The explanation of the nature of speculation and the bogus decision-making that governs prices/values clearly forms a logical argument for rejecting such powers of subjectivity. The worst we can do is be passive consumers. If the system can form a presiding subjective ‘intelligence’, we have to form a ‘counter-intelligence’. The sellers may have (we can call it) ‘speculative powers’ but, lest we forget, we too, the consumers, have ‘purchasing powers’. Classically this term is meant similarly as ‘bang-for-your-buck’, but it also contains our basic right of what to buy, value for money is an added extra. To buy (without a counter-intelligence) is to agree and submit. If one is armed with such a ‘counter-intelligence’ they need not be told of destructive forces of Laissez-faire capitalism--the two go hand-in-hand. Harvey outlines that (2000, pp.76) ‘much of the extraordinary transformation of the earth’s surface these last two hundred years reflects precisely the putting into practice of the free market utopianism of process and its restless and perpetual reorganisations of spatial forms.’ Our decisions of what to buy, we can therefore extrapolate, directly influence these transformations and as we are a collective of consumers, changes to the decisions of what to buy will affect (but not necessarily reverse) these transformations powerfully--more so than what industry transforms. Perhaps it is this compliance to buying that is one of the great tragedies of the industrialised masses, that we have fallen to the fallacies of these speculations: we too have taken part in it all. If we imagine capitalism had never grown up, never gone global, it might give us an idea of an achievable future--one that accommodates nature also. The problem is that consumers have released it from its cage (governments have had a hand in too), and now slowly a ‘counter-intelligence’ (through a technological easing of communication) is not merely imposing a stricture, but putting it back where it came from. We are not alone using platforms like these to communicate ideas like this, and yet I don’t believe that a social-networking platform that truly encompasses the masses has been developed (in a generation or so we will begin to see the fruits of the internet). Just imagine the poor had ‘true’ access to on-line social platforms? It could be an amazing thing, but it might just mirror the injustices of the ‘real-world’. As with with what occurs with capitalism/crises, we must not suffer from a case of amnesia. When the internet is attainable from all corners of the globe we must be careful about how it is managed. It we must not reproduce what happened in the promising early days of the internet, as danah boyd (in Penelope, 2007) recalls, ‘the unbelievable frustration with me about the online world is that there is that 1990s utopian dream about how the internet was going to save us because on the internet no one would know you were a dog, race wouldn’t matter, class wouldn’t matter, you could talk to anyone around the world, we would get rid of all the language barriers, get rid of the cultural barriers, great,’ she says. ‘Well that’s not what happened. What happened is that we have projected the same segregated culture into the internet.’

Palace, 2009. Passive-Consumerism-Counter-Intelligence.

I know this is a profound ideal to suggest the dismantling of Capitalism through the our future of far-reaching social platforms (albeit well articulated platforms), we can use these spaces (as we are doing now) to start to dissect and recalibrate our realities (you only have to see Ushahidi, a mobile phone-based [as mobile phones are still the most ubiquitious communication technology] service that maps reports from citizens regarding poignant political, social events ie. swine flu). Notate Bene The history of Capitalism is a history of crises. ‘Compulsive buyers’, ‘passive consumerism’, ‘Material Girl’, ‘retail therapy’ are some of the saddest terms we can utter. How can architecture fit into this?

Penelope, D., 2007. A space of her own. The Age. [Online] 4 August. Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/a-space-of-her-own/2007/08/03/1185648141385.html [Accessed 27 May 2009].
Harvey, D., 2000. Possible Urban Worlds. Amersfoort: Twynstra Gudde Management Consultants

Speaking about the constructed reality is made easier because there is physics embedded within language and language has the flexibility and innateness of becoming reduced to simple forms to just “consist of language and the actions into which it is woven” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 7). Success of the process of construction is based on communication and the dialogue learned by the partakers of its success. We naturally deteriorate macro-languages by relating our own syntax and the “vernacular of the milieu of the space” (Goh, 2001, pg. 13).

Because “semantics is (not only) about the relation of words to thoughts, but it is also about the relation of words into other human concerns” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 6), there are conflicting ways to see points of view or reasons for taking actions in certain circumstances. The language of thought - conceptual semantics - “provides … the dramas of social life. And sets the stage in countless arenas of human disputation” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 5). The way we construe events might reflect our alignment with select political party or to an ideal be it individually developed or a hand-me-down. “Is the American military incursion into Iraq a case of invading a country or liberating a country? …Are high tax rates a way to redistribute wealth or to confiscate earnings?” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 6). Is a belief in the Book of Genesis a disillusioned view of the world’s beginning, a trap for thinkers not to find pragmatic evidences or a divine event that justifies the world’s beginning? Is sustainability a “a foreign currency, the joker in the Oriental pack… an incorrectly catalogued fetish” (Chinchilla, 2006) or a responsibility?

