A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
Keiichi Matsuda
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
updated 16 years ago
A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
Entrevista en Español:
- cnet.com/es/noticias/merger-keiichi-matsuda-corto-en-360-grados-sobre-realidad-aumentada
- cinefreaks.net/2019/05/10/keiichi-matsuda-invitado-de-lujo-en-construir-cine
Thank you to Construir CINE and the British Council of Argentina for facilitating this dub.
🇬🇧English / original version here: youtu.be/SqW2dEkiD-Y
Merger is a new film about the future of work, from cult director/designer Keiichi Matsuda (HYPER-REALITY). Set against the backdrop of AI-run corporations, a woman finds herself caught between virtual and physical reality, human and machine. As she fights for her economic survival, she finds herself immersed in the cult of productivity, in search of the ultimate interface. This short film documents her last 4 minutes on earth.
Starring Sarah Winter (Versailles, Endeavour)
Alternate versions:
. 🇪🇸Doblaje Español (Spanish dub): youtu.be/UpW1IIFLyfk
. Vimeo: vimeo.com/302028562
. Facebook: facebook.com/keiichimatsuda/videos/571312039946139
. Instagram TV: instagram.com/tv/BspvAHEF_LP/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1vsxc7u4t639b
by Keiichi Matsuda | http://km.cx
more at http://hyper-reality.co
For more information, go to installcell.com
Music: 'Fish In The Tin' (instrumental) by OMO, courtesy of LOAF
For more information, go to http://www.installcell.com
Music: 'Tea Break' (instrumental) by OMO, courtesy of LOAF
For more information, go to installcell.com
Music: 'Advantage' (instrumental) by OMO, courtesy of LOAF
For more information, go to http://www.installcell.com
Music: 'Tea Break' (instrumental) by OMO, courtesy of LOAF
TO CHANGE FROM SPLIT SCREEN TO 3D/2D, CLICK THE '3D' TAB AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR VIEWER. TO EMBED, SEE http://vimeo.com/14294054
by Keiichi Matsuda
keiichimatsuda.com
The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.
Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. It is part of a paradigm shift that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic whole. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from 'reality'. The spatial organisation of data has important implications for architecture, as we re-evaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.
Alternative realities surround us and present possible and impossible fantasies for purposes of information, advertising, glamorising, publicising, and propagating the ideals of capitalism through consumption. The mechanisms of addiction are at play.
Shop windows, billboards, magazines are portals to parallel universes. They set-dress our mundane world, and relieve us of the responsibility of the dream. The pusher shows us what our aspirations are, and shows us where to buy them.
The dirty fringe of the city at night juxtaposes decaying shop-fronts, hooded gangs, traffic fumes and haggard faces with glowing visions of perfect worlds. Perfectly lit, perfectly framed, perfectly inhabited. We are so familiar with these utopias that we rarely question their placement and the connotations of their existence in run-down environments.
The culmination of my fourth year (MArch) in Nic Clear's Unit 15 at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
This project is about architectural intervention, but its basis lies in economics. Our current system of economics and politics (as they have converged to a point which is hard to distinguish) is fundamentally unsustainable. It relies on debt and exponential growth, and operates on an abstracted belief system that ignores our finite world resources. Technocracy is a post-capitalist economic system devised and developed in 1920s America by academics and scientists as a solution to the waste and unsustainability of capitalism. Like capitalism (and communism/socialism etc.), it does not concern itself with scarcity, but rather with abundance, with the view that the capacity exists to feed, clothe and shelter everyone in the world. This does not happen with the current system as 'there is no way to sell an abundance'. This has shown itself increasingly as false scarcity is imposed on us in the form of digital rights management, licensing for broadcasters, action against peer-to-peer services etc.
The Technocrat Retrofit of London occurs circa 2070, and marks a return to the community driven sustainable way of living so often romanticised by architects, but with the help of less fashionable technology and top-down systems of government. The stock market has crashed and the pound has moved into hyper-inflation. Banks are deserted. The mayor of London negotiates with a powerless central government to transform the square mile into a contained self-sufficient Technocratic state.
Buildings are retrofitted to create a sustainable self-sufficient community. Aerostats above the city support tethered wind turbines in the polar jet stream, supplying electricity to the Technate. Sunlight is the most scarce resource in the city, so a canopy of hydroponic greenhouses covers the Technate. Many existing buildings are used to house industrial and agricultural processes, located and inter-linked for efficiency and reuse of waste products.
View in High Definition at http://www.vimeo.com/2566438


