Stone-fized History and Tree-fized Temporary
Recover Tiergarten High Resoluted Soundscape by Synesthesia
Course: MIT 4.182 Augmented Historical Pedagogies - Tiergarten's Hidden Urban Narratives
Instructor: Mark Jarzombek, Cagri Hakan Zaman,
Eliyahu Keller
Collaborator: Shuyue Li
Date: Feb.- May, 2022, June, 2022 (Berlin Travel)
Augmented Historical Pedagogies: Tiergarten’s Hidden Urban Narratives is a collaborative workshop bringing together three institutions: the MIT Department of Architecture, the Institute for Architecture at TU Berlin, and The Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
The collaboration will foster a VR- and AR-based, interdisciplinary study of the Tiergarten, Berlin’s largest park and a site that has undergone unique historical transformations. Because of its complex history, not just in the field of architecture and urban planning, but also within the history of film, literature, politics, zoology, hydrology, and botanics, Tiergarten is an exemplary location for a critical exploration of the ways through which urban history is written and produced.
KEYWORDS:
Tiergarten, Urban History, Interdisciplinary Study, AR/VR, Media and Storytelling, Historiography
OBJECTIVES
In addition to engaging with the site’s history through readings and archival research, students
will use advanced simulation techniques–such as environmental sensing, laser scanning, and photogrammetry–as well as game engines, and produce immersive representations of
Tiergarten. These projects, virtual- and augmented-reality installations, will be conceived as
digital spaces that present the multiplicity of the park’s historical narratives through a variety of
mediums, techniques, and materials. The aim is not to make a passive reconstruction, but to
use these digital spaces as the sites for insightful historical investigations. The final results, a
collection of virtual tours and ‘incisions’ through the layers of knowledge and representation, aim to provoke discussion not just about Tiergarten’s past, but also about a re-envisioned future.
01 Piles and Fictions
The purpose of this assignment is to grant you basic and initial familiarity with Tiergarten as a site and as an archive. As individuals, and by using the assembled online archive, as well other materials in the syllabus you should familiarize yourselves with the various materials representing and encompassing the history of Tiergarten. Using the archive, identify at least 3 “piles” of interest and explore them further. Each pile of collected materials should be thought of as a portal to an array of other materials and objects yet to be uncovered or discovered by you or us. You are also welcome to add additional object that relate to the initial piles and create piles of your own.
After you have identified the piles and materials that are of particular interest to you, construct a fictional connection between them. This connection should not be ‘real’ or ‘evidence-based’ in any strict, formal, or established sense. Rather, it should be a construct that you imagine and one that creates a connection between seemingly disparate objects. Using basic narrative tools such as text, images, layouts, and any other form of media that you deem appropriate, find a way to represent the fictional history you have constructed.
View the Full Research
02 Piling Up - Storyboard
Your next assignment is meant to build on the work you have done, and further test your capacity to link disparate piles. In order to develop that sensibility, we are assigning each of you two piles that have nothing to do with your presentation. We want you to add these to your existing piles and integrate them into your‘ narrative.’ Please remember that your piles are foundational elements of your development of a ‘critical subject position’.
​
In all of these steps, try to be conscious of the act of curating and learning. Part of the goal is to integrate into your narratives your own interaction with the archive and the objects of your interest. How are you not only pronouncing what you have encountered but also learning from those? How does your personal process of
learning become an essential feature of your narrative and representation? How do you narrate your interaction with the archive?
View the Full Storyboard
View the Full Storyboard
03 Installation - VR Experience
1: The archive. How did you use the archive? We mean What piles or part of piles? and how did they appear in your project?
2: The VR experience. How do you imagine the VR experience? What is the setup? What are the transitions? and how does ‘the archive’ appear? You can show a ‘screenshot’ of what the person in the VR is seeing or a storyboard.
3: Finishing. What is left to do or research?
View the Full Presentation
04 Development - Berlin Workshop
- Narrative Description
This project uses dual narrative to experience the soundscape in Tiergarten, by respectively recovering monument and vegetation. For monument, historical events stored as an archive, people could read the textures and draw sketch to better understand history. For vegetation, natural sound served as medium between bio and non-bio, people would listen to the sound and observe the shadow to immersively involve in the environment.
Carved in its body, the stone witnessed history and recorded texture. Silently and secretly, the stone had its heartbeat in pixels. Waved in the sound, the tree heard nature and read the heartbeat of stone. Freely and temporarily, the tree sang songs to the stone by pixelated visual language.
Located along str. des 17. Juni, the project provides walkthrough experience by using point cloud as technique aesthetics. The dual-narrative could be elaborated by pairing up each monument and vegetation. The first pair is Bismark, Victory Column and young tree, which shows the monument movement by time and temporary ambition of Germania, grown on the ground. The second pair is soviet memorial, animal tree hole and old tree, which represents the landscape transgression in WWII and the replantation process with climate change. The third pair is Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate and tree trunk, which symbolizes human impact on natural environment during the war.
- Key Words
​dual-narrative, soundscape, synesthesia, monument, vegetation, point cloud, victory column, soviet memorial, Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Bismarck, young tree, old tree, tree trunk, tree hole
- Presentation
