Approaches to temporal capture and portraiture that interest me
01 NYT ATHLETE PORTRAITS
I’ve enjoyed NYT articles in recent years that show, freeze, and analyze an athlete’s movements over time. Here are two articles about Olympic runners, titled “How Noah Lyles Won the Men’s 100-Meter Gold by a Fraction” and “How Julien Alfred Beat Sha’Carri Richardson for Gold.” I like these pieces because they freeze, analyze and animate a person. I think this could be fun to do on a subject that is not necessarily a star athlete and not on a race track. What if we took this serious analytical approach to the movements of common people (non olympic athletes)? I think we could make something interesting and fun! I also like it that in this article line graphs are presented.
I also enjoy “Richarlison, Messi and Pulisic: Three Stunning Goals Frozen in Time” as a piece that not only shows and stops goals in a soccer game, but also allows us quickly pan around a 3D view of that critical moment and understand it in a way that is impossible for a spectator in real time. I do like soccer, but I think we could isolate and analyze other human, or maybe even animal movements (or plant movements?) in this way and find something really interesting.
02 NICHOLAS FELTON’S 2010 ANNUAL REPORT
I was incredibly moved by Nicholas Felton’s careful crafting with various forms of data to tell a story about his father, who had passed away the previous year, in an “annual report.” On a 99% Invisible episode, Felton describes his information design work and the annual reports he creates. “He took 4,348 of this father’s personal records and created an intimate portrait of a man, using only the data he left behind.” I love this project because the subject is so personal and the presentation is so clear.
Overall, I think Felton’s other annual reports are versions of a person in time (himself usually, over the course of a year). It was interesting to learn how the collection of data for these reports influenced and perhaps interfered with Felton’s life. Though maybe not as extreme, it reminded me of Tehching’ Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece).
03 LOOPING TIME
I really loved Naren Wilks, One Man, Eight Cameras. because it shows how a person and their movements can be rearranged and synchronized, especially to some kind of music (for what purpose, I’m not sure, but it’s so pleasing to see). Here we get to take a subject and the path of their movements as a material. Then we get to see how we can array and recombine those movements. Time loops are often explored in literature and cinema and I think they are very interesting to consider. Sometimes our lives feel like time loops.
In landscape architecture, I think one of the big challenges is to intentionally choreograph possibilities for change and movement within a setting. People try to choreograph the bloom times of plants for example, but you could also try to choreograph people and their movements in space. This makes me think of the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, and his wife, the dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin. Here’s an interview with the couple where Anna Halprin talks about her study of the nature of movement and the nature of the human body.