Thesis: Defining Space using Illuminated Surfaces

Defining Space using Illuminated Surfaces Chad Horton

Chair: Co. Chair: M.Arch Degree:

Mark McGlothlin John Maze

Spring 2013

A MASTER’S RESEARCH PROJECT PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF A MASTER’S DEGREE IN ARCHITECTURE

Defining Space using Illuminated Surfaces Chad Horton

DeďŹ ning Space using Illuminated Surfaces

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“Design..... is the integration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space.”

[Laszlo Moholy-Nagy] Abstract

It is the nature of an architect to adapt new technologies into their buildings, often to improve the quality of space or to create new dynamic senses of space previously unattainable. An example of the latter could be witnessed in Times Square, where buildings are decorated with digital images. These experiences often try to stand on the merit of their spectacle alone and the devices used to create these effects are often limited only to providing signage or advertising within the project. Guy Debord speaks about spectacle as a product of the modern conditions of production, were everything that was “once directly lived has become mere representation.” These representations, in the form of images-of-the-world, have grown to a level of autonomy where the represented image drives the ‘reality’ of society and no longer follows it. In this way Debord states that “deceit deceives itself.”1 By constantly questioning the value of what’s ‘real’ in a world that is content with the representation of ‘reality’, the designers who continue to implement these technologies need to be able to contribute positively to ones sense of space.

Overall, this thesis aims to understand the distinction between the effect illuminated surfaces have on a space at a more phenomenological level, as well as how the epiphenomenological level of the mental world can enhance the perception of space. This mental world according to epiphenomenology is a parallel world to the physical, which operates independently from the physical world but has strong effect on the way our mind perceives what is real. According to epiphenomenologists, reality perceived in this mental world is directly influenced by sensory stimulation.

A series of experimental studies were preformed, from thought exercises questioning the notion of visibility, to immersion techniques explored using video animations, and ultimately utilizing a custom designed light box and a projector system. With the intent to better categorize the various characteristics that light and imag1

Debord, Guy, and Donald Nicholson-Smith. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone, 1994. Print.(#8)

es can attribute to the experience of an architectural environment, this box was used for testing. By utilizing the controlled environment of the box to better understand how applying motion to light, colors, and images effects sensory perception of a built form, these tests work to discover and classify the various experiential conditions that mentally and physically affect the inhabitants. All of these experiments aim to create a form of architecture with an additional dimension of temporality in order to understand the ‘optimum’ conditions of perception needed for a more dynamic and memorable experience of a space. How can projects, artificially illuminated with this additional temporal layer of information, positively enhance the way a space is experienced and understood? In what ways can the inclusion of a system that could dynamically manipulate the sensory stimulation that a occupant perceives change how we experience an architectural space throughout the course of a day? What about throughout the full lifespan of the project? Will advancements in augmentation of our physical world create a connection between the ‘real’ world and the simulated one in the form of a ‘bridge’ instead of a ‘window’?

Answering these questions will involve discovering unique parameters that will affect the way space is perceived, internalized, and remembered. Once these parameters are discovered, a hierarchal classification of these characteristics can be referenced in order to enhance future projects that utilize illuminated surfaces.

The controlled experiments that I’ve performed will be used to create a study on how space, material, light, shadow, and form can be used to manipulate and determine what variables of ‘informative’ light are most effective to the unique experience of a space. The identification and categorization for these parameters of light manipulation can be used in future architectural systems, where other designers can utilize this study to systematically alter the materiality and perception of their own spaces. While maintaining a level of unpredictability and surprise, the resulting space can effectively enhance the way architecture is experienced.

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Moving Beyond Depiction

Introduction to the Invisible World

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Historical Perspective of Architecture and Depiction

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The Inherent Problem with Depiction

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Reimagining the Design Toolset

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Introduction to the Invisible World

Advancements in technology have often had profound effects on architecture. New tools have brought fourth massive changes to the built environment, not only with new constructional techniques affecting the way space is build, but also with how that space is envisioned, created, and realized. Ever since designers began to represent their concepts through sets of drawings, a radical redevelopment in the process of design that required a holistic understanding of the project prior to construction, a disconnect has formed between the space in which a building is designed and the ‘real’ place it is to be built. The mind of a designer is empyreal, an invisible world to himself, that requires translation before any idea can be understood by others. In the same way, the simulated design environment offered by modern day modeling software, manages to merely create its own simulated version of this invisible world. Acting as little more than a sophisticated translator between a designer’s mind and the real world, this tool does little to advance the way a designer can begin to design in the ‘real’ space that is to be developed. In the last few years, many advancements have been made in the field of augmented reality . Webcams, smart phones, and emerging technologies like Google’s Project Glass have enriched the experience of overlaying photo-realist worlds with our own. Designers should be able to use these devices, not only in a way that makes the modern process of design easier, but to reconsider the definition of what is ‘real’. By bringing their design ideas directly to life in an architectural manner, a designer can begin the process of thoughtfully merging the simulated world with the real one in a way that transcends mere spectacle .

As three-dimensional technologies became a primary tool for designers and architects, a disconnect

formed between how architects and designers perceive spaces and how collaborators, enthusiasts, clients, and other members of society can imagine a building’s sense of place, prior to construction. Advancements in animation in film have exposed digital environments to a wider audience. However, immersing a larger audience into this kind of environment still requires the space to be rendered as a two-dimensional image. Video game design has advanced interactive digital spaces to engage users as active participants, but the interface requires training to control and imagine a space in three dimensions, and for many, the desire to explore these worlds is discouraged by the non-intuitive interface and the hindrance of exploring a space through a ‘window’.

Designers need to move beyond the constraints of the projected image through a process of design that doesn’t require drawings or renderings to be produced.

At least not in a method attempting to do little more than ‘accurately’ depict spatial objects. This disconnected formed during the translation of spaces imagined in three-dimensions, and their projection on a two-dimensional plane, such as on paper or through a computer monitor, often leads to a misrepresentation of how a project will exist in the ‘real’ world. By studying the theoretical work of architects who attempt to blur the distinction between the physical and virtual worlds, like Toyo Ito and his idea of the ‘Nth dimension’. This cross dimensional consideration in design is allowing architects to imagine an ‘invisible’ world of future architectural opportunities.

This opens up the designer to consider unconventional forms of ‘space’ that allows us to be inventive about how these spaces, like the world of the networked computer, or the container that is your own mind, can not only be represented in, but merged with our own physical world.

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Robin Evan’s - Arrested Image

Following the diagram from the right, you can see points 9 and 10, which show the psychological projection of objects in the eye and the intellect. Points 2, 4, and 6 show how they are projected onto a picture planed by graphic conventions. The designed object, the building itself, is represented in point 8, and constitutes the core of the tetrahedron.

Figure 0.1 - Adaptation of Arrested Image - Schodek, 2013

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Historical Perspective of Architecture and Depiction

It is important to consider the tumultuous transitions in the field of architecture, and understand the historical circumstances that have lead us from being merely builders to modern day architects. Depiction is a tool for architects developed over five hundred years ago.

The rise of depiction as a new technique in the architectural process developed during the Renaissance. Builders did not find a need for drawing complete representations of buildings until this time. The process of architecture prior to this was primarily a construction practice.

the space they were creating. By translating the designs to paperW prior to construction, architects must work to not overlook the experiential qualities of the site. Designers have constantly struggled to reintroduce these qualities back into the design process. Architecture no longer relies on an optical system, where the eye is the main point of reference. In this process , sensual qualities and bodily experience of the very site that a project is being designed for, are actively experienced throughout the process of design. Because of this, we accept today the need for a conventional set of drawings, rang Doxiadis’ thesis shows the idea of an opti- ing from large scale site plans to small scale details, in cal system where the human eye is the main point order to accurately and effectively represent a building. of reference in architectural production; in such construction processes, sensual qualities, bodily experi- Robin Evan outlines the concept of the “Arences, and architectural phenomena are major driv- rested Image” and develops a tetrahedron chart to relate ing forces of design. Architectural artifacts were a the projective geometry of a set of design documents direct product of the human embodiment in space to the built work itself. In this diagram, our understand- not mediated through reductive graphic convention.2 ing of a work in our minds’ eye is generated by a series of “projective transactions.”3 These transactions rep During this time, architecture made a fun- resent the distinction between seeing a drawing and damental change: it moved from a single stage work understanding the project as it will be built. It is necesof art, with an example of this being pottery, to a two sary, according to Evan, to see a building drawn in both stage work of art, such as music, that requires a set of plan and section, as well as a perspective of a project, written documents to produce. Though a seemingly before the designed object is to be fully imagined. simple and practical transition to imagine, the fundamental way we looked at architecture as a designer The tools of an architect have developed dramatchanged. Renaissance designers were tasked for the ically since the Renaissance. Many would say that digital first time to see architecture as represented through design has created a paradigm shift for design. However, projective geometry on a two-dimensional plane. it isn’t clear in what way it has fundamentally altered the These advancements came from the development of notion of the practice of architecture. Advancements the mathematical system of perspective representation tend to focus on the way a project is depicted, more so that fundamentally transformed the process of design. then the way it is designed. Computer programs have allowed designers to work more efficiently and more pre This was an important transition from a building cisely, but also more predictably. These photorealistic improcess of constructing by hand, to a mathematical and ages may be impressive, but often fail to showcase more critical thinking process that using images to represent complicated design concept like the relationship between the building prior to construction. While working on a form, program, and materialization, some might even arsite, builder understand the notion of the experience of gue they do more to inhibit designers creativity.

2

Casey, Edward S. Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2002. Print. (#5)

3

As and Schodek. Dynamic digital representations in architecture : Visions in motion. Abingdon England ; NY; 2008 Print (#2)

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“Ever since computer graphic tools became available to permit unrestricted manipulation of three-dimensional objects on the monitor screen, a search has been going on for new methods of depiction for planes and surfaces of intersection no longer restricted to two dimensions or reference planes. Nevertheless, I think these experiments have so far been limited to displaying, for example, a cube more impressively or to facilitate handling thereof, without having produced any fundamental change in the mental process involved in designing a building.

Is a depiction possible which is not rigidly oriented according to superficial aesthetic criteria and which, furthermore, differs from the systematic representation of planes? Such a depiction might be an appearance alternating between several dimensions or a n-dimension [blurring dimension] arising in the intermediate zone of intersecting dimensions.� [Toyo Ito]

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The Inherent Problem with Depiction

Designers have struggled to incorporate these experiential elements back into the design through depiction. In fact, modern design technology continues to strives to recreate more element of the real world into the simulated environments we work in; we truly have mastered depiction. Designers have learned to manipulate the limitations of the two-dimensional plane of a computer screen to generate and understand simulated objects that have three dimensional qualities.

