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JULIO BERMUDEZ
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Published in: Proceedings of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA)/AACP Congress 97. Edmonton, Canada, pp.9-13 (1997)
Note: This work was made possible by a University of Utah Faculty Research/Creative Grant.
© copyright 1997 Julio Bermudez. All rights reserved.
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". . . the radical innovations of art embody the preverbal stages of new concepts that will eventually change a civilization." [1]
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As we go on with our daily affairs, a new environment is being invisibly, silently yet rapidly developed. This new and vast territory is being populated at a rate that makes it the fastest growing community and environment on Earth. I am of course referring to cyberspace. [2] Equally remarkable is the fact that this electronic world will soon become truly three-dimensional and eventually immersive. Although cyberspace has hitherto been off-limit to designers (i.e., architects, landscape architects, artists, etc.) this is beginning to change. Yet, there remains an apathy from the design community regarding virtuality. Considering that the place-making opportunities of cyberspace are literally boundless, this situation is at the very least amusing. However, there are some reasons for this awkward condition.
First, the best insights on cyberspace have been aired through verbal media which, although perfectly fit to many disciplines, is not the mother tongue of designers. Looking at any design publication is sufficient to realize that we are strongly geared towards the visual medium. Having few examples of design related to cyberspace. This is a major obstacle because the designerly mind uses design work as the text through which visions, reflections, and recommendations are built, recorded, and communicated. Designers carry out their work and develop their ideas through neither detached scientific experiments nor written humanistic critiques. Rather they get involved with the issue at hand as a design issue, that is, they understand it by trying to give a design response to it. [3] These design proposals or 'visual essays' are then used as examples to learn from and build architectural knowledge upon. With few examples of design work related to cyberspace, we see little relevancy in working with virtual worlds. The result is that valuable design attempts at dealing with cyberspace encounter unusual theoretical, technological, ideological, or practical resistance and skepticism from within the design community.
Second, arguments have been presented against the conceptualization of cyberspace as a environment suitable for true human use/inhabitation and therefore in no need for environmental design. Although there may be some apparent good reasons for holding to a traditional interpretation of place-making and hence denying the possibility of cyber-scapes or virtual architectures, [4] such conservative and a-priori stands shut down great opportunities to conceptualize what alternative constructions and environments could be like. After all, the purpose of place-making is to house and mark human behaviors, be them in actual or virtual space. The fact that the locus of our actions is made of matter or information should be ultimately irrelevant. Marcos Novak clarifies this point: [5]
"To the extent that this development [i.e., the creation of cyberspace] inverts the present relationship of human to information, placing human within the information space, it is an architectural problem; but beyond this, cyberspace has an architecture of its own and, furthermore, can contain architecture. To repeat: cyberspace is architecture; cyberspace has an architecture; and cyberspace contains architecture." (emphasis in the original).
In other words, environmental design may and need to happen in virtuality. Cyberspace demands our attention. Should the design disciplines choose not to respond to this opportunity we can be sure that others will, causing a great loss to our profession and society at large.
Third, another reason for the apathy that designers have towards cyberspace is the suspicion that virtuality subverts what we believe to be essential to the human nature and hence to design itself. The design disciplines have traditionally worked with/in/for the physical world. Our material body has provided us with a referential foundation that, it would seem, cannot be transcended. Tectonics and the body have been central to the very idea and practice of design. In contrast, virtuality appears to underscore these traditional roots by dematerializing environment and presence. This disembodiment also affects us at the most intimate level of touch.
As there is presently little or no actual touch in cyberspace, virtuality would seem to deny the direct link that the sense of touch creates between body and world. The fact that we have coined the term 'high-touch' to refer to high qualitative levels of experiences and in contrast to 'high-tech' is revealing. The seeming lack of tectonics and bodily properties would suggest that cyberspace is condemned to be a terribly cold, inhumane and detached place. But is this true? Is cyberspace really an unbalanced environment where high tech has killed all hope for high touch? Or, is it just our technophobia masked by well articulated excuses?
Given the inevitable evolution of cyberspace, our duty is not to accept preconceived notions of what virtuality is or could be but to study possible, alternative solutions. More precisely, the challenge is to establish a dynamic balance between technology and human nature even in the midst of the totally technology dependent world of virtuality.
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Following is experimental design work that explores the qualitative aspects of 3D virtual environments. The work addresses the mentioned three reasons that have kept designers from engaging cyberspace. Our design actions alone are sufficient to respond to the first one. Generating design examples would stop the existing apathy by showing the value and use of cyberspace to advance design and of design to advance cyberspace. This would dissipate some doubts or at least help designers suspend their disbelief regarding cyberspace. The last two problems are addressed by exploring the capacity of the virtual to constitute place via tectonic reinterpretations. If properly imported, materiality can provide virtuality with involving experiential qualities.
The design work used the following five interdependent theoretical and productive premises:
1. The project focuses on the environment, not the objects within that environment. Design work on virtual worlds has been dominated by an emphasis on form rather than on space, on the contained and not the container, on architecture and not on place. This bias has made it hard to study the larger environmental qualities of the cyber. Focusing on the 'virtualscape' itself brings our attention to aural (Walter Benjamin) issues that are essentially associated with emotional, situational, and experiential states. By moving from the solid to the void, the study looks at a theory and practice of designing the ultimate negative, that is, the very extension that defines and supports the virtual universe. This approach necessarily demands metaphysical considerations.
