I’m increasingly fascinated by the work that architects are doing in virtual worlds, Second Life in particular. Documented and discussed at The Arch I can only offer a naive outsider’s view. I’m clueless as to how reflexive architecture, for example, helps to explore concepts of architecture as a discipline.
However, my fascination with reflexive architecture connects to deepening (and confused) thoughts about objects, interaction, and “physical presence” in virtual worlds. As an extension of this fascination, our group has begun to explore concepts of landscape architecture and in particular metaphors of public gardens and their transportability into virtual worlds. Reflexive architecture reinforces a rather stubborn belief that immersive technologies can be both toxic but more importantly beneficial. I base this on the belief that virtual worlds not only create an immersive “reality-like” environment for play, collaboration, and exchange of information but that projecting forward they may be the source of new archetypes. (Again, both toxic and not).
This is just theory, my own mental model. There’s significant literature that says that virtual worlds evoke different emotional responses (have a look at a paper on Alternate World Disorder), that users feel like their avatars are them (with little separation in personal identity between the avatar and the player “behind” the avatar – regardless of the “roles” or personas, users still call their avatars “me”), and that “virtual/digital” objects have a value that is no more or less than “real” objects (if something is valued it has value regardless of whether it is judged as more or less ‘real’).
If virtual worlds feel real, have objects with real value, evoke real (and perhaps enhanced) emotional responses, and ALSO allow the creation of objects and environments that aren’t possible in the physical world – then as new objects and environments are created, maybe we’ll start to see things that change how we view ourselves, the culture we live in, and the world around us. If so, is it possible to invoke spiritual responses because we now have access to new and creative metaphors? This doesn’t replace the spiritual/creative response you might get from seeing the stars at night or an inspiring cathedral. But perhaps it extends our toolkit for invoking this response.
The printing press extended the reach of writing and knowledge and the Internet extended the speed and ubiquity of access. Virtual worlds extend the capacity for collaborative immersion but might also be one of the more significant media for extending emotional experiences as well – much as TV invoked a new form of community and cultural response (think photos of the war in Vietnam on the nightly news).
So back to Reflexive Architecture.
The following shows the reinvention of virtual surface using the open scripts developed by Keystone Bouchard:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxqa_v-cEB0]
Far Link (Michael Ditullio) developed and comments on this virtual studio: “This particular virtual studio examines the use of kinetic elements as an extension to the base (fixed) architectural structure.”
Keystone furthered his own work with a study of music and reflexive architecture and jazz:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-78CzpaCEM]
In both instances we have the use of ‘standard’ archetypes and have re-tooled them for a virtual world. In one instance we’ve taken the archetype of space (walls, building entries) and changed our archetype so that walls, the “physical world” around us, becomes fluid, dynamic.
OK – so sure, we know we’re talking here about technology that allows us to do almost anything, but what’s intriguing isn’t that the impossible is possible but rather how our minds move from what we know of ‘objects’ and shift these archetypes.
Reflexive architecture and the wonderful work on Architecture Island and at The Arch bring with them new archetypes – although the space is virtual, it’s a space that we treat as ‘real’. Over time, the membrane between the real and the virtual becomes more permeable. Our concepts of objects (both real and virtual) come to include new visual ways of understanding that objects are adaptive and reflect our interactions with them. This reinforces our growing awareness that the world around us changes because of our behaviours in it – the growing environmental movement is a long-neglected recognition that our actions change our natural enviornment.
As we explore new ways to represent and interact with objects in the virtual space, the lessons for ‘real space’ may include the carrying of new archetypes that change how we perceive, feel, and react to environments and each other. We have the potential to expand the technological and artistic reservoir from which we can draw symbols for a shared understanding of our place in the world.
