The Architecture of the Screen

by Graham Cairns

  The body-in-the-world. Carrying on with arguments that eventually lead to the rejection of the Husserlean methodology, Merleau-Ponty directs his attention to the nature of the human subject itself. Defining it as a “body-in-the-world”, he saw it as something completely integrated into the environment it intends to describe. In an analogous way to other non-determinable objects, the mere presence of this “body-in-the-world” influences the spatial configuration that it directs its attention to.18 In this conception, the projection of our shadow on the object we look at, the subtle changes in temperature that we stimulate in our immediate environment, and even the changes to behaviour that we induce in others sharing the same space are parts of the overall configuration. As a “body-in-the-world”, we are not only completely integrated into our surroundings but also complicate them.19

  However, the most notable influence of this “body-in-the-world” is that it multiplies the number of possible readings of the environment due to its simple movement and consequential changes in perspective. If we imagine ourselves as a subject-body in the street mentioned earlier, we perceive a spatial configuration composed of elements organised in certain spatial relationships: a building with a glass facade in the background, trees along the pavement in front of it occupying the middle ground, and various cars and pedestrians passing by in the foreground, for example. However, if in a given moment we cross the road and wait under a nearby streetlight, the image formed on our retina (the perception of what we intend to describe) changes in quite radical ways. The cars and people that were earlier in close proximity are now more distant, the perspective formed by the building has radically changed and the trees fronting the building are now seen from a totally different angle. Thus, argues Merleau-Ponty, we have made the task of completely describing the environment we observe even more impossible. We have multiplied it, and continue.

  Restricted sensorial machinery. Developing this argument further, Merleau-Ponty nuances his definition of the “body-in-the-world”, with the proposition that is it is equipped with a “restricted sensorial machinery” incapable of assimilating the multiple stimuli of the environment around it. In order to explain this argument, he resorts to experiments on visual perception carried out by Gestalt psychologists and, in particular, highlights the concept of “selective attention”, an idea most clearly evidenced by the famous double image of a chalice and two faces.20 Another, even more basic example is seen in Kasimir Malevich’s painting Black Square on White Background,21 the optical effect of which is similar to that which characterises the Gestalt image; the black square appears to protrude or recede depending on our point of focus. Based on the creation of two distinct perceptual spaces that exist simultaneously, but which can only be experienced individually, we see how the eye compensates for its own limitations; it selectively attends to the stimuli around it.

  The limitations attributed to the eye characterise all the other senses as well, each one of which assimilates its own sphere of stimuli in the same selective manner. Inevitably, this evidences a clear contradiction in our attempts to rigorously and completely describe the environment around us, and our perception of it. The mechanics of the body’s sensorial receptive mechanisms are seen as clumsily jumping around in a process of information collection and processing which, according to a strict interpretation of the “selective attention” model, operates at great speed but sequentially, and thus, partially.

  Live sensorial assimilation. One of the consequences of our sensorial limitations is the conversion of the “experiential act” into a live constantly fluctuating experience. In this experience, the eye, the ear and all the other senses are continually moving from one “object of attention” to another. Thus, when we find ourselves in the street scene we were describing earlier, the mind and body engage in a complex and multiple series of perceptual activities. Our ears centre on the hushed conversation of a couple, pass to the general hum of the street behind and finally focus on the noise of construction work taking place in the distance. Our sense of smell may be attracted by the perfume of a passer-by in one moment, only to be drawn but by the aroma of foliage in the next. It may eventually be hit by the odour of rubbish accumulated underneath one of the benches that line the street.

  At the same time, our eyes pass across the entire scene in a similarly fragmentary way, focusing on cars, buildings, trees and people in an agitated and fragmentary attempt to take in all that surrounds us. In this context, the complete description and understanding of our perceptual experience, as described by Husserl, is only conceivable if we “simplify” the object of our attention or restrict ourselves to an extremely reduced range of stimuli – exactly Merleau-Ponty’s definition of what happens when the Husserlean methodology is employed. As a result, the Husserlean methodology has to be considered as a method that “distorts” rather than “describes”. We are forced to accept that the true nature of our surrounding must always be “complex” and “ambiguous”, always just beyond the grasp of objective thought.

