CyberEmpathy Journal Issue 1/2011 (1) Sketches from Virtual Reality Special Edition

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

SKETCHES FROM VIRTUAL SPACE „Nothing could be more important than the effort taken to understand where our world is going, and if we should resist, or whether, accepting the move, actively participate in it.”

(Stanisław Lem)

INTRO

AGNIESZKA SZÓSTAKOWSKA

1. Abstract Sketches from Virtual Space seeks to analyze creative new possibilities arising from the relationship between architecture and electronic “virtual” space (or cyberspace), which has recently become an integral part of man's existential territory.

In doing so, Sketches addresses these questions: What is Cyberspace?

Where is it? How is it constructed? How is it formed? And finally: If there is architecture in cyberspace, what are the characteristics and processes that shape it?

PhD Dissertation 2011 Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow

Chapter One – “Cyberspace” introduces cyberspace in its proper context, beginning with a presentation of “virtuality” as a concept from which the idea of cyberspace is based. Then we analyze the technological, philosophical and psychological aspects of virtuality, before presenting different concepts related directly or indirectly to these notions. Finally, we list and describe the specific characteristics of cyberspace that distinguish it from other types of space.

Chapter Two - “The Structure of Cyberspace” determines what is, or what could constitute the tissue (matter) and structure (sets of the organizing systems) of cyberspace that virtual architecture might employ. Here we introduce the concepts of substance and structures in cyberspace: Cyberspace Substance, as described in this chapter, defines the ambiguous nature of virtual environments, which contain both informative and symbolic elements. Cyberspace Structures are mathematical entities (man’s way of organizing and describing observed www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) phenomena), and can be described as tools of geometric abstraction and geometric metaphor. This conclusion is reached after analyzing various geometric systems, and then determining which of the known geometric systems are most suitable for use in this environment. In the end, we introduce the notion of “cyber-metry”—an alternative geometry for cyberspace that can become the basis for the creation of cyber structures.

Chapter Three – “Architecture and Cyberspace” presents various concepts introduced by the pioneers of architecture in cyberspace and analyzes the architectural potential therein. We explain why architecture fits naturally into cyberspace despite the fact that it is an artistic expression normally associated with physical reality. Based on the conclusions of the two previous chapters, we develop ideas regarding the innovative processes of creating new worlds, and the role and function of architecture in these processes.

2. Thesis Designers in the early twenty-first century arrived at the intersection of two worlds: physical reality and electronically generated virtuality. The purpose of this work is to analyze virtual environments and their increasingly growing importance in the processes of creating human existential space.

Architecture fits very naturally into the new cyberspatial realm‘ however, it brings its unique baggage with it. This thesis presents a new way of looking at the relationship between architecture and—stemming from an understanding of the nature of cyberspace itself—its origin and specificity. This new understanding allows us to develop tools that will facilitate the architectural exploration of cyberspace.

From the outset of this research, one of the main issues of interest has been the question of the very nature of cyberspace. For a point of departure, we took what is available from design and construction elements in the physical world (materials and structures) and found that, in the cyberspatial environment, these tools proved to be elegantly analogous to various aspects of mental states and cognition. This discovery allowed us to see cyberspace as a fascinating domain of abstract mental creativity, with cognition, imagination, and creativity being the new tools for cyberspatial “architecture.”

It also led us to the conclusion that this cyber-architecture (virtual architecture) is a tool that can help us organize this space. However, because cyber-architecture is a new concept, and much broader than the term “architecture” to which we have become accustomed, we should thoroughly rethink the terms, concepts, definitions, and the very essence of the phenomena of cyberspace design.

Any discussion of virtual electronic architecture asks the questions: Can we even talk about architecture in cyberspace? Should we redefine the term “architectural design”? Is cyber-architecture in fact a new discipline of design?

3.

Sketches – Methodology

Attempts to answer these questions are made not only theoretically, but also in the form of sketchesSketches from the Virtual Space. Sketching is chosen as a creative research method because it frees the imagination from the constraints of reality, allowing one to think of cyberspace as a space that is naturally at home in the human mind. Sketches are a permanent and important part of this work.

I hope that my work touches on important issues related to cyberspace, but I am aware that my voice might be just www.issuu.com/cyberempathy CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) another in the chorus of those who are fascinated with the new possibilities arising from this electronic world. In any case, I feel justified because, as Stanislaw Lem said, "Nothing could be more important than the effort taken to understand where our world is going, and if we should resist, or whether, accepting the move, actively participate in it."

By writing this dissertation, I choose to participate.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

I CYBERSPACES 1. Virtuality

1.1. Phantomology and Immersion What can a man experience when connected to a phantomatic generator? Everything. He can climb the Alps, wander on the Moon without a suit and oxygen mask; in chainmail armor he can conquer medieval castles or the North Pole, led by his dedicated team. He can be celebrated by masses as the winner of the Marathon or as the greatest poet of all time; he can accept the Nobel Prize from a Swedish King; he can have a love affair with Mme. de Pompadour, duel with Jargon to avenge Othello, or be stabbed by Mafia henchmen. He can also feel the growth of his huge eagle wings; he can fly, or become a fish living among the coral reefs; as a huge shark he can rush towards a school of victims with open jaws. He can kidnap bathers to eat and digest them in the calm nooks of his underwater cave. (...) [1] “Through imitation”—this is how Stanislaw Lem describes how to deal with limited human perception in the sixth chapter of his famous Summa Technologiae, entitled “Phantomology.” According to Lem, projection of fantasy (mentioned earlier as “imitation”) might happen through linking the human nervous system to a “generator” (computer) that would visualize imaginary worlds and enable interaction within the created simulation. Lem called this device a “Phantomatic Generator” and he introduced the concept of two kinds of “Phantomatic Systems”: Peripheral (working outside of the body), and Central (more advanced, invasive, and directly connected to the nervous system). He was defining the existence of an ideal interactive program that would be able to cope even with the most sophisticated fantasies and become a partner in phantomatic adventures.

What Lem envisioned as Phantomology in the nineteen-fifties exists in today’s consciousness and popular culture as Virtual Reality (VR), or more precisely, Virtual Reality Technologies — the interface between man and man-created new electronic space, or Cyberspace. VR technologies aim to produce a fully involved experience, obtaining a socalled “full immersion effect” in the electronic virtual environment:

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) VR allows you to put your hand around the Milky Way, swim in the human bloodstream or visit Alice in Wonderland. (Nicholas Negroponte). [2] The possibility of electronically generated worlds connected to the development of VR technologies and fast-arising cyberspace took hold in the literature and art of the late twentieth century, and continues to grow. Modern cyberspace has gone beyond the world of fantasy and is now an integral part of everyday reality. It thus seems a good idea to understand the opportunities and threats that come with them.

1.2. The Virtuality and the Myth Understanding the importance of the concept of virtuality in relationship to culture and philosophy can help to define the essential factors that shape cyberspace. Cyberspace is closely linked to the notion of virtuality not only because of its obvious associations with technology, but also because of its strong relationship to the mind’s pathways and spaces.

There are many dimensions that can be considered when defining the concept of virtuality: the philosophical dimension associated with the essence of existence or nonexistence; the psychological and cultural dimension, wherein the concept of virtuality is associated with the definition of subjective space and is related to cognitive and creative processes; and finally, the technological dimension, which is related to progressive computerization of life and its consequences. [3] 1.2.1. Philosophical dimension of Virtuality Philosophically, the notion of virtuality can be tracked back to the writings of Plato, through Leibniz's Monadology, and then to phenomenology. The last one probably best characterizes the modern way of thinking about virtuality.

Philosophy considers virtuality at many levels: ontological—the existence of the phenomenon of virtuality and its relationship to reality; epistemological—knowledge about the principles of operation of the subject in the virtual realm and understanding the processes that take place; axiological, which explores the ability of evaluation by the subject; anthropological—the examination of the existential dimension of virtuality, psychophysical dualism and the concept of consciousness on the aesthetic level[4].

“Virtual” means theoretically possible or “likely to occur [exist]”[5]. But what does it mean to “exist”? Does “imagined” or “thought of” mean the same as “existing”? Is imagined reality real or virtual? Finally, do the experiences described by Lem in Summa, “exist” or “not exist”? Or, maybe they are “likely to exist?”

The question of the significance of the electronic virtual experience is basic for any attempt at designing electronic worlds. There are many opinions on this subject, both denying and admiring the importance of the virtual experience. Many of the creators of virtual spaces, such as Marcos Novak, base their opinions on the belief in the equivalence of virtual experience and real experience, positions that correspond with the phenomenological movement in philosophy.

Phenomenology refers both to direct observation and the description of the phenomenon. Anti-assumptionism, or the suspension of the belief in the real world and the perceiving subject (the purity of consciousness according to phenomenologists), allows us to treat every experience equally. Another researcher of virtual worlds, Peter Anders, believes that symbols and objects have the same status of reality in the mind, meaning that the mind does not distinguish the virtual from the real and treats them equally. In cyberspace, all artifacts are symbolic—the brain recognizes their importance in an associative way. They all relate to the physical world through metaphor, and in the context of cyberspace, the www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) virtual experience functions not only as “likely to occur,” but as existing as much as the real experience.

Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells goes further in analyzing the virtual, linking it not only to the recognition of virtual experience but also to the process of creation of meanings that, in the electronic era, also occur through virtuality: Virtuality is our reality. This is what distinguishes the culture of the information age from previous periods: our creation of meaning is done mainly through Virtuality. [6] It is worth mentioning Baudrillard’s concept of hyper-reality and Simulacra and Simulation —the overlapping “images without content,” which covers reality and contemplation of the existence of reality.

Becoming independent from the sign and blurring the boundary between the real world and its representations, leads, according to Baudrillard, to a hyper-reality that prevents the demarcation of phenomena as either ontological or semiotic.

Striving to create new worlds is an important aspect of virtuality. Michal Ostrowicki, in his publication Virtual Realis, suggests that Baudrillardian hyper-reality could be interpreted as resulting from humanity’s desire to create an alternative reality that is perfect and humanistic, and which completely belongs to man—a different, supporting, and improving substitute for his insufficient reality. [7] Ostrowicki also points to the concept of "replacement" of assumed reality by virtuality, and perceives that a human being that is submerged in the alternate versions of reality is creating a world “almost metaphysically.” Existential dualism, alternative states of the being, irresolution between real and unreal—they all encourage a confused mind to seek for more understandable solutions: Therefore, you may want to think about the ontology of fiction, the logic of possible worlds, how the worlds of thought exist, what is the essence of Virtual Reality, what is the intentional reality, etc. And also—what is the consequence of all of this for "normal" reality. [8] Wolfgang Welsch noticed that modern civilization is immersed in virtuality, also connecting this fact directly to the philosophical impossibility of determining the nature of reality. He says: Artificial worlds, such as art, media, electronic virtual worlds or politics form the domain of existence of the subject between fiction and reality. Navigating artificial worlds is the process of changing the subject and switching between contexts, which is the only possible state of existence. [9] Hyper-reality seems to come closer to man than reality. Ostrowicki says that “it may occur that the realm of the virtual sphere is mostly an existential issue; for example, it may be the way to secure the existence, the choice of a safer world.” [10] In conclusion, virtual experience can be considered not only as being equal to real experience, but as a more human, more understandable and predictable version of reality. This leads to the perception of virtual environments as functional human environments, wherein everything connected to the mind gets (gains) a real or true dimension in the virtual sphere.

1.2.2. Cultural and psychological dimension of virtuality The cultural aspect of virtuality is perceived as the ability to produce culture, and is linked with cognitive and creative operations of the mind, as well as with the process of abstract thinking. According to Elizabeth Grosz, virtuality as a cultural phenomenon has been with us for a very long time. We did not have to wait for the appearance of the computer www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) screen to be able to enter virtual space; we’ve been living in its shadow for centuries: Computers and the world they generate reveal that the world in which we live, the real world, has always been a virtual space. [11] According to Grosz, computer virtual space is not fundamentally different from other forms of virtuality—like processes of reading, writing, drawing or thinking. Cultural understanding of virtuality is associated with our mental ability to synthesize, to process and produce an image of the world – it is our mental computing operational background, a metaphysical laboratory. It’s our private space where we produce an image of the world in which we live.

Ostrowicki claims that the mind by its nature is a virtual environment, programmed just to process information by means of simulations and tests. The role of computers is to extend the experience of mental and sensory experience, thus creating the image of perceived reality outside of our bodies and minds—an Artificial Consciousness.

Artificial consciousness and the desire to create artificial intelligence (or independent consciousness), is a major topic in modern science. Lem, in the Summa, was describing “intelligence amplifiers” that would significantly improve the functioning of the mind. In the nineteeneighties, Howard Rheingold, a researcher of VR technology, promoted computers as "Tools for Thought.” The concept of “Mind Amplifiers” appears quite frequently elsewhere in literature. [12] Perceiving virtual space as an extension of the operating environment of the human mind is a very important point on the road to exploring the nature of cyberspace, as it draws attention to important implications of virtuality in contemporary cognitive and creative processes.

Today, cyberspatial virtuality is mainly associated with communication, with sharing humanity’s private zones of “external consciousness.”

Artificial consciousness introduced into cyberspace thus becomes a common, shared consciousness, and cyberspace becomes the domain of coexistence. Ostrowicki points out: The cultural layer of virtuality is formed by a concept of a multifunctional network of relations, resulting from the application of technology, and transforming society as a whole. [13] Members of today’s society are evolving under the influence of the new possibilities of their now linked, extended minds. Virtuality, if understood in this way, becomes cultural reality, or at least a major factor in creating this reality.

1.2.3. Technological aspect of virtuality The technological dimension of virtuality is associated with the development of computer technologies and networks. Here, Virtuality is perceived in terms of the technology of Virtual Reality (VR). Frederick Brooks defines it as follows: I define a virtual reality experience as any in which the user is effectively immersed in a responsive virtual world. [14] According to Ostrowicki, it is significant that the meaning of virtuality has been created inside the world of electronics, where this notion has a clearly self - expressed meaning. In contrast to the ambiguous nature of philosophical or psychological meanings, the technological meaning of virtuality seems to be easy to define due to the rigors of logic that rules the computer world. Technologically, the world of electronic virtuality is simply a new kind of reality.

VR technologies aim to achieve a perfect simulation like that described

by Lem in the Summa. The development of an interface is moving in the www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) direction that provides the perfect linkage between the device and man, which produces an ideal illusion, a perfect and comfortable connection to the network through the device, and becomes in fact an extension of man. Finally, it leads to the manufacturing an environment, which can be fully programmed, controlled; the environment of interactions, simulation, a full immersion through a device. [15] The device is therefore a prerequisite for communication in the information age. Because of the device, information gains the characteristics of a biological entity and it replaces it. A biological object becomes a generator of information, which, after it is released from its physical constraints, leads its own life in a virtual environment.

The existence of man entangled in such a constructed system is located between the technological virtuality and reality. According to Ostrowicki, we can observe the evolution of the idea of virtuality, which is associated with computer technology and reaches a certain degree of perfection, complementing or even creating man’s reality.

Artificial Reality offers us a new kind of reality that may be the answer to our expectations, announcing that an idea can become true physical reality.

We are now witnessing changing opinions regarding the definition of artificial versus natural, real versus virtual, as these concepts lose their explicitness. Virtuality ceases to be defective in relation to reality, and if it is, it's only on the basis of one's subjectivity.

[1] Lem S., Summa Technologiae, Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, wyd.

4 poszerzone, Lublin 1982, (s. 165) [2] Holtzman S., Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace, Touchstone, 1998 [3] Michał Ostrowicki is proposing this distinguishing in his work "Virtual Realis". He is distinguishing three major levels of comprehending virtuality: technological, cultural and philosophical.

Piotr Sitarski in the article ‘ Preliminary characteristics of the virtual reality ' recognizes two ways of describing virtuality: technological and psychological.

