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.