SPATIAL NARRATIVES IN AUGMENTED REALITIES
INTERFACE ARCHITECTURE:
ROSS GALTRESS
Student No:
000699706-6
Tutor:
Mark Garcia
Diploma Thesis:
ARCT1060
Unit: 15 Word Count:
8400
ABSTRACT This paper is intended as a critique of the interface as the narra-
tive format of the 21st century and of its relevance to the architectural profession. It will examine the interface as the imminent projection of
our cultural narrative arc using theory on new media by Lev Manovich and Aaron Koblin. Further, it speculates on the development of technologies that will allow those interfaces to become both fully interac-
tive and fully immersive, thus creating spatial environments that bring
interface design within the remit of architecture, or vice versa. The creation of a new field: Interface Architecture.
Considered in conjunction with Preston Scott Cohen’s theory on
the use of cinema as an architectural paradigm, the paper examines whether the interface will, in a similar manner, provide typologies for
future architectures. It also questions whether the narrative structures of the interface stand to benefit from spatial parameters explored in
architecture but not yet realised in literature or cinema. Ultimately, the paper seeks simply to engender discussion about the conver-
gence of architecture and the interface, its design and who should be responsible for that design.
CONTENTS Introduction: 09 Methodology: 17 Narrative Beyond New Media:
27
How the Light Gets In:
53
The Interface and Architecture:
41
Conclusion: 63 Cited Works: 69
Full Bibliography: 73
INTRODUCTION Narrative is an essential part of how we, as humans, reflect upon
our environment and ourselves;
[1]
it denotes our methods of order-
ing information and navigating space (Coates 2012: 14), as well as
structuring our collective memories (Flanagan 1994: 198). It is defined as “a spoken or written account of connected events; a story” (Ox-
ford English Dictionary, 6th edition 2006). However that definition ignores
the most important storytelling medium of the 20th century: cinema,
and does little to address the multiple networked narratives that new
media enables. In this paper narrative is defined as a system for structuring information, specifically for human comprehension. It is the connection itself, the organisation of those events and the form they take when considered both chronologically and spatially. It is in essence a human algorithm.
[1] Owen Flanagan, a leading consciousness researcher, writes “Evidence strongly suggests that humans in all cultures come to cast their own identity in some sort of narrative form. We are inveterate storytellers.” (Flanagan 1994: 198).
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In a digital era in which we are increasingly defined through our
virtual presence, narratives can serve as a method to locate our-
selves in an ever-expanding ocean of fragmented information. Buoys anchored to sunken wrecks of space and time serve as nodes in our
stories, that transform the digital ocean into a navigable, networked landscape. This landscape is fluid, nonlinear and transmutable, often physically abstract from the world it represents and shaped by re-
configurable frameworks that render absolute modes of navigation useless. A new narrative vessel is required in this domain and Lev Manovich argues that it will be the interface:
“19th century culture was defined by the novel, 20th century cul-
ture by cinema, the culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.” (Manovich via Koblin 2011)
New media as defined by Manovich [2] is driving the shift from 20th
century cinematic culture to 21st century interface culture. Through 10
manifestations including video games, media art and interactive mul-
timedia installations, new media’s convergence with architecture is at the forefront of expanding the latter’s presence without increasing its
physical footprint (Lavin 2011: 43-51). New media allows architectural
surfaces to broaden their boundaries, become responsive and act
as a flexible conduit to abstract networks, but developing immersive technology will allow the interface to become more spatial and more interactive, to create digital memory theatres
[3]
and previously
01: Daytime TV by David Hall hails the digital age, at the expense of analogue service [2] In ‘New Media from Borges to HTML’, an introduction to The New Media Reader, Lev Manovich sets out eight propositions to define new media. He acknowledges that they are not exhaustive and are likely to evolve with technology. He defines new media as: 1. Distinct from Cyberculture 2. Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform 3. Digital Data Controlled by Software 4. The Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software 5. The Aesthetics of Every New Modern Media and Communication Technology 6. Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually 7. The Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde; New Media as Metamedia 8. Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing (Wardrip-Fruin 2003: 16-24) [3] Giullio Camillo’s 16th century ‘memory theatre’, as termed by Frances Yates (Yates 1966), was the physical embodiment of an ancient mnemonic device, the method of loci (from the Roman for location), which makes use of the spatial relationships of visual triggers to recollect memorial content: “An array of images, symbols, and archetypes that amounted to a microcosm of the cosmos. Standing before it, a person could loose the binds of forgetfulness and access the mind’s resources unrestrained.” (Schneider 2010)
11
impossible spaces. These interfaces will smother and saturate ar-
chitecture with an augmented overlay, that in exchange may allow
architectures to resurface as more prominent, lasting and adaptable digital waypoints: providing a spatial narrative that reconnects the virtual with the real. For the purpose of this paper, and from here on,
these interfaces are considered collectively as a technology that is yet to be realised, termed ‘the Interface’.
[4]
As society and the technologies that support it have increased in
complexity, each successive narrative format from speech to draw-
ing, writing and the cinema has allowed new, increasingly complex narrative structures. These narrative trends are reflected as much in
architectural design as in any other field. In his 2011 lecture, The Hid-
den Core of Architecture, Preston Scott Cohen proposes an interesting paradigm in which he compares architectural plans to films based on their narrative format, and demonstrates that narrative structures
12
[4] Manovich terms the interface as the medium through which narrative content is disseminated, and the ‘cultural interface’ is simply the predominant narrative medium of popular culture for a particular era (Manovich 1997). For literature it is the novel, for cinema the screen and currently for the Internet that interface is the GUI (Graphical User Interface). However the GUI converts the content available on the Internet into a form that is displayed on a screen, cinema’s interface. For the purpose of this paper ‘the Interface’ refers to the future of the Internet’s interface, an augmented reality technology that allows virtual networked content to exist outside the screen. It does not simply provide a representation of the Internet it spatially actuates it.
present throughout 20th century cinema also exist in architectural form (Cohen 2011). However he fails to provide a metaphor for the
nonlinear narrative structures that are specific to new media and the Internet: the cultural interface of the 21st century to which Manovich
refers. This paper aims to further Cohen’s thesis by investigating the
possible architectural forms such narrative structures might take and the extent to which these are dependent upon the development of in-
terface technology. It envisages a future where the Interface has be-
come fully immersive, a virtual reality that is nonetheless dependent on its physical surroundings. The Interface and architecture become
an inseparable entity, an augmented reality shaped by 21st century narrative structures, an Interface Architecture.
[5]
The paper is split into five sections: a methodology statement,
[5] Interface Architecture is the collision of the Interface and architecture. It is a theoretical field closely related to, but technologically advanced from, both interactive architecture and media architecture, but in this paper also designates an entity. It is the virtual and physical structure of the Interface; it bridges the two realities and exists in both. Physically it is the environment that enables the Interface, the substantial structure and materials, technology and real space. This may range in scale from interactive surfaces or a virtual reality room, to a head mounted display or head-up display contact lenses. It may even be a simple transmitter that connects the users consciousness directly to the Internet. On the virtual side Interface Architecture is the spatial design of the Interface. Artists, graphic designers and software developers within the IT industry have traditionally performed this role, but the four-dimensional quality of an augmented reality interface brings the design work within the remit of architecture.