  The phenomenology of cinema: André Bazin

  The phenomenological ideas of Husserl were translated into cinematic theories through the work of Allan Casebier who, in his essay Film and Phenomenology, defines the cinema viewer as analogous to Husserl’s transcendental subject; separated from what he or she sees, and thus capable of objectively analysing and understanding it.22 By contrast, in the works and theories of André Bazin, the power and potential of cinema is seen to reside in its ability to engage the viewer in experiences impossible to analyse in all their sensorial detail. These experiences move the viewing of film ever closer to our perception of the real world as described by Merleau-Ponty. In a practical sense, this was aided in Bazin’s time by the development of certain technical devices such as colour filming and sound recording. However, it was also facilitated by acting style, realistic costume and, most importantly, filming style.23

  The historian James Dudley Andréw argues that Bazin believed in “the naked power of the mechanically recorded image”; what he called “the filming of reality just like we live it”.24 Central to this was the spatial and temporal unity of the filming found in the works of directors like Jean Renoir. This type of filming often involves the use of techniques such as long takes, the moving camera, an intricate choreography of movements and the creation of deep space compositions, often presented in medium or long shot.25 This combination of factors allows for the presentation of multiple primary and secondary actions, incidents, dialogues and gestures that, as a whole, are often too complicated and dense to be fully assimilated. For Bazin, it was a filming style that managed to represent “the beauty and natural ambiguity of the real world26; a feature he identified along with nature’s “unity” as key to Renoir’s “realism”.27 For want of a better term, it is a filming style that has “phenomenological tendencies”.

  Beyond producing filmic images that are visually more complex than normal however, this filming style also produces images that tend to be “narratively cluttered”. For certain critics, this reduces the “effectiveness” of the medium as a narrative device. With this type of filming, the spectator’s eye is not directed exclusively at the most important visual and textual references in a given scene. On the contrary, it is allowed to scan the screen, passing over various elements of the image that often have little narrative or symbolic function. It was a characteristic that led Sergei Eisenstein to describe it as “lacking in artistic intelligence; as showing a lack of economy and certainty”.28 In other words, he saw it as “too representative” of the ambiguities of real life.

  By way of contrast, the type of cinema proposed by Eisenstein was one in which each shot presented a single important action in such a way that the eye could not stray from the information considered important by the director.29 When placed in sequences, this control of vision also became the control of mental associations, with associative relationships being deliberately set up by the director. Based on the “Kuleschov effect”,30 this level of
“psycho-visual control” is easily augmented through rapid editing to reduce the time available for the spectator to analyse what is presented on screen; the associations made between sequential images thus being reduced to the initial and most obvious ones possible. Through these techniques, Eisenstein intended to create a type of cinema in which both the eye and the mind of the spectator would follow one clear and defined path; a path that was to be laid down by the director himself.31

  In this sense, the process of “selective attention” is replaced by something more akin to “controlled association”. Although not completely eliminating the active role played by the spectator in interpreting the film, this combination of factors severely limits it. In the context of the post-revolutionary Soviet Union in which Eisenstein was working, the propaganda uses of such psycho-visual control techniques are obvious; all the more so if one considers that the European public of the time was still “cinematographically illiterate”, and still learning the “visual language” of the new medium.32 In the phenomenological context considered here however, this type of filming and editing represents a clear example of how film can simplify and distort the complex reality described by Merleau-Ponty. Quite simply, it involves the presentation of a limited amount of visual information organised in restricted but easily consumable sequences; something far from a realistic representation of the human perceptual experience.