[4] Ostrowicki M., Wirtualne Realis. Estetyka w epoce elektroniki, Universitas, Kraków 2006, p. 19.

[5] „Virtual - (theoretically) possible, which is ‘likely to occur’.”

(Kopaliński W.: Słownik wyrazów obcych i zwrotów obcojęzycznych.

Warszawa : Wiedza Powszechna 1983, p. 454) [6] Ostrowicki M., op.cit. p. 39 (M. Castells).

[7] Ibid., p. 43.

[8] Ibid., p. 47.

[9] Ibid., p. 31.

[10] Ibid. p. 48.

[11] Grosz E., Architecture from the Outside, Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, 2001, p. 78.

[12] For instance by Holtzman and Anders, and in many essays concerning architecture in the Cyberspace.

[13] Ostrowicki M., op.cit. p. 18.

[14] Brooks F.P. Jr., What’s real About Virtual Reality, 1999.

[15] "Virtual Reality", a book by Howard Rheingold, the researcher and the theoretician of new media is an excellent sources for tracing beginnings of the technological virtuality. Rheingold is describes beginnings of the creation of the VR technology, the Internet, or first HMD. [16] Ostrowicki M., op.cit.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

2. Cyberspace

2.1. Subjective Space Human space is an area that man produces and defines by himself, using systems like the synthesis of knowledge, experience, social and cultural conditions. Thus, the space where we live is a subjective product of our consciousness and can be called an existential space. As pointed out by Christian Norberg-Schulz, we do not simply perceive the world as common to us all, as some naive realists claim, but as different worlds that are “products of our motivations and past experiences”. „Objective space does not exist.” - says Schulz.The existence of intersubjective space is only a hypothesis, and every man owns his own "private" space.” [1] According to cognitive psychology, stimulus information processing plays as equally an important role in determining behavior as the stimuli itself (Input Stimuli). Psychologists say that people in this process are not simply reactive beings, but more importantly, active beings who choose and create their own individual stimuli environments: A person doesn’t respond to the reality of the objective world, he responds to reality as it is represented in the subjective reality of his inner world of thought and imagination. [2] It also has been proven that perception of space is a complex process that involves a number of factors: Generally speaking, perception leads to the formulation of important assumptions about the nature of the environment, and these assumptions vary depending on the situation we are in. [3] From early childhood, we attempt to define our own living space.

Initially, we put our own being in the center to build an outer world around ourselves. From these initial experiments, as evidenced by Norberg-Schulz, arise a strong cultural need to determine the center of everything we build and create—the center of a house, city or country.

Peter Anders said that our position in space determines the mutual relationships between the elements in this space because we are in the center of each spatial scheme we create and we are also the point of reference for every spatial arrangement.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) 2.2. Existential space Norberg-Schulz believes that human interest in space has existential roots arising from the need to capture important relationships in the environment, and from the need to introduce meaning and order to the world. The concept of existential space includes processes that create and arrange our own internal subjective space. Existential space is a space that draws us into a broad social and cultural structure and allows us to exist in it. Norberg-Schulz believes that the concept of existential space is the key to defining any kind of space. He argues that lack of awareness of the existential theory of space renders any attempts to define and design the space incomplete and inadequate. The roots of Norberg-Schulz’s theory of existential space are found in the research of psychologist Jean Piaget, who proved that our awareness of space is based on operational schemes—the experiences we have with different things and situations.

"Existential Space" is a psychological concept, defining schemas that man develops in interaction with the environment in order to be able to satisfactorily operate in it. [4] Existential Space, in other words, is a relatively stable perceptual framework—an "image" of the environment. This system is shaped by cultural patterns, our own experiences, knowledge, and ability to connect facts with each other—in other words, intelligence. Piaget emphasizes the role of intelligence: The true nature of space does not lie in a more or less developed nature of experience as such, but in the intelligence that binds these experiences together. [5] This inner space, according to Norberg-Schulz, still needs spatial and perceptive coordinates, or ways of establishing relationships between the elements of space, focal points of these spaces, setting directions and determining territories. Derrick de Kerckhove says that, “space is a product of consciousness and our perceived space derives from a mix of direct and mediated stimulation.” [6] Space is a product of the interactions between organism and environment, and it is impossible to separate the visualized organization of the world from the organization of the activity itself.

2.3. The space of the mind The notion of Mental Space as a theoretical construct proposed by Gilles Fauconnier and Armen Khederlariana, refers to the existence of possible worlds in philosophy. Mental space, according to the authors of the concept, does not contain a credible representation of reality, but its idealized cognitive model. The concept of mental space with respect to cyberspace, however, conveys slightly different meanings. It is used to emphasize its belonging to a group of spaces associated with the architecture of the mind, and to emphasize the contrast between the known world of thought and the unfamiliar, incomprehensible world of nature. This space of mind (mental space) can be considered another term for subjective existential space, wherein the mind is the main causative tool. In his book Envisioning Cyberspace, Peter Anders proves that cyberspace is a kind of mental space. He believes that space itself is the medium—a communication tool for thought. Communication in mental space happens by formulating metaphors, symbols and characters, and the more we learn to operate in this environment the more we create spaces of memory and cognition. Anders gives an example of the medieval practice of constructing Memory Palaces as a specific sample of the architecture of mental space. Memory palaces were constructs similar in design to known architectural structures, and thoughts could be located in the various nooks of these buildings. In this way, men could memorize long sequences of verbal communication. At www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) the time, such methods were necessary to maintain the continuity of history and language because of the high cost of written media. Anders says that the idea of memory palaces comes back in cyberspace, notably in the processes of memory mapping, databasing and visualization.

Reasoning is based on spatial thinking; Mnemonic Structures, Memory Images, Mental Models which all make cyberspace a mental space.

Other researchers, such as Derrick de Kerckhove, believe that cyberspace is not a mental space, but its electronic evolution (extension). Cyberspace cannot be only mental space – as mental space works internally without the use of conductors and electronic amplifiers (computers and network connections), while cyberspace is an environment dependent on this type of generators. According to Kerckhove, the common ground for cyberspace and mental space is virtuality: It is virtuality, not the spatiality of cyberspace, that makes it akin to mental space. Cyberspace is fluid and inexhaustible like the mind, but it is neither exclusively material not truly “mental.” And it certainly is different from physical space. It is a single environment, allowing every imaginable combination, permutation and configuration of networks. Mental space is also virtual. Both kinds of spaces require visualization and design, and both play with sensorial representations/simulations. Both are endowed with memory, and both have search, retrieve and display mechanisms. Both practice information processing and both are endowed with intelligence. [7] To summarize, cyberspace is a space rooted in mental space, but it is not just a mental space; it is a new electronic area and an extension of the mind.

2.4. Cyberspace Cyberspace is a concept introduced by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer (1984): ”Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding." [8] The term “cyberspace” is the combination of “cyber,” (from the Greek kybernan, which means control [9]) with the concept of space. The prefix “cyber” is usually associated with the field of cybernetics: “the science of effective organization, control and communication mechanisms of animals and machines” [10]. Cybernetics and its scientific methods largely determined man’s approach to understanding life and space in the twentieth century. Today, cyberspace is identified with electronic networks, information technology, communication space, and especially with internet communication.

Some people point to the beginnings of cyberspace in the early Morse telegraph experiments, and broaden its definition to include all possible methods of remote communication and creation in the tele-space [11].

Contemporary communication networks that surround Earth (satellites, Internet, telephone, etc.) create the so-called Bitsphere (Mitchell), which is the tissue of cyberspace’s construction.

Cyberspace is thus a space of connections, an intangible area of communication. Ostrowicki says that electronic environments trigger the information-oriented nature of man to explore and search for new means of coexistence [12]. Electronic environments convey communication in their nature: www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) There is a new continuity between the private mind and the world, but there is also a new connectivity between the private minds in the world. [13] While cyberspace is undeniably part of our everyday life, or existential space, it is also a sphere of cognition, analysis and creation. It is an integral part of the existential space of each individual, and, as a “tool of thought,” an extension of the mental space within which we synthesize all of the processes that produce the image of our own subjective reality. Cyberspace in relation to other types of space—physical and mental spaces—cannot be, as Grosz says, a “parallel universe',” but is instead an integral part of the world in which we operate every day.

Cyberspace, according to Kerckhove, is qualitatively different, although partially integrated with other types of ”space” that people occupy: physical and mental space.

Cyberspace is the third area between, around and within the physical and mental spaces (...). [14] In contrast to cyberspace, which relates to intangible values, we have the so-called “meatspace,” or the space of the body. The term “meatspace” reflects the contemporary gap between the known and the (seemingly) defined space of the mind and the body—a mechanism we have not yet managed to understand. This mind/body conflict is clearly visible in twentieth century culture, where the body is a burden for the imaginative mind, which is fueled by communication and the promises offered by the electronics and computer industry. The mind develops, the body grows old and dies. Many, including Stanislaw Lem, dreamed of the separation of body and mind, where the spontaneous functioning of the brain and consciousness, without depending on the imperfect state of the body, is the ultimate model of living. Many similar visions can be found in science fiction literature. The dream of freeing the mind from the body is not the only role that the concept of body plays in cyberspace. The flesh of cyberspace is liquid, living, and fluctuating.

From this perspective, biological associations with the body are instead a tribute to the inexpressible perfection of biological mechanisms that desire to explore the essence of biological life and point in the direction of engineering and cybernetics development.

Cyberspace is malleable, fluid, computable with high accuracy, and process-able in real time; [it is] hypertextual, interactive, and finally, virtual. [15] Cyberspace is not just an extension of the mind, but it also strengthens it. Lem, in Summa, imagined computers as “intelligence amplifiers” that support man’s biological computing operations. Robinette, in updating Lem’s concept, prefers the term - "Intelligence Amplification".

Cyberspace is an extension of mental and physical space, a way of existence in space.

[1] Szmidt B., Ład przestrzeni, PIW, Warszawa 1981, p. 25.

[2] Zimbardo P.G., Psychologia i życie, tłum. Czerniawska E., PWN, Warszawa 2002.

[3] Norberg – Schulz C., Bycie, przestrzeń i architektura, Murator, Warszawa, 2000, p. 10.

[4] Norberg – Schulz C., op.cit., p. 37.

[5] Ibid., p. 17.

[6] Kerckhove D., The Architecture of Intelligence (The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture), Birkhäuser Basel, 2001, p. 12.

[7] Kerckhove D., op.cit., p. 18.

[8] Gibson W., Neuromancer, Zysk - s-ka, Warszawa 2001; przekład Piotr W. Cholewa.

[9] Kopaliński Władysław – Słownik wyrazów obcych i zwrotów obcojęzycznych, Wiedza Powszechna, Warszawa, 1968 [10] Chris Lucas www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) [11] Cyberspace, although defined as new, is not new. The early pioneers like Morse, Edison and Marconi penetrated it already. The invention of the computer only increased its territory, since the uses of electronic computing. The marriage of similarities, cyberspace: it can be considered as the area of electronic communication including communication networks, signal transmission, and the interaction of computers. Francis Habit [12] Ostrowicki M., Wirtualne Realis. Estetyka w epoce elektroniki, Universitas, Kraków 2006, (p. 29) [13] Kerckhove D., op.cit, p. 15.

[14] Ibid., p. 17.

[15] Pierre Levy

3. Properties of Cyberspace

3.1. What is Cyberspace?

Cyberspace, like mental space, is liquid, flexible and vibrant. It continually transforms as it creates a hypertextual, non-linear environment rather than a linear time-space continuum. In cyberspace, the concept of scale as we know it in the physical world does not exist, and, as a binary construct, it is mathematically infinite. The copy is identical to the original, and more than one object can exist in one place.

3.1.1. Electricity and Multimedia Electricity profoundly revolutionized communication, not only by allowing remote and rapid transmission of information, but also by provoking revolutionary changes in culture. The revolution associated with electricity, also known as the IT revolution, is comparable in importance to the revolutions related to the invention of the alphabet, or to the invention of printing. Electricity creates entirely new types of spatial relations, but what’s most interesting, according to Kerckhove, is that in times of electrical omnipresence, we are able to return to a visual method of communication that is closer to human nature than textual communication. This fact largely determines the nature of our existential space that is saturated with images and symbols (and that have been expressed in textual forms before): If the alphabet split language in many parts and reduced the senses involved in human communication to a string of abstract signs, electricity is bringing all the senses together again in multimedia, interactive systems and virtual reality. [1] Cyberspace has not been embodied in the form of multi-media accidently, according to Grosz. Graphically embodied virtuality is an www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) expression of the visual nature of our culture—the desire for representation comes directly from our brain and it expresses the need to understand what our body is involved in. The reader translates text into images, which are represented by words, and imagining is the process of this translation.

Imagination means literally the power to create images in the brain.

Imagining, or creating images, is exactly what we do when we read.

McLuhan’s metaphor of the Gutenberg Galaxy illustrates the transition from genetically naturalistic, tactile culture to the visual culture of the visualized world with the help of evolving technology. Electricity is, according to McLuhan, an extension of the central nervous system, allowing engagement with phenomenon thus far impossible to observe, thus enriching our experience, knowledge, and expanding the range of building our existential space.

3.1.2. Extended sensorium The cognitive capabilities of the new technology have been tested by the creators of electronic virtuality from the very beginning. The topic of crossing sense barriers is popular in discussions of cyberspace and virtual reality. Robinette believes that technology substantially overcomes the limitations of human senses: I want to use computers to extend human senses. We have certain builtin senses such as vision, hearing and smell, but there are many phenomena that are completely imperceptible to us. Some examples are X–rays, radioactivity, electricity, and the inside of opaque objects. [2] Thanks to the development of technology, our horizons have shifted from the edge of what is visible to our naked eyes to what is visible electronically at the speed of light, that is to say, at the scale of nonEuclidian geometry. [3] Anders says that electronically transmitted artifacts might become comparable to telepathy. He uses the term “bypassing the senses” to describe new techniques that have been made possible thanks to the emergence of electronic worlds.

Cyberspace is the area where intelligence will be able to grow in completely new and different directions. The understanding of space, freed from the limitations of human senses, can become multidimensional in ways similar to how other spaces are perceived: for example music – the art of ‘organizing’ space with sounds.

3.1.3. Interactivity Interactivity is the ability to co-create environments in real time, and it significantly determines the properties of cyber-environments.

Interactivity is not new for either the physical world or for the world of thoughts because only the interaction with other minds and with the physical world allows building a basic awareness of existential space.

What is new is the interaction with the machine and the remote interaction of minds, made possible thanks to the expansion of cyberspace.

Myron Krueger, who was one of the first artist-researchers of electronic interactivity, came up with the concept of Artificial Reality, which was one of the first interactive responsive computer-generated environments.

The concept of interactivity is associated with the concept of interface—a communication platform between the binary mode of the computer and the multimedia mode of human imagination. Interactivity, according to Ostrowicki, is the process of converting or creating an electronic environment through this interface. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) Thanks to the interactive interface, monitor display contents are transformed into the kind of place where a person can get settled. [4] According to Ostrowicki and many other researchers, the ultimate interactive environment would be a bionic generator with an interface located in the human brain—and here we are back to Stanislaw Lem’s phantomatic visions. Modern creators of computer interfaces tend to minimize the effects of the “artificial” element associated with technological imperfections and give the illusion of liquidity with a response time similar to that in which the brain operates, but it’s still very far from perfection. Interactivity is also associated with the concept of immersion, tele-immersion, and telepresence. Telepresence enables remote communication with the simultaneous production of the illusion of presence. Telepresence overcomes space-time limitations, allows penetration beyond the boundaries of physicality, and creates a sense of a multi-subjective approach.

Immersion, interactivity, and tele-presence are the mechanisms that involve man in the electronic world of cyberspace, and which produce the illusion of an artificial reality. Because of them, the boundaries between (electronic) virtuality and reality are blurring. The artificial world of cyberspace and the real world of nature are thus interwoven.