13
three chapters, the third of which is a speculative science-fiction short story, and a conclusion. The methodology statement outlines the scope of the research undertaken, the qualitative research meth-
ods used, the relevance and potential application of that discussed and the format of the paper. The body of the text is then split be-
tween three chapters. The first examines narrative trends through their principle cultural formats as defined by Manovich, namely the
novel, film and more recently web browsers, video games and digital multimedia. The majority of theory is derived from new media and focuses on the technological aspirations and capabilities of the In-
terface (Manovich 2012, 2008 & 1997, Koblin 2011, Aitken 2012 & 2006).
Once the projective arc of narrative in new media is outlined, the second chapter considers the scope of narrative based design within
architecture and uses Cohen’s thesis (Cohen 2011) to compare the ty-
pologies present in each field, highlighting areas of polarity between the two. Particular attention is paid to interactive architecture and the
areas in which architecture and cinema/new media currently overlap
14
(Lavin 2011: 65-105), as they are the precursor to what might be con-
sidered Interface Architecture.
The third chapter posits a future where the potential of an im-
mersive interface is fully realised, unifying architectural design, interface design and interaction design. The hope is to create a scenario
in which the convergence of architecture and the Interface can be tested as an architectural situation, and a set of conditions can be
outlined that help to shape discourse on the importance of spatial
narratives in the 21st century digital realm. The paper aims to arrive at a position from which speculation about that convergence be-
comes a little clearer, and whilst it questions architects’ role in such a future, it does not seek to justify their inclusion.
15
METHODOLOGY The literary and theory survey for this paper revealed that complex
narrative structure forms a large area of research across a number
of fields including architecture, art, literature, film and history (see
diagram 01). Its prevalence in these fields has increased in the past
two decades as artists and researchers attempt to make sense of the pervasive and fragmented landscape presented by the prevalence of new media (Timoner 2009 & Aitken 2006). This was most obvious
in art, video art, interactive installation and cinema works that have embraced the rise of interactive, digital media and digital distribution techniques, and it is from these fields that the majority of sources within this paper are drawn. The far-reaching interviews into the sub-
ject of nonlinear narrative contained in Doug Aitken’s 2006 book
Broken Screen: Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative: 26 Conversations, form the main artery of inquiry, with an aim to place the research within a projective arc that describes the progress of narrative trends through the principal allegorical formats of the era; from literature, through cinema to the interface. These interviews have been combined with speculative theory from Lev Manovich and
17
18
Diagram 01
Aaron Koblin about digital media, to form a comprehensive study of the interface as the next stage in cultural narrative development.
Within architecture, interest in narrative has seen a revival of late,
championed by the likes of Diller Scofidio (Dimendberg 2013), Nigel Coates (Coates 2012), Preston Scott Cohen (Cohen 2011) Sophia
Psarra (Psarra 2009) and Rem Koolhaas (Gargiani 2008). However the body of academic theory was still small when compared alongside that complied from the fields of cinema and video art. Nigel
Coates’s 2012 book Narrative Architecture provides a good overview
of projects by architects with a narrative sensibility but it does little
to address narrative’s relevance to a wider 21st century audience. He states in his preface that narrative’s use as a methodology is “particularly suited to design in an age of communication”, a “messy,
complicated, multi-layered … world” (Coates 2012: 11 & 10), but the
book fails to comprehensively address the new narrative formats such a networked age engenders. Rather, Coates classifies architectures by three levels of complexity that reside within existing, 20th
century narrative structures. As a result the research presented in the
second chapter is largely the extension of an idea in Preston Scott
Cohen’s lecture The Hidden Core of Architecture (Cohen 2011), that
seeks to classify narrative form in architecture as a representation of
narrative structures in cinema: the contemporary cultural interface. The extrapolation of this concept suggests that we should be con-
sidering how the Interface and the narrative forms it generates might be represented in future architectures. However, when considered
19
holistically alongside technological advances towards virtual reality it
is plausible, arguably probable, that the Interface will reach a stage where its narrative structures need no longer be considered as a
metaphor for those in architecture, but become one and the same. Once the Interface becomes fully immersive, at a certain scale it becomes spatial and in certain ways architectural, the boundaries be-
tween the real and the virtual architectures become blurred, eclipsed by their Interface Architecture.
02: We Live in Public by Josh Harris tests the limits of the human psyche in a high pressure, networked and public environment
20
Obviously this concept falls close to the well-established fields of
augmented reality and virtual reality. However it is subtly but substantially different to both. Augmented reality is the enhancement of
a real environment through the overlay of information whereas virtual reality is the complete creation of an environment, be it a real or
fictional representation. Interface Architecture takes the generative ability of virtual reality, and uses narrative to tether it to reality. It is a fundamental difference that may aid the development of an im-
mersive interface that is practical and safe for the human psyche; an
aim justified by the concerns of psychologists including Sherry Tur-
kle, about our dependence on virtual networks (Turkle 2012) and the hazards of immersion. Marie-Laure Ryan writes of the popular con-
sensus on immersion, “virtual reality is a hazard for the health of the
mind … we hear tales of people suffering from AWS (Alternate World Syndrome), a loss of balance, feeling of sickness … MMO addicts who cannot adapt to ROL (Sherry Turkle’s acronym for ‘the rest of
life’)” (Ryan 2001: 10). Speculation about the damaging effects of the Internet on the human psyche has been rife since Josh Harris’s art project Quiet: We Live in Public in 1999.
[6]
Quiet demonstrated that
[6] Quiet: We Live in Public was an Orwellian, Big Brother concept “that placed more than 100 artists in a ‘human terrarium’ under New York City, with webcams capturing their every move” (Wallace 2009). It aimed to demonstrate how we are willing to sacrifice all privacy in order to be recognised in a networked environment.
21
in networked societies complete freedom belies control and individual rights, the desperation to share nullifies all personal privacy and an all-knowing collective consciousness leads ultimately to a madden-
ing self-detachment (Timoner 2009). In Turkle’s most recent book
22
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Turkle 2011), she comments on the younger generation’s increasing dependence on their virtual networks for social interaction and the detrimental effect that has had on their attention, commitment to and position in the physical world (Turkle 2011). It is a concern that gains more credence as the interface to those networks becomes more immersive and occupies ever more of our time, but one that narrative structures can help to mitigate. ‘Architects’ within the IT industry design programmes and interfaces that structure, filter and present data, and narrative structures have been proven to aid navigation of the potentially overwhelming amount of information available. A quick look at popular websites reveals frameworks such as Facebook’s ‘timeline’ and ‘threaded comments’ on Twitter (and now Facebook), that successfully use narrative to present information that is relevant to us, building a unique interface for each user. In summary then, this paper creates new links between existing bodies of work, combining the positive theory surveyed in new media with normative theory on narrative within architecture, to create a new field, Interface Architecture. The aim being to speculate as to how physical architecture might act as an anchor for narratives in the virtual world, rendering architecture more flexible and the virtual more
material. The paper posits a thesis that hopes to further research
into the development of collaboration between architecture and new media, through nonlinear narrative forms as perpetuated by the Inter-
net. The research is in part justified by the work of Turkle and Harris amongst others, who indirectly raise concerns about the immersive capabilities of the Interface, but it also serves as a forewarning of the
impact the Interface may have on the built environment. It should be
seen as a springboard for further discussion within architecture of a
technology that is still in its infancy, but which threatens the potential to upheave the concept of spatial design and those responsible for it. The research conducted for the paper included as wide a range of
contemporary sources as possible in order to fully engage with the
cutting edge technology that is its subject. This included a traditional
literature survey of books, journals, on-line articles and interviews as well as a multimedia survey of films, exhibitions, installations and lectures disseminated via YouTube and iTunes (see diagram 02). An
extensive multimedia survey seemed appropriate given the subject of the paper, but nonetheless there is an over-reliance on printed literature. Whilst this ensures reputable sources, the information contained runs the risk of being out-dated in two fast developing fields
of research. As a result all of the sources for information regarding the technological progress of interface technology are from the web. The availability of on-line lectures and articles from TED and various
research institutions including the European Graduate School, allows for a wealth of direct access to the latest research from leading
23
24
Diagram 02
academics around the world, and helps to advance the theory set
out in their published works. The collation of this theory in an original context has created a new area of research, whilst furthering those it draws from. The critical weakness of the paper lies in the fact
that the technological advances described are not yet close to being realised. The third chapter therefore is speculative, and through a
technologically conjectural, science fiction short story, provides a phenomenology of an Interface Architecture. The limitations of this
comparatively troglodyte format are fully understood but a CGI film would be required to accurately and convincingly represent the multitude of networked, generative and augmented spaces envisaged,
the time and budget for the production of which is outside the scope
of this paper. The short story in no way intends to be a preordained vision of Interface Architecture, but rather an early mapping exercise
for a field that is yet to, or may never exist. It provides an immediate environment to stimulate imagination and test concepts, alongside a
technical demonstration of the immersive capabilities of the written word, thus emphasising those of the Interface.