Thankfully there is rarely confusion in such basic/reduced vernacular used in the construction industry, as this is indicated in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein describes a simple language game (Sprachspiel) a concept intended “to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 23).


Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951). Sourced from the homepage of Tony Bellotti.

This is a universal deconstruction of Wittgenstein’s Builders, not merely an attuning to the industry I so align.

“Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words ‘block’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab,’ ‘beam’. A calls them out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call…” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 3)

The important point is to realise that the builder’s language is an activity - the orders given by the builder and the executions of those orders by the assistant - into which is woven something we would recognise as language, albeit in simpler form. When the builder says ‘pillar’ a certain type of act is performed. Success is judged if the assistant passes the a ‘pillar’ to him.


Wei-wei, Ai. “Table and Pillar” 2002 (background) “Table and Beam” 2002 (foreground). Sourced from Galerie Urs Meile.

There is a direct connection here between words and extra-linguistic reality. The builder sends the command, as in a command-line software and the worker reacts through a number of stored, predetermined and accessed movements, as in a macro, combining two or more events.

Deleuze & Guattari report of the order-word, a procedural, seemingly void of expression, interpretation of language, that utilizes a sequence of instructions to achieve the retrieval of information. “The elemental unit of language - the statement - is the order-word. Rather than common-sense, a faculty for the centralisation of information, we must define an abominable faculty consisting in emitting, receiving, and transmitting order-words. Language is made not to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience.” (Delueze-Guattari, 1987, pg. 76)

This account, raises the question, could a language exist which consists entirely of commands? All art forms have been churned through the reduction machine, stripping back Baroque to Breuer to Pawson, Shakespeare to Hardy to Hitchens, Banquets to Burger King to vending machines. Is it possible that the information age will consume creative writing however passively informative creative writing can be. Consumed by command-line requests that spill to conversation and human interaction - to live is to request both virtually and physically.


Garnier, Charles. Opéra Garnier. 1875. Sourced from Gay Paris.


Pawson, John. Set design for Chroma at the Royal Opera House. 2008. Photo copyright of Richard Davies. Sourced from Dezeen.


Command-line. Sourced from Wikimedia.

If we dive further in the understanding of linguistics moving from Wittgenstein we find that in reality objects are 3-dimensional arrangements of matter, but language idealises objects as essentially 1, 2 or 3-dimensional. For example the word ‘line’ indicates something as 1-dimensional, the word ‘road’ indicates something as 1-dimensional (+ width), the word beam indicates something as 1-dimensional (+ having a finite thickness), the word ‘surface’ indicates something as 2-dimensional and the word ‘slab’ indicates something as 2-dimensional (+ a finite thickness). (Pinker, 2007, 5:07 mins)

The boundaries of objects are treated as objects themselves; ‘edges’ which define the 1-dimensional boundary of a 2-dimensional surface. ‘The patron walked along the edge of the parapet’, and ‘end’ which is the boundary of a 1-dimensional ‘road’ or a 2-dimensional ‘beam’). It can be summarised that space exists in our prepositions, matter exists in our nouns, naturally time exists in our tenses and is causality exists in our verbs. (Pinker, 2007, 7:00 mins)

However uncanny is the relationship between the interpretation of the structure of language to the built environment, it is a functioning language and armed with intrinsic language-games/order-words that allow for the materialisation of our realities.

Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Viking Adult; 1 edition, 2007
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell Publishing, 1953/2001
Goh, Irving. Promising “Post-Colonialism”: Delouse-Guattari’s “Minor Literature” and the Poetry of Arthur Yap, Genre; vol. 22, California State University, 2001
Authors@Google: Steven Pinker, 2007, Producer, Google; director, Google. s.l: Authors@Google. 1 online video (Flash Format) (75 mins). [Video recording]
Chinchilla, Izaskun, Sociopolis, Public Issue, 2006
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 1987/2004

Kibbutzim were created before the first Jewish settlement in the 1950s by Zionists that were mainly Russian-Jewish emigrants. The first funded community was called ‘Degrania’ in Israel, 1909. Kibbutzim became independent-social, economic and cultural units, somewhat like cooperative-socialist islands in capitalist seas.

