4.2 Virtual Reality as Architectural Practice

4.1 Design Approach

In the 1990s Marcos Novak proposed using Virtual Reality to create a new type of architecture “cut loose from the expectations of logic, perspective, and laws of gravity” (Silva, 2006 p. 2). Using terms like Liquid Architectures of Cyberspace and Transarchitectures, Novak put forth spaces conceived specifically for a virtual domain, one that does not exist in a physical world. The implications of Novak’s explorations are becoming more relevant as virtual worlds become layered onto and interactive with our everyday environments. Recently there has been a growing body of research around the merging of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the built environment. An extension of Ubiquitous Computing, Human Building Interaction (HBI) is an aspiration to “transition from the ‘realm of artifacts’ to the ‘realm of architecture” (Alavi et al., 2019, p. 2). This field has started to address how “merging interactive experiences are ‘spatiotemporally immersive’... ones that are not discrete or limited to moments of interaction, but persist over time, and can be enacted at different temporal scales of adaptability” (p. 2). HBI can allow architects to use data in order to enrich occupants interaction with the built environment, where as “designing spaces has historically relied on making assumptions about occupants' comfort and desires” (Alavi et al., 2019). As we start to re-define architecture as a user interface it requires a reconsideration of many design fundamentals. Nabil describes OUI environments as “immersive rather than focused, when interacting with spaces rather than devices or building-sized interfaces rather than tabletops” (Nabil et al., 2017, p.96). Though Augmented Reality and the promises of spatial computing are presently starting to take hold, Virtual Reality is a more immersive tool that better serves the cause of interactive environments that engender emotional affordance. When they acquired the Virtual Reality platform Oculus, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that “strategically we want to start building the next major computing platform that will come after mobile” (Zuckerberg quoted by Hassan, 2014, p. 196). Though VR is not yet universally accessible it very much hails the beginning of a new media era. In his TED Talk The Birth of Virtual Reality as an Art Form, Chris Milk expounds a techno-utopian vision for the future of VR:

“The tricky thing is that with all previous mediums, the format is fixed at its birth. Film has been a sequence of rectangles, from Muybridge and his horses to now. The format has never changed. But VR as a format, as a medium, isn't complete yet. It's not using physical celluloid or paper or TV signals. It actually employs what we use to make sense of the world. We're using your senses as the paints on the canvas, but only two right now. Eventually, we can see if we will have all of our human senses employed, and we will have agency to live the story in any path we choose. And we call it virtual reality right now, but what happens when we move past simulated realities? What do we call it then? What if instead of verbally telling you about a dream, I could let you live inside that dream? What if instead of just experiencing visiting some reality on Earth, you could surf gravitational waves on the edge of a black hole, or create galaxies from scratch, or communicate with each other not using words but using our raw thoughts? That's not a virtual reality anymore. And honestly I don't know what that's called. But I hope you see where we're going “ (Milk 2016).

Fig. 48 Park Borrowed from the EMMA project: Peaceful Park (Luis Alcaniz Raya et al. 2014)

In 2007 Riva et.al analyzed the possibilities of VR as an affective medium, or a “medium able to elicit different emotion through the interaction with its contents” (Riva et al., 2007, p. 46). In 1989, Jaron Lamier described VR as a simulated environment where people interact via “visual, aural and haptic devices, [where] the user can experience the environment as if he/she was part of the world” (Riva et al., 2007, p. 46). Though VR is associated primarily with its hardware consisting of a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and controllers, it can also be defined in terms of human experience. VR is a media through which users experience presence in a simulated environment. Presence in the Virtual Reality context is the sense that one is occupying a different world than their literal environment, the one that is simulated digitally in the HMD (Riva et al., 2007). In order to examine the affective capacity of VR, the researchers borrowed a VR park environment from the “EMMA” project, an immersive VR world built for the purpose of applied psychology. Riva et al. created three separate versions of the park environment by changing the shadows, lights, textures, music, sound and audio-visual features in order to induce two separate emotional states. The third park was kept as a neutral control group, while the first was adjusted to induce anxiety and the second was adjusted to induce relaxation. Sixty-one undergrad Psychology students took part in the experiment by visiting all three sites in random order. Each participant completed two different styles of self report, the first paper and pencil

