Parallel Session (Asynchronous Session)
Reconsidering the Metaverse: Spaces, Screens, and the In-between View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dave Gottwald, Gregory Turner-Rahman
John Carmack, Oculus VR mastermind and grandfather of the game engine made a curious observation in his 2021 Facebook Connect keynote. “I’ve made the pitch before that perhaps a sufficient argument for VR is to just say it’s screens and people as the primary thing,” he said. “Maybe the Metaverse is just lots of screens and lots of people...a screen-focused world.” Looking closely at the commingled history of the cinema and architecture, it’s evident that different models of immersion and visual-spatial storytelling have evolved throughout the 20th century. Newer display technologies in combination with the game engine have brought the image back into the physical world. Although VR discourse focuses on headset-based immersion, considering this history we see a more complicated picture. In this presentation we outline how ultra high definition displays will quite soon begin to assert a compelling and dynamic presence in our offices and homes. As these technologies become more affordable, there will be an increasing number of new possibilities for interactive landscapes within these screen-spaces. What we see in the near future is nothing less than an evolutionary leap forward—space becomes image as image morphs into real-time spatialized content. This responsive content embedded within the built environment will soon extend what is already our world of the image; windows, vistas, displays, and interfaces at our command. What we foresee is much more than VR/AR immersivity, but rather a spatial enmeshing of ever increasing modes of augmentation between image and environment.
Collecting Character: Photographing the Specificity of Urban Areas Anticipating Renewal View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dan Brackenbury
The covered market appears in one form or another within most medium to large European cities and many have altered significantly in recent years due to economic stresses. In frequent cases they have suffered from a lack of regular visitors with some having been forced to close altogether. Others have been renewed and renovated into new upmarket independent shopping colonnades, usually very different from their traditional incarnations. How can we visually assess the character and identity of such places before they inevitably transform and adapt according to their new conditions and uses? The word ‘character’ is challenging to see, capture and discuss because its definition is not straightforward. In his 1961 book Townscape, Gordon Cullen focused primarily on the observable ingredients that contribute to urban character at ground level, and which offer the pedestrian a sense of encounter as they walk through a town centre. Cullen wrote about the visual phenomena that a pedestrian might come across on a normal journey through the city. He walked his sites and noted the views and engagements that he came across on the way. These approaches have been incorporated into a new photographic surveying framework to assess the character of Mercado dos Lavradores in Funchal as it anticipates a period of significant change. The study reveals how the investigative inquisitiveness of the Townscape movement can be reappropriated as a new human-authored surveying model, which might complement the technologically driven appraisal processes that are common in site research today.
