Paper short abstract:

This paper will identify the potential for online digital animations as a medium for expressing the complex and relational properties of social, cultural, economic and political human interactions with their environment as they are found in human geography and architectural theory.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will identify the potential for online digital animations as a medium for expressing the complex and relational properties of social, cultural, economic and political human interactions with their environment as they are found in Human Geography and Architectural theory.

By reflecting upon the use of film by architects and spatial designers throughout the twentieth century, the paper will identify how time based media has been used to express specific theoretical frameworks for time and space using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Tracing the work of Architects such as Ray and Charles Eames to Patrick Keiller, their films will be placed in a larger context that allows us to identify their own social, spatial and temporal disposition through their particular use of technology and means of production.

The author uses an analysis of these historical films as a means of presenting his own work that uses live computer generated animations as an appropriate contemporary medium for expressing complex spatial and temporal concepts. Situated within socially constituted networks that use relational databases to track spatial and semantic activity within an architectural context, the computer models represent time based visions for understanding space and time beyond the use of film or video.