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NARRATIVE BEYOND NEW MEDIA In his lecture, Out of Time in Today’s Worlds (Lynn 2013), Greg
Lynn argues that innovation and progress are made through sim-
plicity; whilst this may be true in product design, manufacturing and even, as he argues, architecture, quite the opposite is necessary in
societal models. In an interview titled Crises of Complexity in Vol-
ume no. 20 ‘Storytelling’, anthropologist Joseph Tainter argues that societies advance through increasing complexity, more specifically “differentiation of structure combined with increasing organisation” (Tainter in conversation with Varnelis 2009: 26). Unsurprisingly then, our narrative formats, the modes through which we describe our culture and society, have also to increase in complexity. The origin of simple narratives is likely as old as the origin of language itself, and whilst basic nonlinear narrative, that either starts in the middle of a story or includes flashbacks, is likely also to have been an oral tradition, it is first recorded in epic poems like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey from the 9th century BC (Murray 2004: 319). However from the late 19th century, Modernist novelists including Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust began experimenting with more complex narrative
27
chronology and abandoning linear order all together (Heise 1997: 77).
This experimentation was symptomatic of a culture frustrated by the
level of narrative complexity available, and it is of little surprise that a new narrative format, cinema, was invented in the same era [7].
Fast-forward a century and artist-filmmakers including Mike Fig-
gis, Peter Greenaway and Mathew Barney are again trying to push
the narrative capabilities of their medium beyond the five categories [8]
of complex nonlinear narrative structure already specified by Doug
Aitken (Aitken 2006: 292). The latest technology? The Internet.
So does the increasing complexity of narrative structure drive the
evolution of the medium, or, has that level of complexity always been limited by the technology available at the time?
[9]
It is a ques-
tion that Aitken returns to often in his interviews collected in Broken
28
[7] On the basis that the first moving picture, Edward Muybridge’s ‘Horse in Fast Motion’ (1878) is considered cinema’s birth (Williams 1992:17). [8] Aitken divides complex non-linear narrative in film into the following five categories: Storyline Manipulation, Structural Manipulation, Manipulation of Structure & Storyline, Immersion and Broken Image. These categories are highlighted to emphasise the complexity and depth of narrative structures already present within cinema that new media finds inadequate. [9] In the context of this essay nonlinear narratives as described by Aitken are seen simply as the latest progression in the development of increasingly complex narrative structures that started with simple linear narratives in the oral tradition. New media and the Interface seek to take this development one step further by accommodating the potential of the Internet to create infinite, networked and postmodern narrative structures.
Screen: Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative: 26 Conversations. The conversations voice people from a wide range of creative disciplines discussing their use of non-linear narrative in response to the fragmented nature of modern life. Matthew Barney asks “I kind of wonder about the way my work has become more densely layered. Does it have to do with the fact that there is more information available and I can find it faster or is it about having a higher tolerance, like an addict” (Barney in conversation with Aitken 2006: 60). The topic is broached with others including John Baldessari and Figgis, but no consensus is reached; whilst those interviewed by Aitken largely agree that complexity through non-linear narrative is essential in pushing digital media’s conceptual boundaries, the reasons curbing or forcing the rate at which that complexity is developing is less clear. Arguably the complexity of narrative structures and their medium have developed simultaneously. Films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) by Michel Gondry have incredibly complex narrative structures that are now possible to produce in novel form, for example The English Patient (1992) by Michael Ondaatje, but were not, before the advent of cinema. Cinema helped to increase the complexity of narrative structures that were possible in the novel by providing a more immersive medium [10] but it also created entirely new methods for increasing narrative complexity. Two of Aitken’s five categories, [8] Immersion and Broken Image, are narrative techniques made possible only by the ability to layer and fragment multiple images and sound, capabilities that were unique to cinema. Technology
29
is a by-product of increased scientific and cultural knowledge and
ambition, but as it allows that ambition to progress, its scope and the complexity of our narrative structures develop in parallel, driving and sculpting one-another. As we push the limits of one format others are
developed, and cinema certainly seems to have reached the limit of
its capacity to convey the emerging narrative structures of the 21st
century. In part the problem lies with the capabilities of the human 30
brain. In his lecture Time Code (Figgis 2000), Figgis discusses the
[10] Cinema is able to convey a scene in a second that would take several pages to describe in a novel, it can be seen almost as a window on another reality. Using audio and visual clues, a film allows the viewer to easily make sense of chronological schisms whilst remaining immersed in the narrative. This ability encouraged cinema to indulge in more complex, interweaving story lines than had previously been explored in the novel.
03: Science and Popular Science Magazines 1872-2007 by Lev Manovich
decisions surrounding the way in which the soundtrack was split for
his film of the same title. Whilst the brain can cope with four visual feeds, it can only really cope with one audio track; “there is a limit
to how much the brain can take in cognitive splitting” (Figgis 2000). It is a capacity that is also pushed with multiple, layered soundtracks
in Greenaway’s film The Pillow Book (Greenaway 1996). At the core
of the problem, however, cinema suffers the same limitation as the
novel, in that no matter how complex, the manner in which it is consumed it is ultimately linear. Figgis accepts the futility of pushing it
further saying “even if you use four screens, the film will start at the
beginning and, when the tape finishes, it will become another form
of linear narrative by the progression of film through the projection
head” (Figgis in conversation with Aitken 2006: 138). Clearly this problem lies in the format of the medium and whilst the complexity of narra-
tive structures within cinema will no doubt progress further, they will
31
04: The Wilderness Downtown by Aaron Koblin, an interactive, multi-window music video
do so most significantly, as happened with the novel, when assessed from a new perspective granted by the next cultural narrative medium. Furthermore, and again as with the novel, new narrative struc32
tures will be enabled that cinema can neither foresee nor generate.
So if we are already pushing the narrative capacity of cinema, what medium will follow?
