Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to the Bastard Space!

james <empyre@factorynoir.com> · Wed, 1 Aug 2007 21:48:06 -0700

Hello Stephan,
I have been patiently waiting for this discussion for a few months  
now.  Allow me to introduce myself first then I hope to address some  
issues and maybe pose some thoughts.  I.R.L. I am known as James  
Morgan, mild mannered lecturer at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media  
at SJSU. I also have a not so Secret Life as Rubaiyat Shatner,  
director of Ars Virtua New Media Center and Gallery located in Second  
Life (on the border of Dowden and Butler).
I have been in Second Life for nearly 2 years now, and WoW for  
probably about a year.  I consider myself a gamer and have played in  
other immersive environments in the past.
I welcome the discussion "beyond the hype."
Aesthetically SL is a 3d cartoon, a low resolution rendering of a  
vast small place.

Psychologically it is a game or a first person shooter.

Sociologically it is liberating, anonymizing, and egalitarian.

Architecturally it is no different, the laws of physics and materials  
differ.
The first show that we did in Ars Virtua was titled "The Real."  I  
curated this show and was deep in the process of patting myself on  
the back for coming up with something so clever as a "real" show in a  
"virtual" environment when in the process of collecting the work and  
laying out the gallery I realized that despite my desire to see the  
work as "virtual" it was in fact as real as any other art that I had  
experienced. That is to say that the experience was real, the objects  
had reality, and the engagement and writing about the work were also  
real.  The simulation had become the simulated.
It is hard for me to see any mediated interaction as anything but a  
"Bastard Space." Along those lines though I am not certain that there  
is a non-bastard space, or that there ever was.
The quality of SL (and WoW) that I find most compelling is the  
immersive social quality. It is difficult for me to explain the  
difference that I feel between a phonecall/IM conversation and one in  
SL, but it centers around a difference in the medium.  I have found  
that in SL there is a common experience, one that contributes to a  
sense of presence.
So if the space is not fundamentally different from another mediated  
space and the primary function is social, what does that mean to  
"native" art in SL?  It becomes a question of the mediation and the  
nature of the social content and context.
Consider Brad Kligerman's Architectural/Sculptural/Mapped/Visual  
space that would have a hard time existing anywhere else and I think  
we start to see a partial answer, but what is it? Truly there is no  
simple answer, though I would not dare to claim it is new it is an  
amazing extension that begins to illuminate the corners of a new medium.
So what role then does architecture have in this space?  What is the  
purpose of architecture IRL?  The meaning of a building is completely  
without context in an environment where distance is deprecated.   
There is no need to move from point A to B when you can teleport, and  
there is no necessity of a floor when everyone can fly.  Architecture  
becomes a magnificent barrier, an inconvenience and a governor of  
experience.
Imitation of functional forms from other media creates an inherent  
uselessness.  Mind you I think this can be compelling and  
illuminating but I have classically railed against this sort of  
transliteration.
James Morgan
Rubaiyat Shatner
On Aug 1, 2007, at 2:27 AM, Stephan Doesinger wrote:
Hi all,
first of all: thanks, Melinda, for your initiative and invitation  
to this discussion.

There are not many forums that discuss Second Life "beyond the  
hype"...
It is obvious that 3D technologies SL are multilayered. So to keep  
life simple - or at least trying hard - my contribution to this  
forum will focus on architecture....
Aesthetically SL seems to be a mirage of reality.

Psycologically it may appear as a stageset filled with digital  
puppets.

In sociological terms SL seems as if it is only about "playing"  
communication.

Architecturally SL appears as a fusion of different spatial  
concepts - "The Bastard Space"(...).

In terms of technology SL may appear as a "3D telephone" or maybe  
even a new kind of internet-interface.

If one imagines a combination of SL (or something like SL) with a  
GPS navigation system, Google Earth or Microsoft Maps, one could  
also imagine, that this could create a new topography of our real  
cities.
At the end of the day we realize, that all of this "virtual matter"  
swaps back to the first world, and somehow fuses, creating  
something new...!
So, as for a kick-off, I want to put forward a few thoughts on  
Second Life, that I summarized in a text entitled "The Bastard  
Spaces".

It was written for the (not yet pblished) catalogue of the Ars  
Electronica Festival 2007, where the "1st Architecture & Design  
competition in SL" will be held. (www.aec.at)
Apart from that, I also want to invite everone of you to submit  
your projects to this competition...

Please find all details at: www.sl-award.com
Stephan
-----------------------------------
Bastard Spaces
1st Annual Architecture and Design Competition in Second Life.