A community can not be free if does not produce resources to be itself.

On small plots, farmers grow vegetables and fruits for their household and for a common market. Regional cooperation in agriculture saves expenses by common use of farming equipment, warehouses, other facilities, schools, clinics, communal halls, shops etc., located centrally. The aim is to reduce the running costs of diversified farming and increase production of industrial crops such as cotton, sugar beet and ground nuts, which could be processed at the central point; and as a consequence, a reduction in transportation costs results.


Nahalal moshav, Israel. Established by the Women’s International Zionist Organization as a Girls’ Agricultural Training Farm in 1929. The inner-most circle contains the communal buildings and resources, which are surrounded by individually owned farms. Contrary to the collective kibbutzim, farms in a moshav tended to be individually owned but of fixed and equal size. Sourced from Sourced from J. Robertson McIlwain [dot] com.

Kibbutzim originated the first building blocks of modern day Israel. Most, if not all of Israel’s main industries grew out of the Kibbutz environment. Most of the nation’s income is created by agriculture whist still using classic traditions established in productive agriculture (although there is present the use of high-technology to the achieve the level of ‘laboratories for research’; aiming to experiment with growth methods while increasing the production of crops without jeopardising quality). They are desirable places to test experimental agricultural techniques and many of them are adopt environmental approaches (see Green Kibbutz movement). The Algatech and the Geshem projects are large-scale projects designed for on-site production whilst managing natural resources.


Alga Technologies (Algatech), Kibbutz Ketura, mass-produces algae for cosmetics, nutritional supplements and for energy conversion and production. Sourced from Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute.

Kibbutzim also exist in the urban context: they are a means to resolve conflicts and social problems. There are more 75 Kibbutzim nationwide in which over 129,300 Israelis reside and collaborate. The Zionists defined the organization of Kibbutzim not only as a necessity but also the new Jews in Palestine (the founders of the Kibbutz movement), felt that they couldn’t rely on others only themselves - belonging to a Kibbutz was a form of societal identity.


Kibbutzim are seen as the most effective way of taking control over land in Palestine - a tool for any Zionist. Sourced from Google.

Kibbutzim are miniature communal societies wherein the principle that all wealth is common property presides. The inhabitants usually are allowed some notion of private property, however all inhabitants are provided for, with all necessities such as: food, housing, clothes and social and medical services. The inhabitants cook and dine together - normally adults and children do not form standard families, even if the adults have private quarters. The raising of children, is also a common task of the Kibbutzim.


The Ideal Settlement: the Utopian settlement behavior. Kibbutzim, for the past 80 years, have been concurrently reflecting the changes in ideology that take place in society and consequently reconfiguring their layout and evolving the aesthetics. Sourced from Google.

The frontier of the post-icon era, brought about by the downward-spiralling economy/ecology, has formed a new breed of architect of less moral stature than the capitalist’s ‘building designer’. Previously embedded as part of the marketing strategy of a brand, the architect today is tailored for a token green agenda. Governed by state dictation, most buildings today require efficiency attributes, some without a trace of carbon-emission; a nominal paradigm shifts exists in this newly created responsibility in which there appears to be two serious issues with the deployment of the ‘green icon’.

Semiotics:
The contemporary icon is conceived by a marriage of a successfully marketed entity and the established architect. The aim of the icon is to manifest a physical representation of the identity of the brand - the most potent example being Bank headquarters. Early 19th Century mercantile architecture resembled important civic institutional buildings; fortresses, allowing little light to permeate. Today they represent more than they are; transparent, readable, attainable, reflective, open and with a green agenda, certainly not the model modern banking stipulates. The misdemeanour of specifying sustainability as corporate identity wreaks of tokenism and fallibility. What best represents a banking institution today? A trough.


The image of banking institutions today. Sourced from Poor William.

The advent of green architectural marketing are second-order signs where buildings have fallen victim to Barthes’ Red Wine analogy. The bourgeois’ full, dark bottle is to signify healthy, robust, relaxing wine. The reality is that this image contains subtle embedded semiotic manipulations with the desire to sell the product and the simple desire to maintain the status quo (Barthes, Mythologies, p. 60). Sustainability is the bottle in this case.


Roland Barthes. Sourced from Islakotero.


Palace, 2009. Banking institutions then and now. Left: Former brank of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Edinburgh (1847). Right: Cook+Fox Architects. Bank of America Tower, New York (2009).