As quoted in the introduction (p.10) Manovich believes it will be the
Interface (Manovich via Koblin 2011), and the shifting focus of his re-
search over the past fifteen years supports this opinion. Little Movies
(1994-1997) pushed the boundaries of nonlinear narrative cinema using arrangements of looped Quicktime shorts, whereas his most
recent projects, as part of Software Studies Initiative (2008-Present), emphasise the visualisation of large cultural data sets. In short
his research has moved from cinema to interface technology. Aaron Koblin supports this opinion saying in his 2011 TED Lecture, Artfully
Visualizing our Humanity, “Interface can be a powerful narrative device… the interface is the message” [11] (Koblin 2011) and Greenaway concurs, declaring in his 2010 Lecture, Cinema is Dead, Long Live Cinema, that cinema died with the introduction of the remote. Interactivity places the role of producer in the viewers hands. He quipped: “the death of cinema is the birth of the screen” (Greenaway 2010), and an interactive screen is simply a rudimentary interface. What the Interface allows that cinema has not is user input, and it is this interactivity, made possible by the Internet, that is driving the complexity of the narrative structures explored in new media. New media are recognised as a visual extension of hypertext (Manovich 1997); a postmodern collection of short clips with no discernible end that threaten to shatter the grand narratives described by Jean-Francois Lyotard (Schneider 2010). New media focus on dy-
[11] Koblin refers to a phrase popular amongst media theorists that was coined by Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message” (McLuhan 1964). [12] Truly nonlinear in its physical form. Unlike the novel or the film, new media attempts to be consumed, through interactivity, in a manner that is unique to each viewer, avoiding the ultimately linear nature of cinema as described by Figgis.
33
namic networked content and its ability to generate truly nonlinear narratives [12] that are unique to each viewer through interactivity. The
problem is integrating that interactivity with the immersion deemed requisite by popular narrative trends since the 19th century (Ryan
2001: 4). As a medium the screen is simply not capable of supporting
both interaction and immersion, a problem it shares with its precur-
sor, the novel. This is a point that Marie-Laure Ryan explains well,
with regards the novel, in her 2001 book Narrative as Virtual Reality:
34
Immersion and interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Immersive novels, as popularised in the 19th century, rely upon transporting the reader fully into the body and mind of the protagonist; however as soon as a novel becomes interactive it acknowledges the consciousness of the reader and in doing so becomes just a collection of words; the medium itself becomes opaque (Ryan 2001: 4-5). The same is true of screens. When used immersively in cinema, they can be transparent windows on another reality, but when used as personal computers the screen is, for the majority of users, an opaque workspace. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) masks and simplifies the computer’s functions, reducing the vast and complex network of the Internet to a few two dimensional windows. In an-
[12] Truly nonlinear in its physical form. Unlike the novel or the film, new media attempts to be consumed, through interactivity, in a manner that is unique to each viewer, avoiding the ultimately linear nature of cinema as described by Figgis.
other play on Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, Sherry Turkle reminds us to “take things at their interface value” (Turkle 2004). She describes
the computer’s opacity as a lack of knowledge about the contained
technology. In her paper How Computers Change the Way We Think she says, “In the early 1980s, most computer users who spoke of
transparency meant that, as with any other machine, you could ‘open up the hood’ and poke around” (Turkle 2004).
The screen then, through its opacity, is limiting new media in their
exploration and conveyance of networked narrative structures. The technological progress that will allow for the interaction needed to increase the complexity of those narratives, whilst providing the immersion necessary to maintain popular cultural appeal, has yet to be made. The solution that Ryan points us towards is virtual re-
ality, “the synthesis of immersion and interactivity” (Ryan 2001: 21).
Through virtual reality the Interface could be everything, anything and
nothing, a transparent, immersive medium through which to explore the narrative capabilities of interactive and generative networks. The screen is old technology, cinema’s medium. It is the pinch point in the distribution of web-based content and as a result is the link in
the chain, between content and user, which has seen the great-
est development emphasis by technology companies lately. Mobile touch screens
[13]
were the first radical development for the com-
puter screen since Xerox Alto pioneered the GUI in 1973. Since then Google and Apple have continued to push the function of the screen
towards augmented reality with smartphone applications like Google
35
05: Developer release version of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality HMD for video games
36
[13] The first popular touch screens were developed for the Nintendo DS, released in 2004 (Fahs 2009). The DS made the screen portable and more interactive but it was not until the release of the iPhone in 2007 that the screen became an omnipresent mobile connection to the Internet. Through this pervasiveness the GUI took a step towards becoming immersive (in a literal sense) as well as interactive. [14] All though this technology has been envisioned since the 1960s, with what is widely considered to be the first augmented reality head mounted display (HMD) system produced in 1966 (Packer 2001: 233), it has only recently become practically useful. This is due to technological advances in computing but mostly because of the ability to connect to the Internet remotely.
Maps and Around Me that can overlay data onto the live feed from an integrated camera. A myriad of MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games, interactive maps and star gazing applications offer similar capabilities, but they are all still displayed on a screen, an ultimately opaque interface. Nonetheless recent technology is offering more immersive solutions. A Google X Lab project, Google Glass (beta release 2013) promises to be the first connected ubiquitous computer offering augmented reality from a head mounted display [14] (Albanesius 2012). In addition the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head mounted display system, was the runaway success at South by Southwest Interactive 2013 (Melanson 2013), one of the largest emerging technology shows in the world. The uptake of the Rift by video game producers [15] marks the first popular culture narrative format to adopt virtual reality for mass production. In a similar fashion to the late 19th century, technology is appearing on cue that will allow the complexity of narrative structures to further increase, and adequately reflect contemporary networked society. The Interface will engender narratives that are densely woven,
[15] At the time of publication, 22 games are being developed that are Oculus Rift compatible and one has already been released. (These come from 22 separate developers). This is despite the Rift having been successfully funded for $2.4 million, via the website Kickstarter in only August of 2012, with a provisional release date estimated for the end of 2013. (Lang 2013)
37
immersive and interactive; that will probably develop well beyond the scope of what is currently being explored in new media, allowing us
to effectively process the vast, ever expanding gluts of big and linked
data available in the digital age. However Tainter offers an irrefu-
table warning: the inevitability of diminishing returns as complexity increases, a problem that could eventually lead to the collapse of the
system (Tainter in conversation with Varnelis 2009: 26). Ultimately narra-
tive is linear for all of us, be it through the body of a book, the length of a film or the passing of time: “Death is like a plumb line that brings
it all back to an inescapable linear narrative� (Hill in conversation with
Aitken 2006: 156).
The technology remains to be proved but what seems likely, virtual
reality or not, is that the Interface of the 21st century will take on spa-
tial qualities not seen in cinema or the novel. Uniquely this places it within the remit of architecture, the implications of which will be fully
explored in the following chapters. Suffice to say it creates a wealth
of new opportunities, threats and challenges for the profession and 38
perhaps a new discipline: Interface Architecture.
39
THE INTERFACE AND ARCHITECTURE Narrative is already seen as a suitable approach for generating
design amongst a number of architecture practices (see p.19), but
Nigel Coates’s book Narrative Architecture (Coates 2012) is one of the first architectural publications that goes beyond showcasing the work
and narrative design theories of an individual practice. Whilst a third of the book is dedicated to Coates’s own work and that of NATO, [16] it also attempts to classify narrative in architecture at large and advocates it as a contemporary methodology for design (Coates 2012).