This process requires that drawings be made from this model in order to appropriately understand what is to be built. The experience of understanding a space three dimensionally in the computer system is fundamentally different from the way we would explore a space in a physical realm. Future advancements in architecture should propel the way we can better understand and occupy these spaces directly from the computer.

Two-dimensional projections of spaces imply the experience, and a general sense of the space depicted. An ‘image’ in this sense tends to reflect the subjective, analytical attitudes of the designer. This is a powerful tool to convey the main concepts of a project or to portrait the final appearance of a major space in the project. However, there is a missing element in this process negating the user completely. Architects are trained to anticipate the needs of a client, but throughout the design process the clients, the people planning to occupy the future space, have to be guided by the prejudiced views of the designer. This could be equated to having a chef tell you how your food tastes.

Modeling programs have changed the way in which

designer’s work, the process in which we communicate the very notion of the spaces we are creating still retains all the same drawbacks as any other form of architectural depiction did before it. Designers still rely on these same techniques in order to simulate sensationalized, proscribed views of the project. Furthermore, the speed with which the technology of a designer’s tools have evolved have more frequently allowed ‘impressive’ shots to be successful, even if they completely lack any of the personalization so often necessary to make a two-dimensional image feel active. As computers can better recreate photorealistic textures and three-dimensional models that allow impressive ‘fly-bys’ through the project creating visually stunning work, the level of experimentation and evolution of the depicting work in a way that pushes the understanding of complex ideas of design to designers and non-designers has diminished.

Moving through a building involves hundreds of choices to be made in close succession. These choices differ depending on prior knowledge of a space, interests in various unique aspects of a design, and instinct.

A designer produces an environment and proscribes a series of movement through one singular restricted path. Can designing without an image in mind strengthen design? Can this strengthen the ability of the client to grasp the designer’s intentions? By researching literature outlining previous paradigm shifts in architectural design and reviewing case-studies of various types of virtual reality facilities it is easier to speculate about future processes that will facilitate the design and understanding of space, challenging the notion of space itself.

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Luxury of Nature (charette) This video study used panoramic images to create an immersive effect on the viewer.

Sound effects and use of montage created a sense of place in the film. For this project the main focus was on the quality of light and the transition between spaces , in order to create a dialog between nature and city.

Luxury of Nature (0:55)

http://youtu.be/3wIvdPEeV9Q

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Evan’s Arrested Image (modified)

With modern tools considered, virtual and augmented reality, motion graphics, and fabricated models can be added to Evan’s original tetrahedron. These new technologies offer new opportunities to effect the way the designed object is perceived.

Figure 0.2 - Adaptation of Arrested Image - Schodek, 2013

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Reimagining the DesignToolset

In order for us to make ‘visible’ the ‘invisible’ world, technology and willingness to ‘build’ ‘invisible architecture’ most produce an understanding of how such a complicated network of information and social tools, have developed into a cyber universe that connects users to the rest of the world in a way that transcends the way we interact with the world at the most fundamental levels. The principal practice of depicting the work of a designer has become faster, more realistic, and allows for more direct feedback, leading to quicker corrections and a more flexible way of working. We have developed a new, essential process of making, that allows designers the luxury of rapid data processing, form generation, and analysis tools, to better design spatial conditions, understand solar conditions of a site, and offer the ability to create all-in-one design packages analyzing everything from structural loads to water runoff patterns.

These programs have made design without a computer no longer possible, or at least practical.

Why then hasn’t the fundamental principles of depiction, not just the way we showcase our designs, evolved along with it?

These tools afford us the freedom to ‘bring’ these virtual address together and display them at will, simultaneous or in any arrangement we desire. If we were to imagine an environment of blurred architecture, we would inhabit spaces that transcend any ability we have now, to manipulate multiple spaces with non-localized addresses into an environment our ‘virtualized body’ inhabits, creating unique landmarks to explore in the homogenous infinity room that embodies the ideal goals of blurring

architecture. In a similar fashion, architects can bring the virtual world into the physical and create unique environments that blur the boundaries between these realms.

What defines a space? How can multiple spaces interact concurrently? The future of digital architecture will facilitate new interactive experiences of inhabiting a space with similar freedoms as the ones we are given through a computer. This would help to produce environments that allow clients and non-designers a perspective into the process of design at an earlier level, to strengthen a project and provide better feedback. Motion Video design, using techniques like montage, have helped push the user experience of a project to the forefront of the designer’s mind as he imagines scenarios in a place he is designing. Video Game designers, for example, design environments only to be completely explored in a virtual world. Many techniques are used to offer full 360 degree views and encourage exploration and interaction with spaces. This engagement with the space, even in a virtual environment, could make a fundamental difference in a users understanding of a project.

With parametric design tools considered, computer graphics, animations, physical models, immersing interactive environments, and digital fabrication methods can expand traditional projective geometry. Evan’s tetrahedron scheme may have to accommodate new means of architectural projections we might generate and also represent an architecture that transcends the limits of abstract graphic conventions, conveying a multitude of sensory experiences.4 4

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As and Schodek, 2008 (#2)

Exploring Reality in Reverse

Introduction to Reality and Illusion

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The Invisible Tower

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Simulacra and Simulation

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Blurring the Real

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The Mind

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The Riddle of Experience vs Memory

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RenĂŠ Magritte, La condition humaine, 1933 Figure 0.3 - La Condition Humaine - Magritte, 2012

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“In front of a window, viewed from inside a room, I placed a painting which depicts precisely that section of the landscape obstructed by the painting: that is, the tree of the painting concealed the tree located behind it outside in the real landscape. And that is how we see the world: we see it as something located outside of us despite the fact that what we see is only a mental representation of that which we experience within us” [Rene Magritte]

Introduction to Reality and Illusion

It wasn’t initially obvious what approach was most suitable, in order to imagine a way to merge the two different realms that define modern society, one simulated and one physical. The original course of action was to conceive an architectural work that utilizes these technologies to create a novel and unique effect on a user. However, by trying to redefine how the inclusion of illuminated surfaces in a project could enhance the sense of space, it became clear that this strategy of conceptualizing a holistic project following a typical architectural design process had many drawbacks.

It was clear that more questions than solutions came from this process, and it was unclear the most effective way to implement these emerging technologies.

However, by exploring the answers to these questions, the questions became more intriguing then the solutions I was trying to develop. By imagining the effect an invisible lookout tower has on the occupants of a sacred wildlife preserve, for example, it became clear that questions of the very nature of perception played a major role in the way a project is understood. By imag-

ining how social connections between people online could be translated to ‘notes’ in the physical world, I began to question the extent someone is whiling, or capable of suspending disbelief in order to allow a space to effect their sense of reality. Even uniquely simulated environments like Disney World, brings more questions about what it means to inhabit a ‘real’ space then it is able to answer. Does inhabiting an architecture that relies heavily on illusion, really constitute as a ‘real’ space?

Moving forward, these questions became the basis for conceptualizing a project that aimed to discover how artificial illumination and the incorporation of digital imagery can be successfully utilized in an space.

By imagining architectural environments that could test these questions, the light box designed for this project was conceived as a laboratory that allowed interactive and customizable experiments to be preformed. It was through this process of exploring the notion of reality in reverse, that helped to shape the types of experiments that would eventual be derived from this research.

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The

visible Tower Payne’s Prairie Preserve Gainesville, FL

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In order to understand the way perception can effect space, a simple charette was performed early during the conceptual period of thesis development. This project questioned what a building can bring to a site if it is invisible. Through imagining the discovery of an invisible tower I was forced to question what unique aspects of perception and cognition play into the sense of space.

The Invisible Tower (charette)

In order to understand the way perception can effect space, a simple charette was performed early during the conceptual period of thesis development. This simple project questioned what a building can bring to a site if it is made to be invisible.

Through imagining the discovery of an invisible tower I was forced to question what unique aspects of perception and cognition play into the sense of space.

Gazing through the protected and antiquated landscape of Payne’s Prairie, you will notice that in all directions, nothing dares to rise up and disrupt the amazing panoramic view that the prairie provides. Trees line the edges of the prairie, but at its center, not even do trees break the barrier that the sky makes with ground.

However, something else exists out there at the center of the prairie. As you move through the prairie, you might barely notice its presence, but as you get closer you notice the evidence that something built exists in this emptiness. First the dirt trail you are following is replaced with a wooden platform to walk upon. Further along the path, stones begin to play their part in this construction. Not entirely out of place in nature, their existence is clearly not natural. Carved and polished into smooth blocks, these initial stones are man-made and provided for seating. Further down the path, these stones make up what

looks to be the foundation of a building, however with no evidence of a structure on top, yet you know something is there. As you approach the stone foundation of the Invisible Tower, you begin to sense it’s presence. First you might witness someone ahead of you disappear behind the veil or you may just stumble upon the opening yourself without warning. Moving behind the white walls, ‘painted’ with the views of the landscape they are obstructing, you can enter the hidden interior of the Invisible Tower.

Though it’s initial appearance along the path was impossible to perceive as you move along the winding trail towards this Invisible Tower, there are moments where the sky and trees no longer line up along the horizon. It’s in these moments where you begin to question the reality presented to us initially, that there is nothing penetrating the sky. The surface of the tower projects an image of the landscape, displaying an accurate and perfectly scaled view of the horizon that it is replacing. The Invisible Tower uses augmented reality techniques to provide the simulacrum that the sky still dominates the horizon. This allows the tower to perform the act of rising up into the sky, offering various views out onto the prairie, while not destroying the very reason it is there, to observe the unobstructed landscape.

The tower exists by forcing us to challenge our reality.