Why are so many people fascinated and at the same time alienated by  
the virtual world in *Second Life* (SL)? Is a deceptive alternative  
to physical reality, to so-called “First Life,” being suggested  
here? What if this metaverse (1) is an eerie mirror of reality?

Could it be that Walter Benjamin’s 1929 commentary has become the  
central metaphor of our basic cultural situation?: “When two  
mirrors look at each other, Satan plays his favorite game and opens  
the perspective to infinity.”(2)

I initiated this architecture and design competition because  
through my artistic work (3) I have become convinced that computer  
games like *Second Life* no longer merely replicate the world, but  
that instead an insidious process of reversal is taking place. The  
aim of the competition is to explore new trends in architecture and  
design on the electronic soil of the MMOG (massive multiplayer  
online game) of Second Life.
In SL we encounter a space that is more than only a metaphor of  
reality. It is both: metaphor and reality. Apart from players’ self- 
dramatization through avatars and buildings as alter egos, it is  
about communication and the skills involved in social adaptation.  
The connection between fiction and reality is bewildering and often  
brings up questions that are elementary for contemporary architecture:

Where are you actually when you make a call on your mobile phone?  
In which reality do you find yourself when you have your iPod in  
your ear, when the acoustic space is uncoupled from the physical  
one? In which space are you located when you are playing a computer  
game, moving through the Internet or using SL as a 3D telephone? It  
seems as though everywhere where physical and media spaces cross,  
new spaces come into existence. These are spaces that are sometimes  
present and sometimes absent, but are usually mobile, moving like  
vagabonds at different speeds over the continents, until they burst  
like a bubble – at the end of a long-distance call on the highway.  
Let’s call them “Bastard Spaces”!

Even what we call the public space is a Bastard Space. It is  
largely a construct of the media because it is about a radical  
economy measured in purchasing power, circulation numbers and  
television ratings. People are transformed into consumers there;  
they become target groups and “eyeballs.” With MySpace, YouTube and  
SL, people write their own parts in this multimedia show – only to  
subsequently reclaim their right to existence as individuals ...

In the course of this process, stage settings are created in SL for  
an absurdist theater reminiscent of Robbe-Grillet’s *Last Year in  
Marienbad* (4). Self-portraits in 3D, buildings full of yearning  
and “dream houses” are revealed when, like Jeff Bridges in *The Big  
Lebowsky*, you fly over a landscape that is situated aesthetically  
somewhere between Bob Ross and *The Sims*. A flowering landscape of  
iconographic formations. When you first wake up and find yourself  
in the architecture of this virtual exile, you automatically think  
of David Lynch’s surreal scenario in *Lost Highway*.

On the other side of Benjamin’s mirror, we gaze at contemporary  
architecture which, as architectural theorist Anthony Vidler  
describes it (5), summons a feeling of the uncanny, seems restless,  
not capable of creating a feeling of home, an architecture that  
manifests the alienation of modernism. We see an architecture that,  
as Michel Houellebecq (6) criticizes, is occupied with setting up  
“the shelves of the social supermarket.”

The competition will demonstrate whether the ideas in SL are  
capable of escaping the radical economy and aesthetic that Excel  
(7) has made into the most important architectural program of our  
times.
---------------------
(1) “The term metaverse comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel  
Snow Crash, and is now widely used to describe the vision behind  
current work on fully immersive 3D virtual spaces. These are  
environments where humans interact (as avatars) with each other  
(socially and economically) and with software agents in a cyber  
space that uses the metaphor of the real world, but without its  
physical limitations.” (*Wikipedia.org*)
(2) Walter Benjamin, *Pariser Passagen*, 1929; Benjamin, Walter:  
*Gesammelte Schriften*, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, Vol. 5, Suhrkamp,  
Frankfurt am Main 1989.
(3) Cf. Stephan Doesinger, *Learning from Sim City*, Revolver  
Verlag Frankfurt 2007: “Die Welt ist ein Computerspiel und dein  
Herz pocht wie Pop-Corn.”
(4) Cf. captions for images from Second Life taken from “Last Year  
in Marienbad” by Alain Robbe-Grillet, quoted from: *Last Year in  
Marienbad*, John Calder publishers, 1977, pp. 50-51.
(5) Cf. Anthony Vidler, *UnHEIMlich - Über das Unbehagen in der  
modernen Architektur*, Edition Nautilus, 2002.
(6) Cf. Michel Houellebecq, *Die Welt als Supermarkt,  
Interventionen*, DuMont, Cologne 1999.
(7) Cf. “Excel has had a greater impact on contemporary  
architecture than Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Frank O. Gehry have  
managed together.” Tor Lindstrand in “Architecture's Second Life,”  
*Archinect*, Jan 9, 2007.
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