Reflexive architecture also asks that we reflect on what we expect of buildings, objects, and how many connections and barriers there are in a world constrained by the physical. The concept of tracking avatar movement through a sim might make us reflect on how shared public spaces move through time, and how the ‘footprint’ that we leave behind is very real – having a virtual world remind us of our interconnections over time and through spaces might remind us that the isolation we feel in the modern world is self-generated – we share space, we interact with objects, we build community through the paths we carve, and we might start to carve those paths with more intention because of what we’ve learned through a reflexive building.
I’ll end with a final thought (and offer an apology for my very vague sort of meanderings): one of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is that the source of greed is illusion. The word for illusion is Maya (the source of oh so many sculpted prims). Does this mean that virtual worlds are a source of greed? Or are they instead powerful reminders that many of our mental models for the “real world” are also illusions?
[...] 2007, 9:48 pm Filed under: reflexive architecture Dusan Writer posted another very thoughtful entry on his blog (link) about Reflexive Architecture, which really got me thinking. I’m excited to see the concept [...]
I must say I absolutely loved your post. Had never heard about reflexive architecture, but I will certainly try to take up its issues more deeply. I specially think this paragraph is quite thought provoking:
“If virtual worlds feel real, have objects with real value, evoke real (and perhaps enhanced) emotional responses, and ALSO allow the creation of objects and environments that aren’t possible in the physical world – then as new objects and environments are created, maybe we’ll start to see things that change how we view ourselves, the culture we live in, and the world around us. If so, is it possible to invoke spiritual responses because we now have access to new and creative metaphors? This doesn’t replace the spiritual/creative response you might get from seeing the stars at night or an inspiring cathedral. But perhaps it extends our toolkit for invoking this response.”
For sure our constant connection with the internet has redefined what we consider space to be. On the one hand it allows us to understand that space is much more than the coordinates around which we move. Space is much more than a quantification of matter, it is a metaphor which allows us to inhabit the world. To be “in” a space is much more than being here or there; being in a space actually deploys a whole realm of understandings which we are sometimes not aware of. I think in this respect you would really enjoy reading this post of mine which shows how much is presupposed, for instance, in our use of maps:
http://amelo14.wordpress.com/2005/06/17/reflections-on-space-western-architecture-and-911/
However, I will end with a serious problem for our actually “living” within virtual space. The reality is that our bodies do not make part of it. Can a space which our bodies do not actually sense, feel and know, be called truly a human space? Or does this tendency, as you yourself foresee, actually make of technology so powerful that our contact with our own bodies and nature is even more jeopardized?
Andrés
What a wonderful and thoughtful response Amelo.
Lost in my musings about the value of virtual worlds are musing about the danger. Castranova wrote eloquently about virtual ecomomies and articulated for me some of the dangers of virtual worlds – the Matrix being one possible end point. In a horror scenario, he paints a world where artificial intelligence is used to substitute for ourselves when we are not “in” a virtual world – when I’m out grocery shopping, I can train AI to take over my avatar. In his scenario, eventually these AIs can outlive us when we die. He paints a picture of the last man alive – humans are so immersed in virtual worlds they’ve forgotten the needs of their bodies, forgotten to have children because virtual children are more adoring and less trouble. As humans die off, their AI avatars take over – until those left don’t know if they’re interacting with real or atificial intelligence. As the human race dies off, the last don’t realize that there are fewer and fewer real humans, that most of their relationships are with virtual intelligences. Doom and gloom indeed.
He also paints a more optimistic picture.
I prefer to dwell on the optimistic primarily because I am an optimist, and also because there are enough people who either doubt the capacity for these ‘spaces’ or who lack the imagination like the reflective architects of the world to see past the recognized archetypes.
Part of my point about virtual worlds is that there is the potential for the application of the lessons learned and archetypes discovered in these spaces to the ‘real world’. Part of my personal discovery is that I’m perhaps more interested in the ‘membrane’ and the crossing over of identities and ideas from synthetic worlds to the real than I am in the ability of synthetic worlds to fully immerse us. No doubt there will be enough people continuing to strive for virtual worlds that are SO immersive that individuals never want to leave (and in some case, why WOULD they?) I’d like to continue a dialogue about how we can properly integrate our virtual and real world activities.