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“Between the ordinary house and the creation of the architect there is a gap which is difficult to bridge. Why has this gap appeared? This kind of gap is nothing unusual and can be found in various other fields of human culture, but for architecture it acquires special significance through direct linkage to everyday life. The room designed by the architect is not the result of the time one has lived through in reality, but the house as dwelling was not built a priori for the things which lie in the future. They reveal the space aspects of the dwelling room as a lyrical concept in encoded form. Between the contradictions and interactive relationships of these two aspects arise our reflections on dwelling space. The linguistic varieties of dwelling space are mutually related. .... The creation of the architect appears in that he extracts the essential entity of the concept of architecture which exists unnoticed beyond the living character of the swelling house. By combining the way things are seen by others, the limits of the room which an individual can visualize in the present are revealed and recorded.� - [Koji Taki ]

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Simulacra and Simulation

What is the justification of a structure to exist, if it must distort reality to validate its existence? This would seem to be a dramatic task for a simple viewing platform to undertake if reality itself was not already in flux. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard argues in his 1981 treatise, Simulacra and Simulation, that modern society has already replaced the meaning of reality with symbols and signs. He explains that the modern human experience is a simulation of reality, not reality itself. Media and culture helped to create a simulacrum of society, a perceived reality upon which, according to Baudrillard, modern society has become too reliant. So much so that it has lost touch with the real world that this simulacrum is based on.

A classic analogy that Baudrillard uses to explains this concept is from Jorge Luis Borges’s On Exactitude in Science. He tells a tale of a great empire that has a map created of itself.5 It was so detailed that it was as large as the entire empire. Eventually , the people chose to live in the map and neglect the real empire, with the empire decaying from disuse. Baudrillard would argue this will also happen to reality.

Philosopher Edward Casey makes the argument that the world we see is already a representation of the ‘real’ world we live in. According to him the world is not a factum brutum, or infinite idea, but is actually presented to us in the form of a image. This image is subject to our own manipulation, either by re-representing it literally through various media techniques, or conceptually, such as in the form of a memory. Like Baudrillard, Casey presents the great representative works of skilled mapmakers as the epitome of representations of an already represented world-image (reality).6 Thus, the Invisible Tower’s veiled surfaces are meant to become a representation of a representation. By manipulating the image of 5

Borges, Jorge Luis, and Andrew Hurley. Collected Fictions.

New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1998. Print. (#4) 6 Casey, 2002 (#5)

the prairie literally, with a literal projection of the world onto the surface of the tower, the project removes the evidence of its existence and presents you with a nearly identical optical image of Payne’s Prairie. This forces the mind to conceptually re-represent the image of the empty prairie, presenting an interesting way to explore the challenge of blurring landscape and architecture.

The Japanese architect Toyo Ito uses this quote to outline a disconnection between built work and their environment. In his exhibit “Blurring Architecture” Ito outlines his life’s body of work and in doing so, uses this to outline the question ‘What is Architecture?’ By pointing out new ways of looking at the discipline. Toyo Ito has worked his whole career to simultaneously express the virtual and real worlds together. His projects attempt to evolve the concept of the ‘simulated’ city, seeking to innovate our notion of representation.7 His exhibit highlights the representational techniques of his work in a myriad of different media, with reproductions, drawings, simulations, models, photographs, and texts presented side by side. Ito believes that investigation or mediating study and implemented reality are not fundamentally contrastive aspects. “Blurring Architecture” is about blurring the boundary between reality and virtuality by using new emerging technologies. Taki’s ‘gap’8, according to Ito, has to do with the ‘body as a living experience’ and how this contrasts with the ‘body of mechanistic modernism’, the technologically augmented body that strives for transparency and homogeneity from its environment.

Ito refers to this ‘other body’ as being born out of a new era of awareness, produced by technological advances throughout the 20th century. This effected not only the technical way we built, but the metaphorical way we construct our world-image. The machine became the symbol.

7

Itō, Toyoo, and Andrew Barrie. Toyo Ito: Blurring Architecture. [Auckland, N.Z.]: Artspace, 2001. Print.(#15) 8 Shinoyama, Kishin, Kōji Taki, and Shōzō Tsurumoto. Meaning of the House. [Tokyo]: Ushio, 1975. Print. (#25)

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“The machine was something self-contained, and the city, with their exterior appearances decorated in symmore complete its independence of the environment, bols that justify their existence amongst the conglomthe greater was its efficiency and functionality.” [Toyo Ito] eration of other towers; however the interior of different towers could often consist of identical interior spaces.

This became the goal of modernism, and build- This style of construction allows the designer to create ings were designed so that their independence from the a facade that represents the meaning of a structure efoutside world was easily controlled, leading to a homog- fectively, but only if the space inside is closed onto itself. enous interior that offered high functionality. Even build- Disney World functions in much the same way. It strives ings with glass curtain systems still function as artificial to isolate the occupant completely from its surroundenvironments with limited influence from the outside. ings. In the spaces designed for Disney World, your views This was the new goal created by the ‘other body’, the beyond the controlled boundaries of the park are limone extended by mechanistic modernism, leading to a ited. This self-contained enclosure guarantees the ocstyle of building that proves to be most successful when cupant as little exposure to the ‘real’ reality as possible. it is able to detach the occupant from nature, or when it can simulate the nature it needs to validate its existence. “The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in re Both Casey and Baudrillard make the argument verse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the inthat this shift in our society’s views of reality happened fantile degeneration of this imaginary. It’s meant to be an during distinct periods of technological innovation. infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults Casey speaks of pictura emerging in the seventeenth are elsewhere, in the “real” world, and to conceal the fact century. French for ‘painting’, pictura refers more im- that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among portantly to the mentality of capturing the world as an those adults who go there to act the child in order to fosimage through various representational techniques. In ter illusion of their real childishness.” [Jean Baudrillard] Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard structures his ar- gument down to three orders of simulacra that emerge Both Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard reduring key historical periods.9 During the first period, fer to Disney World as a example of hyperreality. Eco referred to as the pre-modern era, images were clearly believes that Disney World uses settings such as Main copies or representations of something original. This Street, which features full sized houses that have been is the period when Casey refers to in his philosophical created to look “absolutely realistic” in order to take work on re-representation. The second order of simula- visitors’ imagination to a “fantastic past”. This false recra was ushered in with the Industrial Revolution, when ality creates an illusion and makes it more desirable for photography and mass reproduction technologies in the people to buy than reality. This environment enables nineteenth century allowed the image to dissimulate visitors to feel that technology and the simulated atand threaten to displace the real. The third order is part mosphere “can give us more reality than nature can.” of the postmodern era. Baudrillard believed that in this The Invisible Tower strives to alter its environment era, the image has outpaced the real. So as these im- through similar implementations of technology, but inages begin to proceed reality, they become a simulated stead of dominating the environment like Disney World, environment floating without any reality grounding it. or a purely simulated virtual environment does, this tower chooses to remove itself from the environment.

As the information exchange era flourished, we By sacrificing the identity of itself, veiling the facade in began to see the homogeneity of modern interior de- a fabric of landscape, the tower selflessly maintains sign facilitate a complete freedom of expression of the the encapsulated spirit that the unobstructed prairie facade. This is evident by looking at various towers in a landscape already provides, introducing a wide range of new opportunities to alter the way visitors physi9 Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: cally and conceptually re-represent Payne’s Prairie.

University of Michigan, 1994. Print.

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Blurring the Real

Ultimately, Disney created a simulated environment that appeals to Toyo Ito’s ‘body of mechanistic modernism’. The encapsulated spirit of Disney World creates a barrier were no other architecture can influence the freedom that this ‘other body’ can receive by being disconnected from reality. This desire to be disconnected is only growing stronger as ‘smart’ electronic devices become more ubiquitous. Ito believes that there is a ‘body of electronic modernism’ that longs for non-localized space far more removed than even simulated worlds like Disney could create. This body calls for an ‘invisible different city’, one more homogenous and transparent then even the ‘body of mechanistic modernism’ would strive for.10 This city would respond to the social connectedness and information-driven mindset that modern technologies allow for and offer environments experientially augmented by these technologies, or completely simulated environments all together. This will allow us to create infinite numbers of simulated environments and endlessly recreate any environment without using up the physical resources and ground-space required to create encapsulated environments like Disney World. Toyo Ito strives to materialize interactive elements imagined for the ‘invisible city’ in his personal projects, such as his Tower of the Winds, which creates a skin that responds to the flow of the wind, an architecture sensitive to the effects of the environment through its implementation of technology.

Toyo Ito calls the architecture for this invisible city, as ‘blurring architecture’ synonymous with ‘invisible architecture’. He outlines 3 key elements that would define the architecture for this digitalized new architecture.

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Ito, 2001 (#5)

1. Soft Boundaries

The modern architecture style that lead to completely closed environments, allowed for us to create our own environments in our space, separate from the environment outside of our home. These simulated environments are influenced by numerous technologies but in would be unreasonable to revert back to inhabiting a completely natural environment. The disconnect has grown too vast. However, though it is possible to create architecture completely detached from nature, architecture should not be completely closed environments.

In fact, these technologies should enable us to blur this boundary and create skins that respond sensitively to its exterior environment just as the human skin does. This boundary could translate the stimuli provided from the natural environment for the simulated environment and project the evidence on the exterior of the various dynamic changes happening to the interior environment.

Ito’s Tower of the Winds is a great example of a program that uses a ‘smart’, soft skin, that responds to its environment. In order to renovate an old water tower and ventilation duct right along one of the main entrances into the city, Yokohama Japan commissioned a competition for project proposals. Ito’s proposal involved adding a soft skin system that uses current technologies in the late 1980’s, to combines the flow of the wind with the flow of electrons. These sensors formed an elliptical grid surrounding the exterior of the tower that respond sensitively to the environment. This electronic grid recognizes differences in wind speed, velocity, and even sound

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waves created by the wind, and translates these stimuli into a light sequence that responds differently depending on the natural conditions of the environment it sits in.

Toyo Ito is known to use modern technologies to bridge the gap between the natural and simulated worlds. The Tower of the Winds, uses these technologies to create a light and ephemeral structure that falls in line well with his concept of ‘blurring architecture’. However even non-electronic building technologies, when used effectively, can work to create a similar ‘soft boundary’ that creates a blurred distinction between what is simulated (interior) and what is natural (exterior). Shigeru Ban’s Curtain Wall House (1995) was built nearly ten years after Ito’s, Tower of the Winds (1986) but also approached a unique redesign project with the intention of creating a effective soft-skin between the house and the dense Tokyo neighborhood it inhabits. The clients’ wish to imbue a traditional Japanese-style home with the essence of modern architecture design that favors immense opened and freedom. Ban manages to replace two stories of the facade of the structure with a large curtain that extends around two sides of the building. This creates an interior space whose quality and degree of privacy can be manipulated at will. The curtains and windows of the structure can be opened and closed to alter the way the building approaches the natural environment it occupies. The natural lighting into the structure, the views of nature from the structure, and the presence of environmental effects such as wind can all respond dynamically with the changes in the Curtain Wall House’s soft skin.