Fig. 50 Park Borrowed from the EMMA project: Nuetral Park (Luis Alcaniz Raya et al. 2014)

questionnaire and then emotional and presence ratings during the VR experience in the digital environment. The scientists’ hypothesis was confirmed when the anxious park experience was shown to reduce happiness and positive effects and increase anxiety and sadness. Furthermore the relaxing park environment reduced anger, sadness and anxiety and negative effects while increasing quietness and happiness. Riva et. al highlight the importance of presence in their experiment, “In particular our study suggests that if a medium is not able to induce a feeling of presence, the affective responses might be low independently from the emotional content provided by it” (Riva, et. al, 2007, p. 55).” Presence has also been cited by Huttner and Sussanne as playing a crucial factor in the immersive success of virtual environments. VR’s immersive capacity, ability to affect emotions and media relevance make it a prime tool for architects to start dealing with the idea of emotion as input. It remains to be seen whether emotionally reactive VR spaces should be treated as prototypes for physical spaces, the possibilities seem wide open and it is important we start investigating them in architectural practice. The digitality of VR spaces in the context of emotions allows designers to engender their environments to be uniquely reactive to individuals, this individual customization is not warranted or realistically feasible in the built environment currently.

Fig. 52 Spatial Computing (Magic Leap, 2018)

How can text become a spatial medium? There is an ancient learning method called the “Method of Loci” (MOL) that helps the practitioner to memorize large amounts of information. This method consists of mentally walking through a familiar environment and placing each item to memorize at certain locations in the physical space. To practice, the practitioner repeats this over and over but only in their mind’s eye. When it is time to recall the content that has been memorized the practitioner mentally walks through the familiar environment again and is able to ‘pick up’ the items they previously stored there. This is based on the principle of creating mental associations between the information to be remembered and other easy to recall concepts. Information can be associated with sounds, images, and spatial cues (Huttner & Robbert, 2018, p.1). The foremost principle of the MOL is the practice of navigating in the mind through an architecture or spatial environment. The effectiveness of this method “suggests a natural human tendency to use spatial context to memorize and recall information” (Huttner & Susanne, 2017, p. 2). In her book Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Marie-Laure Ryan examines ideas about interactive text. She “introduces the concept of "ergodic design" (building on Aarseth) in order to discuss work that includes a feedback loop in its design, causing the act of reading/ viewing to produce alterations in the work” (Wardrip-Fruin, 2004, p.336). Cognitive scientist Yair Neuman says of text that they “do not only constitute our consciousness but also constitute the medium through which we reflect on our consciousness” (Neuman, 2010). He further elaborates “literature stands in its own right as a unique medium for illuminating the human existence to include the human psychology” (Neuman, 2010). When we read the written thoughts of others we tend to project our own self, reflected through the other as a sort of translocation. This is considered a form or “projective identification” where “the particularity of the other and his uniqueness is substituted for a replica of one’s self particles” (Neuman, 2010, p. 239). Osgood et al suggest that “meaning is a process linked to linguistic and situational variables of the individual... an individual’s interpretation and expression

of ideas rooted in his or her own prior experience, which is beyond the immediate experience” (Yoon & Wise 2014, p. 221). As in our prototype we are trying to engineer a sense of empathy towards the user as we engage with their emotions we will take advantage of this mechanism of reading self into the words of another. The digital space supplies the words of others, but does so specifically to match the current emotional status of the end user as indicated by self report in the VR space. Through the ideas of MOL and self projection in the words of another we can start to see how text can provide not only spatial cognition but empathetic as well. So how are the texts supplied to the virtual space? For the sake of the prototype a database of text entries that are related to the topic of grief have been collected. They have primarily been sourced from well known literature on the subject. A sample of the data-base can be found in Chapter 7, Appendix. When the end user enters the VR space these texts are floating in the 3-D virtual world in different configurations. The end user is able to walk around and through the floating text which is also animated and colored. The text in the VR world is almost like a 3D word search where the end user can pick out certain words or phrases that catch their eye. The text in the 3D space is intentionally unclear, forcing the end user to move around and through it, building immersion. In order to examine more closely they must reach out and grab or capture the words they are interested in. This process is further illustrated in Chapter 5, Design Documentation. By utilizing text resources that are dynamically matched to individual users, the prototype seeks to engage not only the visual, but the cognitive within a Virtual Reality space, which is traditionally thought of as a dominantly audio-visual medium. This Virtual Reality space is a library. A library is defined most simply as a place where someone goes when they are typically in search of written words. This Virtual Reality space is called a library because it allows grieving adults to find words that are particularly relevant to their current emotional state. The idea of what Adam Varga dubbed “Immersive Typography” regarding his Augmented Reality text experiments efficiently summarizes this idea of spatiotemporally experiencing written text.