Mis-education:
Architects are caught in the Green agenda, speculating merely as no-man’s-land designers, in the same way Government tries to regulate emerging technologies or the internet, albeit on a nominalistic scale. The thinking stops at the formulation of infrastructure embedded in the building and green baton is passed to environmental engineer/consultant/designer/specialist. This is merely a problem of specialisation, the age-old ‘jack-of-all-trades’ debate, which is why architects should choose their friends wisely. The issue is in the presentation of the design being flawed, superficial and let alone misconceived, however fulfilling the market appeal of the brand.

The running joke is that apparently today, icons are sensitive too.

The noble orientation of our established architects today is that of an architectural iconoclast.

On Sun, Apr XX, 20XX at 2:00 PM, XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com wrote:

Hi Ted,

I am just laying the groundwork for my XXXXX project at XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX. And I came across your work. Like you I am not a tekkie. Nor am I attached to the physical form of architecture. Cities, like cyberspace are full of rubbish and the constructed environment has enough physical construction for me not to produce a building for the project.

I am more interested in the future: the fact that architecture can play a role in the connectivity ofsocialstructures or ideas like transclusion in the built context. One way is that a piece of architecture is just the skeleton, with floor plates - allowing as much freedom as possible (see Le Corbusier’s plan libre).

The other way to see it is that we don’t need building anymore…we are mobile and perhaps it’s just nature, perhaps gridded and divided - with rules of cultivation (see REX). Or perhaps I could design a giant jail the size of Mt. Everestin each major city andincarcerate the city’s inhabitants for crimes to the earth. The building could just use the surrounding, useless fabric.

I’m not a morbid person - perhaps my question to you is that, because you foresaw many of the components that the web has today, what do you now see it becoming, technologically and probably more poignantly, socially and if you have some hints, architecturally?

I hope you have time.

XXX XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXX

From: Ted Nelson
Sent: Thursday, April XX, 20XX 9:22 PM
To: XXX XXXXXXXX
Cc: Ted Nelson
Subject: :gbg:arx:artx: Architecture, Art, Web 2.0 (wuz Re: Social Architecure’s Future)

Thanks for your kind words.

I am afraid I don’t have time to answer all the essay questionspeople send me.

I haven’t the foggiest idea what junk or fads will come nexton the Net. ‘Web 2.0’ nonsensically conflates a bunch ofvaguely related stuff under a misleading title.

Architecture? I loved it as a kid but I’m a cynic now.Like “Art,” look at who profits and why. The art establishment(critics, galleries…) mediates between public, collectorsand would-be artists. If those emperors have no clothes,it would all fall down.

Architecture could be cheapo modules. Who prevents?The contractors (working through the Building Codes). Soleri told me that the building codes had killed him.And the big firms that want to build screwy-lookingconcert halls. (Note: I’m hoping to build a good oldQuonset hut on our family farm. Beautiful space inside.)


Quonset hut. Sourced from Texnrails.

(And how come nobody’s selling the Usonian houseas a prefab? Surely the rights have expired by now.THERE’S a money-making suggestion for you.)


Palace, 2008, Frank Lloyd (I’m) Right..

Enough! No time.

TN

—
- FIRST ROCK MUSICAL RECALLED— See
http://hyperland.com/A&E.AnnivBlurb-D10.txt
- NEW XANADU SOFTWARE— See xanarama.net
- MY SPECIAL LECTURE on 14 non-computer topics—
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/podcasts/seminars.php

Theodor Holm Nelson
Founder, Project Xanadu
Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Visiting Professor, University of Southampton

Topographical contours. The body belongs to the earth as the building belongs to the earth..

Reinsertion of local landscapes into the city:

Looking to different neighbouhoods in any city, mean activities could be mapped and linked to open plazas, skeleton infrastructures and aerial gardens (forests). The idea is to generate new identities inside the city, between the citizens, the traditional natural species and cultivations, and the education that the local knowlegde and the global media can bring. In each neigbourhood, could be implemented new structures with the funtion of becoming a body (building-garden) inside of a body (city-machine).


From left clockwise: 1.The new catalysts are bodies with tubes. 2. With skin wrinkles. 3. They belong to the earth, incrementing the earth surface.