  Phenomenological filming. In comparison to these characteristics, the realistic filming style proposed by André Bazin was very different and was typified by images overflowing with visual stimuli. If we thus consider the filming of a scene set in the street described earlier, we find ourselves faced with a cinematic image presented in long shot and filmed in one continuous take. Filming from the pavement in front of the previously mentioned glass facade, we examine an image that frames the entire building, upon whose glass surface we see the reflections of everything that passes in front. Through this facade, and its layer of reflections, we catch a glimpse of things that happen on the interior: workers collecting their belongings at the end of the day, people continuing discussions on telephones, colleagues discussing issues of concern and the typical chat of a typical office. Immediately in front of the building we see the everyday life of the street, such as friends strolling along the pavement, an old man reading a newspaper on a roadside bench, cars passing by at various speeds.

  Scattered over different parts of the building’s facade, these activities and reflections turn the building into the screen for what Bazin would describe as a “phenomenological image”. This image is full of the multiple, changing and contrasting secondary incidents and unimportant moments that characterise our physical environment. If, amongst this already overloaded visual image the camera begins to move, the configuration presented on screen inevitably intensifies and multiplies. As with the effect described with reference to the “body-in-the-world”, this movement means that everything that has previously been seen, analysed and understood manifests itself in different perspectives and configurations. The already complex scene becomes even more difficult, if not impossible, to assimilate and describe in its totality, and the phenomenological realism of the scene intensifies even further. According to Bazin, these changes contribute to the creation of a cinematic experience that is sensorially more “live and active” or, to use another term, more “realistic” than anything created through standard editing. The camera ceases to place itself between the viewer, and the subject and ceases to “stare” at what it films; “it delivers reality in the manner of a cipher grid moving across a coded document”.33 When confronted with such a complex cinematographic image, the spectator is left with no alternative other than a selective, and thus, partial, mode of appreciation.

  Thus, whilst watching our typical street scene, we may focus on the noise of the traffic, only to instantly be distracted by the overheard conversation of some passers-by. Similarly, we may be looking at the branches of one of the trees blowing in the wind, only to later focus on the changing reflections that run across the building’s facade. Alternatively, we may watch the journey of a protagonist who walks away from the building having finished work for the day, or stands and waits for a lift to arrive. Confronted with such imagery, the cinematographic experience could be considered as similar to that of the physical environment. This similarity, as Bazin was at pains to emphasise and promote, could be further heightened through costume, acting style, sound, colour and other technological developments of the time, such as Cinerama and CinemaScope;34 which is an enormous hemispherical screen beneath which the viewer, as Bazin noted, “doesn’t simply move his eyes, but is obliged to twist his head”.35

  A technical device that pushed the physical experience of cinema closer to the physical and sensorial experience of reality, Cinerama was the most avant-garde visual manifestation of “film reality” of the day. As such, it was whole heartedly welcomed by Bazin, a critic for whom such technological developments meant more than simply the ability of film to create more intricate and complex visual representations. For Bazin, such developments meant the possibility of the complete absorption of the viewer in a form of virtual cinematic reality. The distance of his views from those like Allan Casebier, a celebrated defender of the phenomenology of cinema, is clear. Whilst for Casebier spectators are capable of objectively distancing themselves from what they see, for Bazin, spectators are enveloped in an “active, live and realistic environment” that echoes the phenomenological characteristics of experience laid out by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

  The phenomenology of Jean Nouvel

  Many of Nouvel’s buildings aim to create rich and complex sensorial games that transform the built object into a series of ambiguous perceptions.36 Consequently, they are in some way representative of ephemeral, immaterial and intangible phenomena. With respect to the Cartier Foundation in Paris, this sensorial perspective has given rise to a building that simultaneously functions in a number of phenomenological registers; one of which is equally cinematographic. Situated on the Boulevard Raspail, it is formally simple; an architectural gesture based on the counter position of two built elements: a five-story glass box placed behind a high glass screen some five metres in front of it (Figs. 1–2). This screen faces onto the pavement and the road in front and, as a result, is covered with the reflections of the street. The building proper (the five-story-high box) has a double height ground floor exhibition space and four upper floors occupied by the offices of the Cartier Foundation itself.37

  Figure 1: The free standing screen and block behind.