The three typologies that Coates defines for narrative within archi-
tecture are ‘binary’, ‘sequence’ and ‘biotopic’ (Coates 2012: 81). ‘Binary’
describes an architecture that is given an alternate identity through 41
[16] NATO was a group formed of Diploma Unit 10 students and their tutor, Nigel Coates at the Architectural Association in 1984 (Coates 2012: 55-63). The group produced a publication that ran for three issues providing a context in which the students’ anarchistic, narrative-laden projects ‘could be treated as a reality’ (Coates 2012: 63). The magazine was “a manifesto for a socio-culturally engaged and popular, narrative architecture” (Coates 2013) that proved the sounding ground for a lot of Coates’s practical theory.
06: Double Club by Carsten Holler. An example of Coates’s ‘biotopic’ narrative typology
the occupant’s imagination; it relies mostly upon visual references (Coates 2012: 83). ‘Sequence’ describes a series of spaces that tell a
story through their order or chronology, it is ‘binary’ with “the added 42
factors of time and direction” (Coates 2012: 109). And ‘biotopic’ is de-
scribed as a situation, that has “no formal organising devices” (Coates
2012: 100), is “more nuanced but less prescriptive, offers multiple
readings and revels in the coexistence of coherence and diversity” (Coates 2012: 110). The description depicts an open network of narra-
tive elements that organically and independently coalesce to support a holistic narrative beyond the influence of each: it seems vague and
the examples given offer evidence for parts of it whilst contradicting
others. Carsten Holler’s Double Club in London (Coates 2012: 102) splices together overtly ‘binary’ spaces but there are only two narrative sources rather than a ‘coherent network’ and whilst the vivid
dichotomy enhances each individually, it questions their relationship rather than layering the space with additional narrative. It could also be argued that the sharp borders that exist where the spaces are thrust against one another delineate a very rigid organising structure. At the other end of the spectrum Coates proffers Eric Miralles’s Parc
Diagonal Mar in Barcelona (Coates 2012: 107), a fantastically ludic space that provides the large environment and multitude of elements described by Coates in a ‘biotopic’ architecture. It is perhaps the most successful of the examples; the elements of the park create an overarching narrative imbued with childish whims of play and fantasy, but the features are aesthetically cohesive, and demonstrate little variety in their individual narratives. Coates intends his taxonomy to “map out a ‘method’ for using narratives as a design tool” (Coates 2012: 81) but the loose fitting nature, particularly of the most complex genus, reduces the collection to a glossary of narrative architectures rather than a generative methodology. The narrative typologies that Coates establishes in his survey essentially categorise architectures by their level of intricacy, from the simple, ‘binary’ to the complex ‘biotopic’, but they could also be seen to describe a shift in perspective or rather a change in contextual scale. Whilst not exclusively so, ‘binary’ largely describes decoration at the level of a room, ‘sequence’ describes the arrangement
43
07: Parc Diagonal Mar by Eric Miralles. A ludic ‘biotopic’ space
44
of spaces within a building, and ‘biotopic’ describes a campus or
city comprised of multiple independent structures. Each develops in
complexity by considering a wider range of narrative components. Once rationalised to the scale of a building the ‘binary’ and ‘biotopic’
narrative modes fall close to existing bodies of work and architectural models for generating design. ‘Binary’ designates facades imbued with iconography, a proposition similar to Robert Venturi’s postmod-
ern thesis published in Learning from Las Vegas (Venturi 1977), and the ‘biotopic’ becomes a container for multiple and dynamic narrative
elements. Coates describes an architecture as ‘biotopic’ when its “narrative components fuses with its system of functional parts, like
the occasional sparks between two electrically charged planes. It can destabilise the physical reality of a territory” (Coates 2012: 100). It is a
description that resembles contemporary interactive architecture,
[17]
a field instigated by Cedric Price with Fun Palace in 1961, that has
readily adopted emerging multimedia and digital technologies (Glynn 2013). This taxonomy then, delivers a valid, but closed system for the
analysis of the complexity of narrative within architectural projects,
[17] Ruairi Glynn defines interactive architecture as “an active architecture [where] digital technologies & virtual spaces merge with tangible and physical spatial experiences” (Glynn 2013). It is a progressive definition of a field born from visions of mechanically responsive structures, and one that pushes it towards the physical side of Interface Architecture. [5] Both seek to create physically transmutable architectures but where interactive architecture seeks to integrate digital systems, Interface Architecture will actuate them.
45
by its own parameters. The genus that does prove original is that of
‘sequence’ but it is ultimately similar to a set of architectural-narrative typologies arrived at by Preston Scott Cohen (Cohen 2011) through an
alternative, and critically more easily extendable model.
Given that narrative is an integral part of culture (Flanagan 1994:
198), and that its structural form has been practiced, studied and
theorised about for centuries through the cultural interface (Manovich 1997), it seems contrived to attempt to create entirely new typologies
for its application in architecture. A far more workable solution, and
the one proposed by Cohen in his lecture, The Hidden Core of Ar-
chitecture (Cohen 2011), is to test the feasibility of those structures in 08: 2026 by Maha Maamoun, ref. La Jetée, an example of Cohen’s ‘collage’ typology
46
their current guise, and from that infer a set of design principles for
architecture based upon the wealth of theory already collated. In his lecture, Cohen makes an interesting proposition for the categorisation of buildings based upon narrative structures derived from cine-
ma, and defines three paradigms of the plan: ‘anatomical’, ‘extrusion’ and ‘collage’, listing a building that typifies each and a film to which
their narrative format correlates (Cohen 2011). ‘Anatomical’ describes
a building in which each plan is successive, and formative but not definitive of the whole. He chooses Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, NY (1959) to represent this and compares it to most conventional films with progressive linear narrative. ‘Extrusion’ describes a conventional building form in which each plan is definitive of the whole, replicated many times as it rises vertically. He compares this paradigm to Andy Warhol’s film Sleep (1963) in which one shot can effectively describe the entire film. And ‘collage’ describes a building where each plan is enduring but clashes with the subsequent “a collage of several Sleeps” (Cohen 2011). The building is OMA’s ZKM, Karlsruhe (1992), and the film chosen to represent this plan is La Jetée (1962) (Cohen 2011). Cohen’s architecturalnarrative typologies are differentiated by the structural sequence of spaces within a building, and would all fall within Coates’s ‘sequence’ genus. However, they break that classification down further and critically, generate their structure from an external narrative model: cinema, the principal narrative mode and cultural interface, of the 20th century (Manovich via Koblin 2011).
47
Intriguingly the two films Cohen chooses to illustrate his point are
from the early 1960s - has narrative in cinema not progressed since then? He concedes that although a ‘collage’ building, the most com-
plex of his three typologies, delights in contrast between its plans,
its external surface remains a limiting constant: “the perimeter is
extruded, just as the La Jetée film proceeds linearly, so too does the
extrusion provide that continuity that allows for this montage” (Cohen
2011). This echoes Mike Figgis’s belief that cinema can never truly
escape linear narrative due to its physical form (Figgis in conversation with Aitken 2006: 138), and implies that both cinema and architecture
are faced by a similar technological hurdle, one that the Interface may overcome. Cohen’s typologies are good but they are retrospective;
as a result and as with Coates’s taxonomy, they do little to develop existing design methodologies for architecture and are inadequate to
represent the new narrative trends of the 21st century. To drive de-
sign, architecture should look for influence from narrative structures
in popular culture and their projected development as outlined in the 48
first chapter. If cinema’s narrative structures offer models for 20th
century architecture as exemplified by Cohen (Cohen 2011), then the
Interface will provide a set of projective design principles for future architectures: an extension to Cohen’s architectural-narratives typology that accommodates the 21st century cultural interface, where the building serves as a hub for changing plans, overlaid as augmented realities.