The idea of the multifuntional garden: Ecological Niches (Gills Clement)

Utopia is linked with ecology: If there is one only specie of any plant in your garden, the opportunnity of growing a bean is impossible. Diversity is linked not only in the diversity of species, but too in their behaviours. Mixture. A tree is not an individual, it is a linked community. One tree alone is a gardens that doesn’t need maintenance, without watering. In abandoned places is where diversity is, not in the mono-cultivations. These are the genetic pools where life is generated. “The horse is generating a mint garden, because he doesnt like the mint” (Gilles Clement: From the Garden in Motion to the Third Landscape, AAIR, February 20, 2007). Diversity is surprise.

We should liberate as much space as we consume through the material construction of the project, making compatible the program with the preservation and multiplication of the landscape (social and/or natural landscapes). We should abandon the romantic relationship between looking, nature and space, and realise that the landscape is not what is in front of us, but what is around us.

Nature Restauration: Permaculture (Bill Mollison)

To let the building be a part of the machine, we inject new natural elements that fertilise the soil of some plots in the city, generating valleys. We re-source the energy from above: electricity from the roof and facades (solar energy), and water from rain that is collected through the valley. Never again do we have to re-source our elements from under the cities, but rather from the sky.


Palace, 2008. Funnel collectiors and pot cultivations (non-digging): When the plants have grown to their point-of-sale size, they can be removed in their pots and sold immediately. The larger pots remain in the field to be reused. This system allows growers to offset labour costs associated with planting and re-planting in the field with a significant initial investment..


Palace, 2008. Fertilising valleys: Filtrations of water excess, pots on ground, hanging pots and funnels. Pilars from the sky to the ground..

Another solution for cultivating:

“A growroom: A growroom, or grow room, is a room of any size where plants are grown under controlled conditions. The reasons for utilizing a growroom are countless. Some seek to avoid the criminal repercussions of growing illicit cultivars, others simply have no alternative to indoor growing. They can be grown with the use of artificial light, sunlight, or a combination of the two. A grow room will often become excessively hot (relative to temperature range ideals for plant growth), due to the heat generated by the high power lamps; the use of supplemental ventilation fan is often necessitated.” (Sourced from Wikipedia).


Typical Growroom. Sourced from Wikimedia.

Hydroponics: Hydroponics or agricultural hydroponics is a method used to cultivate plants using mineral solutions instead of agricultural land. Plants can grow with only the mineral solution or in a neutral medium such as sand, gravel or tissues.

Our intentions now are have a clear objective of placing no hierarchy between any media, tools or space to complete a task. The choice and use of each media, tool or space must pass contemporary criteria of sustainability and functionality. As with navigating through the commercial landscape or the democratic/anonymous web, a rigorous process of filtering, selection, concentration and personal export will follow.


Tom, Dale. Western Negative. Sculpture. Still image burned into screen of monitor. TV Broadcast monitor. Dim: 60cm x 80cm x 80cm. 2007. Sourced from Dale Tom.

There are several discrepancies about which, it is that should be investigated architecturally - or whether the investigation into building is something that needs to happen at all. A paradigm shift is occurring within the occupation of architecture and catalysed with the unenviable economic trough we are all faced with, architects - ‘cast-ers’ of indestructible stone are now bequeathed with a profession somewhat dormant. The shift is an extension of science, where architects conduct most of their work as research, some never building, or as a guise for youth to developing a pre-building catalogue.


Sutherland, Peter. Acid Rain. Sourced from IANN Magazine.

Peter Cook denounces this sort of investigation as a construction to provide virtual parameters for the constraint of building, but where the relevance is in this work, our focus’ must be poignant and sustainable as it is on a scale of mass-investigation. The investigation in the algorithmic process has its limitations: it has the unfortunate circumstance of being dictated by technological development, and the technological development is governed by capitalistic gain (by slow inch-by-inch releases: there is the analogy that once a extra-terrestorial ship crashed and the military stole, preserved and recreated all the of the technology on-board - now, month by month they are releasing updates and ‘breakthroughs’ for commercial access acting as the leather belt on the arm of the techno-addicts). There also is grave irresponsibility in the frivolous act labeled ‘scripting’, an uncanny name, as though it performs architectural pantomime (virtuality), it is so virtual that the production, labour and materialistic value is totally disregarded. Any contextual relationship is uprooted.


Palace. Overrated - Scripted (Rhino Model), 2008.