2. The design work uses real and not digitally generated phenomena as its inspiration and driving force. Digital technologies carry such a strong bias to the envisioning and construction of virtuality that the result is often devoided of much experiential 'thickness' (i.e., detail, complexity, etc.). This limits us to the existing preconceptions concerning what can and cannot be done in/with/for the virtual and tend to generate worlds of poor quality. In contrast, using reality as a source for virtuality puts us in a different state of mind that is more conducive to new theoretical, design, and productive opportunities. The variety, richness, complexity, and accessibility of real phenomena provide limitless potential for producing alternative visions of the virtual if the selected events defy conventional types of experiences. This is an essential condition to avoid the impoverishment of the virtual by easy and literal transplantations from the real. The major creative sin would be to make the virtual a mirror of the real. For not only would this be highly difficult to do but also, and worse, it would be an unforgiving lack of imagination.
3. The design work uses a minimalist approach to tectonics for representing and exploring the qualities of cyberspace. There are three reasons for this. First, as said, cyberspace does not need to follow or copy reality. In fact, it is the potential lack of resemblance that is so appealing about virtuality. Utilizing basic tectonics to generate potential visualizations of virtuality creates the opportunities to neither copy nor reject reality but instead transcend that dualist position altogether. It also allows us to concentrate on environmental issues (i.e., space and context) rather than objects. The Ôtectonic simulation of the virtualÕ demands the selection and juxtaposition of materials, processes, technologies, and states associated with the qualities of information Ñ such as fluidity, lightness, complexity, ambiguity, and transparency.[6] By changing the focus of observation, context, scale and speed of real material phenomena, tectonics can generate powerful and completely new visualizations and conceptualization of the virtual. The only consideration is that these images must avoid recognition. Second, a strong tectonic presence, even if virtual, invites the natural projection of bodily sensations that creates a direct kinship between feelings and experience Ñ the sense of touch arouses emotional responses (intimacy, smoothness, etc.). As a result, the design immediately obtains a qualitative character very difficult to elicit by other means. Finally, the fact that tectonics are used metaphorically to suggest virtual environments that are by definition immaterial, challenges the strong historical alliance of design (particularly architecture) with ontologies of stability and materiality. This subversion of matter is very appropriate. If designers can let go of the idea of being as a permanent, defined, and solid entity, then any discipline/body can.
4. The design exploits the conditions of betweenness by unfolding between figuration and abstraction, the digital and the analog, the known and the unknown, and virtuality and reality. The project seeks the surreal contrast between the accuracy and sharpness of the digital images (that at first suggest high degrees of design certainty and refinement) and their actual high levels of dissonance, fluidity, and ambiguity. The digital re-presentations of analog events and tectonic constructions create a very strange and evocative perception. The attempt is, on one hand, to avoid abstract detachment with all its negative high tech associations of platonic austerity (i.e., Gibson's Neuromancer 'syndrome') and lack of experiential qualities and, on the other hand, to reject obvious, cartoonish replicas of the real in the hope of attaining a superficial high touch. Seeking such alien familiarity, the design work tries to establish a completely different sense of place.
5. The investigation uses alternative design methodologies to generate the poetics of the virtual. Applying the first four premises requires hybrid technologies and non-electronic modeling techniques.[7] A complex physical installation combining diverse media (e.g., television, video, slide projection, lights, material screens, water, gas) is constructed. The objective is to produce events that challenged the qualities of matter and thus potentially inspired new visualizations of the virtual. The installation is purposely designed to generate random processes and results that are video-taped. This performance is then digitally captured and manipulated until obtaining the final design.
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The Design Work (Art Work: Video)
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References
[1] Shlain, L. (1991). Art & Physics. Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light. (New York: Quill William Morrow), p.17
[2] Cyberspace is the computer-generated, interactive and information environment that is globally networked by telecommunication technologies (telephone, cable, satellite). It has about 40 million users today and grows at a rate of about 10% per month. Some argue that by early next century there will be more network users than citizens of any single country except India or China.
[3] See for example, Cross, N. (1986). "Understanding Design: The Lessons of Design Methodology". Design Methods and Theories 20:2, pp.409-438; and (1982). "Designerly Ways of Knowing. Design Studies 3:4, pp.221-227. Lawson, B. (1980). How Designers Think (London: Architectural Press). Rowe, P. (1987). Design Thinking. (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press)
[4] A good reading in this line of argumentation is Goldberger, P. (1995) "Cyberspace, Trips to Nowhere Land." The New York Times (5 October), B-1.
[5] Novak, M.(1991). "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace"; in M. Benedikt (ed.): Cyberspace. First Steps. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) pp.225-254, quote p.226
[6] Complex natural and man-made phenomena that behave with high degrees of fluidity and chaos were found particularly useful (e.g., liquid turbulences, light interferences, electric feedback loops, media effects, etc.). These kinds of events have been largely ignored by science until recently. The adventment of the sciences of complexity has created interest in these phenomena but little design work has been done to exploit this realm. The visual expressions of 'psychedelic art' of late 60's and early 70's (i.e., paintings, light shows, etc.) or more recent media installations are not far away from the type of work here referred to. However, the approach, goal, and results differ from those experiences.
[7] This methodology was developed based on some of the technics and methodologies elaborated by professor Bennett Neiman (New College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado at Denver)
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