“This thin membrane takes the place of shoji screens, fusuma doors, shutters, and sudare screens in the traditional Japanese house,” according to Ban. This ‘curtain wall’ that Ban designed, though poking fun at modern technological advancements in architecture, like the use of a glass curtain-wall system, is intended to recreate conditions of early primitive architecture such as tents, teepees, or yurts, that often used soft fabrics to create barriers instead of harder materials. This primitive architecture is one that Ito believes existed before

the body adopted it’s mechanistic alternate personality and appeals to the ‘body as a living experience’. However where the inclusion of a fully glass curtain wall would create just as effectively the homogenous and transparent skin that the ‘body of mechanistic modernism’ calls for.

This approach allows the project to use advancements in building technology to transcend the isolationist attitude that modern architectural style has created towards nature, inviting nature back into the building while retaining enough control to question what part of the interior environment is ‘simulated’ and which is ‘real’.

2. Transforming the Program

Computer tools can change dynamically from various work related tasks, to socializing or entertainment focused activities. The idea of a network explains the process by which a computer is able to travel thousands of miles to virtual addresses in cyberspace and bring them inside of our environment. Additionally these tools offer us the freedom to ‘bring’ multiple virtual addresses together and display them back-to-back, side-byside, or one over the other in ways that transcend any abilities we have to manipulate multiple spaces with nonvirtual address. Using the non-localized space created by electronic communication as a model, blurring architecture calls for creating a floating character in the design that permits temporal changes. The modern design method calls for rooms built to suit an intended program.

This has lead to the mindless inclusion of these various spaces into home designs for 100s of years. Toyo Ito calls for an approach in the construction of spaces that allows for the flexibility of a spaces rapid upheaval of use, when a change of program is called for. The two story curtain works with a system of sliding glass partitions in Shigeru Ban’s Curtain Wall House to create an environment that can transform at will to embrace different aspects of its environment. Its spaces are flexible enough to facility various programs and the skins system can allow for complete isolation from the outside, or could be visually open to the city but closed off by the curtain glass system to allow protection from the environment, and of course

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these spaces could be completely opened to the environ- cyberspace. These environments interact with each ment creating a very fussy barrier between what consti- other in the simulated environment and through the tutes the interior and what would constitute the exterior. computer engage us into their disjoint, yet immersive environments, lured by the freedom, flexibility, and trans3. Un-Uniformity parency that the ‘invisible architecture’ would utilize.

“Blurring architecture develops in a room in which two different kinds of spaces are in mutual interaction. But it is a homogeneous room whose goal is the further increase of homogeneity and transparency. It is a clear clean space extending to infinity,” Toyo Ito describes an architecture that is in constant interaction with other spaces. These spaces are superimposed on top of each other through their mutual interaction. The homogeneous space interacts with these special spaces, and forms various new environments harmoniously responding to the dynamic nature of these information rich environments.

As an architectural designer in the 21st century, Ito works with computer programs that allow him to design. These programs simulate 3 dimensional architectural elements on a endless empty plane. The tool set of the modern architect is robust. He is afforded numerous toys to experiment with and has full control over his simulated environment. And beyond modeling tools, a computer can create several kinds of environments, transforming dynamically from various work tasks to socializing or entertainment based environments. . The vast digital network we’ve been weaving for ourselves enables a computer to be able to travel thousands of miles between ‘real’ servers and bring ‘virtual’ addresses together in

Ito’s three bodies reflect a strange inconsistency we have in our bodies; we take our place in nature and society solely through our ‘body of living experience’ or we could call it the physical body. This, the initial human interface with nature, is always actively engaged with its environment, it collects information and it is this body that others engage with physically, the one which personifies the rest of your ‘bodies’. These other ‘bodies’ developed overtime and could be considered a result of an evolution of our society using technologies to create a new ‘spirit’ inside us that longs for the freedom they grant us. With this freedom comes the comfort of seclusion, privacy, and control over your environment. Ito talks about a newer body, the ‘body of electronic modernism’, as if it is a third fracture in the psyche of modern man. It could be seen as just an extension of that original spirit that awoke inside us when we discovered that new ideas, lead to new technologies, that lead to new opportunities. These opportunities outline what it means to be modern, to be a human on the cutting edge of his time. With these new opportunities come augmentation to the goals and desires of the ‘body as living experience’. The side effects of the changes made to the human condition are not readily apparent but can lead to the modern conflict we currently face.

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Gestell

The enframement of the world.

Gebild

A structured image that restructures the world of which it is an image.

Figure 0.4 - Adaptation of Frame in Tree- Unknown, 2013

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The Mind “Space is itself nothing but mere representation, and therefore nothing in it can count as real save only what is represented in it.” [Immanuel Kant]

Casey’s argument was structured around the rise of pictoria, a process for describing the world using images. He explains the linguistic history of the world ‘weltbild’ (world image). The idea of the world-image was understood as more than a picture of the world, but was taken to also mean the world conceived and grasped as a picture. This premise is based on four basic factors.11

1. The Ambiguity of ‘bild’ allows for the double meaning. Linguistic scholars debate over this detail, which when translated could mean the difference between the world-as-picture or the world-as-image. The world-asimage implies that the world is subject through our own manipulation. This idea is manifested in the work of landscape painters who used mirrored representations of the landscape they are choosing to depict. They would mix these mirror or transformed views of the world, and super impose multiple elements together to create a new space.

2. If ‘bild’ refers to ‘image’ then the German world ‘Gebild’ is a term that refers to a structured images that restructures the world of which it is an image.

These images are consciously designed to represent the world in the eyes of the representer in order to justify the reality the representer is witnessing. This supports an idea that the world is framed. Gestell is another German word used by Edward Casey to define this ar11

gument, it refers to this notion of the enframement of the world through structured ‘framing’. The frame can be literal, like a window, or conceptual, like a memory, work to create a sense of order. This was to express the notion that the world is already framed and artists, painters, film makers, architects, all work to re-frame it.

3. The frame also acts as a horizon. Just as a horizon both closes in on and opens out upon the receding depth of a natural scene, the frame of the same scene, as represented in a painting, has a point where it spatially terminated that is in constant flux until captured. Casey argued that this more successfully draws our attention to the objects on the horizon and their eventual surpassing into the unseen. A horizon is a frame within a frame, both the internal and external horizons of a representation actively encourage us to pick out and analyze particular objects in the scene. We pay attention to an object along the horizon because we know that the horizon is outrunning the objects and will be gone. A frame too creates a moment where the objects in the scene have their most relevance.

4. The world as pictured creates a totality of objects that calls for us to recreate them. This places the human as the source of all representations. The observer of world, the subject, is responsible for representing it in ways that are inherent in the subjects own mind. These factors include the unique categories of understanding, the ability to form incongruities, and the process of abstraction.

The mind is a complicated system that works to include ourselves as a subject in the representations we create.

Casey, 2002 (#5)

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Ito refers to the ultimate space of blurred architecture as being uniform while embracing new stimuli (information) in a way that creates moments of significance (landmarks) in that same ‘ideal’ space.12 It’s natural to compare parts of the body to physical or even architectural elements. It’s not uncommon to hear someone claim that the stomach has a ‘door’ to the ‘heart’ of that the heart is the ‘window’ into the ‘soul’. The way the mind organizes and produces thoughts is reminiscent of this idea of invisible architecture. If you imagine your mind as a room, it would be a space with the utmost transparency and homogeneity, extending to infinity in all directions while still maintaining the persona of being a container.

The mind can be blank and in an instant transformed by new information. When asked to describe the ‘space’ in your head, most people would describe the types of ‘thinks’ they think, or perhaps the way that thoughts arise, or the way they use their mind to gather or structure information to have readily at hand for an upcoming exam. It’s not the ‘space of the mind’ that you visualize but the thoughts that occupy the mind that define the way we picture that space. This makes each mind a uniquely different environment, yet each mind is also constructed of similar parts and begins as a ‘nearly’ empty container.

“Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.”

[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

The mind is clearly a space with a ‘soft-skin’. It’s function, amongst so many other things, is to let in infinite amounts of information and retain as much of it as it can. It responds to ‘all’ of the stimuli provided by the organs of the body, including sight, smell, hearing, touch... and works automatically to make necessary changes to your ‘mindset’ and provide you valid information. The mind, just like a perfect space of blurred architecture, can transform significantly at will. Whether automatically to deal with emergency or consciously to study for an exam, the mind is as flexible as any dynamic space we can build. The mind is boundless in ways that physical and even digital spaces cannot recreate. It can take in and organize countless information in subcon12

Ito, 2001(#2)

scious ways we often don’t even notice. At will a skilled mind can display countless snippets of information superimposed and interconnected in a myriad of complicated patterns in order to produce unique and insightful connections between these ‘pockets of stimulation’

The mind, like invisible architecture, is highly suited to adaption. Most often the mind is used to contain a variety of information just within ‘reach’ in order to accomplish any task at hand. Just like homogenous spaces are used to make an office tower operate efficiently, the ‘space of the mind’ could function to segment information into individual units laid out side by side in complicated but organized gridded patterns.

Yet at times it can be made consciously empty, save for thoughtless processes, such as breathing, which may always occupy the ‘space’ but will often operate subconsciously and without taking up any ‘room’. And still at other times the mind could be bombarded with spontaneous thoughts or worries, dictating a transformation of the mind without much control by the owner, responding automatically to a problem at hand or when a solution is available but not readily apparent.

“The mind is a flexible space from moment to moment, but it also develops in a less elastic fashion throughout its development and through experiences.

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Emerson explain not only a process by which the space adapts to retain information but by the way these new ideas can transform the mind permanently. The ‘space of the mind’ will experience numerous moments that rapidly change this space.13 The mind adjusts itself when it experiences these moments that drammatically transform the way you see the world - your ‘world image’.

Without this kind of flexibility, life changing moments and paradigm shifts might not effect or even ‘fit’ into the space of the mind. It is this nearly boundless dynamic flexibility that should be strived for by invisible architecture and the future blurring of architecture through technology.

13

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, and Gene Dekovic. Self Reliance.

New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1975. Print..(#9)

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The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory

The Psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, talks about the cognitive traps that our mind natural devises. These traps limit our mind’s ability to have a clear view on complicated concepts like happiness. The difference between the way we experience and remember things, is one such trap.14 Happiness is a concept that needs to be analyzed in a variety of ways. There is a fundamental difference between being happy in your life and being happy with your life. A composer, for example, may play the most beautiful piece of music with his orchestra, creating a beautiful memory of a ‘happy’ experience. However at the very end a performer makes a mistake and this agonizes the composer who exclaims ‘the experience is ruined!’ However it is not the experience that was dramatically affected, it was the memory of that experience.

