Nic Clear
“In a traditional or architectural drawing, space is always implied. Even when we draw perspectives we’re still talking about the representation onto a flat plane. Space isn’t flat, and it takes training and knowledge to understand a certain protocol.” Lorna
1 February – (7 February) | Lecture 3 | Nic Clear
Nic Clear questions received notions of the future. Are the norms of economic growth the only way society can develop? Does the current economic crisis call into question a future of unlimited growth and/or enable different choices? Drawing on such fields as synthetic space, psychoanalysis, postmordern geography, post–economics, cybernetics, and neurology, as well as interviews with novelist William Gibson, Archigram architect David Greene, and musician Brian Eno.
|||
|||
#GAMSWEN 
Once a teacher at University College London and an architect running his own practise, Nic Clear now devotes his time to his studies as a full time academic. It was refreshing to hear someone who is obviously in a position of great influence be so modest and down to earth. Instead of showing us endless slides about himself and his own work he instead chose to illustrate the points he was making with his students work.
It is Nics belief that although drawing is an important part of architecture, animation can sometimes be a more effective way of communicating ideas and spaces. During his time at the Bartlett school of architecture he ran a course called Unit 15, during his lecture today Nic treated us to some clips from short films made by his students on this course. It was just a shame we didn’t have time to see the full length films. It was clear to see that the students were phenomenally talented and to my eye the clips looked like those from a multi-million pound film production, not from a course at UCL.
A great clip was ‘Robots of Brixton’ by Kibwe Tavares. It showed a futuristic Brixton, where unplanned construction was blown out of all proportion to make room for the growing robot population. The film depicts a repeat of the 1981 Brixton riots but this time with robots. A fitting end to the short film quoted Karl Marx “History repeats itself, first in tragedy, then farce”.
My favourite clip was from ‘London after the Rain’ by Ben Olszyna-Marzys. The short clip we saw used incredibly strong imagery and sound combined to create an eery post-apocolypic atmosphere that was truly immersive. I found this clip the most interesting because it drove home the point that animation is a great way to communicate and allow others to understand a space by moving through it, hearing it and feeling it.
Nic Clear – 14 – FEB
From: http://lornamacaulay.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/nic-clear/
Nic Clear taught at the Bartlett’s School of Architecture for 20 years, alongside running his own practice. Clear’s main level of interest is film and animation in the development and the representation of architectural ideas and practices. He doesn’t like that people assume that architecture is solely the domain of the architectural profession.
Architecture as a profession operates on a very frigid pyramid. You can develop your own work and show it and claim it as part of your own practice. Drawing is so instrumental to the production of architecture that we couldn’t have architecture before the drawing.
Clear showed us two images that relate to the story of how drawing began, the first one was a drawing of two people, one of them was using the light of a candle to draw around the others shadow onto a wall. In the other drawing, we saw the same scenario, but instead of using the candle light, the drawer was using sunlight. However, Nic pointed out that the second image was historically correct, because without drawing we wouldn’t have had instruments such as candles.
In a traditional or architectural drawing, space is always implied. Even when we draw perspectives we’re still talking about the representation onto a flat plain. Space isn’t flat, and it takes training and knowledge to understand a certain protocol.
Architecture is traditionally represented through photographs, by layering that creates the illusion of 3D space, and by taking various photographs Clear showed us roughly the technique of how to make an animation from it using the ken burns effect.
Afterwards Nic Clear went on to show us various videos that his previous architecture students had made using 3D animation, where different uses of space, perspective and light paths were practiced. The one that stuck in my mind the most was the “Robots of Brixton”. It’s futuristic and very inspirational, I also like the way they’ve used quotes to try to make people aware of the way the world is today
GaMsWeN Lecture Week 4 by http://sptalkintech.wordpress.com/wednesday/gamswen-lecture-week-4/
Nic Clear taught at the Bartlett’s School of Architecture for 20 years, alongside running his own practice. Clear’s main level of interest is film and animation in the development and the representation of architectural ideas and practices. He doesn’t like that people assume that architecture is solely the domain of the architectural profession.
Nic showed us two images that relate to the story of how drawing began, the first one was a drawing of two people, one of them was using the light of a candle to draw around the others shadow onto a wall.
In a traditional drawing, space is always implied. Even when we draw perspectives we’re still talking about the representation onto a flat plain. Space isn’t flat, and it takes training and knowledge to understand a certain protocol.
Afterwards Nic Clear went on to show us various videos that his previous architecture students had made using 3D animation, where different uses of space, perspective and light paths were practiced. The one that stuck in my mind the most was the “Robots of Brixton”. It’s futuristic and very inspirational, I also like the way they’ve used quotes to try to make people aware of the way the world is today.