However if, as suggested, architecture can serve as the physi-
09: Sleepwalkers by Doug Aitken, expands MOMA’s urban influence
cal interface to these virtual networks, it will embody the narrative
forms that will emerge with new media and adopt the fluidity that comes with them. The Interface will shroud architecture in new me-
dia’s narrative content, and rather than simply offering that content as a primer for architectural design, the two will become inseparable, the convergence of architecture and the Interface. It is this conver-
gence that will have the greatest effect on architecture, the precursor
and closest example of which is the use of architectural surfaces as planes for film projection, a topic explored by Sylvia Lavin in her book
Kissing Architecture (Lavin 2011). The films that Lavin highlights in this architectural paradigm are specifically designed for the architectures
49
that they are displayed upon, but they facilitate discourse on the abil-
ity of architectural surfaces to act as a screen for narrative content, and the effect that has on the architecture. Lavin eloquently demon-
strates how architecture can benefit from the soft touch of cinema, creating buildings invested in affectation and empathy rather than signification, which re-engage with the new interactive world, regain-
ing a political and ethical role in the formation of urban spaces (Lavin
2011: 101-113). If this is the scope of traditional architecture when
‘kissed’ by the narrative structures of cinema, imagine the possibili-
ties of an immersive, responsive, networked narrative environment. It is the capabilities of such an environment that the short story in
the next chapter attempts to approximate: an interface that embraces physical architecture, destabilises it and layers upon it. A generative network of augmented realities. An Interface Architecture.
50
51
[18] It is likely not 6:52 am as you read this but the short story is not set in your time frame. It is fixed in Greenwich Mean Time, sometime in the digital age. Little else is clear. [19] This places the setting within the years 1921 (the year Henry Tate & Sons and Abram Lyle & Sons merged) and 2034 when the refinery ceased production. The refinery was based on the Thames, placing you in London, but that’s revealed on the next line…
[20] ‘Gull’ is an abbreviation for seagull, a seabird of the Laridae family that used to be common around London. They are known for their harsh squawking calls.
HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN It’s 6:52 am. [18] This is not the beginning and there is no end, just
a moment that unfolds at a station overlooking the docks. The doors slam open. The Tate and Lyle refinery
[19]
to the East groans, steam
from its chimneys thickens the wet, early morning fog that drifts off the banks of the Thames and covers the opening paragraph ... all of
these signs inform us that this is the Docklands Light Railway. DLR stations are all alike. It doesn’t matter that the lights are out, the plat-
form not yet illuminated by the hazy morning light, all of this setting you know by heart.
The chime of the tracks fades to a faint whistle as the train disap-
pears towards London proper. The mist closes in again, as heavy as
the dew, punctuated only by dampened birdsong and the occasional cry of a gull.
[20]
You turn and make your way down the cold, metal-
lic stairwell, each step clanging out over the bleak landscape as you slowly disappear from the page.
53
Stood in observation bay B at the SERCO memory theatre project,
[21]
the intercom crackles; something about test 46a. You remove
your coat and hang it on the back of the door wishing you’d had the
foresight to get coffee on your ill defined but dank and caffeine-less journey in. A man opens the door in the test space you’re watching, the machinery comes to life, the lights flicker and his description is
partially obscured … fat … educated and sullen, a man who has had marred those about him. I am the man in front of you. Or, rather: that man is called I, and you know nothing else about him.
[22]
Coated
glass separates you, the frame a window on his reality: an unremark-
able room but for its symmetry and lack of content. The walls are a dull grey but each 12’ expanse is bare and uniform. Framed mirrors
are centred on two of them and a flush door, from which I entered, is carefully concealed in the third. Opposite the door is a leafless door-
frame set about 3’ from the wall. It’s Georgian in its scale with thick
jambs and a sizeable entablature but its decoration is from another
culture altogether, ornate carvings reminiscent of Balinese craftwork 54
snake over its every square inch, their details enhanced by deep shadows cast from the spotlights above.
[21] There is no public record of the SERCO Memory Theatre Project. SERCO was a British government services company founded in 1929 that supplied public and private transport and traffic control, aviation, military and nuclear weapons contracts, detention
centres and prisons, and schools. [22] This sentence is a direct quote from Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (Calvino 1998: 11)
I follow the stream of instructions issued through a small piece in
my right ear and walk slowly towards the doorframe, keen to leave as soon as possible. When I arrived the doctor said I’d be well fed and left to rest for up to 48 hours; something about temporal disorientation. Anyway it felt like I was in that room for a week, it was like
a psychiatric hospital from the 60s; all white and padded, with just the one bed against the back wall; no television, no papers, nothing, not even a window. I’m surprised I wasn’t put in a straight jacket. And the food was terrible. The money seemed worthwhile when I
signed up but I’d need a few bottles to sleep through the worst of the incarceration again. The lights dim as I walk towards the doorframe, perhaps they can read my mind. I wonder who’s watching behind
the mirrors on either side. The trill voice in my ear seems at odds with the expressionless glazing and certainly doesn’t belong to any
of the quacks I saw early in the process. Maybe she’s a computer; or rather it’s a computer. I wouldn’t be surprised. When we arrived I hauled myself up to a small crack in the boards covering the van
windows and caught a glimpse of the facility. I could see a couple of
industrial chimneys in the distance and a lot of security for just one, lonely building in the middle of a field. It looked remote, explora-
tory, sci-fi; the kind of place they’d be creating super computers that could whisper sweet nothings into your ear. Or conducting inhumane experiments on middle-aged men. I draw closer still, the carvings, once in sharp relief, slowly lose their vivacity as the lights peter out to nothing. By the time I reach it there is just the inky black memory of
55
their shapes set against the darkened room. I put my hand out, carefully run it across the chiselled frame, and step over the threshold.
The effect is immediate, the wall in front of me recedes, a strange
glow in its place that lasts for but a fractured second before filling
with sparks, images, fleeting thoughts, emotion. Panic. I stumble backwards, the intensity of the display commensurate with my ris-
ing anxiety. The frame catches me but my paranoia is not as eas-
ily arrested. Fortunately the voice in my ear regains prominence:
calming, reassuring, referring me to the training. I focus on slowing
my breathing. I can hear my heart beating like a drum but that is not just a simile. In front of me the chaos eases, amongst it my first
Pearl bass, biological drawings of the heart, and the understanding of the difference between a simile and a metaphor. As the drum’s
rhythm steadies a wealth of information seeps from around it, filling the Interface. The Interface is my consciousness or at least it mirrors
my consciousness, an eternally shifting representation of my stream of thought. I pluck at the abundance of recollections flooding past 56
me through the doorframe, drumming lessons, the Amen break, my
grandfather’s Winstons collection, his cigarettes and dark comedies.
Turning I realise they are populating the space behind me, everything I‘ve ever seen, an eidetic collection of books, family photos, account numbers, objects and information. Everything is available, every link remembered and indexed in relation to my life story, it is giddying but immediately navigable, a 21st century memory theatre.