The experience is gone forever and the only remnant left is the memory that the composer ‘ruined’ in his own mind. This relates back to arguments made by Edward Casey in Re-representing landscape with the terms like weltbild (world picture) or gebild (a structured image that restructures the world of which it is an image.)

“Hence ‘world picture’ (weltbild), when understood essentially, does not mean [merely] a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as a picture.” [Martin Heidegger]

These concepts attempt to represent the internalization aspect of experience. Experience in the ‘real’ creates a simulated version of reality in the mind. It may be that this process has always functioned in this way and only recently philosophers like Heidegger and Casey have managed to qualify it in writing. But the argument can be made that the mind is already a ‘perfect’ piece of invisible architecture, working semi-autonomously to craft a mental environment that is most suitable to meet the needs of its host. It is through the mind that we interface our environments, natural or simulated.

The mind seems to be more compatible with the new 14 “Daniel Kahneman, The RIddle of Experience vs. Memory” www.ted.com. Web. 2013 (#7)

invisible world created by advancements in communication technology of the 20th century, then it is with the homogenous environments we inhabit in a modern advanced society, comfortably removed from nature.

Kahneman, during a lecture at a TED conference in Longbeach, CA, makes the argument that through this capturing process there are two ‘selfs’. The ‘experiencing’ self lives in the moment, it has the knowledge of its past, but functions in the present. Then there is the ‘remembering’ self, one which keeps a mental record of these experiences and crafts a mental story of our lives. Kahneman makes the argument that the way an experience is laid out, the story of the event, can lead us to paint different pictures in our head. The ending in particular leaves the most dramatic impressions on the ‘remembering’ self, while the ‘experiencing’ self experiences the individual parts of this story with equal weight. It’s this kind of insight into the way the mind crafts experience into memories, or the way the mind creates its own reality, that offers merit to the argument that the human mind is designed to be uniquely susceptible to augmenting its own reality, and in fact have existed and expanded as a culture by making most of these technological innovations. Perhaps it is even a survival mechanism or a mental filter to keep us from going insane from the process of digesting conflict information, but the mind creates the world it wants to live in. Now societies are heavily networked together and these invisible cities, are becoming more tangible and more manageable. Right now we engage with this new world of information and communication innovations through a window. However it would be the next shift in the way we can depict objects that will require designers to not only create a window into a the invisible world, which merely requires a well manicured interface that you must engage with multiple peripherals, and instead designers will be tasked to bridge worlds, creating ways to blur these spaces with our own or to manipulate perceptions in order to bring us ‘fully’ into their simulated realities or paint our physical realities with them.

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Understanding Digital Augmentation

Introduction to Simulation

37

The Topic of Perception

39

Virtual Reality

41

Hyper-reality

43

Case Studies

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Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque, 2001 Figure 0.5 - Adaptation of Sendai Mediatheque- Ito, 2013

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Introduction to Simulation

Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque attempted to create a space that featured the ‘unbounded nature of space’ by using ‘tree-like’ structural tubing systems that run throughout the building. These light weight structural pieces penetrate through the floors and are the only elements designed to break up the space. In order to properly portrait this idea of boundlessness he created a computer graphics simulation of the Sendai Mediatheque in order to justify the need to construct the a honeycomb grid system that begins to target the discrepancy “between the homogeneity of the module and the sprawling character of nature.”15

This project was completed by a computer simulation and designed to exist very comfortably in the boundless simulated world it was created in. The expansive qualities of the modeling programs Ito used to design 15

Ito, 2001 (#15)

the Sendai Mediatheque, as well as the building itself both exist as a place that is defined by the objects that occupy the space. Ito managed to simulate unique structural systems using organic and natural patterns that would mimic the language of the park located next to the project.

Following a rough outline provided by nature and the imagining of ‘perfect’ invisible spaces, Ito envisioned a space that extended in all directions without much to impede the flow of movement, like leafs in nature. In order to avoid breaking the flow he structured these plates with tubes that did not follow any architectural conventions that allow them to not be reminiscent of structural columns, but of flowing trees. It is from designers who embrace the ideas of phenomenology in architecture that Ito draws inspiration in using nature to alter the inherent way we perceive a space.

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Even limited to one projector projecting from a set angle, pourous and reflective surfaces can manage to transpose enough information ontp multiple surfaces, in order to evoke a spatial conection. In this test, the detail of the surface closest to the projector allows significant amounts of light through. A mirror set at a 45 degree angle behind this surface manages to both reflect the same texture onto the ceiling and also creates the appearance of a rear wall.

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The Topic of Perception

Although that arguments put forward thus far tend to alienate two separate parts of the human body that are seemingly inseparable, in order to break the convention between the difference in ‘experiencing’ and ‘remembering’ for example. However there are unique elements of the body that where initially believed to function independently that we’re later discovered to be linked through complex cognitive processes. The eye and the brain work in this fashion. It was originally imagined that the eye ‘saw’ and the brain merely processed this stimuli. It was later revealed that the brain and eye work closely together. Neuro-biologist Semi Zeki explains, “One ‘sees’ with the brain, and not the eye”. He believes we perceive our world through ‘the visual brain,’ which constantly compares and sorts out visual information.16

The world we see has intrinsic characteristics that effect the different ways we approach two-dimensional projection-based models and three-dimensional reality differently. We can use forces like gravity to orient ourselves, for example. This is a feat which would be difficult to recreate with a two-dimensional projection of space. In a similar fashion, the way we navigate a space in these two-dimensional projected environments is fundamentally different. In a simulation the 16

Zeki, Semir. A Vision of the Brain. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1993. Print. (#30)

user’s physical body remains stable while the visual field in front is shifted, where in reality the world is stable and the body turns itself around. We gather all that information through sensory organs, and then process it. This course of action is traditionally known as perceptions and reasoning. Sensory reception and cognitive processes interact and complement each other; ‘our thoughts influence what we see and vice versa’.

Experience is the true factor that separates twodimensional projections from reality. In a two-dimensional projection experience is ‘sensed’. Even by engaging multiple senses, using engaging narrative, authentic sounds, accurate lighting details, and a realistic depiction of movement, the two-dimensional projection still cannot supersede the ‘perceived’ experience of three-dimensional reality. This involves a sense of ‘knowing’ you inhabit this space which is composed of phenomenal things that foster meaning. In order to truly engage a two-dimensional projection in this same manner a subject would need to believe the existence of the simulation is the most ‘authentic’ or the two-dimensional project must engage with the individual and his environment in a way that does not distract the user from the simulations ubiquitous involvement in the three-dimensional ‘real’ environment.

This is the same type of technology that makes

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the simulated environments in dark rides at amusement parks so enthralling. This combination of technology allows the user to ‘feel’ physical stimuli like movement and gravity, temperatures and smells, and an accurate sense of depth and illumination, which are often only depicted in simulations. Yet this technology is provided as a ‘toy’ or in scientific and academic institutions a ‘tool’. These devices avoid fully reaching the levels of an authentically ‘perceived’ reality’ because we actively engage with what we know to be a ‘illusion generator’ and are often aware of the simulations intended results before hand. This could be avoided by forced manipulation of a user into believing a reality completely fabricated (Baudrillard already believes we fully engage a environment consisting of simulacra of our own creation) .

Steen Eiler Rasmussen compares the personal experience of his hometown in Germany, with that of a photograph, in his work Experiencing Architecture (1964) . About the photo he claimed to not see it as just an ‘image’ but he was able to remember and imagine ‘an impression of a whole town and its atmosphere. You not only see the houses directly in front of you but at the same time, and without actually seeing them, you are aware of those on either side and remember the ones you have already passed....you breathe the place, hear its songs, notice how they are re-echoed by the unseen house behind you. A man who looks around the world, like any animal whose eyes are in the front of his head, seems to get a succession of optical stimuli, not a simultaneous panorama: What he ordinarily perceives is the visual world, not a succession of visual fields.’17

Human experiences are links to a plethora of interrelated perception ‘devices’. These devices consist of orientation, auditory, haptic, taste smell, and visual systems. By analyzing the control that each system has over various elements of the body, you begin to see the uniquely interrelated roles they play. For example, the body uses vision and physical the stimuli

of organs and skin in tandem to allow for motion and even just standing. This complex interconnection is the reason why closing your eyes or focusing at a fixed point can cure nausea created by the unsettling of your equilibrium by the irregular motion of a vehicle or the visual effects of modern three-dimensional films, ones that requires glasses to enjoy. These developments in the understanding of the way experience engages the entirety of the body allow us to imagine the ability to reverse engineer the fundamentals of perception.

In The Perception of the Visual World, James Gibons explains that ‘there is literally no such thing as a perception or space without the perception of a continuous background surface’. The world should be considered as a mosaic of surfaces, colors, edges, shapes, and interspaces, not merely a collection of objects (houses, cars, people), arrayed throughout the landscape.18 Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum effectively embeds itself into the city of Bilbao by reflected distorted elements of the city on its surface and in a manner reduces them to the fabric of their individual elements.

The body uses a background surface to apply even the most fundamental processes of perception. According to MIT’s Artificial Intelligence laboratories’ studies from the 1970’s, before an object or space is perceived, the observer deconstructs the scene into zones that feature similar intensities of light and color. Often this adequately separates an object from its environment so that the observer can distinguish between the various objects. The observe then distinguished the connections of various elements to read a figure-ground representation of the space. This simple mental depiction is called a ‘primitive sketch’ and would be similar to an AutoCAD drawing of a space depicting only the location of the edges of surfaces with clean lines. By understanding the way a person most readily perceives things and applying these techniques to the tools designers use, architects are more capable of controlling the way a space is perceived.

17

18

Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge [Mass.: M.I.T., 1964. Print (#22).

Gibson, James J. The Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950. Print. (#10)

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Virtual Reality

“It was almost like being there” has been said in many places. ‘Cinema space’ has been analyzed by Alexander Sesonske and others in an attempt to define how we are able, and more importantly willing, to be in a state where “the slightest invitation will persuade us to abandon our ordinary lives and live wholly within the world of the film”. 19Michael Heim, in his book The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality says that stories of virtual reality “suggest our need to create realities within realities, to suspend our belief in one set of involvements to entertain another. . . our ability to enter symbolic space”.