Nic Clear by http://mygamswen.wordpress.com/nic-clear/
The lecture was interesting and much clearer then the previous one. Nic Clear is an architect and he also combines video, animation and motion graphics in his work. He has been teaching postgraduate design unit at the Bearnett School of Architecture. The course is based on using all the tree combinations mentioned above and also reproduction of architecture and space.
He started of talking about architecture and profession and how these two are so new, about 200 years of existence. Also he explained how architecture could be something else for instance it could be a ‘creation of new spaces’ example digital and virtual. He showed a video of David Lynch’s ‘Panic Room’ and how D. Lynch used the video and digital cinema together to explore a house that was the movie filmed in, for example how the camera travelled through a key hole or through a handle of a kettle. This, he explains, is a representation of architecture, combining the two and the ability of manipulating and changing spaces within the space.
Later in the lecture he showed us videos from a film festival onedotzero. that was at the BFI called Future Cities and it was made digitally where After Effects played a big part of it, and how it mixed between virtual and actual realities. I personally don’t like digital cinema and After Effects, but the short videos were quite beautiful. The videos look so futuristic and sic-fi to me maybe that’s why it wasn’t appealing but his understanding to virtual reality and link between virtual and actual makes me wonder what it’s real? Also he spoke about someones desertion where neurologist was a tutor and a student just worked with him to create to understand the space and visualise it in how it is in our brains, he said ‘ perception of reality is an illusion that our brains construct’ .
LECTURE 4 by http://adamsobhy.wordpress.com/gamswen/lecture-4/
Nic Clear
Nic Clear taught at the Bartlett’s School of Architecture at University College London for 20 years and in that time was also working in his own practice. He then moved onto becoming a full time academic and states that his main level of interest is “using film and animation in the development and representation of architectural ideas and architectural practices”
He started to talk about architecture and the practice of it and what architecture is, and talked about the aspects of architecture and the notion that it is just the development of buildings which is only one aspect of the history of architecture.
He talked about the development of new media and that architecture must be broadened to include a whole number of different spaces such as digital, virtual, and augmented Spaces and that while the profession of architecture still protects the title of architect they will be left behind to these new forms of media.
He talked about architecture as a profession and how it operates as a frigid pyramid and gave an example of a famous building built in London located at 30 St Mary Axe which was designed by Ken Shuttleworth but claimed as a Lord Norman Foster building which is quite common in architecture.
He went on to talk about drawings and traditional architectural drawings and how they are flat but space is always implied, but space is not flat and that it takes time to learn the protocols of architectural drawings, you learn how to read plans and how to read the projection of shadows onto a drawing (Sciography) and he talked about how he never use to question that but with the development of CGI it needed to be. He then showed a clip from a film called Panic Room and how it made him re-evaluate the whole way architectural ideas are communicated. How the camera went from actual space to virtual spaces and it was manipulated.
He then went onto show us work that was done by a few of his student over the past few years, these were created using 3d imagery and animation using various software. He told us of a person called Andrew Kramer who runs Video CoPliot which has loads of tutorials on software and a good learning tool he also talked about the Ken Burns Effect which is a panning and zooming effect used in video production.
He showed several different works from student over the past few years one of them was a film called Robot of Brixton made by Kibwe Tavares this was an amazing animation that won an RIBA silver Medal in 2011 and is about Brixton in the future and how it will become a ghetto for robots who would suffer the same privations as most minority groups do.
This was an amazing piece of work and from my point of view I would love to one day create something as amazing.
Lecture 4- Architecture and Animation by http://3danimationgu.wordpress.com/lectures/lecture-4/
This week a famous architect called Nick Clear visited and gave us a lecture. He talked to us about architecture and how animation is used in architecting and he showed us his students work.
We spoke about Lord Norman Foster who made the famous London building 30 St Mary Axe, the cupola of the building housing the German Bundestag and the great London authority building. He was a guy where he done the least job for these building but got the most credit in his team. He is a worldwide known architect. Nick Clear also told us that architecture operates like a very big pyramid.
He also talked about what architectural representation is and how it means orthographic presentation. What I learnt also in this lecture was that architects like complex drawings and buildings. They like it when stuff looks complex.
Another thing I learnt in the lecture was that in a traditional architect drawing space is really important. It will look flat but architects will know how to look at flat drawings and plans. I also learnt that video co-pilot is a great software for film editing and animation.
We looked at a clip of a film. It shows us how an architect communicates there idea. David Finch uses camera in a fantastic way he goes into mechanism etc. Traditional Photography, film making and architecture combining is what David is trying to show in the film. He also used vector works to make an architecture flat drawing to create a narrative story aswell.
Lastly, Nick Clear showed us some videos of his students in University City London. He told us what programs his students use to edit the videos, photos etc. They use Aftereffects and they are skilled in 2d drawing and turning it into virtual.
Lastly he showed us one of his students 3d video. It was called robots in Brixton. This lecture was really fun and I learnt a lot about animation. It was great to see other students work and it made me realize there’s a lot of competition out in the industry.