3.1.4. Nonlinearity. Hypertextuality Nonlinearity is the fundamental feature that distinguishes the virtual world from the physical world. It also derives from mind spaces: the brain does not function linearly—access to its memory resources is similar in structure to the access within hypertextual structures (rather than continuous narrative structures of physical space). Cyberspace is not based on a linear space-time continuum. The idea of cyberspace is based on the principles of tearing and breaking narration. Hypertext is a new language that breaks the narration. It was created along with the development of computer technology and cyberspace, and became the language of virtual worlds.

Hypertext is a bold and radical idea, a new way of reading and writing—similar to it, but more rapid, and complete with quotes, exceptions and footnotes. In the future, hypertext will evolve into a huge, navigable network of new literature. [5] The characteristic movement in cyberspace is the jump, not the step.

Communication derives from the multi-linearity of the connections.

Hypertext, as Ostrowicki says, is not "a proper text," it is more of an information about different texts—code node, rhizome or meta-data.

Hypertextuality is also associated with multi-meaning dimension of information. Novak contrasts the linearity of narrative thinking with the nonlinearity of poetic thinking. He believes that poetry is closer to the cyberspatial, hypertextual environment, and access to the resources of cyberspace is randomized, not sequenced. Novak believes that in order to understand Gibson’s "incredible complexity" of cyberspace, we need a "poetic" approach to the construction of cyberspace. [6] This implies the hypertextual approach.

Holtzman suggests that, thanks to the hypertextuality of cyberspace, we will be able to discover whole new areas of the mind and that we may develop new forms of logic that will better reflect the workings of the mind. "Freed from the constraints of linear forms,” says Holtzman, “using the imagination, we can explore completely new human potential'. [7] 3.1.5. Infinity The notion of the infinity of cyberspace is complex, and can be considered on many levels: physical, mathematical and psychological. Physically, because the data stored on a finite number of www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) servers, it contains finite volume, and as the cable through which the data flows has finite capacity and speed limitations, cyberspace is finite, and therefore is limited by the constraints of the “finite” physical world.

As a mathematical construct, though, cyberspace can be considered infinite because it is infinitely divisible and can be expanded by adding an infinite number of pages connected by an infinite number of links.

Holtzman, like many other scholars, believes that infinity is a natural feature of electronic virtual environments due to its logical mathematical construct. As an example, he maintains that fractal structure is the most appropriate way to “build” virtual databases. Many other researchers, including Virillio, are in favor of the fractal aproach as well.

Psychologically, aside from its physical limitations, considering cyberspace as a development and extension of mental space, we could rely on the argument of potentially infinite possibilities of the mind.

However, according to Novak it is not that simple: Strictly speaking, as a human construct, cyberspace is finite. However, we are not only finite, but also very small, and confined to a very small region of reality, and anything that involves large enough numbers, or that exists in a sufficiently different scale than we exist in, is, effectively, if not literally, infinite or infinitesimal. [8] Novak believes that cyberspace as a structure for not only storing data, but also for coordinating its movement and development; cyberspace is many times larger than physical data storage. However, cyberspace itself is not infinite, just much bigger than one can imagine. Novak doubts that the human mind is capable of working “in the mode” of infinity: We, the finite, can never conduct a full critique of the infinite. Hence, by a curious reversal of terms, it is reality itself that is most virtual for us, in the sense of being an asymptotic potentiality that we can never fully know or exhaust. The 'real' is already virtual. [9] The actual infinity of cyberspace remains a contentious issue, although Novak himself says: Pure virtual space is a liquid approximation of the potentiality of all possible worlds (...). [10] 3.1.6. Lack of scale The lack of scale in cyberspace means the inability to measure distance, determine size physically, and, above all, to locate a reference point for tracking in cyberspace. Normally, a man gets orientation in space by estimating his position in relationship to a reference point and by determining directions and territories with respect to this point. By measuring from this point, he creates an image of his surrounding space. In cyberspace, because of the lack of scale, it is not possible to determine distance, direction and territory. To the contrary, cyberspace adapts its “size” to meet the current needs of a user.

According to Norberg-Schulz, scale is the key factor affecting the size of physical space. By scale he means the criteria associated with size and scale related to the body; it does not translate to spaces of the mind or cyberspace. Scale and dimension are the way we interact with the physical world but they do not work in the non-material worlds.

There is no scale in VR. There is no limit to the resolution of a virtual construction. [11] Despite the obvious uselessness of the concept of scale in cyberspace, we tend to try to find a use for it (like we do with many other concepts that we use to use in the material world). Thus researchers tend to redefine www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) familiar concepts and adapt them to cyberspace. For example, Michael Benedikt treats the concept of scale in cyberspace as a combination of scale and resolution. According to him, scale is a change of resolution and it causes the pixel or voxel (three dimensional pixel) to accelerate or slow down. Pixels and voxels, like the entire cyberspatial environment, are free from physical forces, but resolution changes affect the fluidity of their movement. This is the phenomenon that Benedikt associates with scale in cyberspace.

The problem of lack of scale in cyberspace implies that this new environment should be considered as a new category—as a space, but definitely a new kind of space that requires new classifications, definitions, and an independence from the habits and concepts transferred to it from other fields.

3.1.7. Uniformity of a copy. Problems with authorship.

The concept of origin disappears in cyberspace, as each digital copy is indistinguishable from the original. Copying and pasting is easier than creating a new one, and so “origin” involves changes in the understanding of creative processes. The copy is created without any loss of quality, a copy that is always perfect. [12] This applies to the problem of authorship, which is widely discussed by the creators of electronic environments. Cyberspace requires changes in the very concepts related to authorship.

This revolution in the arts involves a radical transformation of the role of artist, who, instead of creating, expressing, and communicating the content and meaning, is now designing the contexts in which the recipient will be able to construct their experiences and their own meanings. [13] 3.2. Where is cyberspace?

Cyberspace is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Cyberspace is woven between physical space and mental space and it creates bridges between them, visualizing and allowing communication.

Cyberspace is like Oz — we know that it exists, we can get there, but it has no specific location. [15] From the technological perspective, cyberspace as an electronic space is dependent on a generator and an interface device. Although an invisible electronic grid surrounds us constantly, we are unable to connect with this world without the mediation of a device. This means that cyberspace can be wherever we are able to generate it and get inside it. For the recipient, cyberspace is a collection of events and places that he can access after connecting to the network. It is only limited by technology, but there are no spatial restrictions. It is not a linear environment so it does not have unused space. It exists only where it is needed, and disappears where no one is looking. It is a collection of popular places and events that live only through the activity of a user.

Cyberspace is generated from the outside, and as McFadden says, is topdown and symbolic rather than bottom-up and spacious. [16] This means that its form is somewhat rigid, and does not evolve as other forms of nature—it is not “grown” and left to fend for itself.

We are currently building virtual worlds from the outside in order to enter them from the inside. [17] 3.2.1. Self-organization (User-Driven Environment) Cyberspace is created simultaneously by many users, and it combines individual territories, spaces, agoras, squares, and auditoriums. It is a www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) world that self-organizes, and, with no defined boundaries (in the sense of imagining the physical boundaries), it is continually created and dismantled—it lives and dies depending entirely on the activity of its users. Among other things, this is why Novak and Kerckhove call it an intelligent space. A self-organizing structure affects its discontinuous, jagged and random nature.

Cyberspace consists of many different media, all of which constitute its structure and construction. That is, they are not natural but are the product of designers, and, in many cases, users. Spatialisation of cyberspace is a product of those who encode the spatial algorithms. [18] Cyberspace, because it is a social product that takes dematerialized form and structure, is entirely determined by its creators, and does not have one static, measurable reference system. Because of that, it is not continuous and it fully depends on the user. This has a significant impact on the fact that, on a local level, cyberspace environments are so different from each other.

[1] Kerckhove D., The Architecture of Intelligence (The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture), Birkhäuser Basel, 2001, p. 22.

[2] Rheingold H., Virtual Reality, Mandarin, London 1991, p. 25.

[3] Virillio P., We may be entering an electronic gothic era, [Architectural Design, Architects in Cyberspace II, 1997] [4] Ostrowicki M., Wirtualne Realis. Estetyka w epoce elektroniki, Universitas, Kraków 2006, p. 25.

[5] Kerckhove D., op.cit., p. 41 (Ted Nelson,1962) [6] Williama Gibson: ”(…) Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. …”

[7] Holtzman S., Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace, Touchstone, 1998, p. 174.

[8] Marcos Novak, Alessandro Ludovico interview with Marcos Novak [9] Marcos Novak, Alessandro Ludovico interview with Marcos Novak [10] Marcos Novak, Alessandro Ludovico interview with Marcos Novak [11] Holtzman S., op.cit.

[12] Holtzman S., op.cit.

[13] Sitarski [14] Mitchell W., City of Bits, MIT Press, Boston 1996 [15] Norberg – Schulz C., Bycie, przestrzeń i architektura, Murator, Warszawa, 2000, p. 54.

[16] McFadden T., Notes on the structure of Cyberspace, [Architectural Design, Architects in Cyberspace, red. Spiller N., 1995] [17] Norberg – Schulz C., op.cit., Murator, Warszawa, 2000, p. 37.

[18] Dodge M., Kitchin R., Atlas of cyberspace, Addison – Wesley, 2001.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

II CYBERSTRUCTURE 1. Substance of Cyberspace

1.1. The substance of cyberspace In order to understand the nature of matter in cyberspace, we need to move away from looking at matter as something that is constant as we see it in the physical world. In the case of cyberspace, we need to refer to the associations with the mind's space—a place of abstract reasoning where matter equals image, information, and idea. The notion of "substance" rather than "matter" better reflects the nature of the intangible electronic environment.

Substance completely fills up cyberspace and constitutes its existence.

Cyberspace cannot exist where there is no substance. The substance is consciousness, idea, code, the law and lawlessness of cyberspace. It saturates space with information, not with objects and forces.

Cyberspatial substance is a cybernetic database with a bionic control system. [1] Space, especially the electronic space as a substantial material, has an inexhaustible means of morphological and structural possibilities. The dynamic structure of substance determines the character of cyberspace as liquid, temporary and nonlinear. Cyberspace in this respect is part of the pulsing biological environment, an integral part of the biosphere: The space where we live is not a hostile emptiness, but in the broadest scale—the biosphere, the matrix from which derive all forms of life, understood not only biologically but also culturally. This means that the basic material for these processes is simply the space itself, influenced by various factors that shape it into endless mutations and systems. [2]

Cyberspace saturates the biosphere with electronic information. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) 1.2. To sculpt cyberspace Cyberspace is an integral part of existential space. It is derived directly from the mind and it is an electronic extension of the mind’s space.

Sculpting/carving cyberspace means giving form to the substance of cyberspace, forming information. It is the continuous and constant process of creation and evolution of the electronic environment.

Forming information in cyberspace happens on two levels. The first level is forming an interface—the dialogue between the transmitting device and a man. (i.e., designing the medium that enables communication with the device.) The second level is giving form to the communication that is passed through this device to other users, thus forming the information.

1.2.1. Formation of the interface For a computer (device) it simply doesn’t matter whether it is dealing with images, music or film because the way the binary electronic world operate is reduced to ones and zeros. However, for a man it does matter, so he uses the interface to maintain control of the computer.

Cyberspace, in this sense, is thus the interface between man and device.

Designing the interface is part of the process of creating the face of cyberspace, establishing and designing points of intersection of the physical world with cyberspace.

1.2.2. Shaping the message Cyberspace is not just an interface. It is also considered to be a communication medium. Thus, the main value of cyberspace is not the device but the message. (The device is only an intermediary in the communication process.) Formation of the message in cyberspace usually means the creation of a visualization of an idea. Or, in other words—the process of imagining. Imagining, thinking with images instead of words, expresses the visual nature of human imagination.

Creativity is usually connected to the act of imagining (shaping images and its manipulation) and is largely based on visual stimuli: Keeping in mind the astonishing variety of phenomena occurring in the spatial systems that arise in the human imagination, that is constantly enriched by experiencing surrounding world, we could assume that everything that imagination absorbs and emits is nothing but a visual reflection of the endless resources of the environment—which is simply based on formation of flat or spatial images. Therefore, the fundamental notion, which reflects the concept of imagination, is not an image but the process of imagining. [3] The process of imagining is the driving force that creates cyberspace.

Simulation of the real and unreal world through imagining evolves into the reality of an electronic environment. Creation of visual representations and transferring meanings through images constitutes the basis of the construction of the cyberspatial substance.

1.3. Structure of cyberspace Cyberspace, like any other human space (or any part of existential space) requires organization and structuring. Cyberspatial structures are logical ways of organization of the substance of cyberspace and, like the structures of the physical world, can be represented by certain forms, clusters of matter, or constructions reflecting logical plans, analysis and diagrams.

1.3.1. The order of space Space is an element of human existence and the order of the space is a necessary part in determining the structure of being. Spatial structures should therefore fit into a certain order in the space. The order of www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) cyberspace is associated with certain dynamics of formation and evolution of idea, but also, as shown by Schmidt, with the dynamics of the bionic system itself: From the variability of spatial phenomena occurring in nature, comes the basic observation: the natural order of things is dynamic, and any attempt to create a static, seemingly inviolable system within it that, sooner or later will fail. [4] Structures of cyberspace are thus dynamic systems, which come directly from the dynamic nature of thought itself. Creation of the cyberspatial structures should be based on this assumption.

1.3.2. Spatial coordinates The organization of space requires determination of its spatial coordinates. The basic organizational models of the physical man’s world consist of: establishing the centers—in the sense of places (to establish proximity), directions—ways (to establish continuity) and the territories—zones (to establish limitations).

Spatial coordinates define the organizational model of man’s physical universe, determined by the establishment of proximal centers, directional force to delimit continuity and boundary.

In the case of cyberspace, the situation is similar; its organization also requires creation of places, directions and territories, but in a completely different sense than in the physical world.

The cyberspatial electronic environment is governed by rules closer to the spaces of the mind than the laws of physics. Therefore, the creation of cyberspatial coordinates should be initiated by analyzing the resources available to the mind spaces.

These resources can be divided into two groups. The first group is connected to the process of creation meanings, metaphors, language, with intuition and cognition. We can call this group the Right Hemisphere Structures. The second group is associated with logic, analytical thinking, mathematics and geometry, and process of analyzing and sorting. This group can be called the Left Hemisphere Structures.

1.3.3. Right Hemisphere Structures The right brain hemisphere, which controls the emotional life, gives our experiences immediate expression, enables true multi-dimensional learning, and the perception of space. There is no sense of time; it is oriented towards the here and now. It is creative, emotional, and it encompasses the whole of the perceived phenomenon. In this group of cyberspatial structures, the metaphor and symbol provide tools for imagining, visualizing and creation of cyberspace.

1.3.4. Left Hemisphere Structures The left hemisphere is the logical hemisphere. It is responsible for analysis, attributing facts, perception and sense of time, control on the word, verbal communication and counting. It is oriented towards the future, and is aimed at sorting facts and listening. It is based on the socalled “short memory” and the perception of individual elements of the phenomenon.

In the group of left hemisphere logic structures and mathematics are the tools of planning and structuring the cyberspace, enabling the identification and description of the spatial coordinates. It is the mathematics in this group that provides the tools of perception and creation of space.

Mathematics, as the science about structures, their relationships and dependencies,[5] for centuries has perceived the objects of its studies as www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) existing for and within them. Most importantly, these studies determine the relationship between “unidentified mathematical objects” and the rules that govern operations on them: In the field of mathematical science one cannot and must not discuss what points, lines and numbers effectively are. What is important, and what corresponds to “verifiable’ facts are structure and relationships, that two points determine a straight line, that numbers combine according to certain laws to form other numbers etc. [...] [6] Mathematics creates forms whose substance is an idea. It is an abstract, logical tool. This is why it makes mathematics a perfect tool for forming the substance of cyberspace: Mathematics is moving through a vast, free world of thought. The mathematician, like the painter and poet, is a creator of forms. If the forms he creates are more durable than theirs, it is because his are made of ideas. [7] Mathematics allows using abstraction, not only for describing physical phenomena, but also in the process of creating reality, allowing us to go beyond the limits of reality and the mind. Abstraction is an invaluable cognitive tool, possessing the power of universality that allows the application of a single rule in very different circumstances, allowing us to go beyond the world of nature. Another advantage is that allows our imagination great liberty, permitting us to devise new and alternate versions of reality; versions that may not correspond to something in the real world.