The term “virtual reality” may be, if one is looking at the practicalities of using the technology, a term contrived for its instrumentality in facilitating the suspension of human disbelief necessary to enter a newly contrived experience which the contriver wishes to have taken-as-real.20 The term ‘virtual reality’ may be encouraging us to ignore our individual experience of the technology -- organizing in advance, by virtue of a name, the reaction that we ‘should’ have to this newly contrived environment.

The mind’s willingness to suspend disbelief, allows the mechanisms of the mind work to appreciate an in19 Sesonske, Alexander. Value and Obligation. New York: Oxford UP, 1964. Print.(#24) 20 Heim, Michael. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.(#!!)

vented situation. You see this willingness expressed by societies desire to ‘escape’ into a fictional storey in film, theater, or literature. Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined this term in 1817 in the book Biographia literana or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions.

“In this idea originated the plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’; in which it was agreed, that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from out inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”21

An invented situation is made more believable when they maintain internal consistency. This is why simulated events take place in fictional “universes”. Walt Disney is a ‘Universe’ builder. These areas need to have to exist to house scenarios that would seem noticeably out of place if you heard them from a friend or a news paper in our own world.

21 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. London: J.M. Dent, 1975. Print.(#6)

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“The authentic fake.” [Umberto Eco] “The virtual irreality” [Pater Sparrow] “A real without origin or reality” [Jean Baudrillard] Hyperreality

Hyperreality is a way of characterizing what our consciousness defines as “real” in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter an original event or experience. There is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced post-modern societies.

Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more. Hyperreality is significant as a paradigm to explain current cultural conditions. Consumerism, because of its reliance on sign exchange value (e.g. brand X shows that one is fashionable, car Y indicates one’s wealth), could be seen as a contributing factor in the creation of hyperreality or the hyperreal condition.22 Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation, and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance.

Essentially fulfillment or happiness is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than any interaction with any “real” reality.

Interacting in a hyperreal place like a casino gives the subject the impression that one is walking through a fantasy world where everyone is playing along.

The decor isn’t authentic, everything is a copy, and the whole thing feels like a dream. Hyperspace is an interesting term. In science fiction it refers to a ‘area’ of outer space that can be accessed with the help of some sort of future technological breakthrough or space altering device. Information technologies already allow us to ‘warp’ between various terrestrial environments. These telecommunication tools work to relate space and time in a way that could not be achieved in

the ‘real’ world, but only in a hyper-real version of it.

According to Daniel Schodek and Imdat As, in Dynamic Digital Representatoins in Architecture >> Visions in Motion, “We use the internet to communicate with people, gather information, and see new places across time zones and across cultures. The ability to switch among different spaces has altered conventional space organizations and corollary temporal sequences of bodily movements. Information technologies impact architecture, and change the way we navigate through physical mass. Thresholds between public and private, the sacred and the profane, have been blurred. Now interfaces allow one to be omnipresent in multiple spaces through semi or entirely immersive virtual environments.”23

In this way our bodies ‘soft’ skin interfacing with the environment and be transported with these technologies to engage with various, even non-localized, environments. Schodek and Imdat talk about an ‘Active Innerskin’ project by Kas Oosterhuis. This project, designed for a space station module, that used information feed in through a ‘data stream’ that flows through the architecture transforming the space to respond to the information it is receiving. This gives architecture an ‘organic essence’, similar to what Toyo Ito strived for in the Sendai Mediatheque. Pneumatic cylinders, and a skin covered with LCD screens that can display information or simulate the interior environment, are able to respond to information in order to meet the work or leisure needs of the crew aboard the space station.

Oosterhuis also developed a hyper-spatial environment that explores this multi-dimensional context of this ‘new’ architectural style.TransPORTs2001 is a project that appears as a unicellular organism, a constantly transform-

22

23

Baudrillard, 1994 (W)

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As and Schodek, 2008 (#2)

ing envelope that avoids the use of platonic geometries or any boolean combinations of these geometries, to create a more organic environment. The data provided into the project constantly transforms the space and blur the distinctions between ground and wall, now and then, and local vs non-local stimuli.24 These projects became more about the simulation of acts and events that are unfolding around the architecture than the representation of spatial organizations or navigational patterns.

“Bodily movement [in virtual or cave-like environments] is limited, and the perception, interaction, and manipulation of pace is often solely from fixed viewpoints. One does not move around to gather dispersed elements in space; the space literally comes to the person. Moreover, in hyper-spatial situations there is an interplay between sensory information and physical architecture. Thus in order to digitally represent hyper-spatial situations, one has to represent information sets and corollary architectural forms simultaneously.” [Schodek and As]

There is a distinct connection between the idea of organizing data sets and the creative arts. Similar to the movies are made by displaying two-dimensional (stills) in a sequence of ‘scenes’, made from individual ‘shots’, that each feature multiple ‘frames’. Models in a computer simulation are depicted as two-dimensional projections juxtaposed sequentially to produce motion graphics. Motion-graphics in architecture work to simulate the environment to produce more ‘believable’ prototypes. Though this concept differs fundamentally from film in many ways, it was developed in the early 20th Century by theorists like the filmmaker/architect, Sergei Eisenstein. He believed that the film process was based around sequentially and montage and could produce meaningful holistic views of a subject being represented. Architecture as an industry and as a subject has had much less time working with motion-graphics then film has. The phenomena of occupying a build24

SHoP (Firm). 2002. Versioning : Evolutionary techniques in architecture / guest-edited by SHoP/Sharples holden pasquarelli.

Chichester, England: Wiley-Academy. (#26)

ing creates a visual vocabulary that includes the nuances of occupying space, such as mood and feeling.

Computer models have reached a level of technological advancement where they can begin to allow a virtual occupant to effectively Suspend disbelief. However computer models of architectural environments are still models, subject to convey information about a design as well as the process of it’s own creation. Italian Architect Leon Battista Alberti believe models should be ;plain and simple, so that they demonstrate the ingenuity of him who conceived the idea, and not the skill of the one who fabricated the model.’ 25For this reason many professional architects, like Frank Gehry, create multiple variations of a model to break the individuality of the model. In the end the designer must choose whether the end product should attempt to depict reality as it is, or chose to present itself in a more abstract manner.

The Vatican Hill Topography project is a project designed by the Harvard Design School, that represents a chronologically ordered sequence of computer models of Vatican Hill. This type of project allows characteristic changes to a space over time be viewed in a comprehensive manner.26 “The project tells us a story of the palimpsest of culture over the course of time.

Yet it is not an ‘objective’ representation of reality; nor could one literally take these drawings and use them as a guide to Rome. Therefore architectural representations may be not just a means to an end, but also an end in themselves. As the quality of expression and concern over spatiality enhance the ‘adoptability’ of these representations, they may become the end-product of an architecturalized space designed not to be built.

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion-all in one. “ [John Ruskin] 25 26

As and Schodek, 2008 (#2) Ruskin, John, and Jan Morris. The Stones of Venice. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. Print. (#23)

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Case Studies

Currently engineers and designers are pushing the limits of depiction in a number of ways for a number of diverse fields. From surgical training devices to space travel simulations, immersive digital environments are being developed and implemented for many fields outside of architectural design. Spatial immersion is a phenomenon that occurs when a person feels that the simulated environment they inhabit is perceptually convincing. The success of these immersive digital environments have increased as the believability of 3d computer graphics has increased. Additionally, implementation of surround sound, interactive user-input devices, and environmental attributes such as wind, lighting, and seat/surface vibration are more often being used to trick the mind into immersion. The goal is to simulate experiences that engage all of the five senses. Once this is achieved, the user should be able to engage the space that is being simulated.

A cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE) is a way of creating an immersive virtual reality environment, invented by the University of Illinois in Chicago in the early 1990s. This environment is created by using individual projectors displaying synchronized images onto multiple surfaces in a small room- sized cube. The effect is a feeling of spatial orientation and depth that responds to the movement of the body and the position of the head to create immersion. The first of these simulated worlds, Crayoland, was an anti-photorealistic experiment that paired flat drawings, completely hand-drawn using crayons in a way that created a 3 dimensional world. The immersive feeling was generated by the ability of these images to move in response to a user and the implementation of environmental sound effects. This form of virtual reality was so successful that it is now the third most prevalent virtual reality environment in existence after goggles and gloves, and vehicle simulators. Hundreds of universities now utilize CAVEs or similar derivative concepts such as the ImmersaDesk. This may be the first immer-

sive environment to achieve mainstream usage amongst designers, currently the fastest growing tool of its kind.

Developments at the labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been developing techniques to respond to each of the senses needed to create immersion. Surround Vision, for example, is a research project developed by a graduate student, Santiage Alfaro, that appeals to our sense of sight. Not quite virtual reality, this project relies on a tablet computer to view a large panoramic scene. The tablet can calculate the direction the person is viewing and shows a part of the scene. The user can pan across the scene as he likes, effectively engaged in a scene that seems to be happening around him.

The Touch Labs at MIT have been working on one of the most challenging senses, touch. Designed with the purpose to help create better surgical simulations, these tools simulate the actual touch and feel associated with surgery. The teams at MIT have been developing systems that employ computer haptics (the generation of virtual ‘objects’ that the user can touch and feel). These devices have been working to better simulate the actual material qualities of various objects, from a soft, squishy lung, to a rigid rubber box. These techniques actually produce tactile feedback accurately enough that a student from MIT and a student in London where able to cooperate and move a box through a virtual environment together.

Each student could feel the other pressing on the opposite side of the box and they were able to respond to these inputs together while being an ocean apart.

It was from these unique projects, ones that tested a specific aspect of digital augmentation, from tactile responsiveness, to emersion through use of virtual panoramas, that lead me to conceive of a project that can test one unique quality of augmentation, artificial illumination, in a controlled fashion.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Introduction

51

Building the Toolbox

53

Controlling Light

61

Exploring Perception

71

Conclusions

97

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Introduction

In phenomenology, the environment is concretely defined as “the place,” and the things which occur there “take place.” The place is not so simple as the locality, but consists of concrete things which have material substance, shape, texture, and color, and together coalesce to form the environment’s character, or atmosphere. It is this atmosphere which allows certain spaces, with similar or even identical functions, to embody very different properties, in accord with the unique cultural and environmental conditions of the place which they exist. By exploring the nature of augmentation, it was apparent that in order to avoid gimmicky applications of these technologies, a clearer understanding of the phenomenological effects of light was necessary. By moving backwards from concepts of augmentation and illusion, a project formed that allowed for more experimental studies to be preformed. A closed light box was created that worked in correlation with a projector enclosed inside it’s black walls. This allowed controlled experiments using light and images to be preformed, by applying various textural patterns to models placed at the end of the box opposite the projector, the ‘stage’. The images used in these tests ranged from black and white lines, to light-to-dark gradients studies, and even full color textured images and videos. These tests began to question how these images could enhance a sense of place in the testing chamber. They question what qualities of light move a person through a space, how simulated images could be applied to the materiality and forms being tested on the ‘stage’, and whether artificially illuminating a surface can create a

better understanding of how the architecture is organized.

