in/outSite

1999

Ursula Damm (DE)
Michael Hoch (DE)

The project "in/outSite" deals with the discrepancy between an individual's surroundings in everyday life and the internal "spaces" which he/she imagines and lives out. Its objective is an architecture designed to develop an adaptable mode of building.

The point of departure is how human beings move about. Points of reference are then to be derived from easily-observed magnitudes; these, in turn, lead to the modeling of characteristics as the result of interaction. Human beings in a space are then to be described as autonomous islands with a connection to an—among others, social—environment; "field models" of movement, utilization of space, communication and energy are then produced.

The anthropocentric conception of space (everyone produces "his" space himself) is thus abandoned; what takes shape is a superordinate, collective Something which incorporates the characteristics of many individuals. Here, (space) planning does not occur in a projection of individual needs, but rather results from out of a configuration in which the expressions of many involved persons are assessed by many involved persons (feedback from the system to the real space in an evolutionary process).

The current installation "in/outSite" observes the movements of human beings in public places and their interactions during spontaneous encounters. Geometric interpretations analyze spatial relationships (territories, behavior with respect to one's personal space) that typically prevail at locations where human beings congregate, and enable these to be perceived visually and acoustically.

An overhead camera registers the paths along which human beings move, which are recorded on the image as lines and which thus provide information on the utilization of the particular site. Through this structure, there emerges a network of lines that displays individuals' current locations as territories (spheres) and graphically links neighbors with each other. When do groups form? Whose behavior displays reference to or consideration of others? Are there recognizable rules in these structures?

Passers-by have the possibility to play with the video image, to produces sounds and geometries dependent upon their behavioral pattern. In a second image, the paths followed by human beings during the previous hour are used to generate a virtual landscape, in which most-frequented points are represented by peaks and those that are avoided as valleys. This virtual landscape will (in the future) serve as a model of conceivable architecture and—analyzed as the result of human territorial behavior—of the urban structure and the design of city plans.