Mathematics and geometry are creative and cognitive tools: logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality.

Mathematics is a kind of expression of the human mind, "reflects the active will, contemplative reason and desire for esthetic perfection." [8] The substance of cyberspace consists of information and image. The process of formation of cyberspace should be based on formation of its electronic substance using logic and abstract tools of mind, creation of images, meanings, symbols, and finally, a new language of an electronic cyberspace. Structures of cyberspace are dynamic, are variable, temporary, interactive, and liquid as the biosphere itself.

[1] Ostrowicki M., Wirtualne Realis. Estetyka w epoce elektroniki, Universitas, Kraków 2006, (s. 93) [2] Szmidt B., Ład przestrzeni, PIW, Warszawa 1981, p. 34.

[3] Szmidt B., op.cit., p. 114.

[4] Ibidem, p. 70.

[5] Mathematics as a system, serves the process of exploring the surrounding reality. Without mathematical structures, according to Emmer, nature could not be understood. He says that the Greeks were the first to realize that nature can be understood using mathematics, and geometry can be applied also to its discovery, not only to describing it.

Mathematics is in some sense the translation of the language of nature, translation of the surrounding reality. Euclid, through the 'Elements', opened a window through which the nature of the universe has been noticed. Euclid, using the two-dimensional space of thought, without referring it to the physical world, contributed to a revolution in the concept of space, to the birth of abstraction and the idea of mathematical proof. Later, thanks to Descartes, and the invention of the frame of reference, mathematics gave mankind the tools of simulation, visualization and prediction. These tools are the basis for the creation of cyberspatial structures.

[6] What is mathematics? R. Courat, H. Robbins [7] Emmer M., Mathland, From Flatland to Hypersurfaces, Birkhäuser Basel, 2004, p. 20.

[8] What is mathematics? R. Courat, H. Robbins www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

2. Geometries of Cyberspace When geometrizing, man creates and defines the spatial coordinates, which provide him with basic orientation in the surrounding world.

First, he tries to capture spatial relationships, and only then, says Norberg-Schulz, geometric patterns may appear.

The world can be organized around sets of central points, broken into named regions, or linked with memorized paths. [1] Geometries visualize mathematical rigor. But in cyberspace, they do not occur in the same forms as in the physical world. Geometric systems in cyberspace do not fulfill their mathematical measuring and descriptive tasks, but they occur in the cyberspace in various forms that can be described as geometric metaphors.

2.1. Geometric visualizations and metaphors In cyberspace there is no scale or reference point, therefore all measuring and descriptive activities, for which geometries are created, are meaningless. So why do we need geometries in cyberspace if their principal task is to measure and describe spatial coordinates which cannot be implemented?

The answer to this question should be sought by moving away from perceiving geometry only in terms of cold mathematical structures or scientific methods. Peg Rawers, in her publication Space, Geometry and Aesthetics; through Kant and towards Deleuze proves that the phenomenon of geometry is that geometry is not only a mathematical method for constructing and describing space, but also is an aesthetic procedure, questioning the beliefs that are focused only on scientific forms of knowledge. Geometric figures, according to Rawers, can also be understood as an aesthetic expression of geometric thinking. The aesthetic geometry thus becomes a temporary, technical improvement of memory (e.g., intuition), and part of the mind space.

Birth of aesthetics based on the new geometry is a long process and it depends on the degree of absorption of scientific theories in the culture: Geometric thinking may therefore be composed of dynamic embodiments, reconfiguring the relationship between aesthetics, space and the sensing subject. As a result, new ‘figure-subjects’ are opened up through which geometry may also enable crossdisciplinary examinations; especially for ontological research in philosophy, architectural design, art history and spatial practices in the www.issuu.com/cyberempathy CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) visual arts. [2] For Kant, various mental models generate the experience of geometry: pure intuition, sense-intuitions, technical and aesthetic activities.

“In metaphysical philosophy, geometry is also frequently taken to be an exemplary form of pure intuition and abstract ideas, thereby confirming the existence of pure, but inaccessible, transcendental knowledge” [3].

Rawers emphasizes that the dynamic relationship between space, geometry and aesthetics can be very productive for contemporary artists, especially for those studying alternative spaces in which the geometry can be understood without restrictions imposed by its scientific form accompanying the creation of “real” prerogatives.

Therefore, the existing systems of geometry should be examined in terms of their “usefulness” for the creation of cyberspace.

2.2. Euclidean geometry in cyberspace Of all geometric systems, Euclidean geometry is the oldest and most deeply rooted in the popular consciousness. Although it has long been proven that we live in curved, non-Euclidean space, we continue to build the space of everyday life in accordance to the Euclid’s postulates. This is primarily because Euclidean geometry is the most convenient existing geometric system. Poincaré says: Just as it makes no sense to ask if the metric system is true and the old system measurement are false, or if Cartesian coordinates are true and polar ones false. One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Euclidean geometry is, and will remain, the most convenient. [4] Another reason for using it is the fact that non-Euclidean geometry is almost unconceivable from the human scale perspective, which makes the Euclidean forms a much better choice in describing human’s space.

In hyperbolic space, Euclidean form is approachable but not attainable.

Euclid’s Elements had a tremendous influence on Western culture. It formed a basic component of the standard intellectual education: First, there is a sense of certainty – that a world full of irrational beliefs and shaky speculations, the statements found in the Elements were proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt. And although certain features in both the assumptions and methods of reasoning used by Euclid have been questioned over the centuries, the astonishing fact is that after two thousand years, no one has ever found an actual “mistake” in The Elements – that is to say a statement that did not follow logically from the assumptions. [5] Since the Euclidean geometry is used to create and describe the existential space, it is clear that virtual worlds are also constructed in accordance to its rules. More precisely, according to the principles of geometrical metaphors of forms, relations and representations based on Euclidean geometry. Constructing virtual worlds on the foundations of Euclidean geometry is a part of the process of importing known elements into the new, unknown environment. It is an attempt to equip this new environment with human dimension and is part of a settlement process. It is also, as in the physical world, an attempt to give deeper meaning to the man’s existence, his proportions and the matrix of the universe.

Matters of convenience and continuity between the virtual and the real world are important factors standing behind the formation of the new environment. Michael Benedikt, when describing his idea for the architectural development of cyberspace, argues for "importing" useful laws of physics to the environment of cyberspace. He justifies it as www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) allowing for a better orientation and accessibility of data. However, he proposes to conduct this process on a selective basis, because, as he says, not all the features of the physical world are suitable for the simulation in cyber worlds.

The fact that non-Euclidean spaces can function independently in twodimensional space opens a window to a whole new understanding of space. In fact, it is a revolution in thinking about space and it has changed the concept of space forever. Instead of a three-dimensional filled with objects and surrounding us space (structure), we can perceive the space as a flat surface.

Holtzman even assigned fractals to the digital world, recognizing the fractal geometry as a natural geometry for cyberspace, as well as the main factor that should determine the aesthetics of cyberspace. As he says, despite the fact that self-similar structures have been possible before, they could not “exist” without computers, and this, according to him, makes the computer a fractal "device". Fractals are not built on any borrowed metaphor. They belong to the world of computers.

One of the first visions of cyberspace by Gibson: "tunnels of light' in Neuromancer are not built in a curved space time, or fractal dimension. or imaginary tenth dimension, but in the well-known Euclidean geometry.

Benedikt considers the application of certain rules and geometry of the real world as a necessity, which preserves the continuity and smooth transition between the virtual and real and optimal orientation and navigation in the data accessed. On this basis he builds the whole system of rules that should govern cyberspace. These principles are described in his book: Cyberspace First Step - Some Proposals. They are ways for the effective transfer of spatial values of the physical world to cyberspace in order to create a convenient and logical navigation system. Benedikt says: Ordinary space and time must form the basis of cyberspace. (…)

Possible correlations between the behaviors of physical space and cyberspace must be kept. A cyberspace dweller brings expectation of three-dimensional continuity of physical environment in cyberspace, the logic of being in the real space and time. [6] The aspect of the consistency of the worlds is emphasized by the many creators of VR. If cyberspace is supposed to simulate the 'real', there is no other way than to let it be constructed on the basis of Euclidean geometry. As Benedikt pointed out, the cyberspace user brings to the virtual environment the expectation that the cyberspace should look familiar, be easy and "intuitive" to navigate. But, not all features of this system can be used in the new electronic environment. This is partly because the system of Euclidean geometry in cyberspace is limited to the role of metaphorical representation.

Euclidean geometry also plays an important role in the process of creating new multimedia language, which uses extensively the www.issuu.com/cyberempathy CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) symbolism it contains. For example, in the symbolism associated with the directions, verticality has always been considered a sacred dimension of space—related to the expression of verticality “over, up, high”—it symbolizes superiority, supremacy and perfection. Not only do directions create symbolic cultural meanings, the geometric shapes are filled with meanings as well, for example, a sphere has always been an ideal form; a straight line is “more perfect” than the curved one; and finally that symmetry is superior to asymmetry.

Bartett House, Second Life 2.2.1. The function of Euclidean geometry in cyberspace Euclidean geometry is implemented into the cyberspace environment mainly because of its convenience, but also because the laws governing Euclidean systems are well known and have been present in a culture for centuries, and because the world of visual symbols that creates communication platforms belongs to the world created on the principles of Euclidean geometry. However, in electronic environments, Euclidean geometry loses its measurement, descriptive and positioning values. It is not useful in the understanding of mathematical structures, but as a tool that describes and provides guidance.

There is no scale in cyberspace, so the concept of dimension in the mathematical sense does not exist. There is also no objective reference point with respect to which this concept could be built. The territories where the objects could be situated are not specified. Moreover, one place in cyberspace (in the physical sense) can be occupied by more than one object. Cyberspace does not generate any specific “mass”; it is more of a collection of “events”. Properties of cyberspace cannot be described by the Euclidean system, so from the mathematical point of view Euclidean geometry is useless for the purpose of describing it.

Euclidean geometry in cyberspace serves as a metaphor in the way it is described by Rawers: elements and principles are understood as an aesthetic expression of geometric thinking, or as a technical improvement of the temporary memory. They do not meet the descriptive function; they are abstract phenomena—aesthetic tools.

Visualization of forms and their relationships give the basis for data visualization. This is visualization of the use of Euclidean aesthetics, not its mathematical properties. What we call Euclidean geometry in cyberspace is thus a visual representation of the Euclidean geometry— the system of symbols. We see geometric metaphors as more focused on visualizing the symbols than on using mathematical properties of geometry, or as a descriptive and cognitive tool. Instead of Euclidean geometry in cyberspace, we should talk about the aesthetics of Euclidean geometry.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Euclidean geometry aesthetic in Cyberspace Asymptote Architecture, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) VIRTUAL TRADING FLOOR 2.3. Non-Euclidean Geometry in Cyberspace Euclid in Elements intended to create a coherent mathematical structure based on the geometry of space. Euclid's fifth axiom [7], however, proved to be a weak point of the whole system, which ultimately led to its overthrow.

Attempts to prove the fifth axiom lasted uninterruptedly until the nineteenth century, when mathematicians began to suggest geometric solutions in which the fifth axiom does not exist. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss was the first to develop a revolutionary theory of hyperbolic non-Euclidean space. Eventually, it was published by Bolyai and Lobachevsky. A few decades later another kind of non-Euclidean space was described—an elliptical space.

M. C. Escher, Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935

After rejection of Euclid's fifth axiom (parallel postulate), there are two possibilities left: that a point belonging to the line does not pass any line, or such lines are more than one. Having accepted the first of these possibilities, we obtain an elliptical geometry, if the second, we obtain hyperbolic geometry. In consequence we accept the axiom saying that any two lines intersect at some point, and the concept of parallelism does not exist.

The creation of non-Euclidean geometry had a tremendous impact not only on the perception of the world, but also on the essence of mathematics and geometry. This discovery destroyed the idea that the Euclidean geometry is a faithful representation of physical space. It was this impulse which in effect led to the liberation of mathematics from its www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) function of describing nature. It became obvious that geometry is a human creation, not something that exists in nature. Mathematical spaces came to be seen as abstract logical structures, which also led to the separation of mathematics from physics. All of this started the process of changing the direction of thinking about space and the creation of space. The space began to be perceived as an abstract independent entity.

2.3.1. Elliptical and Hyperbolic Space The Gaussian breakthrough discovery was the fact that we can perceive the geometry of curved space without referring it to the higherdimensional Euclidean space, which means that we can perceive an elliptical space (the spherical space), two-dimensionally. Twodimensional space of a sphere (for example, the image of the Earth's surface) can be considered as an independent space, which operates under the new rules.

On a sphere, the sum of the angles of a triangle is not equal to 180°. The surface of a sphere is not a Euclidean space, but locally the laws of the Euclidean geometry are good approximations. In a small triangle on the face of the earth, the sum of the angles is very nearly 180°.

Riemann explains how the sphere can be perceived as two-dimensional elliptic space and proposed a new interpretation of the concepts of point, line and plane. As a plane he chose a surface of the sphere; the points are the positions in the Cartesian style, the position given by a pair of coordinates (longitude and latitude); Riemann’s lines are geodesics of the sphere.

This space was first visualized by Henri Poincaré. Poincaré’s space is not just a model of hyperbolic space; it is a two-dimensional hyperbolic space. In the language of mathematics, this means mathematicians have proven that all possible mathematical descriptions of the hyperbolic plane are isomorphic. If our space is hyperbolic it behaves according to the Poincare model, but in three dimensions.

The invention of hyperbolic space, as an independent space that may exist in the form of two-dimensional visualization, also expanded the concept of space into the abstract realm, closer to the reason than to empirical experience, thus as an abstract space, making it an excellent tool to describe the (abstract) structure of cyberspace.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Hyperbolic tesselations

M. C. Escher, Angels and Devils 1960 2.4. Topology in Cyberspace Topology is the science of transformations, and the science of invariants. [8] Henri Poincaré is the creator of the concept of topology, which was introduced in groundbreaking masterpiece Analysis Situ (meaning 'the analysis of site') in 1895. Topology is the study of the properties of geometric figures that remain invariant even after being subjected to deep deformation, such as the loss of their characteristic metric features: form and dimension. These forms, however, maintain their qualitative properties. Poincaré defined topology as a science that lets us examine the qualitative properties of geometric figures not only in ordinary space but also in space with more than three dimensions.

Figure constructed arbitrarily with deformable material on which neither cutting not welding are possible; there are properties that are conserved when figure so constructed is deformed at will. [9]

Topological deformation of surface The best-known examples of topological transformations are the Möbius Strip and the Klein Bottle. The theme of the Möbius strip has had a long history before it was defined as a topological space. Since ancient times this theme has appeared in ornamentation as the symbol of infinity (seen in perspective). Möbius strip is a single surface deformed without www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) cuts or tears. It is also has the mathematical property of being nonorientable.

Mobius Strip A Klein bottle can be formed starting from the Mobius strip, maintaining its properties. The Klein bottle is also a one-sided surface that is enclosed; it has no interior or exterior.

Klein's Bottle The introduction of topological forms to the language of science and culture resulted in a radical change in the definition of “space”. Instead of a static model, composed of elements, the space started to be perceived as something malleable, variable, and its organization, distribution and allocation have become flexible. Topology has essential meaning for the formation of structures of cyberspace. Every existential space (including cyberspace) is focused around specific action. The first relations ordering these spaces are topological in character. The nature of topology is not based on fixed distances, angles and surfaces, but is based on such relationships as proximity, separation, succession, limitation and continuity. Thus, topology becomes the perfect tool for the formation of cyberspatial substances.