By creating a flexible environment for study, various experiments can target individually these concepts of phenomenology that effect the character of a space, such as materiality, color, texture, form, light intensity. The control allotted by the simple box and stage model, allows for consecutive testing in an ‘empty’ environment that is only defined by the combination of elements designated for testing. For example, early studies aimed to understand how various types of gradient textures (vertical, horizontal, circular...ext) , change the way we understand a space when they are projected on a specific form. Each gradient was applied individually to a form, and through this type of testing process, it was clear that certain gradients worked better to enhance a sense of place than others. Through experimentation, this process of discovery can both enlighten designers to effective uses of these technologies, as well as generate thoughtful questions as to what causes the successes and failures of these techniques. These questions often lead to another series of tests aimed at qualifying a comparative quality of light, and through this process, these new tests often generate peculiarities that encourage various other series of testing opportunities.

The environment that resulted from this process of answering questions with more questions, was designed to meet the flexible needs of this experimentation approach to understanding light.

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Building the Toolbox

The light box built based on the screen proportions of the projector it was designed to house, in order to display a consistent image against the furthest end of the box. The initial box measured 2’10” long, with openings on either end that measured 1’2” by 9.5”. Now that the projector’s image could be displayed consistently, these images used could be aligned with objects on the stage, and even animated to create dynamic effects on articulated surfaces. Early studies performed with this initial light box began to understand how to control where the light fell, how to control outside light from contaminating the stage, and the dynamic use of shadows created by various overlapping elements. Plugs were designed to cap ends of the box when they were not actively required for viewing a particular scene, additionally another opening was created in the side of the box to view the stage area from other angles.

This box design offered an extensive understanding of how light can affect the atmosphere of a place, however for the final iteration of this light box design, it was clear that the initial box lacked sufficient room to perform more interactive tests studying the nature of light and perception. By scaling the project up considerably, to a box that measured 4’ long, with openings of 1’6” by 1’2”, it allowed for multiple spectators to view inside the box at the same time, and offered more room for more complicated tools of experimentation.

One element that the light box was lacking, that I felt was essential to understanding both digitally augmented spaces, as well as the phenomenological aspect of light, was an interactive system that allowed a spectator to control the effect of the light. With this in mind, a system of gears were incorporated along one end of the box, that allowed for customizable mechanical devices to be plugged in and removed with ease. Using simple established gear systems, like the Geneva Wheel or Reciprocating Machine, with laser cut panels designed to filter light in unique ways, an interactive system of dynamic parts could be installed. This kind of approach allowed for controlled variable to be incorporated but through a process that was generating spontaneous effects on the user.

By creating an environment that engages a spectator to create his own sense of space, designers are also able to use this as a tool to design in an environment that allows for experimentation and tactile feedback. A mechanical wheel located outside the box, connecting to the interior gears, offers manual control over the various moving parts, and can help to both bring organic motion to the experience as well as allow precise movement over the various elements in the box, in order to better control the light. Through this process, designers can study the interplay between physical modeling, simulated images, controlled lighting, and human interactivity.

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The Participation of the Spectator

It was necessary for the light box, designed as a scaled environment for studying the effects of moving images, to incorporate elements that gave it a sense of scale. Elements such as the catwalk that cover the gears, as well as the lights embedded below, give spectators a persistent element from which to gauge the size of an occupant in the space.

The light box is also a tool to study an individual’s perception of a space, and thus needed to be designed in a way that engages the spectator at his or her own scale. By including windows and a hand operated cranking mechanism to manipulate the gears inside the box, this element of interactivity allows for a more immersive experience. This level of immersion is necessary in order for a designer to use this method of experimentation as a way to evaluate the notion of perception. A study dealing with the notion of reality and representation can not simply operate as a representation of a space. It has to be an engaging space on it’s own.

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Interchangable and Flexible Design

Removable panels inside of the light box allow for simple peg assembly of various gear configurations quickly.

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The Mechanics of Image Distortion

In order to achieve the types of motion desired, various systems were considered that allowed for more then just circular motion to be incorporated. Reciprocating devices can be used to create backwards and forwards motion. A Geneva wheel can be incorporated that only rotates 90 degrees at a time. These tools, and the shadow devices used with them, were created with laser cutting tools and can be combined for a variety of effects..

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Richard Serra, Verb List, 1967-68 Figure 0.6 - Verb List- Serra, 2013

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“When I first started, what was very, very important to me was dealing with the nature of process... So what I had done is I’d written a verb list: to roll, to fold, to cut, to dangle, to twist…and I really just worked out pieces in relation to the verb list physically in a space... [offering] a way of applying various activities to unspecified materials.” [Richard Serra]

Controlling the Light

Given a plethora of options to explore, it was very difficult to be able to quantify individual aspects of light in a manner that was consistent. It was important to adopt a strategy that would add structure to the experimentation processes without limiting the ability for spontaneous discovery. Seeing as this thesis was always concerned, in one fashion or another, with the process of design, it made sense to explore the notion of understanding this ‘immaterial’ in a way that other designers explore the qualities of physical material.

Richard Serra created a list of over 100 verbs in order to add structure to his process. These verbs represented actions that could be preformed to various materials as a way of creating a guide for experimentation. He would attempt to apply these terms to materials in a manner not always readily apparent, and through this development in his process, his work would often have surprising, spontaneous results. Serra called his list a series of “actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process.”

Serra was primarily known as a sculptor, and while these terms show amazing flexibility in their ability to relate themselves to various types of materials, it was most likely not intended to be applied to the immaterial quality of light. However many of these terms work surprisingly well at guiding the process of controlling the manipulation of light.

Some terms directly applied to light in the same

manner as they would to various other materials. To Bend, for example, can be achieved with light as well as metal, however the process of creating this effects differs. Other terms seem to be easily applied to light. For example, To Spread, is more easily accomplished with light and the right angled surface, then it would be metal, which would require a process of melting before being manipulated in that fashion. More interesting are the terms that can be applied to certain materials in a physical sense, and to others in a psychological sense. Richard Serra uses the verb To Lift on the material rubber by performing the action of lifting through the recovery process of a large piece of vulcanized rubber that needed to literally be lifted from a warehouse. This verb would need to be imagined from a different use of the word lift, in order to apply it to light. Light cannot physically lift anything, however the psychological effects of light on mood have been extensively documented and an experiment can be imagined that would attempt to create a sense of Uplifting through the qualities of the light and surfaces being studied. The ability to apply these verbs in a more psychological manner, made adopting Richard Serra’s Verb List easy because of its ability to relate to the phenomenological aspects of light. With this guide, the ability to explore complicated qualities of light or surface undulation could be better understood by manipulating these complicated variables independently in order to isolate the effect that changing, for example, the size of a bright white square may have on the way a mirror would reflect this light in order to enhance the overall illumination of the ‘scene’.

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Gradient Studies

An important step in adding controlled elements into the experimentation process involved understanding how light operated at a base level. In order to do this, gradient textures were applied to a series of surfaces in order to gain a better understanding of how the composition of light and shadow effects the illumination of a space. These studies reveal the ability of shawdow to create debth in an environment. In certain instances the directionality of the gradient conseals the nature of the surface it’s projecting upon. In other instances the gradients and surfaces clash.

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Application of Diffusion

Lighting designers often consider the contrast of light when it’s being applied to a ‘stage’. A series of test were preformed using a composition of white squares. A blur filter was applied and increased in regular incremints in order to create a set of images designed to test a specific lighting condition, diffusion. In this test it is clear that both hard edged white squares as well as slightly diffused white squares work to simulate a natural lighting condition, such as light entering through a window. It is only when the blur effect becomes excessive that the illusion of natural light is broken.

By using a single white square on a surface, the illusion that you are looking through a flat window is maintained, even when the surface being projected onto is bend or curved.

This light, while being controllable in a similar way as a spot light, creates natural and comfortable light when diffusion is applied.

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Simulated Depth with Shadows

Moving dark and while lines along the surface creates dynamic light conditions. These shadows mimicing the movement of bodies throughout the project and can be used to guide a user.

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Shifting Walls Light Studies

By using a flexible system of pourous interchangable panels that are capable of tion to each other, unique patterns of light can be cast onto the back wall of the structure. ates dynamic shadows that respond to the users input, by allowing the user to interact ing panels. Additionally these panels can be lined up in order to form windows and doorways

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sliding in relaThis system crewith these slidbetween spaces.

“These circumstances surrounding our perception of a thing condition the perception, and do so in a ‘causal’ way. There are many factors that contribute to how we see something, but what is of importance is that these factors contribute to the perception in a strict, regulated fashion. In certain circumstances we see certain things in a certain way. This can be more rigorously defined by approaching this situation as one that allows for perception to move within level of ‘indeterminacy’. There are then circumstances which provide for ‘optimum’ conditions of perception, what we otherwise refer to as the ‘normal’ condition for perceiving a thing. Light of course functions as such a circumstance, where the absence of light, i.e. darkness, and ‘clear daylight,’ operate as the ‘limit-conditions’ of the possible determinacy of an object.” - Yann Kersalé

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Exploring Perception

Just as many of Richard Serra’s verbs could only be applied to light by reinterpreting their original intended uses, many words could also be added to this list that relate more directly to the psychological effect of light, as well as the ability of an image to effect the sense of perception. The psychology of perception involves determining the ways that the cognitive action of sensory reception, receiving, storing, memorizing, and processing information all factor into what and how a person perceives his environment. The argument that the mind ‘sees’ as well as the eyes brings more support to the argument that the body is willing to ‘perceive’ of being in a space even if the visual information that the body ‘visually’ sees through the eyes is not ‘real’, manipulating the way the body works to store and process visual stimuli can lead to advancements of a blurred architecture that we may perceive in our ‘minds’ eye as more ‘real’ then the image the eye see’s itself. By targeting instances in various experiments that challenge the way we accurately perceive a space, we can begin to question certain terms like To Confuse, To Perplex, To Disguise, To Manipulate. These terms require more complicated elements, like the ability to interact with the boxes cranking mechanisms, in order to engage a spectator more fully

into the scene in order to better simulate the effect it might have at a larger scale. Certain natural effects like aliasing were discovered and incorporated into the experimentation process, due to their ability to effect the ability of a mind to accurately comprehend what it is seeing. These often create visually charged effects, similar to what is accomplished by many basic optical illusions.

