Haunted space [private] - Feature - the architecture of virtual reality - Critical Essay

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Sven Lutticken

A couple of years ago the gurus of cyberspace routinely hailed the coming of a new era; a new time and space where our messy material world is supplemented and, in the end, supplanted by a new kind of virtual space. Some have pointed to the Platonic and Gnostic roots of contemporary computer discourse: one often encounters the conviction that the material world is grossly imperfect, and that with the help of the computer it will be possible to leave this world behind and enter a higher habitat of pure data, of pure information. (1) This new space, then, holds the promise to supplement and even supplant our disenchanted physical space, as a technological heaven that can be entered at will. Sometimes, this discourse takes the form of a Romantic/Idealist narrative that sees history in terms of a progressive spiritualization; the reign of Pure Spirit will be realized by technology. Many self-styled visionaries have claimed that technology will soon enable people to download their minds, thus being able to live fo rever as Pure Spirit--a new version of the theories of spiritual evolution that were created by Idealist thinkers and later adapted in grotesquely caricatured versions by theosophy and similar movements. (2) This dream is now receding in the face of the often overwhelmingly mundane applications of computer technology. Parallel to this development, some artists have questioned or complicated the dream of virtual reality as a kind of "improved," transcendent space, purified of the restrictions inherent in matter. In these artists' virtual spaces, the stage is set for a return of the repressed.

SUBLIME DATA

Architects still rely on photography (often digitally altered) to publicize their finished buildings, but computer simulations are increasingly important to create images of an architect's approach. The look associated with the successful Dutch architectural firm MVRDV is created more by its computer sequences than by (photographs of) its finished buildings. Of course, there have been architects before who were influential mainly through plans, for example Boullee, Sant'Elia or Lissitzky. But while their drawings could be visionary, they were graphically quite conventional perspective or axonometric renderings of three-dimensional space. MVRDV, on the other hand, creates computer sequences that give the viewer the illusion that he or she flies through vast spaces, like an immaterial entity, a disembodied angel. One moves through the spaces of MVRDV's Metacity/Datatown videos and video installations not unlike the user of a computer game, except that in this case one cannot control one's movements. The main wo rk, Metacity/Datatoum (1998-2001), is a four-screen surround projection, in the middle of which the viewer sits completely passive--his path through virtual space being preordained. The spaces one traverses are the different sectors of Datatown, an abstract city consisting only, as MVRDV put it, of "huge, pure data." (3) The computer-generated spaces of Datatown exploit the trill of flying at immense speed through space, past vast volumes that look as if they could disappear or reappear at any moment. And, indeed, they sometimes do.

A recent addition to Datatown is the single channel video Pig City, featuring the simulation of a giant tower for the industrial breeding of pigs. Pig City shows the different elements of the tower appearing out of thin air, until the construction is complete--pigs included. The gradual construction of the virtual tower has practical reasons, insofar as this allows the viewer to gain an understanding of its inner workings, but it also enhances the viewer's sense of awe. The whole idea of this bio-industrial skyscraper is so unreal that one cannot help feeling that it is above all intended to enhance MVRDV's aura. Other parts of Datatown include a huge windmill curtain, consisting of an immensely high "wall" of metal tubes to which windmill blades have been attached at regular intervals. There is also a stacked forest: high above the trees there is an immense ceiling, above which there is another forest, and so on. All this stacking has to do with MVRDV's preoccupation with density, which is highly relevant to the densely populated Netherlands. However, its density studies quickly leave the world of Dutch pragmatism behind in order to soar to sublime heights. The animated structures of MVRDV are so immense that the viewer loses his or her familiar sense of scale and appears to be in the hands of powers beyond his or her control. One might imagine MVRDV to be master of the data sublime. This data sublime is an updated version of Kant's "mathematical sublime," which presents the subject with something so vast that it is beyond the powers of the imagination. Where the imagination fails, reason steps in to save the day: the imagination is stretched beyond its capacities, but sublime vastness is according to Kant comprehensible to reason. (4)

In romantic art and poetry, the sublime was often used to emphasize man's futility by presenting something so powerful and great that one is overwhelmed by it: the sheer magnitude of sublime views was a weapon against the banality of modern space. However, poets also developed what Thomas Weiskel has called an "egotistical sublime," which emphasized the vastness and profundity of a poets mind. (5) By showing views that stretch our imagination to or beyond its limits, because they do not account for our political and social reality, MVRDV suggests that even the sky need not be the limit if only visionaries like MVRDV was given free rein. The architects' data sublime is thus transformed into an egotistical sublime. In the final analysis, these works are about MVRDV's great, awe-inspiring vision. MVRDV's actual buildings often have a hard time living up to the promises of its designs and virtual fantasies (although the canny use of digital photography goes a long way). The material world has all these bothersome limitations: creating skyscrapers out of thin air is exceedingly difficult. Old-fashioned, empirical space is bothersome and uncool. MVRDV gives the impression that it would like to download itself and be the virtual maker of virtual architecture. The world is not enough: augmented architecture must become and remain information. Thus MVRDV seems to partake in the tendency to seek salvation in the virtual. The architects reinforce this tendency in order to free them front the strictures imposed on architecture and let them share in the mystique traditionally associated with visionary artists.