2.4.1 Topology and Architecture The authors of cyberspatial landscape interpret topology, as well as other advanced mathematical concepts quite freely. The concept of mathematics within the meaning of art, as observed by Michele Emmer, is not mathematics in the strict sense of the term and it would be hard, using these methods, understand the true mathematical ideas. It is rather the configuration of rhythms and the interrelationships of mathematical laws. For this reason, the topology in art (architecture and cyberspace as well) should be considered rather as an example of the geometric metaphor, in the sense postulated by Rawers than as a reliable mathematical tool for the design of electronic spaces.

Giusepa Di Cristina defines the topology in architecture as follows: Architectural topology means the dynamic variation of form facilitated by computer-based technologies, computer-assisted design and animation software. The topologising of architectural form according to dynamic and complex configurations leads architectural design to a renewed and often spectacular plasticity, in the wake of the baroque and of organic expressionism. [10] Topology, in its “metaphorical” form, penetrating the architectural www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) grounds, has had a special and profound impact on architecture, radically changing the perception of space. The change mainly concerns the shift from the idea of static understanding of space into a belief in its liquidity and morphology.

Topology in the case of architectural consideration means the study of behavior of surface structures that are subjected to deformation. The surface remembers the spatiotemporal changes in the process of continuous deformation, which gives more opportunities for the architectural distortion of the surface, hence, the form itself. The continuous deformation of a surface can lead to the intersection of external and internal planes in a continuous morphological change.

Topology “awakened” architecture to life. The key role in the adaptation of mathematical concepts to topological architecture was performed by computer visualization.

Example of topological aesthetics in architectural design

Zaha Hadid, Thames Gateway

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Michel Sanner, Topological surface 2.5. Fractal Geometry in Cyberspace Fractal geometry is the first geometry, which, although it comes from the need of inventing a more accurate way of description of nature, is considered the most promising system for the construction of structures of cyberspace.

Although fractal geometry was described earlier, the French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot defined it in the 70s of the twentieth century. At a time when mathematics started to become more abstract and separated from physics and the function of describing nature, Mandelbrot began to consider mathematical problems in terms of shapes, including shapes that correspond to the rules and the forms of nature. Mandelbrot was looking for a simple way to describe the complex nature of objects such as mountains, trees, clouds and coastlines. Traditional geometry, according to Mandelbrot, is not suitable for this purpose: Why is geometry frequently describes as cold and dry? One reason is its inability to describe the form of a cloud, a mountain, a coast or a tree. Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coasts are not circles and riverbanks are not regular, not ever light travelers, along a straight line. […] Nature reveals not simply a higher degree of complexity but a completely different level. [11] Mandelbrot suggested using fractal geometry as a much more appropriate way for describing phenomena occurring in nature. It seems to be 'closer' to these structures. Fractal geometry is a set that has certain characteristics. The main characteristic is the self-similarity.

Like topology, fractal geometry found its way into the popular consciousness, thanks to computer visualization, which allowed to fractals to be “seen”. The electronics visualization of fractals led to the development of software that generates them, therefore, to develop techniques and ways to visualize them and to discover the unique features of these systems for cyberspace. From the “geometry of nature”, fractals have become the geometry of cyberspace.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Mandelbrot Set Holtzman even assigned fractals to the digital world, recognizing the fractal geometry as a natural geometry for cyberspace, as well as the main factor that should determine the aesthetics of cyberspace. As he says, despite the fact that self-similar structures have been possible before, they could not “exist” without computers, and this, according to him, makes the computer a fractal "device". Fractals are not built on any borrowed metaphor. They belong to the world of computers.

The Sierpinski triangle (also with the original orthography Sierpiński), also called the Sierpinski gasket or the Sierpinski Sieve, is a fractal and attractive fi xed set named after the Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński who described it in 1915.

Fractal worlds are visual forms of calculation. Thus, fractals perfectly fit into the specific world of electronic cyber-environment, with no scale and no resolution limits.

A plot of the Lorenz attractor This is an excellent feature that allows dealing with the complexity of the cyberspatial construction and also makes possible to visualize one of the basic features of this environment - infinite depth. The beauty of fractal representation, Musgrave says, lies in the fact that compared to the visual effect the model remains very tiny in size. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) 2.6. Multidimensionality of Cyberspace Admiration for the concept of multi-dimensionality of space has been present in the science and culture for over a hundred years since nonEuclidean geometry of spacetime was defined by physicists and mathematicians. In the early twentieth century especially the concept of fourth dimension (mainly for the purposes of space) gained on popularity. The fourth spatial dimension was present on cubists, futurists and surrealists’ canvas. It was also a theme for many literary works. For example Howard Hinton, in his 1910, treatise “Fourth Dimension", firmly stated that "the birth, growth, life and death of living organisms is a transitional phase of four-dimensional bodies passing through our space”. The most popular among the publications is Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, the story of a Square, a citizen of “Flatland”, visiting the three-dimensional world.

Despite the fact that “Flatland” was already well known in the nineteenth century, and Cubist experiments took over the art world in the early twentieth, multidimensionality, like other mathematical concepts, on a massive scale began to function only after it had been visualized by computer. Emmer said: It took more than a hundred years for the hypercube dreamed by Square in Flatland to become an object of a mass consumption. [14]

Tesseract The film Hypercube, which was created in 1979 at Brown University, was the first visualization of the rotating three-dimensional hypercube.

In 1984, the same author (Banhoff) and his colleagues visualized hypersphere.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Hypercube rotation 2.5.1 Fractals and structure of cyberspace What role might fractal geometry play in the process of creating the structure of cyberspace? Virillio believes in that crucial role: You cannot separate the fact of invention of the virtual space from fractal geometry. The architect has to work in fractal dimension. [12] Kenton Musgrave, Mandelbrot’s student and an expert in computer visualization technologies considers a combination of fractal structure and Euclidean geometry to be an ideal structure of cyberspace. He argues that the fractal geometry allows cyberspace to “grow” inside by adding more detail, which can be noticed by gradual zooming: Using a fractal representation, you can grow "inward" by adding ever more detail that can be seen by zooming farther and farther in to your cyber construct. [13] 2.6.1. Spacetime continuum Thanks to Einstein’s discoveries a new value—time has been introduced to the geometry. Although time is an important factor in a number of geometric systems (for example the topology of chaotic systems), it was the direct recognition of time as a dimension that once again changed the perception of space.

Modern concepts of geometry also include a time value. As a result, instead of occurrence of points, in spacetime we formulate the term events, that is, points in the four dimensions of space and time.

Instead of space ways, we speak of geodesic lines through space and time. Instead of distance, we have a combination of time interval and spatial distance between the events.

Time perceived as dimension is considered to be an important element of the cyberspatial environment. Immaterial cyberspace structures behave as thoughts - they are volatile and they change over time.

Cyberspace is alive and its geometry is evolving. Perceiving points as www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) events and replacing the notion of distance (which does not exist in cyberspace), with the concepts associated with time-intervals and the position seems to be a promising direction of research on cyberconstructs.

Various concepts transmitted between the fields, as in the case of the geometric and mathematical concepts discussed here, show that space exists as a cultural category within which there are defined certain structures and rules.

Geometric systems introduce to the processes of creation of space a sense of order. Mathematics and geometry are abstract tools used to organize the abstract space of mind, establishing a hierarchy and building certain structures and rules. However, the geometric systems used to create cyberspatial worlds play completely different roles in cyberspace than in the physical world. Euclidean geometry brings to the cyberspace the systems of symbols and metaphors, which help build existential spaces. It brings the known, allowing the domesticating of new territories. Non-Euclidean geometry showed that space can become an autonomic geometric being, an independent entity existing in numbers, a being created by intellect and remaining close to the reason and stimulating abstract thinking. Non-Euclidean geometry became an independent product and the creative power of speculative abstract mathematical mind. Topology allows perceiving space as a dynamic, fluid, malleable, variable environment, which can be freely shaped and changed in time. The world of fractals is a step towards the discovery of new spaces independent from nature; it is an abstract, mathematical tool for the creation of cyberspatial world. Spacetime has provided us with a new understanding of geometric concepts: points as events, lines as geodesic lines. These concepts are ideally suited for cyberspace which is a dynamic system, based on events.

[1] Norberg – Schulz C., Bycie, przestrzeń i architektura, Murator, Warszawa, 2000, p. 15 (Lynch) [2] Rawers, P., Space, Geometry and Aesthetics; through Kant and towards Deleuze, New York, 2008, p. 1 [3] Rawers, P., op.cit., p. 3 [4] Emmer M., Mathland, From Flatland to Hypersurfaces, Birkhäuser Basel, 2004, p. 10 [5] Emmer M., op.cit., (Osserman) [6] Cyberspace, First step, Benedikt M., ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1992 [7] If a line segment intersects two straight lines forming two interior angles on the same side that sum to less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles sum to less than two right angles.

[8] Emmer M., op.cit., p. 11 [9] Ibidem., p. 66 [10] Ibidem., p. 80 (Giusepa Di Cristina) [11] Emmer M., op.cit., (Mandelbrot) [12] Virilio: “One cannot separate the invention of virtual space from fractal geometry. Architect needs to work in fractal dimension.”

[13] Musgrave [14] Emmer M., op.cit., p. 55

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

3. Cybermetries

Using the well-known geometric structures as a base for forming the landscape of cyberspace is part of the natural process of 'transition' from the known to the unknown world; in other words the process of 'colonization' of the new space. Within this process, we can observe a cyberspatial ‘evolution’ - the selection that allows extracting and consolidating the best possible solutions for virtual worlds, allows establishing new paradigms, and also allows extracting characteristics of these worlds. Isolating the specific features leads to more efficient ways of navigation in the new spaces, better usage and more effective management.

Also the geometric structures of virtual spaces adapt as a result of adjusting to the requirements of the evolving electronic environment.

We are redefining existing concepts, creating new definitions, and finally, creating new geometries as a response to the inadequacy of the old systems. New geometric systems in cyberspace form a quite distinct field of geometry of the digital world that is separate from the traditional notion of geometry. These new systems are freed from the function of description of nature; they are abstract, and open for mind to create existential space, which is set in the electronic domain of cyberspace.

These new geometries of cyberspace, which are the outcome of the processes described above, we can call ‘cybermetries’ [1] rather than ‘geometries’ – in order to distinguish them from the traditional geometric theories. Cybermetries are created based on the characteristics of the environment of cyberspace: a new concept of dimension, hypertextual access, lack of continuity and location, no point of reference, mathematical infinity, lack of scale, and the specific dynamics characteristic of the whole system.

3.1. Examples of cybermetry The process of clarification of cyberspatial environment brings the emancipation of cybermetry. A good example for that is proposed by the Kenton Musgrave combination of fractal geometry with the Euclidean geometry as a new geometry more relevant for cyberspatial environment than the ones that relate to the physical world. Other examples could be Mark Titman’s Zoom Geometry or Michael Leyton’s New Formalism.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) 3.1.1. Titman’s Zoom Geometry Mark Titman’s Zoom Geometry is a response to the new characteristic features of virtual environments. Zoom geometry is the geometry of becoming, the geometry of life.

Titman postulates to derive the multidimensionality of cyberspace from the movement. The movement that occurs in cyberspace is a result of polarity, the force which exists within all living beings, including the organisms of digital origin (Organized Data). ‘Polarity has generated dimensionality through movement,’ says Titman.

A position in cyberspace cannot be estimated based on a relationship with the environment, as happens in the physical world; the position in cyberspace is defined as the proportion of mutual relations of users and the current needs of the user-defined direction of movement. Position is determined by the vectors of the optimum changes. In this case, the destination is a priority, even if is unknown. Establishing a permanent change and the intention are integral parts of this process.

The movement, according to Titman, is the only way to determine the position in cyberspace. Every new position generates different expectations and answers for the user. Based on this, the user / inhabitant of cyberspace decides in which direction he should proceed and what size of the cyberspatial environment he must generate.

Titman also underlines that in cyberspace there is no frame of reference; we cannot determine the point to which we will refer when forming, measuring, or describing virtual worlds. The reference points depend on whether the system is static, dynamic, or nomadic, and whether the objectives have been defined. If the target is specified, the navigator knows the position, can define the area, and the structure can be created, gaining some stability during this process. If the target is not specified, or there is not enough data to determine it, the user moves using his intuitive qualities of navigation: instinct, intuition, and intellect.

According to Titman, cyberspace has three basic dimensions: height, width, and breath. Breath is movement, life; it’s pulsing and temporary.

Zoom geometry exists in space, in which a point and a plane can be balanced. The point, in cyberspace, according to Titman, is its negation, its opposite, which is an Infinitely Distant Sphere. Everything can be determined by the relationship to the empty space. Zoom geometry is an idea of a space where past and future components, peripherals and centers, planes and points maintain perfect balance.

3.1.2. Leyton’s New Formalism Michael Leyton has developed the concept of a new geometry where shape is equivalent to the Memory Storage. Leyton called this theory a New Formalism. According to this theory, a memory of every geometric transformation is preserved in a shape. The procedures contained in the shapes of objects and in their nature constitute the basis for the New Formalism. ‘Instead of thinking about the results, describing them in a geometric manner, let’s concentrate on the process,' says Leyton.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

M. Leyton: the inferred histories on the shape Leyton’s New Formalism is a theory widely used in other fields of science. Leyton himself describes the use of his geometry in the processes of discovering structures of paintings and the creation of architecture (described in the publication The Structure of Paintings, 2006). In his opinion, works of art are a storehouse of information.

Leyton also believes that the emotions expressed through images or architectural shapes are in fact the memory, which is easy to reconstruct based on certain laws. He says that these laws that concern keeping/storing memory allow for the systematic and rigorous mapping not only of the compositional structure, but also emotional structure.

M. Titman, Zoom Geometry

New Formalism introduces a new approach to geometry. In the New Formalism, a shape is the means of reconstructing history, is the way by which past actions are restored. The shape is equivalent to the memory storage; it is no longer only a form.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) Leyton believes that memory is stored in asymmetries and erased in symmetries. He developed a ‘principle of asymmetry,’ which says that any asymmetry must return to the symmetry if it goes back in time. This allows reconstructing the history of shapes. The form is the result of history; in other words, form is memory.

M. Leyton: the inferred histories on the shape

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

v

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Referring to the architecture in cyberspace, Leyton says that it itself is a living structure, asymmetric, which allows us to rediscover and restore the history of the process by which it was produced - bending, cutting, twisting, breaking, etc.; in other words, it is a magazine of memory about itself.

[Architecture] is no longer dull and aloof, like the conventional building. It is alive with time, and, because it is filled with memory it is alive with mind. [2] Leyton, like Titman, pays special attention to the problem of time and movement in cyberspace. Both also introduce new ways of looking at the cyberspatial dimensionality. A fundamental change from geometry in cybermetry lies in redefining dimension.

3.2. An alternative understanding of dimension - a cyberspatial dimension The process of creating cybermetry is based on redefining certain geometrical values. The basic change, and the base for the creation of the new language, is redefinition of the concept of ‘point,’ replacing it with the concept of ‘event.’ This brings the need to change the concept of line, which is no longer just a set of points, but a collection of events, thus losing continuity. Similarly, we can look for redefinition of the plane, solid, and in the end, the space itself. To conclude: electronic virtual space consists of events, and the movement is a condition of its existence.

We will also need to redefine the concept of dimension for the purposes of cyberspace. Since the notion of distance or scale does not exist, we lack the tools of description to establish location and determine the 'size' of an object or event. Dimension in the mathematical sense cannot function in an environment where there is no reference point (it can only function in the local systems, in which encoding is unified, and every user knows its predefined rules), so the notion of dimension in cyberspace should be considered to be based on completely other values of 'measuring.'