Typical optical illusions of this nature, require movement and are more readily experienced through other media, such as simulations and videos. However using the tools provided by the box, and by recreating the physical and visual elements need to achieve this, experimentation by interspersing the intended simulated effects seamlessly into our physical environment is possible.

This can be used to enhance the meaning that a physical object, space, or architectural element inherently has by layering a new perception of the object on top of the ‘real’ one. The main goal for understanding the notion of perception, is not to merely be able to replace the real with a simulation, but to understand what physical and mental mechanisms cause our bodies to respond to simulations as readily and as comfortably as they would reality.

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Using Reflection to Extend the Scene

Mirrors located on the ‘stage’ can send light back over the catwalk covering the gearing. This effect works to extend the scene and engage areas of the box that the projector is not positioned to shine upon.

Through this process it was discovered that the image being projected can be ‘stretched’ along the wall depending on the angle of the mirror. More sopisticated mirrors featuring patterns cut into them, were also studied. These can be used to split the amount of light reflected back, while still allowing light to reach the ‘stage’.

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Spatiality in Reflection

Mirrors offer the unique ability to extend a scene visably as well as physically manipulate the light in the environment. In this series of test, mirrors were used to explore the notion of perception by creating the appearance of a three-dimensional shape using a two-dimensional set of grid lines. The reflection of the grid is visible in the mirror, and at controlled angles it is possible to perceive the presence of a cube at the end of the box.

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Directional Mis-Perception

This study uses reflective, angled, and recessed surfaces in a combination that attempts to disorient the participant through the uses of image applied to the surfaces. Looking directly onto the surface from the front, the viewer would be presented an image that is perceived to be two-dimensional but as the user begins to rediscover the spatiality of the environment, these images begin to reveal their true three-dimensional nature.

The spatial and material differences between these objects are harder to discern when viewed from key angles when

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an image is applied to the surface. This sense of disorientation through the manipulation of perception provokes a unique reaction in the participant by encouraging a process of discovery. This discovery leads to an engagement of the architecture resulting in an experience of evolving understanding of the spatial environment. These images do more then simply ‘decorate’ the surface. By highlighting, disrupting and interfering with the spatial containers, people will be directed to engage with and enter into these images. This changes the experience throughout the lifespan of a project and uses informative light in ways that follow the tenants of phenomenology in architecture, by driving people to encounter the lighted image.

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Image Distortion

Special lenses were used that manage to effect the direction and focus of an image. These lenses work together and at various lengths they can refocus the inital image, while at other lengths they manage to spread light in distorted and surprising fashions. By rotating one or both lenses , the light manages to bend, to stretch, and to spray accross the surface. These tools, while being less predictable then most used in the light box, manage to study certain verbs from Serra’s list that were proving difficult to produce otherwise, including terms like ‘to stratify’ .

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Image Distortion

The Image, when applied to certain articulated surfaces, creates a disorienting effect on the occupant. The image creates a sense of misapprehension by visually altering the materiality of the surface. Simultaneously the articulation and spatiality of the built elements distorts the image, allowing a process of rediscovery.

Architects can use the construction of a surfaces to simulate various characteristics on a static surface. By utilizing undulating surfaces on a skin, an architect can represent motion in the project. Undulating and ornamented surfaces can work to dissolve the perception of individual boundaries.

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Soft and Hard

Certain natural characteristics can be applied to these textures, such as simulated raindrops, in order to create the misapprehension of a fluid dynamic surface.

The simulation can utilize specific data from the building to generate an ever evolving sense of place in the environment. For example, the ripples projected onto the exterior of the surface could be generated by studying natural characteristics of the building environment, such as actual wind velocity, or social interactions, such as the flow of people in and out of the building, in order to determine the degree of distortion that will be applied to the surface image.

Surface Tracking

By highlighting unique design elements of the structure through the use of purposefully designed projected images, the characteristics of the various elements are made promimenet. This offers the designer a method for underscoring key design elements in the project. Often this results in a felling of immateriality in the piece being projected upon in order to glorify another aspect of the work, such as the form of a structure.

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The flowing characteristics of certain textures in correlation with the surface’s articulation, can be used to create a sense that the materiality of the surface is lighter then it actually is. Additionally surfaces with porosity of light can apply a texture that evokes a sense of solid opacity, such as brick or stone, while still allowing light to bleed through the a semi-transparent surface. In both cases, the material quality is purposefully made ambiguous in order to create a unique sense of place.

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MoirĂŠ Pattern

The interference pattern known as a moirĂŠ pattern was considered to test the ability of a space to use layered information to create a unique sense of perception. This phenomenon is often seen in digital imaging and computer graphics when jagged distortions in curves and diagonal lines in computer graphics are caused by limited or diminished screen resolution. It can be recreated by overlaying parallel lines in non-linear ways to create real visible patterns that question the way we perceive the two surfaces. Using the projector in combination with various laser-cut patterns, this effect, also known as aliasing, was able to be recreated in a hybrid physical and simulated approach.

While this is better experienced through the motion allotted by the mechanisms inside the light box, this photographic study showcases the way a moirĂŠ pattern changes depending on the angular relation of one surface on top of the other.

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Conclusion

The intention of this thesis was not initially to create a testing environment for the understanding of light, and thus the resulting light box is not the subject, defining the thesis, but merely a final product in the process of understanding augmented reality. The goal of the thesis was to propose ways to challenge a preconceived notion about the separation of simulated and physical worlds. We interact with and occupy both worlds on a daily basis, yet these worlds rarely interact in thoughtful ways. By challenging myself to understand the ways in which these two worlds could meld, I realized that attention needed to be placed less on the holistic final product, and more on the individual elements that make up that whole. By questioning the interaction of these part I was able to create a space that is engaging, immersive, highly customizable, and ¬flexible enough to aid in the design process. However without the process of questioning first, the lack of evolution in the way architects design and depict their ideas, followed by challenging the complicated manner in which a designer must translate his ideas from the environment it was created in to its final environment, I would not have been encouraged to create an environment that merges these two realms at all.

The box operates on two scales. It was designed to simulate the scale of human that is no more than four inches tall. Yet it also most features elements to engage the spectators using the box, and thus it exists at the ‘real’ scale of the physical world it is operating in. In order to simulate the immersion expected from a space of this nature, considerations of how the box operated at a one-toone scale with the physical world were necessary as well.

The way a user looks in on the project through windows into the space, as well as the mechanical opportunities offered to the spectator, ones that allows them to manipulate the space themselves, must consider the scale of the active participant and how he will understand and engage the space. These features proved successful in a variety of unexpected ways. The experience of controlling the effects being generated by the box, offers the participant a unique to craft their own memories of a space. The way a space is remembered is not just about knowing what it looks like, but also being able to recall the sensation of

experiencing it. By spinning the wheel, a user is engaged in one particular aspect of understanding the box, however moving around the box to understand the ‘scene’ from various vantage points offers the non-active participant their own unique understanding of space. Though the box proves successful in recreating, to some effect, the experience of discovering a sense of space through immersion, for a study about the notion of reality versus simulation, the necessity to simulate the scale of a space, has it’s obvious limitations. Future iterations of the light box would consider constructing an inhabitable space for a true one-to-one experience of scale inside the box.

By studying the nature of light, in order to envision better utilization of technologies that manipulate light in future projects, this testing environment worked as a new method of translating between physical depictions of design concepts and simulated experiential images created on the computer. The extensive exploration of the individual characteristics of light is the necessary first step in thoughtful inclusion of these often seductive and overwhelming elements into a design. By understanding and exploiting the way our mind is capable of suspending it disbelief, through effects like the moiré pattern for example, we may be able to find and discover creative new ways of integrating the various virtual elements we interact with into our physical space. The gearing also plays a major role in not only the mechanical function of the box as a tool, but their operation helps to simulate the flexibility intended in a testing environment like that of the light box.

Additionally the dynamic nature of the testing environment allows for a unique temporal experience that changes from user to user. These bring into question the roles that memory and experience play into the way a building is engaged with and perceived.

This is reminiscent of what Daniel Kahneman speaks about experience and memory, the way a space is experienced effects the way it is remembered. For this reason, the inclusion of interactive elements create an opportunity to effect the way the light box is experienced, understood, and ultimately remembered.

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Acknowledgments

I’d like to offer a special ‘thank you’ to the creative friends, the supportive family, and most importantly the brilliant faculty advisors that helped me through this daunting process.

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List of Figures Figure 0.1 - Adaptation of Arrested Image - As, Imdat, and Daniel L. 1941- Schodek. 2008. Dynamic digital representations

in architecture : Visions in motion Abingdon England ; New York: 2013 Figure 0.2 - Adaptation (2) of Arrested Image - As, Imdat, and Daniel L. 1941- Schodek. 2008. Dynamic digital representa

tions in architecture : Visions in motion Abingdon England ; New York: Used - 2013 Figure 0.3 - La Condition Humaine - Torczyner, Harry, Magritte: Ideas and Images. New York, 1977 Used - 2012 Figure 0.4 - Adaptation of Frame in Tree- http://www.lamapa.net/2004/photos/pages/Framed%20Landscape_jpg.htm 1 + 1 = one 2004 - Unknown, Used - 2013

Figure 0.5 - Adaptation of Sendai Mediatheque- ItĹ?, Toyoo 1941-, Schneider, and Manfred Speidl. 1999. Toyo ito : Blurring architecture / editors ulrich schneider, manfred speidl. Milan : London: Charta ; Used - 2013 Figure 0.6 - Verb List, Serra - Friedman, Sarah. Http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2011/10/20/to-collect. Used-

2013 All Images not referenced were taken or created by the author and copyright Š 2013 by The University of Florida unless noted otherwise. All rights reserved. Text, images and other media are for nonprofit, educational, and personal use of students, scholars and the public, and is work of the author unless otherwise noted. Any commercial use or publication by printed or electronic media is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of the University. Placement of the name, marks and image of the University of Florida do not imply or suggest endorsement of any product or service used in this booklet.

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