As Castranova pointed out – there really is no difference. We can earn money in a virtual or a real world, spend time here or there, and there is only an artificial boundary that we define by the nature of the sensory input.
Having said that, as synthetic worlds become more immersive, become more compelling than the real world, this threatens to trigger a widespread migration to virtual worlds the consequences of which will be difficult to measure. The migration will range from large chunks of time amongst a wide swath of people, to nearly complete migrations where people are living and working in virtual spaces. The more that this migration occurs, the less “value” the physical body starts to have. The less value that is placed, perhaps on nature, on human touch.
But some would also argue that our current “physical” spaces are not so physical at all. Are manufactured environments, the experience ecomomy – are these THAT much different from virtual spaces? Retailers manufacture scents to make us buy more. They manufacture fake histories in their store design and signage. They manufacture our experiences towards “training” us to forget the instincts of our bodies and to buy what we don’t need.
So….I’m agreeing and disagreeing. I believe that the mind/body/spirit/environment balance is out of whack in the real world to begin with. I believe virtual worlds have the potential to trigger new emotional responses that, if directed properly, might help to reconfigure culture so that a new balance of mind/body/spirit is possible. I believe that the only thing that is non human about these spaces is the absence of blood and bones but that virtual spaces might actually enable us to step out from behind the inherited masks that our real bodies present to the world (by no choice of our own – gender, race, age) and to present new versions of ourselves that are spiritual, creative and emotional.
I also believe that we risk following a path into synthetic worlds that forever cuts us off from our bodies and perhaps from nature. That there are dangers, and that it is up to the early pathfinders, the artists and architects, and the thinkers like yourself, to remind us that there is more than one aspect of ourselves that we will need to integrate as we grow, expand, append, and explore in these new worlds.
[...] architecture, which I’ve written about previously and is covered in detail at The Arch may open one doorway to strange loopiness. The idea that our [...]
[...] Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 in Metaverse General Tags: 3D, papervision, reflective architecture Fascinated by reflective architecture, I ran across the following which acts in a very similar way to the objects developed by Keystone Bouchard as I discussed here. [...]
People readily adapt to immersive virtuality and live in it as if it is real, in a very simple way, and the lower the level of education, they easier they do this, without thumb-sucking about reflexivity.
The architecture needs to have a comfort level that avatars can really live in, and not just gaze at, as art. The camera angles have to be good!
I don’t believe in these four truths, as the source of illusion isn’t greed, but hope. I also think there isn’t anything terribly fascinating or insightful about tracking avatars around on a sim, they’re like people, only a little clunkier until the technology gets better.
Virtuality and artificial intelligence are human artifacts, and bear all the markings of any human tool.
[...] avatar’s experience than buildings that give good camera, in Prokofy Neva’s view, who recently outed me as part of the thumb-sucking set who have perhaps spent too much time ‘gazing’ and not [...]
[...] avatar’s experience than buildings that give good camera, in Prokofy Neva’s view, who recently outed me as part of the thumb-sucking set who have perhaps spent too much time ‘gazing’ and not [...]
[...] avatar’s experience than buildings that give good camera, in Prokofy Neva’s view, who recently outed me as part of the thumb-sucking set who have perhaps spent too much time ‘gazing’ and not [...]
>The reality is that our bodies do not make part of it. Can a space which our bodies do not actually sense, feel and know, be called truly a human space
I realize you would like to be more metaphysical about this, but you can also look at it more practically. Your senses see a space rendered — and your senses actually do sense the space by sight and sound, and to a minor extent, touch (via the mouse). If something comes right at you, you might wince. If there is a loud noise, you might jump. So you are in a space, reacting, and being immersed, you have construed it, or constructed a working map of it, so to speak. I don’t see that this is all that different from coming into a real life room and taking in the space and navigating your way around it.
[...] whole thing reminds me of Keystone’s work on reflective architecture, which was one of my early and more profound discoveries in Second [...]