These values may not be quantitative, but they must be considered in terms of quality. This means that the dimension of cyberspace is a characteristic (property), not a number.

3.2.1 Metadata Dimensions in cyberspace are often interpreted as properties of the data - metadata.

Metadata is information helping to identify data in cyberspace. It is basically data about data. Most metadata consist of information about the author, date, and time of creation of the file (or information), size of a document, date of last change, format, etc. This information identifies the uniqueness of the document and its location in cyberspace. It can be defined as dimensions of the document / information / event in cyberspace. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) To determine the location, shape, transformation of an object in physical space, we use geometry; to determine the location, shape, transformation of the object in cyberspace, we use metadata. Metadata is therefore one of the key factors that shapes cybermetries. The object is information, and its dimension is information about itself and its properties.

Understanding of metadata as the characteristic features of the document / object / event / in cyberspace can be extended to a description of properties such as color, the frequency of sound, etc. All of unified qualitative systems can be metadata, thus dimensions of cyberspace.

3.2.2. Semantic Dimensions. Semantic Spaces Alan Wexelblat’s concept of Semantic Spaces and Semantic Dimensions relates to the idea of metadata.

Wexelblat says that through the combination of properties such as the document’s language, lines of code, date of modification, and author with the concept of dimension, we create n - dimensional information space in which objects are identified and classified according to the characteristics of these dimensions, as he calls them: semantic dimension.

The semantic dimension is a way to combine elements of different values. Semantic dimensions are mechanisms to help solve the problems of positioning and composition. They create ways to organize the elements according to their importance.

Semantic space is n - dimensional space where each dimension is a semantic dimension and n is the number of properties that express forms of objects in space (including the values not found). According to this concept, cyberspace is a multi-dimensional information space.

The goal of semantic dimension is to give a representative meaning for the arrangement and position of abstract information. As a result, we are creating the logic of the position in accordance with the structure of objects.

Wexelblat describes two basic types of semantic dimension that exist in cyberspace: the Absolute Dimensions, i.e. those that can be described based on examination of a particular isolated object (such as author and the size of the object), and the Relative Dimensions, which refer to the relationship of object with other objects and users. In the group of Relative Dimensions, furthermore, we can distinguish five types: Linear Dimensions, which correspond to those dimensions which can be described in the form of conventional lines (i.e., values correspond to real numbers); Ray Dimensions, similar to linear but connected at one end to a fact or feature; Quantum Dimensions; Nominal Dimensions; Ordinal Dimensions; and Functional Dimensions.

Because the dimensions carry information, both editing and changing the position of the object influences its dimensionality. Editing is done by movement of the object: Movement – in semantic space we change the meaning by moving them along one or other dimension. [It is] Editing by moving. [3] 3.3. Cybermetries without geometry A cybermetric system is used to describe the creation of electronic and virtual worlds. Cyberspace, as a visualized world of ideas, uses symbols images. It also produces its own language of symbols, which evolves adapting to the environment. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Does cyberspace seek to abandon the figurative language of symbols? As it is the product of abstract intellect and it relies on abstract ideas, what is the role of figurativeness in cyberspace? To be able to communicate, must cyber architecture be linked to forms of ‘spatial’ forms or must it be based on the spatial geometric system?”

Cybermetries are associated with a new understanding of the properties of geometric objects and are the result of thinking about cyberspace as a space environment. Defining new properties, dimensions, may lead to conclusions which in effect starts to change perception of space itself.

[1] ‘Geo’ – ‘Earth’ is not adequate for Cyberspace environment, as we are not using these systems to measure physical world. So we propose to replace ‘geo’ with ‘cyber’ coining a new term ‘cybermetries’.

[2] Leyton M., Shape As Memory, A Geometric Theory of Architecture, Birkhäuser, 2006.

[3] A. Wexelblat, ‘Semantic Dimension’ in Architects in Cyberspace.

4. Structures of Cyberspace As a whole, cyberspace is an irregular structure and it is clearly developing as a decentralized organism. Attempts made towards imagining cyberspace as a whole, unified structure probably derive from a natural instinct, a desire to sort and organize things that surround us.

Also important seems to be the fact that the emergence of cyberspace is accompanied by overwhelming chaos, and a natural human reaction is an attempt to organize it.

4.1. Kenton Musgrave’s concept Kenton Musgrave suggests that the best visual manifestation of cyberspace should be a system that is familiar to the average user and does not cause confusion in navigation, as well as responding to the specific features of cyberspace: Requisite features of a "natural" cyberspace: 1) It should be locally two-dimensional, like the surface of the Earth.

2) On intermediate scales it should be spherical, like a planet.

3) On the largest scale it should be three-dimensional, like the universe we inhabit.

4) The geometry used for its representation should be, for the most part, fractal. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Musgrave believes that two-dimensional environments seem to be the most natural and intuitive for the average person. Global context, however, is natural in the reference to the physical world, as it is the context of the planet. There is also another advantage of this geometrical solution - this space is topologically very convenient. The surface of the sphere is finite, but unbounded. This means that we can have our locally-planed geometry, without worrying about falling off the edge of our necessarily finite world.

Three-dimensional space is, according to Musgrave, the best way to organize the layers of cyberspace in the largest scale, not only because it maximizes the total usable space, but also because it can vastly increase the local density of information.

4.2. Michael Benedikt’s concept Michael Benedikt, in his book Cyberspace. First Step describes his idea for the construction of cyberspace in detail.

He encourages the use of the torus to form its structure. A torus is a twodimensional surface or solid formed by rotating a closed curve, especially a circle, around a line that lies in the same plane but does not intersect it. Benedikt argues: The absolute size of this form is computable, but unimaginable. The detailed description will have to wait. [1] Cyberspace in the shape of a torus is convenient, because it may contain multiple internal spaces - the spaces within the spaces - giving the opportunity to develop one of the basic features of cyberspace - infinite variety. It can therefore accommodate an infinite number of interconnected areas.

Cyberspace is designed with the ‘top-down’ method and then 'embedded' in the network. It happens by adding particular constructions one to another, creating a new place without the context, not by building up at a designated area according to the existing rules.

Each piece of cyberspace does not need be in any way similar to the previous one. Cyberspace has no development plan. Because the site is unrestricted and (theoretically) infinite, probably no plan is needed, and its further development will occur spontaneously in the same way as before. Therefore, trying to imagine cyberspace as a form of geometry, analogous to a planet or galaxy system, seems to be meaningless.

In the case of a network environment that is cyberspace, we should then abandon dreams of planning and control of the whole system and give more attention to its own characteristics, so different from those governing the physical world.

[1] Cyberspace, First step, Benedikt M., ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

III CYBERARCHITECTURE 1. Cyberdefinitions

Architecture welcomed the emergence of new electronic spaces with great enthusiasm. Although architecture is a seemingly sedate (stable) discipline, it easily came under the influence of the dynamic characteristic of cyberspaces.

Architectural boundaries are not rigidly defined, which allows external ideas to penetrate the territory of architectural discipline. Because of this, architecture easily adapts philosophical, mathematical, and physical concepts and translates them (or their parts) into its own language, including it in the canon of architectural aesthetics. The openness of borders, according to Elizabeth Grosz, is a result of the eternal search for the architecture of its own identity: What is interesting about architecture is that is has always been unsure as to where to position itself and its own identity as a discipline: it is itself internally divided about whether it is a science, a technological discipline or a mode of art or aesthetic production. [1] The question of architectural identity has been asked not only by architects. According to Grosz, ‘architecture is not simply the colonization or territorialization of space, though it has commonly functioned in this way, (…); it is also, at its best, the anticipation and welcoming of a future in which the present can no longer recognize itself’. [2] Building on the achievements of science, architecture absorbs the rules made by it while acting as an art form, wherein the validity of these rules is constantly challenged. Thus, it becomes a bridge between science and art, the filter through which the ideas of science penetrate the ground of art.

1.1. Architectural (r) evolution Rejection of the concept of durability in architecture is part of ‘dematerialization of the world trend,’ the process that has been present in the culture for centuries; it derives from the virtual abstractness of the www.issuu.com/cyberempathy CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) human mind. In the twentieth century, thanks to the emergence of electronic bitsphere and virtual worlds, this process began to intensify and become a permanent part of the existential space.

Designing immaterial, 'not buildable' buildings is as old as the practice of architecture itself. When we refer to the philosophical concepts, attempting to understand the essence of architecture itself, we will see that over thousands of years of an architectural existence, many breathtaking works of visionary architecture were conceived but not built.

1.1.1. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili The first (documented) milestone on the way to the perception of architecture as an integral part of a virtual experience was the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili', a work attributed to the Dominican monk Francesco Colona, published in 1499 in Venice. [3] It is a story full of mystery of a young man, Poliphila’s, travel to Arcadia. [4] Buildings, whose descriptions and illustrations can be found in the Hypnerotomachia, are like objects from a dream. The design is based on an architectural knowledge taken from the works of Vitruvius and Alberti, while the way of thinking shown in the Hypnerotomachia is very similar to the way of thinking presented by architectural visionaries, for example, dealing with "nowhere," as if it was "somewhere,", which is a common feature of the discourse of visionary architecture; the idea of abandonment of concerns about the weather conditions and limitations of the physical architecture; the idea of short-term objectives, predicting, and architecture of events (which had a huge influence on such artists as Cedric Price, Archigram, and Bernard Tschumi); descriptions of machines and a discourse of the old dichotomy between biological and mechanical life. It all can be found in 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.' Landscapes of the Hypnerotomachia are somewhat similar to the metaphysical desert landscapes of Chirico and certainly could have been inspiration for the Surrealists. Machines in the Hypnerotomachia are bizarre hybrids of ornament, mechanism, and desire. They are, according to Neil Spiller, an announcement of Duchamp’s "The Large Glass" and other mainstream Dada ideas.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) 1.1.2. Giovanni Battista Piranesi Another major creator of the development of immaterial, virtual architecture was Venetian Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Like the fictional Poliphilo, Piranesi was trying to recreate meanings from the ruins (debris) and remains of ancient architecture. Piranesi created the famous series of sixteen etchings 'Carceri d'Invenzione,' (”Imaginary Prisons”), he is also an author of the manifest 'Prima parte di Architettura,' published in 1743.

Piranesi was the retrospective designer of the past, reconstructing the fragments of ancient Rome, but he did not follow the guidelines of archaeologists, neither did he glorify antiquity in the manner of his times; he rejuvenated it, relying on his imagination. He was creating collages of objects and ideas, which is also characteristic of modern tactics, both artistic and architectural. He was studying the gap between architecture drawn and built, thus being probably the first 'virtual' architect in the history of architecture.

His 'Carceri' is a magnificent example of rupture between the architect’s expertise and the troubled artist’s soul. 'Carceri' illustrates huge underground dungeons with stairs and mighty machines placed everywhere. Fantastic labyrinth structures are collages of Antiquity (classical ancient architecture) and Piranesi’s own set of imagined monumental ancient ruins.

Piranesi’s influence can be seen in the works of the Romantic era and Surrealism. Within the architectural field, he was certainly an inspiration for Lebbeus Woods, or Lieberskind. Piranesi’s influence is also visible in Escher's work and Kafkaesque style.

Among other visionaries whose visions support the concept of virtual architecture are Claude Nicolas Ledoux, author of the urban concept of the ideal city Chaux and Étienne-Louis Boullée'a, the creator of the famous visionarilly designed mausoleum of Newton (1784).

Piranesi, ‘Carceri d’Invenzione’ I, II, III i IV 1.1.3. Situationists - Cedric Price and Constant Nieuwenhuys In the twentieth century, the concepts of speed and time became the integral part of life. Art, architecture, and music absorbed these values very quickly. Futurists were among the first artists who tried to construct their art based on the concept of speed. They believed that art should develop simultaneously with science, and what was characteristic for futurists was their intrinsic mechanical approach to all kinds of organisms, both biological and social. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Cubism also suggested new development paths for architecture - without the tyranny of the plan, section, and elevation - towards eternal change.

Cubists, inspired by the notion of multidimensional space, tried to create new ways for man to perceive objects.

All of these cultural changes led architects to question the correctness of the subordination of architectural rigors to their function. Also, they began to question the social restrictions of urban areas and started to consider a city as an obstacle to a proper democratic life. The Situationists movement was created as an expression of this way of thinking. Constant Nieuwenhuys and Cedric Price belonged to the Situationists: The architecture of tomorrow will be a means to modify the present concept of time and space, will be a means of knowledge and action.

Architectural context will be modifiable. Context will be switchable entirely or partly in accordance with the will of the inhabitants. [5] The Situationist movement was founded in 1957 by Guy Debord and ideologically alluded to the Surrealists, although it strongly condemned consumerism. Their ideology was based on 'derive’, the development of psychogeography and unitary urbanism, and most important, the construction of "situation."

Cedric Price Fun Palace 'New Babylon,' by Constant Nieuwenhuys, was the great Situationist urban design work. This work, whose metamorphosis lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, has evolved into the form of a countless series of models, sketches, etchings, lithographs, collages, and architectural drawings, and also into the form of manifests, essays, books, and films.

‘New Babylon’ was a type of propaganda which criticizes the mechanisms of modern society. It envisioned a society of total automation, where the need for labor is replaced by a nomadic life based on creative play.

Architecturally, ‘New Babylon’ is a great network of internal spaces which cover the entire planet. Every aspect of the architecture and landscape elements can be controlled and constantly reconfigured.

Architecture is based on the interactive game of needs.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

New Babilon, wnętrza 1.1.4. Archigram, Superstudio, and Archizoom In the 1960s, three young architects, dissatisfied with the static nature of contemporary architectural practice and the flattering tastes of the middle class formed a group which they called ‘Archigram.’ They were Mike Webb, Peter Cook, and David Green.

They sought to deny permanence and stability, permanence and belonging, and and aimed to manifest the demand for change. They conceived the idea of a nomadism of entire communities, which became possible thanks to advanced technology, and the need to redefine the rules of living and housing, to allow for expansion of individual mobility.

They cultivated the idea of a mobile society, which could resemble early nomadic communities.

Nomadic visions of Archigram are associated with a desire to break the bonds of Earth, a lack of rooting, and independence from infrastructure.

They played with the flexibility of modern architecture, its ability to exchange information with an external environment.

The most famous projects of Archigram are 'Plug-in City' (Peter Cook from 1962 to 1964), 'Walking City' (Ron Herron), and 'Instant City' (Cook, Herron, and Crompton).

'Plug-in City' is a continuation of earlier ideas of residential cabins 'Metal Cabin Housing Project.' In the Plug-in City all the components can be dismantled and disconnected. Parts can be exchanged as they become obsolete. Small residential capsules (living-capsules) are connected to a mega structural frame. Plug-in City was a place for living divided into discrete spheres: science and education areas, or zones of pleasure and fun.

Mobility was the obsession of members of Archigram. Green developed the concept of ‘Living Pods,’ portable living capsules, which became the most representative idea for the Archigram. In Green's visions, a house was designed to be mobile device, and the city functioned as a machine that to plug the house into. From Archigram’s demands of change to Herron’s Living Pods, the famous ‘Walking City’ was created developed.

‘Walking City’ was designed so that it could move on special telescoping legs or on air cushions.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Plug - in City, Peter Cook, 1962 – 1964

Walking City, Ron Herron Another project, ‘Instant City,’ was developed by Cook and Herron simultaneously. Herron developed his scheme under the influence of San Francisco’s architecture and Cook constructed his version based on the English Smalltown model - a bizarre and 'tubular' structure.

‘Instant City’ consisted of a set of lightweight mobile structures, television screens, and inflatable service facilities, including a whole set of mobile toys developed in the previous decade. [6]

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Instant city At the same time in Italy there were two groups similar to Archigram: Superstudio and Archizoom. Their projects are ironic in the main and use visual and linguistic Dada language. They considered their work to be ‘poetic time bombs, systematic sowing of doubt, revolt and disgust in the growing canon of experimental architecture’. Architecture was to them an allegory of society.