The analogy that architecture should be built as a reflection of its age is however fulfilled by this dalliance. With graciousness and with a stringent effort to avoid the sickening and prevalent copy/paste blogosphere we cite Sam Jacobs, “This unreality has infused architectural production, often finding resolution in hysterical, liquid, fluid form at audacious scale - the kind of thing recently dubbed ‘Parametricism’. Displays of beyond-human formal complexity drop out of the computational design systems employed in the search for exoticism and difference - a difference that was demanded by the market pluralism of ultra capitalism. Appropriately, these projects seem to use the very same kind of tools that has maximized, magnified, and deepened our current financial crisis.” (The Ruins of the Future, Stange Harvest, 6/12/2008)

One responsible building definition of our age is to access the highly developed data mining abilities we have on our silver platter. The formal resolutions existing in scripting could be re-hashed (while still holding all of the profound complexities) into works investigating geo-spatial analyses, web-based feedback, responsive spaces and other humanist approaches. Furthering that, we are staring straight into the face of an energy crisis and every move the architect make is of instant negative consequence. The notion of building is now in question.

For some years now, Paul Virilio has spoken about the state of play in our technologically vexed context. He advocates that it is “interesting while maintaining a critical attitude”, that we should not just be the player, but rather play as if to know, or better still create the game itself. Virilio suggests that there are two ways to look at play, one pertains a likeness to playing cards which is a game that requires knowledge of how to play, but not to know the construct of the game itself. If so wished, one can find the combinations/permutations needed for success, however, it is not a requirement. The other is attributed to “the play of a mechanical part when it is loose in its housing” which Virilio remarks as “the play of today”.

This ‘type’ of contemporary play is simultaenously talking about the sophistication of what we are playing with, and also the complexities and the nearness to reality of the games themselves. “What is a game once the virtual invades reality?” says Virilio. “To play today, in a certain sense, means to choose between two realities.” There are obvious reasons why computer games are in epic demand, for example the market has understood that they allow a gamer to be in a position that they cannot attain with their own bodies and/or their environment - because of its limitations. Coupled with the imaginations of the developers and the sophistication of their engines, the realities of gamers can exist in any form. This is the catalyst for a vitual addiction. One can be a sports star, a war hero, or even a town planner as in the SimCity franchises, or even interact with other human beings on a IM program and claim they are in another reality than what is really the truth. One can use this portal to even engage in the act of love-making but not have bodily intercourse, commonly termed as the degrading act of cybersex. A sex without physical interchange, awkwardness, smells, sensational expolosions, all that is very human and real.

Narrative in storytelling allows readers to concoct their own “mental cinema” of what protagonist looks like, or even how soft the sand she is standing in. I see Camus’ Meursault as an intelligent being completely in touch with his surroundings, manipulating what could be a sorrowful existence into a romantic, sensual however existentialist dream - well-dressed but run down and slouched, from the sun, walking and sweating. But the Meursault represented by a virtual gaming narrative is pre-defined, stuck in a carved-out box, set in digital stone and a realisation of someone elses imagination - not yours or Camus’. The beauty of the novel comes in the thought-images of the individual.

When asked what game we should play, Virilio says to “play at being a critic. Deconstruct the game in order to play with it. Instead of accepting the rules, challenge and modify them. Without the freedom to critique and reconstruct, there is no truly free game: we are addicts and nothing more.” To the developer, we should ask the developers to resist pre-definitions, and allow users freedoms to infinite degrees. We should access resources to develop ourselves. Our virtual spaces should be accessible and flexible. There exists virtual spaces that allude to users being allowed to configure environments, but still there is a creation with primary tools to achieve this.

SIAL’s Greg More created Eureka a digital presentation environment that allows users “to navigate spatial collections of multi-media assets.” What appears to be a seamless navigating environment is just a re-alignment of an already known interface.

Phun is an inviting system that turns real-world physics virtual and for this very reason is highly addictive. It arrives closer to the point of simulating realities however abstracting the objects that appear within them. We can set up our own test or experiment with objects that we could not purchase or even construct in this world.

The third example brings closer the relationship between the body and the virtual space as well as being affordable, CamSpace.

And then there is Jeff Han and his VR empire.


Multi-Touch Sensing through Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. Image from Jeff Han’s NYU Homepage.

If you would like to read the full transcript of Jermone Sans’ interview with Paul Virilio, you can see it here at the Watson Institute’s Website.

We’ll leave you with the following, a picture of what Virilio believes the human will be in his own context, ” …a weightless individual in a little ergonomic armchair, suspended outside a space capsule, with the earth below and the interstellar void above. A man with his own gravity, who no longer needs a relationship to society, to those around him, and least of all to a family.” It seems scarily similar to the idea that Peter Sloterdijk holds (but we’ll leave that for another day).