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Paris: Invisible City | Paris:
Ville Invisible existed firstly as a french publication written by Bruno
Latour with photography from Emilie Hermant and designed by Susanna Shannon.
The book presents us with a new way to approach sociology, namely through
a series of of 'dis-locals', or small elements of the functioning of the
city that are not apparent when using conventional sociological approaches.
The book takes us through a simultaneous photographic and written exploration
of Paris, and leaves with a question as to what holds this collection of
dis-locals in tact - what is the binding Plasma?
The web version of the
book which exist for English, Castellano, Italian and French speaking audiences
uses the chapters in the book as differentiators of sorts, which allow
for varying interface possibilities. The first section of traversing, uses
the glass structure of the Centre Pompidou tunnel as a navigation device
to vertically display the photos. The actual glass tunnel of the Centre
makes evident to the outside, the passage of individuals going through
the complex, and as one circulates through these tunnels to higher levels
one is also able to see a vast panorama of Paris. Movement here is vertical,
though referenced to a forward motion of passing through a space through
the juxtaposition of the tunnel navigation window.
The second section [proportioning] refers
to a lateral scaling, where every image appear the same size, even though
the actual scale of the images is greatly varied. Through the lateral movement
of the images as they enter the screen, when gain a short glimpse at the
relations between the images, before one fills the entire screen, thereby
showing only a fragment of the sequence. Movement is lateral.
The third
sequence [dimensioning] takes us through an archive where there is the
movement of leafing through old files and documents. In this leafing through
one image comes abruptly after the other and dominates our view - hiding
the other either recently passed or near to come. When transferring this
sensibility into a web platform the act of clicking was too certain a gesture
to activate the interface, so the user simply runs their mouse across the
tabs of the 'files' in order to swap positions and have a new image dominate
over the other. Movement is leafing through, or for a screen environment,
z-depth swapping.
The last sequence takes us back to a panorama, an updated
version. in this sequence the question is posed as to what the connective
plasma is in this configuration of 'dis-locals' we just experienced. Since
this space is undefined, the user is free in this section to modify the
rhizome structure which binds the images together. Upon activating a node
of the structure, the background image switches to correspond to the selected
node. Movement: sprawling and variable.
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