"the illusion of speed is that is saves time... every minute is torn apart by being segmented" - Frédéric Gros
Architecture, emerging between physics and phenomena, mediates the occupation of time and space. Our hyper-mechanized world demands humanity to experience the built environment at speeds that peel the eyebrows off one's face. Vision is pliant at profound velocities. Assuming the vehicle that is hurling the body is a constant of foreground, this leaves the depth and breadth of sight is susceptible to distortion.
In an agrarian Florida context, wayside trees fade to tonal flush, fences dissolve to absence, and buildings elongate to horizon. The middle-ground often becomes the field of compromise where these architectural perversions occur. This study looks to better understand the relationship between this middle-ground of architectural condition and perceived speed. In order to control and manipulate the variables, time and space needed to be scaled down to a manageable and consumable degree. The development of device that holds a fragment of contained movement, essentially a drop tower, allows for the analysis of tectonics over time.
Drop Set 01
Drop Set 02
Drop Set 03
The device's logic is to inverse the role of space and eye. Naturally, our memories of the wayside insinuate that the viewer is the variable traveling at a high speed in some aluminum chassis on wheels piecing together fragments of a blurred stationary object. The track reverses the role, cementing a stationary viewpoint. This forces the architectural condition to become the vehicle in the relationship. As the drop tower rotates from its vertical position, the vehicle falls slower due to increased frictional resistance which recreates the range of speeds one interacts with these conditions. The free fall of a vertical 90° orientation mimics the speed of the turnpike. A shallow 34° portrays the initial distorting of the speeds encountered along county roads. Lastly, a subtle 6° tilt pulls just enough to simulate the slow gait of an early evening ramble on a dirt lined back road.