I begin to enjoy myself, splicing chapters of my life, pitting my ex-
wife against her younger self, but an assertive rebuke reminds me
of the task at hand. I turn 180 degrees, facing once more where the wall should be but the faint glow has returned. The network connec-
tion is being authorised and I’m given my first task: ‘what is the time?’ The connection is live. You know the time. But there is another
dimension now, the theatre merged with the network, a single, col-
lective consciousness, our consciousness. We know the time. The
Interface is the network, a spatial landscape. The links do not just exist - they are, and we can travel them instantly. The time is but a spark. Unprompted we gather information, our mind running riot,
throwing together spaces, forming new links, shortcutting old ones. The Greenwich Observatory, the Ohio Clock Corridor, Reuters, the International Date Line and the Elizabeth Tower, contorted but real,
and cast from a homogenous bell metal-esque material. The voice in our ear issues a second task and the formation around us dissipates.
Latitude 41.37050, Longitude 2.15000. Barcelona, the pavilion, details flood in and we’re there, the large expanses of glass, impossibly thin walls, space and shadow. Challenging the veracity of this world,
we step from the threshold but the polished marble is smooth and firm and the breeze light on our cheek. Arms outstretched we cau-
tiously take a couple of steps forwards, there is no hidden wall, the
architecture has changed us or we have changed the architecture. We are unsure but somehow this is real, beyond real; with everything comes an understanding, a comprehension of its place and story.
The voice offers further instruction but we are too far removed to
57
58
09: Alba by Georg Kolbe
care. Fascinated, we jump cut through the pavilion to the smaller of the two water basins and sit on the edge of the cool marble floor, our feet dangling in the water, basking in the reflection of the reality
we’ve created. It’s late morning and Alba’s arms are raised, shielding her face from the blinding sun that cuts at an angle across the West
wall and meets the North at the water, a mirror perfect reflection that is shattered by the ripples making their way from our feet to hers. The perfectly book-matched veins of the Tinos Verde marble become a
mess, dancing playfully across the undulating surface. The movement breaks our concentration, our consciousness wonders from this
idyll and a train of thought emerges; the marble replaced by the crack of a landscape, fences and distant chimneys, a question.
Where are we?
59
We find the site without trouble but it appears empty. We probe
further; a full history, lease documents, planning applications and photos. Nothing, no fences, no facility, no technology. And then it happens, too quickly for us to fully understand. There is a crack,
a crack in everything, the pavilion, the network, the Interface. The voice in my ear screams but is drowned out by a rushing sensation, the memory theatre, the doorframe, the mirrors, gone, collapsed.
You. The observation room, the damp, the train, it all sucks, rushing, swirling, deafeningly back to 6:52 am you, exorcised by a sentence.
60
[23] See note 18 above
[24]
[24]
[23]
and you reading. It is just
61
CONCLUSION The research for this paper started as an investigation of narra-
tive in architecture through comparison with more popular narrative media; what Manovich terms cultural interfaces (Manovich 1997). The
intention was to identify weaknesses and gaps within architectural narrative theory, which new media’s narratives could satiate. How-
ever, it soon became clear that the Interface could offer much more than an analogous model for architectural-narratives structures, and
exact a profound literal effect on architecture’s ontology. As a result the paper arrives at the juncture of architecture and the Interface. It
does not seek to set out a design manifesto for Interface Architec-
ture, but act as a catalyst for further discussion and critical analysis
of the field, the nature of its design and the changes to architecture it may prompt. Critically this paper suggests that the realisation of the technology described is not that distant, and its transformative
potential should be recognised and addressed by the architectural profession urgently.
We already live in part-augmented realities; mobile access to the
Internet allows us to reshape our contextual environment with rap-
63
idly developing networks. More directly still, smartphone applications apply this information as a direct overlay to reality; they are rudi-
mentary interfaces that provide the connection between two modes of society, the physical and the virtual. Increasingly the more rel-
evant mode is the one over which we have control, the one we can shape to our instant requisites and fleeting attentions. In such a
reality, architecture takes on a whole new set of spatial conditions; mass is forgotten, gravity undermined, sequence shattered. Narrative remains the only structural constant through which data is or-
ganised and shaped. At present ‘architects’ amongst the IT industry are conducting this interface design role. The title they’ve chosen is
a cause of contention but it is indicative of the fact that the archi-
tectural profession needs to confront the challenges of technology and the virtual realm, or take a back seat, and remain working solely
within the increasingly marginalised physical one. As augmented reality continues to develop and technology becomes pervasive,
[25]
more consideration needs be paid to its spatial, social and ethical
64
ramifications. It is a role, for which architects are well placed, but the
design parameters will be radically different to those the architectural
profession works within today. Interface Architecture must embody new forms, new philosophies and new frameworks appropriate to the virtual realm, a point well made by philosopher Slavoj Zizek:
“Virtual reality is a rather miserable idea, it simply means let us reproduce, in an artificial, digital medium, our experience of real-
10: New City by Greg Lynn, Peter Frankfurt & Alex McDowell, an early interface
ity. I think a much more interesting notion … is the opposite … the reality of the virtual” (Zizek via Wright 2004)
It is an approach realised in New City (2008), an installation for
MOMA by Greg Lynn, Peter Frankfurt and Alex McDowell. Speaking
about the project in his lecture Out of Time in Today’s Worlds (Lynn
2013), Lynn questions whether a sphere or the globe (Earth) is the
best model for spatial design in a virtual world? New City imagines
a new form, an idealised virtual world that is parallel and simultaneous to ours, with the same population, but a radically different and
mutating structure, where continents, cities and neighbourhoods can
65
drift through one another (Lynn 2013). In effect it is a spatial repre-
sentation of the digital world, one of the first visualisations of what “the Internet should look like” (Lynn 2013), and further, it utilises 12
projection screens to form a three-dimensional, tessellated cave-like
structure that fully ‘immerses’ the viewer. Whilst the installation is not interactive and does not display networked content, it is as close a conceptual experience as currently exists, to the Interface.
Lynn implores architects and designers to become involved with
virtual reality so that it is not simply mimetic of the physical world,
resulting in travesties like Second Life and World of Warcraft (Lynn
2013). However, it is a plea that should be heeded with caution.
Whilst this paper advocates the specialised design of interface archi-
tectures it should be recognised that the Internet has no overarching form, it is postmodern, fragmented and far more transmutable than
66
New City envisages. It proffers new political, cultural and economic systems and is manifold. Interactivity engenders billions of unique virtual realities, a rich ocean of information, myriad, personal, layered, overlapping and convoluting. Attempting to impose a governing, holistic, meta-form on the Internet is to approach its design from a megalomaniacal perspective, ironically a disposition often associated with architects, and a regression to the overarching structure of Lyotard’s grand narratives (Schneider 2010). The Interface should be designed simply as a framework, a tool, an interface and nothing more. If the design principles are good, the narratives, context and technology will drive the form. Interface architectures will prove
the embodiment of that form, and through their context will become unique and diverse nodes that populate the Internet, allowing its
spatial landscape to develop organically like any concrete city. Lynn’s description of New City’s function, for “storing information and ac-
cessing information in a highly spatial way … a new kind of ency-
clopaedia” (Lynn 2013) is perhaps the most apt of his discernments. Interface Architecture will encourage a return to Renaissance models of thinking about and ordering information; egocentric, four-dimen-
sional theatres, virtual versions of Vasari’s Studiolo (Pallazo Vec-
chio, Florence), Vignola’s Salla de Mappamondo (Pallazo Fareneze,
Rome) or Camillo’s Memory Theatre, but our 21st century theatres will be interactive, pervasive and networked.
