omnispace

Implant

Workspace Unlimited was founded in 2001 by Thomas Soetens, artist, and Kora Van den Bulcke, architect, and investigates the creative artistic and socio-cultural possibilities of virtual worlds, based on 3-D game technology. Their new work Implant is both an electronically networked interactive virtual world and an installation physically situated in the magnificent Art Nouveau building of Vooruit, a performance venue in the center of Ghent. Once logged into Implant, visitors navigate through two co-existing architectures that slowly begin to reveal themselves: a sumptuous simulation of the real Vooruit, a large complex maze of theater spaces, cafes, meeting rooms, and offices which can be traversed in much the same way we move through physical space - walking upstairs, through doors, down corridors, around corners, inside and out. And a hidden hyperlinked architecture that emerges as users interact with the model's various walls and ceilings.

Objects vs. Experience

"...since immense is not an object, a phenomenology of immense would refer us directly to our imagining consciousness. In analysing images of immensity, we should realise within ourselves the pure being of pure imagination." Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1961.

In virtual space, we move from place to place, byte to byte. Distance is no longer a relevant measure of travel. Cyber-architecture is space-time collapsed, and beyond recognition, in so far as moving from one place or enclosure to another does not require the physical space-time journey. The physical manifestation exists only as electrons and the transceivers used in order for the user to exist within it, and the concerns are moved from the practical and economy to expression of intentions, interests and thoughts. It represents the design of experiences rather than objects, a paradigm shift in architectural consciousness. The process of experiencing traditional architecture relies on the 'object-centred' within a physical site. Cyber-architecture relies closely on the design aspects of traditional audio-visual narratives, such as cinema, stage design, performance and installation art. The design of the space alone is not the most important consideration. Communication through the spatial and symbolic language used, although similar to the traditional architects' portfolio of form, must also consider the time-atmosphere perspective.

"… The space-time metaphor represents a monumental failure of imagination…. We've been thinking about virtual presence as if we have to send our bodies out there. But if we could design reality for our minds, what powers would we grant ourselves? The ability to be anywhere instantly would be a step in the right direction. The ability to be everywhere, all at once, without going mad, is the real challenge. Why should we settle for avatars, when we can be angels?" Brian Moriaty, Computer Game Conference 1996.

On imagining cyberspace, the mind is a good analogy since it has no physical space, no distance or mass. Thoughts cannot be seen under a microscope or repelled by a magnet. Your mind continually generates ideas but never runs out of space; thinking about writing a novel takes no longer than the vision of a meal. These thoughts which form the content of the mind are not in physical space as they are not physical objects. Therefore mind is not an object in time and space. Similarly, cyber-architecture is not made from objects in time and space, even though it appears to have form or mass.

Wireless Imaging MIT campus
Although the Cyber-Architect is freed from many constraints, it is not only the removal of these restrictions that cyberspace has to offer which makes it so appealing. The tangible aspects of creating cyber-architecture can be just as complex and impactful as physical architecture. Since the primary role of architecture is the creation of meaningful places which society can inhabit and interact within, the design features of an electronic architecture must inform and create distinctions between arbitrary user choices. Aesthetics, relating to physical architecture often relies on the context or setting however cyber-architecture is siteless, infinite space without geographical boundaries. The primary task of the cyber-architect then is creation of meaningful place.

Vitual Trading by Rashid & Couture
"In patently unreal and artificial realities … the principles of ordinary space and time, can … be violated with impunity. After all, the ancient world of magic, myth and legend to which cyberspace is heir, as well as the modern worlds of fantasy fiction, movies and cartoons, are replete with violations of the logic of everyday space and time: disappearance, underworlds, phantoms, warp speed travel, mirrors and doors to alternate worlds, zero gravity, flattening and reconstitution, wormholes, scale inversions, and so on. And after all why have cyberspace if we cannot (apparently) bend nature’s rules there?" Micahel Benedikt, Cyberspace: First Steps, 1991.

Successful virtual space must provide the participant with cues of how to navigate and understand the generated environments. The dynamic process in which we use our navigational awareness of an environment to reach a desired destination in physical architecture can also be made to apply in cyber-architecture. The means by which information about the relative location and attributes of one's environment are understood and navigated through are in many ways similar to physical architecture. In this way one can use architectural design aspect as examples for cyber-architecture.

Donald Norman, cognitive psychologist, suggests the following design guidelines as a rule of thumb for creating effective environments: (1) provide a high intensity of interaction and feedback; (2) Have specific goals and established procedures; (3) Motivate; (4) Provide a continual feeling of challenge, one that is neither so difficult as to create a sense of hopelessness and frustration nor so easy as to produce boredom; (5) Provide a sense of direct engagement, producing the feeling of directly experiencing the environment, directly working on the task; (6) Provide appropriate tools that fit the user and task so well that they aid and do not distract; (7) Avoid disruptions that intervene and destroy the subjective experience.

Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
The existing wealth of literature on urban planning can be put to tremendous use in cyberspace. One can use these analogies in creating digital architecture and in organisation of cybercities. e.g. Kevin Lynch, from his book The Image of the City, suggests that to heighten the image-ability of an urban environment is to facilitate its visual identification and structuring. These elements according to Lynch are; paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and regions. Paths are a kind of space which express a tendency toward mobility and expansion and within which directions are evident. A path consists of; a starting point, a direction to be followed through a sequence of places and events and the final goal. Lynch suggests that subjects move through the city following a sequence, facilitated by anticipation of memorable events, details and point of reference, which trigger specific moves for navigation. These events and places which one experiences on the way during moving along a path, determines the character of the path.

Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson
“The trouble with the spatial metaphor in computers is that it can limit our understanding of cyberspace. Motion there best serves those looking for something, whether it's a piece of information or a particular view of an object. Speed, a necessity in real space, is simply a blurred condition between states. The users don't engage the information until things slow up and they can examine the destination.” Verlag Heinz Heise, 1997.

Instant Ego

iNSTANT eGO is a concept dwelling that allows the emergence of intimate electronic space in the middle of the urban public space. Plugged to clothing, iNSTANT eGO is an inflatable cluster of intelligent tissue folded over, waiting to be unfolded. The flexible space starts out like a hood in a raincoat and it can expand to swallow the user as a whole. Once s/he is inside, the user sees the confined space becoming infinite through the boundless realm of virtual reality projected onto the inner skin of the structure. The user can then travel into this infinite space by using electronic sensors that manipulate the projected images.

Zero Gravity

Multi-disciplinary artist Laurie Anderson was trained as a fine artist, sculptor and painter, but her work spilled into dance, music and performance art. At the focal point she is a poet who builds multimedia textures around her words. In 1983 she completed her first large theatrical scale work, United States, a 4-part multimedia performance of song-texts. Bringing together a unique blend of spoken word, large scale projections (in collaboration with media artist Perry Hoberman), keyboards, microphone (delivering her voice through her trademark sound effects), quirky movement, Cheshire smile, and sly eye contact. In 1995 she explored the interactive medium, creating the CD-ROM Puppet Motel in collaboration with multimedia artist Hsin-Chien Huang. Puppet Motel is divided into 32 rooms, small vignettes based on previous works and trademark Anderson motifs: clock, airplane, plug socket, telephone, and other objects of technology. Puppet Motel is a new form of music-theater where the audience is on stage, controlling the flow of time and space in zero gravity.

Virtual Worlds

Since the late 1970s, Jenny Holzer´s work has sought to reformulate many of the givens of traditional art, especially in the context of public spaces. Writing is the basis of Holzer´s practice. Although most of Holzer´s content is original, on occasion, she works with historic or archival sources (for example, in her several commissioned permanent memorial works). Holzer employs her texts singly or in combination in her permanent works, installations and xenon projections. Media employed in Holzer´s practice vary. Writing is programmed into electronic signs; printed on posters and t-shirts; carved in sandstone benches, marble floors and granite sarcophagi; cast as bronze plaques; or etched on silver. Further, her statements have appeared on billboards, movie marquees, automobiles, in news magazines, and on websites, as well as being projected onto facades, walls, water and mountainsides by laser or with xenon. Jenny Holzer makes use of the insistent appeal of modern advertising media for her own ideas.

In 1993, Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium, opened at the SOHO Guggenheim Museum, one of the first exhibitions to investigate new artistic directions in virtual reality. The show featured two virtual worlds by Jenny Holzer. The first, created in collaboration with engineer Ken Pimentel, was an untitled piece, inspired by one of Samuel Beckett's short stories, The Lost Ones. It featured a cavernous world in which souls alternately flee from and engage the viewer. If you catch them they speak one of Holzer's trademark truism phrases. Holzer collaborated with Jeff Donovan on her second world, offering a response to the violence against women in the Bosnian war. Here, you enter and find a vast patterned desert of striking color: bright orange earth and deep blue sky. As you travel across the landscape, a circle of buildings appears on the horizon. When you reach the village you see that each building is an identical cinderblock hut. Soon you reach another village. Again the same square, block huts, but these are lined up in double rows like barracks. The voices here have the same simple, flat tone, but the words are violent. Each hut harbors a different voice. Each village has a different story to tell. The silence of the desert seems to be watching you. jenny holzer

CAVE

Media artist Daniel Sandin and engineer Thomas DeFanti joined the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Chicago during the 1970s, where their research in electronic visualization culminated in 1991 with the design and construction of the CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment). The suspension of disbelief, so critical to the overall effect of virtual reality, is enhanced by the specific qualities of the CAVE's interface, which is, in fact, a small room of about three cubic meters. After entering the room, the user finds himself surrounded by projected images that are seamlessly synchronized on three walls and the floor.