The activity of Archizoom was mainly focused on ‘an assassination attempt on the modernist utopias.’ The most famous of their work is the ‘Non-stop City.’ which is an attempt to show the 'negotiating' position of the user to architecture. According to the Archizoom ideology, the architecture must become an open structure.

Archizoom, Non Stop City

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Superstudio, Continuous Monument series, 1969 The ideologies of architectural visionaries are directly continued today.

Virtual architecture, despite the fact that it’s considered by many critics as an architectural utopia, is in fact something more influential and important than just an utopia. Architecture in cyberspace is the new way of looking at architecture, and it may even constitute a separate discipline.

1.2. Architectural (re) definition The process of entering into the electronic era for architecture involves a redefinition of terms that have always been associated with the field of architecture, such as inhabitation, or construction. The foundations for this new way of thinking have been assembled by architectural visionaries who for centuries stretched the boundaries of architecture to other territories that do not belong to the architectural discipline.

The challenge posed by architecture to cyberspace cannot be reduced to issues of technology. Virtuality is not just technological innovation.

Electronic spaces have to offer a great deal more to architecture: ‘the idea of a disembodied, nonmaterial, or transcendental notion of design, design disembodied from matter; and the idea of a simulation, reproduction, enhancement, or augmentation of the senses and materiality’. [7] In the phenomenon of electronic culture, the disappearance of the object becomes a trend in architectural design.

Architecture wants not only to be built, but also it wants to live, to become a constant subject in the process of building; it seeks to evolve, change, and improve, like a biological form that is a part of the mechanism of nature.

It is also necessary to expand the range of architectural considerations of spaces associated with spheres of the mind, and to define new relationships between architecture and its main reference point - body.

It is the post-organic movement in architecture, the result of a new convergence, for which the digital architecture becomes a bridge.

Technology understood as a medium, according to Kalitko, is a mechanism of mediation between body and space. What characterizes new relationships between architecture and body is non-measurability, lack of scale, lack of a reference point.

The disappearance of the object is a phenomenon of techno-culture and a design trend in architecture at the same time: de-territorialization, mobility, temporality, and instability of equilibrium: Architecture, as the process of defining and limiting the object, now considers the body as immeasurable model, as a deconstruction of www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) certainty and constancy of form, defining the body as a form which is constantly in the process of change and thus being in opposition to the constancy of the object. Architecture, on the other hand, seeks to repeal its materiality, disappearance of the contours, obliterating the real presence. [8] Architecture, in the era of electronic space, should constantly be reborn.

[1] Grosz E., Architecture from the Outside, Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, 2001, p. 4 [2] op.cit. p. 151 [3] Although it is agreed the author was Colona, it was published anonymously and a number of sources indicates that the true author could be Alberti.

[4] ‘Axis of the plot of the Hypnerotomachia is a Poliphyla’s dream where he is looking for his bride. Hypnotic and not very clear story of Poliphyla is only a pretext for extensive discussion on topics far from the struggles of the heart. During his journey he visited a lot of fantasy and described in detail architectural buildings, gardens, marvels of engineering – among others: water maze, and automatic doors, opened with magnetic panels. As many as 200 of the 370 pages of the book is devoted to architecture and landscapes, 60, an encyclopedia of Renaissance botany, there is also a lot about music, fine arts, interior design and culinary arts.’ (Anna Dziedzic) [5] Ivan Chtcheglov [6] The concept of Instant City has its resonance in the popular music field. This is thanks to t Cook’s student - Mark Fisher, one of the most renowned stage designer (among other things, he is the author of the ‘The Wall’ stage desing for Pink Floyd.)

[7] Grosz E., Architecture from the Outside, Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, 2001, p. 86 [8] Kalitko K., Architektura między materialnością i wirtualnością, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań 2005, p. 10

2. Cyberarchitecture

There are many terms describing the phenomenon of architecture that colonizes electronic virtual worlds. In literature we can find terms such as: Virtual Architecture, Information Architecture (Kipniss 1993), Intermedial Architecture (Kipniss 1993), Architecture of Intelligence (Derrick de Kerckhove 2001), Connected Architecture (Derrick de Kerckhove 2001); Hyperarchitecture (League Puglisi 1999), Hybrid Architecture (Peter Zellner 1999), Liquid Architecture, (Marcos Novak 1995); Transarchitecture (Marcos Novak 1991). www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) Elizabeth Grosz notices that there seem to be two different ways of considering virtuality in the context of architecture. The first way is connected to the perception of virtual architecture associated with the use of information systems in buildings, technology that can or should somehow be incorporated into the way that buildings work, and the second way: ‘as an entirely new way of seeing, inhabiting, and designing space.’

The first way is connected to electronic 'extensions' of buildings associated with monitoring, security, and other information systems and networks. This kind of virtual architecture is described in William Mitchell’s book City of Bits. Mitchell calls it Extended Architecture (Augmented Architecture), and he points out that this kind of architecture facilitates integration of electronic and physical spaces. This is not only the architecture of so-called intelligent buildings, where physical buildings are equipped with electronics, it is, according to Mitchell, the entire layer of the bitsphere superimposed on the surface of the Earth, a network of information and electronic systems necessary for the functioning of modern civilization. This architecture allows us to use electronic extensions of existential space.

Derrick de Kerckhove believes that cyberspace, in order to function properly, needs three types of architecture: architecture of electronic connections (connected architecture) – which is a physical electronic mesh that surrounds the planet allowing communications; architecture of hardware - meaning equipment, receivers, and servers; and finally, architecture of software – which is the architecture of code and standardization of distributed data, but most important, it is an architecture associated with visualized data.

This last type of architecture is connected to the term ‘virtual architecture’ most noticeably. The perception of architecture as a process of imaging and creation of visual messages that evolves, and thanks to which we can interact is a new way of looking at the field of architecture and design process: This method requires re-evaluation of concepts of reality and relationships among rooting, nesting and temporality between real and virtual. [1] Cyberspatial architecture should be regarded as an emerging phenomenon on the cusp of architecture, music, art, theater, film and poetry. This is the actual virtual architecture, architecture that is programmable, immaterial, architecture of electronic access to the virtual worlds, and architecture of these worlds.

Daniel Libeskind, Micromegas Time Section 1979 www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) 2.1. Marcos Novak’s Liquid Architecture Marcos Novak is a transarchitect, a global nomad, an artist, theorist, and musician. He is one of the first architects to begin describing and defining the notion of virtual architecture. He is also internationally recognized as a pioneer in this field and as the inventor of the concepts of Transarchitecture and Liquid Architecture. Novak’s most important publications are: "Liquid Architecture," about the liquid forms of spacetime, "Transmitting Architecture," and "Soft Babylon," an article referring to the Constant’s concept of the "New Babylon". "Transmitting Architecture," the essay from 1995 which set the theoretical basis for the entire realm of virtual architecture. He describes himself as a creator of interactive, animated virtual spaces. Novak's essays and work have had a major impact on architecture, music, science, and technology.

In his publications, Novak states that architecture has gone beyond the limits of the human sensorium, and learned to use the achievements of science. Architecture became interested in new areas and spaces that have been discovered by science and made available through the development of technology, thus pointing to cyberspace as a new and attractive area for the interest of architects, which should be thoroughly examined: While our science examines the micro-and macroscopic regions of a curved, multi-dimensional spacetime, we build within the borders of our minimal and limited sensorium, where we can understand something directly with our senses. [2] Novak believes that the architecture cannot continue to function limited by its materiality. The concept of architecture demands redefinition. We must refresh the field of architecture, allowing ideas from other fields to circulate freely within its domain, while at the same time discussing current paradigms. To be effective, says Novak, the strategies that we use to generate new architecture must reflect the current understanding of physics and cosmology; we need to deal with our most advanced concepts and methods of understanding the world.

Novak believes that ‘cyberspace is, has and contains architecture.’ This is the essence of the mind, and the mind cannot exist without architecture.

Cyberspace contains architecture of a new type – a liquid architecture: Architecture in Cyberspace is LIQUID. Animistic, animated, metamorphic as well as crossing categorical boundaries, applying the cognitively supercharged operation of poetic thinking. [3] The vast majority of the world around us is in flux. The stillness of architecture has been the exception. This is about to change.

Architecture is coming alive. [4] Novak argues that the liquid architecture of cyberspace is much more than just kinetic, robotic architecture. It is like a biological mechanism a fine structure of relationships and intervals, which, in the context of creating electronic spaces, means filling them with content and giving them forms. Novak emphasizes new public face of virtual architecture: Cyberspace can be seen as a vast virtual laboratory for the continuing production of new architectural visions, while the same time returning architecture to the public realm. [5] According to Novak, contemporary architecture is totally depends on society - its audience, because it is created entirely by a user.

Architecture is no longer a subject of the heroic dream of Modernists who dreamed that architecture can change society, but rather the opposite; we are about to realize that architecture can be changed only when society evolves. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition)

Novak strongly emphasizes similarities in the new architecture to poetry and music. Poetry and music are forms of creation of space in time; they are dynamic structures, and, according to him, ‘shelters for imagination.’

Novak links the hypertextual nature of cyberspace to poetry. A poetic way of thinking contrasts with the linear, narrative way, which makes poetry much closer in design to hypertextual cyberspace than linear narrative structures. Access to its resources is not linear, nor sequential, but free, like free access to mind storage resources.

Referring to the poetry of Lorca, Novak brings up the concept of duende, the spirit, the demon of poetry, which is recalled as a poetic fact, poetic image, is not based on any analogy and does not involve any direct meanings, any logical explanation. Novak considers duende to be the liberation of language. He says that we should comprehend the spirit of duende, in order to get closer to understanding the ‘unimaginable complexity of Cyberspace’ (Gibson’s definition of Cyberspace).

We must turn towards not only the technologies but also in the direction of the oldest of the arts - poetry. [6] Cyberspace is an uninhabited poetry and to be able to navigate it we must be a leaf in the wind of dream. [7] Dematerialized and non-linear architecture in cyberspace is liquid, according to Novak. It’s architecture of fluctuating relations between abstract elements. It tends to music: The dematerialized, dancing, difficult architecture of cyberspace, fluctuating, ethereal, temperamental, transmissible to all parts of the world simultaneously may become the most enduring architecture ever conceived. [8] The functions of the new architecture are strictly subordinated to the functioning of the network environment of cyberspace; therefore, Novak’s Transarchitecture plays the role of the organizer in cyberspace: When bricks become pixels, the tectonics of architecture become informational, city planning becomes data structure design, construction costs become computational costs, accessibility becomes transmissibility, proximity is measured in numbers of required links and available bandwidth. [9] New design features for virtual architecture consist of: morphing, transformation, metamorphosis, and change of form in time. Morphing is the newest device for architecture; it has genetic character, not surgical. ‘Collage is mechanical, morphing is alchemical – says Novak architects must create generative models for architectures.’

Design is not only the act of planning functions but primarily the task of planning processes, it is writing the script for the virtual architecture’s life, determining the extents of freedom for a user within the system, and setting up the scenarios and sets for a user. ‘For the first time in history, says Novak, the architect is called upon to design not objects but the principles by which the objects are generated and varied in time’.

The notion of time in Novak’s Transarchitecture is understood not only as a temporal, spatial relationship, as temporal knowledge of architecture, but also as time simulation techniques. The transarchitect has to become a director, to learn the art of composing (designing) time, as does a composer of musical works or choreographer.

Real time is a challenge for the architect, but also the logistics of maintaining a consistent illusion becomes such a real problem, as the www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) physical limitations of materials. [10] Constant’s ‘New Babylon’ returns in Novak’s essays as a ‘Soft Babylon,’ a concept that was an opposition to the Modernists’ ideas. Constant’s megastructure, which was to cover the entire planet, has been interpreted by Novak as the global Internet infrastructure. ‘Soft Babylon’ is a self-organizing structure; built in the system bottom–up. Society has complete freedom in shaping this environment. Novak calls this concept ‘the Naked City.’

Novak’s projects are a continuation of the philosophy of architectural visionaries. His postulates can be linked to general trends in the philosophy of post-structuralism and phenomenology, which highly values virtual experience. Post-structuralism is also connected to the idea of defragmentation of solids and surfaces, and in Novak’s case, also defragmentation and despatialisation of physical consistency of architectural systems.

Novak pushes the boundaries of architecture towards the fields of communication, science, music, and poetry, rather than grounding it in its current static forms.

2.2. Architecture of Intelligence. Connected Architecture Novak argues that reality is in constant motion, that it is liquid; therefore architecture should be liquid as well. Derrick de Kerckhove, on the other hand, is looking for relationships between elements in this liquid space. He believes that identifying these relationships should be one of the main tasks of architecture and architects in cyberspace. He calls architects working in the cyberspace ‘cybertects.’

Derrick de Kerckhove, McLuhan’s student, is a media theorist at the University of Toronto. He is also the author of the concept of architecture of intelligence and architecture of connectivity (connected architecture).

Connected Architecture is the architecture of relationships between three spaces in which man functions: between the space of mind, space of physical world, and the network space (cyberspace). Kerckhove says that there is a profound need for the identification of certain compounds and the relationship between these three spaces, including those compounds that have a significant impact on architecture.

Architecture of intelligent connections, according Kerckhove, is an architecture that supports physical and nonphysical connections of bodies and minds. It is based on the assumption that there is such a phenomenon as connected minds and their connections are supported by technologies that enable them to collaborate on common goals within the specified time. The challenge for architecture is to explore these types of network structures, which are the most effective and efficient solutions for the connected minds. It is what Kerckhove calls the ‘architecture of intelligence’: The opportunity for the architects is not merely to improve the drafts or elevations, or even benefit from the CAD system, but to rethink the real.

How do architects greet this opportunity?

The architecture of intelligence is the architecture of connectivity. To the extent that architecture deals with building places for people in face-toface presence, connected architecture deals with structuring connections, designing forms and patterns of telepresence and collaboration in the networks between such places. (…) While the formal architecture is a response to the expansion of space www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) in perspective, connected architecture, is the response to the ‘electronic implosion of space, time and architecture’. [11] As a result we get convergence of design of information space with that of real space through the mediation of computer technology: Kerckhove believes that connected architecture must address three areas of expertise: ‘thresholds and connections between real and virtual spaces; the construction of usable virtual environments in cyberspace and the architecture of connected mental space to the extent that connective cognition now requires the use of cyberspace to be shared in new ways.’

The primary goals of connected architecture, similar to those of Vitruvian architecture, should be to construct useful, reliable and attractive social and cognitive environments. [12] Connected architecture is characterized by the following properties: ‘Dematerialization, Demobilization, Mass customization, Intelligent Operation, Soft Transformation.’ Cyberspace architecture must have the ability to store, archive, retrieve, analyze, update, modify.

Kerckhove indicates an important function of architecture as connected architecture in today's process of creating existential spaces, communities, and even entire social structures: We are now in the transition period where, as Le Corbusier did in 1924, we need to rethink not just the city, but the whole world. One of our primary concerns should be to find strategies to include a sense of the global within the local community. There is some urgency to this as the global strife is imploding upon everyone and connected architecture can do something about it. The cybertactural extension of the built environment allows cybertects to consider truly global architecture for the first time in human history. [13] Virtual architecture has the potential to become the first truly global architecture in history, due to the global nature of the network and unification of the language of cyberspace. To make this happen, the architecture in cyberspace must be interactive and accessible. So the user has influence on it, and he feels that he is an integral part of the electronic network environment. Kerckhove points out: ‘Wherever I am with my palmtop and my cell phone, there is the world.'

2.3. City of Bits William Mitchell in his book City of Bits carefully analyzes the emerging architecture of virtual environments. He discusses not only the architecture of the virtual spaces in the sense that Novak speaks of, but also Extended Architecture, its structures and functions in today's electronic society. Mitchell argues that the ‘emerging civic structures and spatial arrangements of the digital are profoundly affecting our access to economic opportunities and public services, the character and content of the public discourse, the forms of cultural activity, the action of power, and the experiments that give shape and texture to our daily routines.’ So we have to learn to control the environment of cyberspace, learn to shape our fate.

