Giorgio Milellahttp://giorgiomilella.com/thesis_1

A V V I C I N A R S I

G E T T I N G C L O S E

Thesis 1

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AVVICINARSI

[GETTING CLOSE]

Walking in Midtown New York City at rush hour you may have close contact with

hundreds of people in just a few minutes. In what ways are space and time critical to

verbal and non-verbal communication? My thesis project “Avvicinarsi”(eng. Getting

Close) attempts to answer this question with an installation that explores how we make

meaning in limited physical space, something that we have developed throughout our

200.000 years of history as homo sapiens.

The goal of my project is to challenge the sense that we have of others through space, and

to visualize the invisible. This is very interesting to me because I found communication

and language to be so difficult and sometimes it feels like a burden that wehave to carry

through every moment of every day and it does not leave us because it is a necessary part

of our social system and a function of modern day urban life.

Communication is something we cannot avoid because we are social animals and live in

society. Other people are not only “entities” that exist outside of our bodies, their

presence is not only physical and external, but also they become important part of our

own world because we set up our own identity by projecting an image of ourselves that is

for others to see, and they are not only recipients but active agents that through

relationships contribute in defining us.

Humans are social animals, throughout our existence as a species we have always lived in

groups. There are many characteristics that set humans apart from other animal species.

These characteristics are the result of our ability to think analytically, and the ability to

build tools. This has led humanity to develop their extensions rather than adapting their

bodies to nature, and this is an important step in the evolutionary timeline because

extensions, on the contrary of biological mutation, take much sorter time. At the present

moment we have reached a speed of evolution, through technology, that can be counted

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in years, sometimes months.

Humans have developed very complex dynamics when it comes to socializing; especially

in the way we use the space around us in relation to other persons when they stand at

different levels of proximity. This is very interesting to me because it is one of those few

aspects of human nature that reminds us we are animals and we are the result of a rather

unusual evolutionary process that happens outside our bodies, unlike what we are used to

see in most of the other species.

So far, the main problem I have encountered is the scope of the idea behind my project,

every other day I find myself entangled in my own ideas. If I were to visualize myself at

this moment I would look like a chimera with the body of an ant and the head of a macro

cephalic human being, lots of ideas but nothing has been done to bring these ideas to the

real world (hence the body of an ant). I have many ideas I have thought of countless

possible iterations, but I feel that I need to make a choice if I want it to be a project about

others, or maybe a project about myself in relation to others. Of all the iterations I made

the one I liked the most is the one where circles are projected around people walking in a

set space, and these circles represent their personal space. The problem with this project

is that I feel that it is just a good looking container of ideas but it is empty, there is

nothing inside, it does not say anything, it does not ask a question, and most of all it is too

general.  The  reason  why  I  chose  this  as  the  concept  for  my  thesis  is  because,  I  would  

like  come  up  with  an  installation  that  will  probably  raise  awareness  of  something  

that  is  wired  into  our  brains  and  that  affects  our  behavior  everyday,  and  hopefully  it  

will  teach  people  to  overcome  their  personal  barriers  by  looking  at  how  easy  it  can  

be  to  touch  another  human  being  and  feel  the  warmness  and  comfort  of  actually  

being  physically  connected  to  another  person  on  a  very  superficial  level.

Some works I found very interesting are the works of Marina Abramovich, because she

challenges people through her performances, she uses the human body as a tool to make

others uncomfortable. She pushes the boundaries of each one of us, and always brings

human interaction a step further from what is considered normal or appropriate. Another

work I really liked was from the Korean artist Woo Sok Jang, because he uses ceiling

projections and computer vision in a similar manner as I envision my own project.

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There are a few people I am planning to talk to about my projects, two of them are

teachers at Parsons. The first one is Ernesto Klar, who has guided me through the process

of one of my first installations and has always been very interested in my work; I believe

he can give me guidance in how to approach the analytical part of my project. The other

persons I want to talk to about the technical part of my project are Zach Lieberman and

Rory Solomon; I believe that their experience with computer programming can bring new

perspective in my next iterations.

GLOSSARY

COMMUNICATION: The act of exchanging any amount of information.

HCI: Human Computer Interaction, see INTERACTION

INTERACTION: The main dynamic behind communication, the exchange of information

between a person and another person, animal or object.

INTIMATE SPACE: The space that we consider as the most personal and we share with

only people we consider intimate.

XBOX KINECT: A video recording device invented for videogames that is able to detect

movement and read three dimensions not only two as other video cameras.

LANGUAGE: The verbal form of communication, in humans is expressed as speech and

writing.

PERSONAL SPACE: The space that we consider as our own, and feel reluctant to let

other people in unless there is some sort of relationship or connection with the other

person.

PROXEMICS: The science that deals with the amount of space individual set between

them during verbal and non-verbal communication, it relates to environmental and

cultural factors.

REAL SPACE: The actual space we live in, considered where interaction happens. The

space of where we have to use all five senses when interacting with other people.

SOCIAL SPACE: The space just outside of our personal space, this is where most of our

communication happens it is outside of what we consider a safe distance.

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VIRTUAL SPACE: The non-tangible space where communication is happening more

and more. The Internet is the principal medium through which we interact with others.

Being a non-tangible space, virtual space eliminates 3 of the main five senses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

Woo Sok Jang Portfolio Website. Web. 3 Oct. 2011. <http://woosoki.com/>.

"ILab Cookbook - Proximity Toolkit." GroupLab - Home. Web. 5 Oct. 2011.

<http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/cookbook/index.php/Toolkits/ProximityToolkit>

Marina Abramovic, MOMA Website. Web. 15 Oct. 2011.

<http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965>

 

Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.  

 

COMMUNICATION

Interaction

InteractiveInstallation

Senses

TouchHearingTaste

SmellSight

Proxemics

Real

Virtual Senses Hearing

Sight

HumanComputerInteraction

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