It is like stepping onto the stage of a virtual theater. The immersive experience of the CAVE was intended as an allusion to Plato's cave; its multiple screens and surround-sound audio evoke the metaphor of a shadowy representation of reality, suggesting how perception is always filtered through the mind's veil of illusion. Unlike other systems of virtual reality such as Scott Fisher's VIEW, the properties of the CAVE are enhanced by the interplay between real and the virtual.

The CAVE immersant does not experience disembodiment, but rather is viscerally aware of his or her physical presence "on stage" amidst the animated imagery and orchestrated sound. cave

Liquid Architecture

Marcos Novak describes himself as a "trans-architect," due to his work with computer-generated architectural designs, conceived specifically for the virtual domain, that do not exist in the physical world. His immersive, 3-dimensional creations are responsive to the viewer, transformable though user interaction. Exploring the potential of abstract and mathematically conceived forms, Novak has invented a set of conceptual tools for thinking about and constructing territories in cyberspace. Novak introduces the concept of "liquid architecture," a fluid, imaginary landscape that only exists in the digital domain. Novak suggests a type of architecture cut loose from the expectations of logic, perspective, and the laws of gravity, one that does not conform to the rational constraints of Euclidean geometries. He views trans-architecture as an expression of the "4th dimension" that incorporates time alongside space among its primary elements. Novak's liquid architecture bends, rotates, and mutates in interaction with the person who inhabits it. In liquid architecture, "science and art, the worldly and the spiritual, the contingent and the permanent" converge in a poetics of space. marcos novac

Virtual Environments

Pavel Curtis, while a computer scientist at Xerox PARC, created one of the first popular on-line role-playing environments, LambdaMOO [requires Telnet], in 1991. Known as a MUD (Multi-User Dungeons), LambdaMOO is a text-only fantasy realm that is descended from sword and sorcery games from the 1970s such as "Dungeons and Dragons." While not the first of its kind, LambdaMOO is perhaps the most famous text-based virtual environment, dissected and analyzed by media theorists, sociologists and psychologists who see it as fertile breeding ground for a new hybrid form of literature, live performance, cinema, and interactive storymaking. Through the freewheeling dynamics of improvised dialogue and unrehearsed interactivity, participants lose themselves in their roles and collaborate in a form of collective authorship. Shielded (and even liberated) by the anonymity of their characters, players improvise their own conversations, story lines, props, and settings; they pursue their own adventures, and experiment with a myriad of alternate identities; sometimes they even switch gender and, occasionally, species. MUDs are characterized by a tightly knit – though globally dispersed – community of characters engaged in an ongoing dialogue that combines the aimlessness of nomadic wandering with the focused creativity of world building.

Telepresence

Scott Fisher's seminal research in virtual reality was conducted in the late 1980s at the NASA-Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, where he worked on the Virtual Environment Workstation VIEW project. Fisher set out to develop an interface that would engage all the senses, thrusting the viewer into a realm of full sensory immersion. The NASA system included an updated version of the head-mounted display, with stereoscopic images that provided stereoscopic depth of field, a major advancement over the monoscopic vision of Ivan Sutherland's earlier device. Fisher added headphones for 3D audio, a microphone for speech recognition, and, in collaboration with Tom Zimmerman, adapted the "dataglove" – the wired glove worn by the user that makes it possible to grasp virtual objects in cyberspace. This multi-sensory interaction with cybernetic devices created the powerful illusion of entering a digitized landscape. By pursing Morton Heilig's concept of experience theater, Fisher made a significant advance toward what he termed "telepresence" – the projection of the self into a virtual world. scott fisher

Responsive

Originally trained as a computer scientist, Myron Krueger, under the influence of John Cage's experiments in indeterminacy and audience participation, pioneered human-computer interaction in the context of physical environments. Beginning in 1969, he collaborated with artist and engineer colleagues to create artworks that responded to the movement and gesture of the viewer through an elaborate system of sensing floors, graphic tables, and video cameras. At the heart of Krueger's contribution to interactive computer art was the notion of the artist as a "composer" of intelligent, real-time computer-mediated spaces, or "responsive environments," as he called them. Krueger "composed" environments, such as Videoplace from 1970, in which the computer responded to the gestures of the audience by interpreting, and even anticipating, their actions. Audience members could "touch" each other's video-generated silhouettes, as well as manipulate the odd, playful assortment of graphical objects and animated organisms that appeared on the screen, imbued with the presence of artificial life. myron kruger