Interview clips weave in and out during time-lapse footage of downtown Raleigh and surrounding areas. The video's objective is to pay homage to the growth of downtown Raleigh in general with a focus on the Shimmer Wall as a symbol of its energy and liveliness. To echo the sentiment of "shimmering" throughout, simple graphic elements blink on and off quickly. Timelapse footage also captures this kind of flickering movement.
TRANSCRIPT
It came about as a function of designing the entire building where we had to provide louvers for the HVAC and backup generators and emergency equipment.
We spent months taking what wouldn’t work technically, a bunch of fishing lures and little wires, and made that into a moveable series of panels that that wouldn’t blow off in the wind and that was maintanable and affordable and all the things that architecture needs to do.
It looks like a tree and this is the city of oaks after all. But we’re also… and we are a city of that past and that tradtion, but were also a city next to research triangle park, and the home of Redhat, and Cree, and lots of pretty high tech stuff. It’s no longer the small town that it was—it’s an increasingly importantly city, people want to live here.
Has the shimmer wall brought life? I don’t know if it’s brought life but its added life and it sort of looks and feels like a lot of the dreams we have for downtown.
What’s most memorable about urban spaces…you know the Pragues, Paris’s, and New Yorks of the world—are, are the people.
VISUAL METAPHOR
the shimmer wall 's many tiles = the people of raleigh---their movements and life, and how they gather
The tiles can be representative of activity flow and traffic patterns in general.