Sci-fi movie is always an inspiration for architects, urban planners and scientists. Blade Runner released in 1982 is the first movie taking account of the city occupied with screen media. By inputting the urban screens in a city, Los Angeles, in the year 2019, Blade Runner has got a great attention in many academic discourses related to postmodernism[1] and media city.[2] The film doesn’t take place in a spaceship or space station, but in a city. The city of Blade Runner is not the ultramodern, but the postmodern city (Bruno 1987: 63). Blade Runner has been convinced  its stage design as a realistic solution with today’s technology and could be treated as an early blue print for phenomenon of symbolic city. By taking an example of opening scene in Blade Runner, this paper try to address how screen media in both form and content can function as a way for symbolic expression in the urban city.

In the opening scene, there is a flight vehicle flying slowly across the cityscape. Through the continuous camera moving, what catching our eyes is a pyramid look megastructure covered with thousands of windows twinkles with the lights in the dark. It is the first impression of the city in the film. According to stage designer, Syd Mead’s design concept, the randomly light source is a reflection from instant TV channels changing where people are sitting behind the window and watching different channels at the same time.[3] Each window represents a single block of pixel based on the same system (TV) but operates individually without any interruptions from others (blocks). When the building carries the bulk of pixel blocks, it shows a dynamic and fluid pattern whereas the accumulation of pixels becomes an iconic image. The concept of this megastructure has proved a visible working reference for Paul Virilio’s “Electronic Gothic”.[4] Virilio notices that the development of hi-res building covering with screen serves as the similar function with the narrative of Gothic church windows. In Blade Runner, a pyramid look megastructure becomes a modern church where a reflection of TV channels is telling the story for the metropolis.

From another aspect, flying toward the megastructure is by means of entering into the city in the filmic narrative. The megastructure is a metaphor of the night gate to the city. The integration of building and the light provide a unique identity at night such as the Empire State Building lighting rainbow roof lights over New York City. It can be seen as a nighttime landmark by indicating the direction for the pilot:  Where is in/ out? Where is the front side / back side? How far from the building? Can we see the lights? In comparison with material architecture and immaterial architecture, the diffusion of light and shade reveals forms, which are distinct and tangible. In the other words, buildings are no longer volumes in light. They become light in volumes (Scheerbart 1967: 17). The argument between material and immaterial architecture can be related to the screen as the form and the images as the content; and the combination of screen and images is a representation of urban space.

Otherwise, when we look at the form of this megastructure, the pyramid appearance can be seen as an extended concept from the crown of the central tower (figure 1) in the film Metropolis (1972). On the one hand, the tower in Metropolis represents a metonym for power of authority as skyscrapers in modernism. On the other hand, the crown dome represents a function of church in the city center.[5] Based on this explanation, Ridley Scott extends the symbolic meaning of tower by combining the form of pyramid with the content of mass media. When the pyramid covering with screen media, the power of authority has been replaced by this new power of TV. In that, Blade Runner prophesies the upcoming media city on the one side and the prevalence of pop culture on the other. It also demonstrates a shift from modernism to postmodernism.

(Figure 1)

1. yellow bird

http://www.yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com/

2. video streetview

http://www.videostreetview.com/

3. immersive media

http://immersivemedia.com/products/index.html

4. 360 reality

http://360-reality.com/

5. city-views

http://www.city-views.tv/wb/

Panorama Projects

1. expo 67

http://expo67.morenciel.com/an/index.php

2. iCINEMA

http://www.icinema.unsw.edu.au/index.html

3. Luc Courchesne

http://www.youarehere2011.info/

4. Jubilator

http://www.jubilator.org/

5. Yan Breuleux

http://www.ybx.ca/fabrique/index.html

6. Jeffrey Shaw : Place-Ruhr

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/place-ruhr/images/3/

7. Art + COM: BMW Museum

http://www.artcom.de/index.php?option=com_acprojects&page=6&id=64&Itemid=0&details=&lang=en

Date: 30. Jan. 2011

Train: Dundee – Edinburgh

Trip Duration: 1 hour

Equipment: Sony A55 + Samyang 8mm

Soundtrack from the film: Stalker (1979)

Before addressing the impacts of urban screen and its future, this paper begins with an enlightened speech by Rem Koolhaas at the Pritzker Prize ceremony in 2000. Koolhaas said, “ For the first time in decades, and maybe in millennia, we architects have a very strong and fundamental competition. The communities we cannot imagine in the real world will flourish in virtual space. The territories and demarcations that we maintain on the ground are merged and morphed beyond recognition in a much more immediate, glamorous and flexible domain – that of the electronic. […] Unless we break our dependency on the real and recognized architecture as a way of thinking about all issues…liberate ourselves from eternity to speculate about compelling and immediate new issues […] architecture will maybe not make the year two thousands fifty.”[1] After ten years of IT development, Koolhaas’s sensationalized prediction not only becomes reality, but also in more comprehensive, more vigorous and more rapid way changes the immediate environment. Today, urban space presents a complex structure where the symbiosis between real world and virtual world, humanity and technology, sensitivity and rationality, the past and the future dissolves with each other and merges into a new relation of time and space. The boundaries of the territories, cultures and histories are dispersed due to the dynamics of globalization, digital technology, the Internet and capitalism. The appearance of urban landscape is full of signs, images and information. The city has become even more complicated than before. The 21^st century could be seen as the end of the industrial age and the beginning of the information age.

