical interpretation of your site (one of the three framed by the readings, or one that evolves in your discussions with your tutor); again, some suggestions:
- do the site’s phenomenal properties and materilaities privilege vision over all other senses? Does this cause us to overlook some rich but subtle experiences of sound, texture and enclosure? (e.g. gallery windows define an intimate enclosure between their glass mullions confirmed by relative auditory isolation).
- Do the site’s phenomenal and spatial properties frame bodies to each other in an unequal relationship (panopticism)? How do bodies appear through the gallery windows as opposed to the canteen windows? How does this relate to the issues raised by John Berger or Michel Foucault in the articles we are reading?
- Does the site hint at a distinct (if subtle) relationship to landscape (trees, ground + sky, grass + bushes, …)? How does the sky / tree / ground appear through the gallery windows as opposed to the canteen windows? For example: the gallery windows seem to project into the courtyard alike tree houses; the tree may be/could be too close to the gallery window to be seen as an object but instead the arrangement subtly suggests seeing closeups of the tree as it changes seasons – i.e. as a process. Relate this to the reading “Sites of Time”.
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