5 comments on 5 Videotect entries

Here in no particular order are my comments on some of the Videotect Skyway Video entries.
In brief, the premise is to present a point of view about skyways, and in particular their relationship to the streets, in a 2 to 4 minute video.  The contest was launched at the end of last year, and all entries are posted on the Architecture Minnesota Vimeo site.

I entered a video myself, and believe myself to be mature and objective enough to respond to the entries without too much crazy self-absorbed obvious flaming egotistical bias.  My interest, here and elsewhere, is to encourage and stimulate a conversation about the whole phenomenom of skyways, in particular the Minneapolis System.

1. Adam Ferrari

Adam Ferrari from Architecture Minnesota on Vimeo.

Adam has selected and illustrated a very clear argument from Jane Jacobs. To my view, Jacobs represents a valid if somewhat archaic vision of cities as bad rural communities, different in density but not in essential human character. She doesn't see much hope for American cities, based as they are on convenience, shallow status display, and simplistic planning goals that maximize the prerogatives of indifference and exploitation. I think someone needs to pull the patches out of Jacob's quilt and resew it into a pattern that can accommodate the simultaneity of optic fiber and Glee reruns, the collapse of the American Federal model of global conquest, and the resurgence of chastity among urban teens. If that seems murky to you, you can understand why I didn't try to gloss Jacobs in my video.

Recommended. Well, all the videos are recommended. You can watch the whole group in an hour, give or take.

2. Dustin Rehkamp and Matt Gerstner


Dustin Rehkamp and Matt Gerstner from Architecture Minnesota on Vimeo.

This video starts with a Chris Marker feel,evoking La Jetee, using the skyways as a metaphor for the unconscious psychic geometries that keep us isolated in the urban landscape. The ending is a goof. I like the "husky" business guy and the winsome gal. It is an O Henry story told in the idiom of YouTube.

3. IDE[A]


IDE[A] from Architecture Minnesota on Vimeo.

A deconstruction of the experience of movement through the skyway, achieved with fluent manipulation of the plasticity of video time and space. It feels like a distracted conversation, with glances away, lulls, a pleasant background. The time flow stutters and spirals around, the spatial flow bunches up and skips, like sparse lunch crowds in the skyways themselves. This is very slick, sophisticated use of the medium and will impress everyone. For me it captures the skyways as kaleidoscope: fragmented but symmetrical, gem-like in their rough urban setting, too abstract to inspire fondness but earnest enough to admire. The skyways, I mean.

4. Sammy Sarzoza


Sammy Sarzoza from Architecture Minnesota on Vimeo.

This video has actually earned a few "likes" on Vimeo, which is unusual for this set of videos. Maybe over time some others will garner this onsite approval. The soundtrack sets a bouncy, retro, drive-in movie concession break mood. You have to like it, really. The message is simplistic to the point of loony irony without spoiling the enjoyment of the entire package. It will grow on you.

5. Alan Polk


Alan Polk from Architecture Minnesota on Vimeo.

Readers of this blog have already encountered Alan in his role as inventive skyway videographer. I have to confess a bias in favor of anyone who can strap a Sony to a Unicycle and push it through the maze. More to the point, Alan is the first to directly oppose the rural to the urban, and pry out the outlandishness of building walkways in the sky contrasted to the down to earth sentiments of a "real" Minnesotan. If the protagonist was forking silage, I would say Alan had created a straw man argument here. But he has done better than that, he has seen the skyways through the eyes of Lake Woebegone, and found them wanting.