67
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-Psarra, S. (2009) Architecture and Narrative, London: Routledge -Comer, S. (2008) Film and Video Art, London: Tate Publishing
-Gargiani, R. (2008) Rem Koolhaas / OMA, London: Routledge
-Marchessault, J. and Lord, S. (2008) Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema, University of Toronto Press
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-Vesna, V. (2007) Database Aesthetics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
-Aitken, D. (2006) Broken Screen: Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative, New York: D.A.P.
-Jameson, F. (2005) Archeologies of the Future, London: Verso Books
-Mccullough, M. (2005) Digital Ground, Cambridge: MIT Press
-Murray, C. (2004) Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, London: Routledge
-Wardrip-Fruin, N. (2003) The New Media Reader, Cambridge: MIT Press
-Meadows, M. (2002) Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, London: New Riders
-Rieser, M. and Zapp, A. (2002) New Screen Media: Cinema / Art / Narrative, London: BFI Publishing
-Packer, R. (2001) Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, London: W. W. Norton
-Ryan, M. (2001) Narrative as Virtual Reality, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press
-Zapp, A. (1999) Networked Narrative Environments, Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications
-Heise, U. (1997) Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism, Cambridge University Press
-Flanagan, O. (1994) Consciousness Reconstructed, Cambridge: MIT Press
-Williams, A. (1992). Republic of images: a history of French filmmaking, London: Harvard University Press
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-Calvino, I. (1983) If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, London: Secker & Warburg
-Yates, F. (1966) The Art of Memory, London: Routledge
-McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London: Routledge
ARTICLES -Coates, N. (2013) Nigel Coates - Biography [Accessed 2 April 2013]: http://www. nigelcoates.com/biography
-Glynn, R. (2013) Interactive Architecture [Accessed 1 February 2013]: http://www.
interactivearchitecture.org/about
-Lang, B. (2013) Oculus Rift Games [Accessed 8 April 2013]: http://www.roadtovr. com/oculus-rift-games-list
-Melanson, D. (2013) Oculus, Cliff Bleszinski at SXSW [Accessed 4 April 2013]:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/08/sxsw-virtual-reality-panel-livestream
-Albanesius, C. (2012) Google ‘Project Glass’ [Accessed 4 April 2013]: http://www. pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402613,00.asp
-Manovich, L. (2012) Innovate Visualizations of Temporal Processes [Accessed 14 March 2013]: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/lev-manovich/articles/ innovate-visualizations-of-temporal-processes
-Schneider, N. (2010) In Defence of The Memory Theatre [Accessed 28 March 2013]: http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/in-defense-of-the-memory-theater
-Fahs, T. (2009) IGN Presents the History of SEGA [Accessed 4 April 2013]: http:// uk.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-history-of-sega?page=7
-Wallace, L. (2009) We Live in Public Spycam Madness [Accessed 1 February 2013]: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/01/enduring-a-tota
-Manovich, L. (2008) What is Digital Cinema [Accessed 14 March 2013]: http://www. manovich.net/TEXT/digital-cinema.html
-Zizek, S. (2004) Cyberspace, or the Virtuality of the Real [Accessed 29 March 2013]:
http://www.jcfar.org/past_papers/Cyberspace and the Virtuality of the Real - Slavoj Zizek.pdf
-Allen, S. (2000) Practice Architecture, Technique and Representation, London: Routledge
-Manovich, L. (1997) Cinema as a Cultural Interface [Accessed 14 March 2013]: http://www.manovich.net/TEXT/cinema-cultural.html
JOURNALS -Lapham, L. (ed.) (2009) ‘Storytelling’, Volume, vol. 20
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-Varnelis, K. (2009) ‘Storytelling’, Volume, vol. 20 pp. 26-28
-McGrath, B. and Gardner, J. (2008) ‘Cinemetrics: Embodying Architectural
Representation in the Digital Age’, Architectural theory review, vol. 13; no. 1, pp. 29-51
-Denby, D. (2007) ‘The new non-native movies’, The New Yorker, March, pp. 80-85
-Turkle, S. (2004) ‘How Computers Change the Way We Think’, The Chronicle Review, vol. 50; no. 21, p 26
INTERVIEWS -Aitken, D. (2012) The Source [Accessed 21 December 2013]: http://www. dougaitkenworkshop.com/work/the-source/
LECTURES -Garcia, M. (2013) Gravitus Victus, University of Greenwich: Future Cities 2
-Lynn, G. (2013) Out of Time in Today’s World, University of Greenwich: Future Cities 2
-Mensvoort, K. (2013) Next Nature, University of Greenwich: Future Cities 2
-Coates, N. (2012) Narrativity Equals Creativity, London: AA [Accessed 1 February 2013]: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1965
-Nauman, B. (2012) Space, Body and the Self, Fort Worth: The Modern [Accessed 21 December 2013]: http://www.themodern.org/programs/Upcoming/ Bruce-Nauman/1517
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-Turkle, S. (2012) Connected but alone? Long Beach: TED [Accessed 1 February 2013]: http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html
-Viola, B. (2012) The Art of Bill Viola, Milan: University of Bocconi [Accessed 21 December 2012]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMMfh5dYic
-Cohen, P. (2011) The Hidden Core of Architecture, Princeton: Princeton University [Accessed 14 March 2013]: iTunesU
-Koblin, A. (2011) Artfully Visualizing our Humanity, Long Beach: TED [Accessed 28 March 2013]: http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_koblin.html
-Greenaway, P. (2010) Possibilities: Cinema is Dead, Long Live Cinema, Berkeley: University of California [Accessed 21 December 2012]: http://www.egs.edu/
faculty/peter-greenaway/videos/new-possibilities-cinema-is-dead-long-live-cinema
-Viola, B. (2009) Convocation, Los Angeles: Otis College of Art and Design [Accessed 21 December 2012]: iTunes u
-Figgis, M. (2008) Timecode, Narration and the Art of Film, Saas-Fee: European
Graduate School [Accessed 21 December 2012]: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/ mike-figgis/videos/time-code-narration-and-the-art-of-film
EXHIBITIONS -Redzisz, K. (cur.) (2012) Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear, Baker, Asselbergh, Maamoun, Boer, Mancuska, Esquivias, Laumann, Azma & Hill
FILM -Timoner, O. (2009) We Live in Public, New York: Indiepix Films
-Wright, B. (2004) Slavoj Zizek: The Reality of the Virtual, Independent
-Barney, M. (1995-2002) Cremaster Cycle, Indpendent
-Figgis, M. (2000) Time Code, Culver City: Screen Gems
-Greenaway, P. (1996) The Pillow Book, Santa Monica: Lionsgate Films
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Image References 01: http://aestheticamagazine.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/daytime-tv-david-hall-endpiece-ambika.html
02: http://www.premiumhollywood.com/2009/09/25/hanging-with-the-new-flesh
03: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2010/11/science-and-popular-science-magazines. html
04: Author’s collection
05: http://tehnoboys.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/rift-2.jpg
06: http://www.kramweisshaar.com/media/projects/the_double_club.jpg 07: Author’s collection 08: Author’s collection
09: http://www.burnaway.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/image4.jpeg
10: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arte/2296423989/sizes/o/in/photostream
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