Re-reading Istiklal Street using an optical toy: zoetrope montage

Abstract

This article examines multi-modal perceptions of Istiklal Street, a public space in Istanbul, using a zoetrope, an optical, scientific, and educational instrument invented in the mid-nineteenth century that was a predecessor to film in early cinema. It discusses how this tool increases the awareness of architectural students to environmental perception through observation. Constructing a black curtained zoetrope with a radius of five metres allowed them to metaphorically inhabit the optical device as it was large enough for their bodies to enter. After experiencing Istiklal Street as flaneur/flaneuse, students aimed to understand its heterogenous and fragmented narrative using the zoetrope. Re-reading the street through a zoetrope enabled a paradoxical interplay between the device and its scale. By interacting with a zoetrope to create different fragmented movements and scales, movement in the urban space was understood as more than a visual perception or transient state of curiosity. Instead, the students comprehended architectural production through filmmaking as 'a mode of reflection' rather than as mere representation. The zoetrope became a medium through which the students' visual, haptic, and kinaesthetic senses were fused together.