From one aspect, the society is more about what Debord describes in Society of Spectacle[2], the whole social life is dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy (1967:11). The ubiquitous of branding and advertising occupied the urban space represents the spectacle of capitalism’s consumer logic (Nevarez 2010:165). The real world is defined by the images where the images become real beings in that the society is only understood by what it is “appearing” rather than “having”. The spectacle presents itself as an appearance of the accumulated productions (i.e. news, propaganda, advertising) in which the image of the product will never correspond with the reality of product whereas the image only presents itself by its appearance. In the other words, the spectacle is a place where the image is placed and becomes another reality – an image reality. Somehow we can imagine the whole society is like “The Truman Show”. There is an artifical stage built upon the real world, therefore everything is concealed from the reality. However, the point is not about true or fake, it shows an ambiguous condition of social life. The reality is the presence; the presence is the reality. Debord tried to give the spectacle an isolation position against the traditional dualism between true or false, real world or virtual world. Furthermore, Debord also reveals the nature of the image in the postmodern society. The image is constituted by symbol and signs, at the same time symbol and signs becomes the purpose for the images.

From another aspect, the society at present serves as an evidence of Baudrillard’s assumption in “symbolic exchange”.[3] In postmodern society, the behavior of consumption is not only based on the value of production but also the added values including symbol, identity and images. The price is not equivalent to the quality of the product; furthermore it demonstrates an additional value behind brand, style, design, concept and philosophy. When a virtual object is placed into the market as a real object through trading and exchanging, the consumer purchases an image, an ideology, a story or an aura instead of a real thing. Images, signs and information become real beings in the consumer society. The content of product is redefined by symbol and images; the form of exchange is operated beyond the geographic boundary, cultural differences and the power of hierarchy. It represents the characteristics of postmodernity: individual, uniqueness, diversification and nomad on the one hand, and the power of public on the other.

Today urban screen can be regarded as a phenomenon of symbolic exchange transformed by visual representations into urban landscape. Since the early 2000s, a number of pioneering groups including realities: united, UNStudio, urbanscreen, ag4, LAb [au] and Diller Scofidio + Renfro have explored the notion of urban context with a variety of experiments in media facades, which transform architecture into the form of media. On the one hand, urban screen is an architecture of communication over the space which identities the meaning of urban space and itself; on the other hand, urban screen is a media approach to data exchange which expresses the nature of postmodern society – a culture of symbolic consumption.

The argument is what is necessary to set up a wall-size screen in urban space in that a wall-screen might serve the same function as mobile screen or TV screen with one major difference in scale. It is crucial to see the current development of large-scale screens with regard to how they work or what they work in urban space. When the building façade has been replaced by the screen, the screen could be considered as an architectural object. The building integrated with the screen becomes the spectacle of urban landscape. My assumption is that urban screen is the architectural mutation, which reveals its symbolic meaning for a space rather than the information content for a medium.

With this kind of consideration, the situation is something like what we can observe in Time Square or in the Las Vegas Strip. Those massive electronic billboards designed with distinct images and clear intentions tend to define the space with a unique identity. Urban screen is always full of vivid, fluent and graphic images to attract people’s attention. Even the screen might be only observed from a far distance or be passed by with a glance; people can quickly absorb the message from the screen, but sometimes the message is nothing less than the impression of images. The notion of impression is an important factor, which makes urban screen different from other screen formats. The screen is an immobile object existed just right there like an electronic sign in a space. For instance, the NASDAQ building is one of the notable sign in Time Square, New York. The NASDAQ decorated with a large display screen in the front façade is consisted of thousands of LEDs and a system of transmission technology plays stock information constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We might argue what the stock information on the building façade means for in confrontation with many other mobile devices shown the same information. As the building becoming a large information display, it is interesting to see how people react with the NASDAQ. There are only a few people stand and watch what is going on the screen. Most of people (a high percentage of tourists) treat the building as a landmark by taking pictures of the screen or indicating it from a guidebook. Here, the function of display screen represents a symbol of NASDAQ rather than the fluctuation of stock numbers. Urban screen acts as both the expression of architecture and the catalyst for the public space. The relationship between architecture and urban screens should be clarified and reconsidered with more theoretical discussion. The relationship between architecture and urban screens could be raised by the following questions:

• If urban screen is a sign in a space, how does urban screen express the message by what kinds of forms and contents?
• If urban screen becomes an architectural object, can we regard urban screen as an architectural form, and the screen image as an architectural content?
• If urban screen has a symbolic meaning in a space, what are the differences and the similarities between urban screen as symbol and architecture as symbol?
• If a screen replaces a building’s façade and a building becomes a material infrastructure for the screen media, what is the relationship between urban screen and architecture?
• If a building has a difference between the inside and the outside, how does urban screen function whether it could be the negative of the inside?
• If urban screen creates a virtual space in a physical space, how to define this virtual space and how to link these two spaces with each other?
• If a building creates a boundary in a space, does urban screen create another boundary in between a building and a space?

Through the combination of spatial elements, urban screen is not only a storage medium for images but also a metaphoric register for space. On the one hand, urban screen creates another layer of spatial experience, which provides new experience and new perception for a space; on the other hand, urban screen communicates with different layers of spatial elements, which enrich the meaning of space and unfold the awareness of multi-layers of space.