Peter Kamnitzer: City-Scape. 1968. 16mm. Color. 10 min. Made at the Guidance and Control Division of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas. Four views of the imaginary city.
The $2,000,000 computer, NASA II, and its visual simulation subsystem was developed by General Electric for the Guidance and Control Division of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. It has been used for more than ten years to simulate conditions of lunar landings. Kamnitzer, head of the Urban Laboratory at the University of California at Los Angeles, collaborated with GE and NASA for nearly two years to convert the equipment into a tool that also would allow pre-experiencing of possible environmental situations here on earth.
It is rather unlikely that any filmmaker will have access to such sophisticated equipment for aesthetic purposes only. However, as we have seen, the notion of "art" increasingly includes ultrasensitive judgments as to the uses of technology and scientific information. Consciously or unconsciously, we invent the future. And all futures are conditional on a present that is conditioned by the past. One way to be free of past conditioning is to simulate alternative futures through the fail-safe power of the digital computer. This is "art" at the highest level ever known to man, quite literally the creation of a new world imperceptibly gaining on reality— but not so imperceptibly as before.
A film like City-Scape adds still another dimension to the obsolescence of fiction. Whereas Stan Brakhage transcends fiction through mythopoeic manipulation of unstylized reality, Kamnitzer creates not myths but facts— obscuring the boundaries between life and art with a scientific finality unequaled in subjective art. Optimum-probability computerized visual simulation of future environments is not limited to economic, social, or political motivations. The possibilities for purely aesthetic exploration are revolutionary and have yet to be attempted. City-Scape is the first step toward that future time in which artists not only will be the acknowledged legislators of mankind but literally will determine the meaning of the word "man."
In programming City-Scape Kamnitzer was limited to two hundred and forty edges, or points where tangential planes intersect. Since an architectural edifice normally has only twelve edges, the city could have only twenty edifices. However, rather than having only square boxes, Kamnitzer programmed vertical pilasters and horizontal lines to generate a sense of scale per floor. The necessity of at least two freeways and one tunnel reduced the city to approximately five or six buildings. This information was input to the computer not as a drawing to be scanned, but as mathematical equations of perspectives describing the transformation of a numerical model of a three-dimensional environment onto a two-dimensional display or image plane.
The real-time solution of these equations produced a color CRT display with six degrees of freedom, unlimited dynamic range, true perspective, controlled color and brightness, and infinite depth of focus. With three simple control mechanisms Kamnitzer, seated before the twenty-one-inch screen, was able to: (1) stop and start the forward motion of the "vehicle" moving through the city; (2) control the direction of movement over and under bridges, through tunnels, around corners, etc.; and (3) control visual direction so that, while the vehicle may be moving north the "driver" may look northeast, south, or in any direction without affecting his forward motion.
Because the environment is stored digitally in the computer's memory a true "environmental" sense is created. That is, the operator-driver may move into the city and, after passing one or two structures, may decide to turn around and view what in effect has been "behind" him or otherwise out of range of the CRT display. This is done instantly, with the operator manipulating a lever as the CRT draws a new perspective in color every twentieth of a second. In addition, the operator-driver may enter closed spaces, fly into the air, and pass or "crash" through environment surfaces— without damage, of course, because the crash is only simulated.
Although City-Scape is a color film we have not used color illustrations for two reasons. First, the color is not intended as an experience in itself, an exploration of color effects as in Cybernetik or the Whitney films, but rather as a means of distinguishing the structures within the city— i.e., the yellow freeway, the blue freeway, the green mall, the gray building, etc. Second, as we already have noted, a great deal of image quality is lost when color television displays are recorded on color film; the result is a pale washed-out image neither so brilliant as the original phosphor, nor so intense as optically-printed color.
As the film begins we are rushing toward the city's skyline against the horizon surrounded by a vast green plain. Once into the city, various types of movement and positions are simulated: circling around the central mall area, driving up freeway ramps and along freeways, riding up and down in an outdoor glass elevator, walking down corridors of buildings, looking out windows, flying above the city in a helicopter that takes off and lands from a skyscraper heliport, the simulation of a drunk driver and his crash into a swimming pool, and finally moving through a solid mass, which the computer translates as a tunnel-like experience.
Only a few minutes have passed before a strong sense of location and environment is created, and the viewer begins to remember positions of structures not on the screen. One actually begins to feel "surrounded" by this city, though viewing it as if through a porthole. The true three-point perspective invests the image with a sense of actuality even stronger than in some conventional live-action films. Kamnitzer relates: "The on-line experience, the sense of power of sitting at the controls, is something very hard to describe. You are turned on. You are involved." It is an extremely close interaction between man and machine. The drunk-driving sequence— in which the "vehicle" swerves and careens through streets before plunging into an empty swimming pool— was done specifically to illustrate the immediacy and plasticity of the computer's reaction to the instructions of the operator.
Kamnitzer considers City-Scape a documentary of the possibilities that now exist for an Urban Simulation Laboratory. The concept is, in the absence of an ability to experiment with real people in real cities, to create a simulated environment in which people can pre-experience alternative futures. Kamnitzer's method incorporates the use of conventional mathematical models, man-gaming or operational gaming to simulate the decision environment, and the computed visual simulation subsystem to formulate what Kamnitzer calls "the total question of if then, the key to all decision-making."
The metalanguage that Kamnitzer has designed to facilitate this activity is called Intuval, derived from intuition and evaluation. Professor Kamnitzer considers Intuval to be an "answer" to the optimization attitude toward the computer. "What we are doing," he says, "is very different from people who want to use the computer to optimize for them and thereby the computer provides the answers. I am using the visual simulation subsystem to trigger the next creative leap in the human brain, and therefore I consider my approach very different from the usual rush into data banks and optimization. If used in an experientially meaningful manner the computer can provoke the next creative leap, while in my opinion the reading of charts, books, monographs, and statistics does not lead to a creative advancement. Books are being written every day, the libraries are full, the data banks are going to burst, but the decision-maker does not have access to this information when he needs it, in a form that is meaningful to him at this moment.