Andy Warhol’s Empire State Building lasted for eight hours, using a single fixed camera to shoot the changes of the Empire State Building in New York from dark to early morning for eight hours, and then splicing the negatives. While some critics say Warhol’s films are a boring aesthetic, his “artwork” gives architecture a whole new definition. Seen from his Empire State Building film: Perceiving space is achieved through the observation of the passage of time and changes in light. Architecture becomes a vehicle for many actions, preserving the movement of time and the passage of people. Of course, at the same time, as a special existing space, architecture can also show and render emotions in the continuous time dimension. For example, Asian director Cai Mingliang used a minimalist architectural framework to sharply portray urban conditions and emotional dissatisfaction, revealing the architecture of the era itself.
Student: Siqi Pan UID: 3035949102
You adequately summarized the points made by Giuliano Bruno on what architecture can be or do when represented in a particular way in her discussion of Empire and Cai Ming Liang’s films. Do these observations remind you of other examples of architecture in film? For your point on how architecture can ‘show and render emotions in the continuous time dimension’, how do film and its techniques assist such an endeavour, particularly in its treatment of time?