  Figure 2: Layers of glass screens to create multiple reflections.

  As with any building, it occupies its own particular physical context or, to use the terminology of Merleau-Ponty, it forms part of a given “spatial configuration”. In this case, the spatial configuration consists of traffic lights, road signs, street benches, parked cars, passers-by and adjacent buildings, etc., all of which are reflected in its glass screen facade. According to the theories of Merleau-Ponty, both the physical building and the reflections its facade collects are part of the environment that the human subject appreciates as it distractedly walks along the road. Distracted, and applying the limited sensorial machinery of the human body, the impression of the building that forms in the mind of this subject is inevitably ambiguous.

  If, whilst walking, and thus constantly changing the scene we witness, we focus on a particular action, the multiple sensorial impressions formed become even more complicated. We may focus on somebody crossing the street, direct our attention to the street lights that are flickering into action, or even fix our gaze on an old man turning the page of his newspaper whilst sitting on a bench. Similarly, we may listen to a conversation of pedestrians walking past, centre our attention on the constant and monotonous traffic noise in the distance, or turn our ear to the sound of footsteps approaching from behind. As inherent parts of the immediate environment, these factors all contribute to the agitated perception we get as o
ur senses continuously pass between its multiple stimuli.

  The phenomenology of the Cartier Foundation. If we choose to speak of a phenomenological interpretation of the Cartier Foundation, there are a number of ways in which it can be interpreted. In its first and most obvious phenomenological register, the building is simply a constituent factor in the “meaningful configuration” of its surrounding environment. Beyond that however, it operates at another level. It is deliberately designed to be a type of architectural manifestation of phenomenology’s principal ideas. Through the incorporation of an entire range of visual and optical games that manipulate and confuse our perception, it is a building that intensifies the complex, multiple and ambiguous character of our sensorial assimilation. The clearest example of this is evident in its very conception as a glass building fronted by a glass screen; a screen that assimilates all types of reflections on its surface.38

  Oliver Boissière, the critic who has most closely documented the work of Nouvel, has spoken about this use of glass in a number of ways. In one sense he has called it “an attempt on the part of the architect to evade architecture’s materiality”. Alternatively, he describes it as “an attempt to create a complete environment, an architecture that fuses the building with its immediate surroundings”.39 In the case of the Cartier Foundation, this fusion involves the juxtaposition of diffuse exterior reflections with equally diffuse views of the interior.40 The result is a visually complex collage on the building’s facade that collects together so many images that none are discernible in isolation. In fact, at times, the optical game is so complex that the difference between exterior reflections and direct interior views is almost impossible to discern.41

  The apparent fusion of the building with its immediate surroundings that optically occurs on the facade is repeated on the facade of the glass box building behind. The independent screen extends beyond the limits of the constructed building both in terms of width and height. As a result, the peripheral parts of the facade, composed simply of a single layer of glass, appear more transparent than the central area, which has a constructed structure visible behind. In foggy or misty weather conditions, this technique is intended to produce an effect in which the borders of the building seem to fade and blend with the diffuse sky42 (Figs. 3–4). With the decision to leave a mature oak tree in between the building proper and its independent screen, this fusion of building and environment acquires even more nuances; the built form now blends not only with the sky, but also the surrounding foliage on the site. In addition, the tree helps provoke the impression of constant visual change; we see the movement of the tree’s branches and leaves directly, but also as reflections on the independent screen. In addition, we see them on the facade of the glass box building behind. Given that the nature of this effect changes with the seasons, it fulfils another of Nouvel’s stated aims – the creation of an architecture that “changes with the time of day, the weather and the season of the year”.43