Mitchell paraphrases Churchill's famous statement: ‘we make our buildings and our buildings make us’ - "now, we make our networks and our networks make us.' [14] Architecture plays a representational role by providing buildings with their public faces. The Vitruvian idea of decorum (using forms appropriate to the status and purpose of the building) shall also be www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) applied in cyberspace. The hierarchy of control and value, structures of institutions, should reflect any 'built' environment, each urban plan, even the urban plan of cyberspace, says Mitchell. In cyberspace, public images (representations) are replaced by computer-generated graphics images. They, according to Mitchell, are the modern facades of the institutions. They organize the hierarchy and give importance to space.

The task for the virtual architecture is to create the face of buildings, facades in the network, where the symbolism of the image will be used again. This opens up entirely new ways of operating the symbolism in architecture. Finally, says Mitchell, buildings will become computer interfaces and computer interfaces will become buildings. Features of programs and interfaces will become as important as plans for buildings and construction materials.

Mitchell is the author of the concept of the City of Bits, which according to him will be the largest global city of the future. The city is located in the bitsphere, which, referring to McLuhan’s ideas, is the actual place for the global village. The City of Bits will become the capital of the twentyfirst century.

This will be the city unrooted to any definite spot on the surface of the Earth, shaped by connectivity and bandwidth constraints rather than by accessibility and land values. Its places will be constructed virtually by software instead of physically from stones and timbers and they will be connected by logical linkages rather than by doors, passages and streets. [15] Within these places social contacts will be made, economic transactions will be carried out, cultural life will unfold, surveillance will be enacted, and power will be exerted. [16] Computer networks will become such fundamental phenomena to urban life as systems of streets. As a result, familiar urban design issues are up for radical reformulation. The task of the new urbanism, says Mitchell, will not focus on ‘configuring buildings, streets, and public spaces to meet the needs and aspirations of the civitas, but one of writing computer code and deploying software objects to create virtual places and electronic interconnections between them.’ Therefore, the design must not only determine the future character of urban planning, but also its social nature.

In the City of Bits, architectural concepts are about to change completely meanings. The boundaries of cyberspace are understood in different ways, not as physical boundaries, but rather as access barriers. Shelter also has a different meaning; it is more a refuge of privacy, lack of access. It should be understood not as physical shelter for the body, but as a safe storage place for personal data. Building privacy and limiting access will become one of the technologies of the future virtual architecture.

Our network connections are becoming as important as our bodily locations.

Mitchell in City of Bits examines the question of virtual architecture from its functional and constructional side. He introduces new architectural terms and indicates the future functions for virtual architecture.

[1] Grosz E., Architecture from the Outside, Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT Press, 2001, p. 68 [2] Novak M., Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace, [Benedikt M., Cyberspace First Steps], 1995 [3] Novak M., op.cit.

[4] Marcos Novak, Alessandro Ludovico interview with Marcos Novak, [5] Novak M., op.cit. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) [6] Ibidem [7] Ibidem [8] Ibidem [9] Novak M., Transmitting Architecture, [Architectural Design, Architects in Cyberspace, red. Spiller N., 1995] [10] Novak M., op. cit.

[11] Kerckhove D., The Architecture of Intelligence (The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture), Birkhäuser Basel, 2001 [12] Kerckhove D., op. cit.

[13] Kerckhove D., op. cit.

[14] Mitchell W., City of Bits, MIT Press, Boston 1996, p. 49 [15] Mitchell W., op. cit.

[16] Ibidem

3. Creating worlds

Most creators and researchers of cyberspace environments agree that this environment is forcing a radical change in thinking about the design processes. We cannot talk only about designing the space, object, or systems in cyberspace; we need to talk about designing the process.

Because the electronic environment is an interactive virtual environment, where each user can be a co-designer, the discipline of design in cyberspace should be redefined and re-evaluated, taking under consideration these new elements.

3.1. Designing the Process The functioning of the mind space (from which Cyberspace derives) is based on continuous analysis of stimuli, filtering them, assigning, and classifying. It is a continuous process of creating an image of the world.

The space is alive, evolving, revised, and changed during every second of its existence. Thought is in constant movement, as is living space.

Design, in the modern sense, should focus primarily on setting up the scenes for people’s life: a frame, pattern, and algorithm. The main task of the designer, as Janusz Krupinski points out, is to propose new patterns of behaviors, a new social model - 'perfect model.' [1] Another Polish design theoretician, Andrzej Pawlowski, also believed that the main focus of artists’ work should be on the creation process, not on works and not on objects in the material sense. [2] This way of thinking about design is not new; it’s been present in the history of architecture for centuries, especially in urban planning, because of the specificity of the vast and complex organism which is society. www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) Study of the mechanisms and processes as alternative ways for design intensified with the development of cybernetics and computer technology. Seeding and culturing of architecture, fascination with algorithmic creative processes, fascination with evolution, and admiration for biological mechanisms of the body and its liquidity these ways of thinking about design are clearly visible in modern architecture aesthetics. [3] 3.1.2. Genome. The processes of nature Fascination with the machine has inspired mankind for centuries, but it was cybernetics, in the early twentieth century, that gave rise to doctrines that try to decipher the mechanisms of nature and the creation of devices that mimic them. Cybernetics is perceived as meta-science. Its primary objective is to define the essence of being through the understanding of the mechanisms of its operation. Cybernetics mostly explores knowledge of control systems.

Despite the development of cybernetics, the perfection of the mechanisms of nature still contrasts with the imperfection of man-made mechanisms. The problem is, according to Lem, that we are trying to imitate nature, but often in different ways than Nature works: Because in IT we have devices for data processing, the devices that transform and convert the information entered (input information) into the information retrieved (output information), and the transducers can be quite different objects from cathode ray tubes, transmitters, converters and the molecular aggregates. But we always enter the information and get the information. In contrast, information in biology is placed on such media that are able to remake the information into something that is an organism, such as palm trees, elephants, or Aunt Frania. [4] This medium is a genome. The genome is a kind of physicochemical encyclopedia operating in the liquid environment of the cells. This is, according to Lem, a radical novelty for engineers, which wants to possess knowledge about the technology of life. The code encrypted in the genome is like a "Construction Handbook," which reads itself and gradually builds itself according to the blueprints. ‘Some products are unsuccessful, but others, like a man have been running successfully for millennia,’ says Lem. “Handbook Genome” contains the entire alphabet of biological technology.

3.1.3. The code of cyberspace Because the world was created in the process, the creators of virtual spaces feel that the cyberworld should be formed by the process as well.

Therefore they propose to refer to the processes of nature, learn about them, and try to imitate them. The evolutionary process, they believe, is the most appropriate process and probably the best process for shaping the social environment.

Architecture can be planted, says Holtzman, it can learn behaviors (Artificial Life Evolution) - simple rules should create simple forms.

Holtzman suggests that the computational side of the process should be given to the computers while the 'creative' side – making choices and decisions, in his opinion, should be the task of the creator. The architect should be responsible for the aesthetics of the emerging world. Lem would agree with that: The programs will be created under the authority of other ‘programs parents' and the man will only give commands. [5] According to Holtzman, the complexity of Virtual worlds requires that the computer be programmed as a tool to create them. [6] The www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) computer has to become a creative partner. A new era, says Holtzman, where the software is an art, is coming. Programming environments in cyberspace should not be built top-down but bottom-up, much as a plant grows from a seed.

This is a radical change in approach for the design process, which cedes some of the elements of the process to a device. The key to understanding this approach is the understanding of the code and the ability to control it, because the design process in virtual architecture is programming. An architect (cybertect, transarchitect) should possess a knowledge of programming to the same extent to which in the physical world he has a knowledge of construction, which allows him to use available resources - construction materials and building systems.

Artists, writers and musicians have to become also programmers in future. [7] Code regulates behavior in cyberspace, just as architecture builds walls to enclose and divide space, inserts doors to allow entrance, and provides locks to reduce unwanted access. The architecture of code precisely constrains the shape and usage of cyberspace. [8] Design and control of the code gives the possibility of design and control of the process.

For citizens of cyberspace, computer code is the medium in which intentions are enacted and designs realized, and it is becoming the crucial focus of political contest. Who shall write the software that increasingly structures our daily lives? [9] 3.2. Creating images. The new symbolism of cyberspace Controlling processes, programming cyberspace, is an essential element of its construction. Code regulates its behavior and ethics, but also plays an important role in the creation of symbol, which is the base of the interface – the face of cyberspace, part of the aesthetics of cyberspace.

Image manipulation and the creation of new symbols are another layer of creativity for the cyber-architect. Creation of images is creation of cyberspace, where the territory and its representation are one and the same.

The human brain instinctively looks for order in a cacophony of information, for the design, the layout, the regularity. The task of architecture in cyberspace is, therefore, in addition to organization and control of the process, building the identity of the places where and within which a user creates his existential space.

3.2.1. Places For primitive peoples, says Christian Norberg-Schulz, space referred to objects and places, and had emotional coloration. Greek philosophers made the space an object of reflection.

Today, architectural space, according to Norberg-Schulz, can be understood as the specific expression patterns or images of the environment, forming an integral part of the overall orientation of the man - "being in the world." The task of the architect is to create places that are part of the symbolic language of each existential space.

Architectural space can thus be called a concretization of existential space.

Inhabiting, or occupying, places, is, as Heidegger noted, the main aspect of being. Spaces get their spirit (importance) from locations and not just from 'space.' Place means to 'be inside,' or inhabit, to participate. Man's relationship with the place and through the places with spaces consists precisely with inhabitation. Place is a fundamental concept of existential www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) space. ’The concepts of closeness, centrality, and enclosure work together, creating a more concrete concept of being.’ [10] A human’s primary intent is to inhabit. Only when a person determines what is inside and what is outside can he say that he really "lives," says Norberg-Schulz. Thanks to this relationship, man’s experiences and memories are localized and the interior space becomes an expression of person’s "inside."

Places in the Cyberspace of the net are software constructions. Each piece of software creates environments for interaction that can be entered. Inhabitation gains the new, more conceptual meaning of connection, belonging, fusion of the nervous system to the network.

Cyber-buildings and rooms are part of a citizen of cyberspace; a citizen of cyberspace becomes a part of his cyber home.

Rooms and buildings will henceforth be seen as sites where bits meet the body - where digital information is translated into visual, auditory, tactile, or otherwise perceptible form, and conversely where bodily actions are sensed and converted into digital information. [11] Creating 'places' is creating the identity of cyberspatial environments.

Only creation of a place, living it allows us to build it, says NorbergSchulz. 'Only when we are able to live, we can build.'

3.3. New design methods. Creating the Worlds Creativity involves discovering configurations, connections, and relationships. This process is based on the combinatorial activity, setting things in new perspective. Poincaré described the essence of creativity: Creativity precisely means to not construct unnecessary combinations, but to build useful entities, which constitute a minority. Create - is to distinguish, to choose. [12] ‘The artist,’ says Czeslaw Milosz, ‘differs from other people in that he can stop and then reverse stages of human cognition. He learns how to enclose stages of the perception/cognition in the outside work that others could contemplate.’

Artists and architects have always been creating worlds by creating images that contain these worlds.

Architectural design in cyberspace means design of the process, controlling code, creating aesthetics with the image, creating symbols, and finally producing cyberspatial 'places' to allow it to reside (inhabit).

3.3.1. Defamiliarization Designing cyberspace, however, is closely associated with the process of its (cyberspace) discovery, which in this case is not only related to the development of technology, but also to exploring the potential of the mind itself, the process of exploring the human psyche, forms of perception, reactions, and behaviors. So the question remains: how to design effectively without letting the designer’s own limitations impose limits that are a direct threat to innovation, because the scope of our construction is directly related to the limitations of our approach. How to get to the truth about cyberspace?

We are at the very beginning of understanding the opportunities that new cyberworlds have to offer. We tend to treat new media in the old way, imagining the future in a linear way, which is based on exaggeration and multiplication or ‘improvement’ of what is already existing. This comes from the inability to overcome the barriers of imagination. Lem described this process very cleverly by saying that www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) Stone Age Man imagined his future full of great and beautiful flint, and the man of the nineteenth century saw the future as mighty full of great balloons.

An example of linear thinking in cyberspace may be striving for the perfect simulation. Opponents of this method advocate the use of completely different approaches. One of them may be the concept of 'defamiliarization’ first proposed by the Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky.

Shklovsky was investigating the problems of direct perception in the arts. The concept of 'defamiliarization' (‘ostranenie’) is an artistic technique that forces the viewer to see ordinary things and situations differently, an unusual way, so as to challenge the perception of familiar.

This concept became the basis for the tactics of twentieth century art movements such as Dada, postmodernism, and also science fiction.

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. [13] Defamiliarization allows for the conscious exploration of viewed things and observed processes by slowing down the process of perception. It allows understanding the artistic processes that are involved in the formation of a phenomenon. This is a high stage of comprehending the essence of the phenomenon.

According to these rules, computers should be used rather as 'abstract machines' that are exploring new design strategies. The relationship with the spaces of the mind may suggest some ways of exploration. For example, the psychological experiment proposed by Stanislaw Lem in 'Solaris': What happens if we encounter something beyond our comprehension?

3.4. Function and forms of cyberarchitecture The essence of creation processes is not the output work, the object, but the process of creating, understanding, nurturing awareness: We detest implementation of projects, what matters and is really important is to understand, not to produce. And understand means how much someone has experienced awakening, how much unreality one can see in every phenomenon. [14] The architectural form in cyberspace is a form that is open for a process; it was liberated from its concreteness. Virtual Architecture, like language, recognizes itself not in unambiguity, but in the complexity of the symbols and metaphors. Ambiguity opens it to interpretation, to creating a vision. The symbolism of this architecture opens up to a metaphor for interpretation, and invites the contribution of the user.

Why do we need an architect in cyberspatial environment? Architects are familiar with the principles of spatial organization; they are aware of the relationship between the organization and operation of space, they understand the design process and processes of implementation of projects, and they are able to transpose the basic material into a functional element of the environment.

However, should not the redefinition of architecture reach much deeper than we think? It should not only redefine the form, but also the function. Then, if we are about to profoundly redefine architecture, will it continue to be architecture? www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication

Empathy Issuu 1/2011. Sketches from Virtual Reality – Agnieszka Szóstakowska (Special Edition) No matter what the answer to these questions, it is certain that electronic virtual learning environments in a sense take part in the process of raising awareness about ourselves, about undiscovered spaces of our consciousness; it is part of the process of our evolution. e virtual worlds, and architecture of these worlds.

[1] Krupiński J., Wzornictwo/Design, Kraków 1998, p. 15 [2] Krupiński J., op. cit.

[3] Fascination with biological forms can be seen also in the Art Nouveau era, but Secessions’ creators did not show any interest in mechanisms, did not reach deep into the secrets of biological life.

[4] Lem S., Tajemnica Chińskiego Pokoju, Universitas, Kraków 1996, p.

101 [5] Lem S., op. cit.

[6] Holtzman S., Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace, Touchstone, 1998, p. 77 [7] Holtzman S, op. cit. p. 79 [8] Kerckhove D., The Architecture of Intelligence (The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture), Birkhäuser Basel, 2001, (p. 29, Mitchell) [9] Mitchell W., City of Bits, MIT Press, Boston 1996 [10] Norberg – Schulz C., Bycie, przestrzeń i architektura, Murator, Warszawa, 2000, p. 20 [11] Mitchell W., op. cit.

[12] Szmidt B., Ład przestrzeni, PIW, Warszawa 1981, p. 114 [13] Viktor Shklovsky [14] Krupiński J., op. cit.

www.issuu.com/cyberempathy

CyberEmpathy Journal of Visual Communication