The virtual promise: building shells and forms of dwelling in OpenSim platform Evangelia (Villy) Kaklidaki Special Lab Educational Staff School of Architecture Technical University of Crete ekaklidaki@isc.tuc.gr
Socrates Yiannoudes, Ph.D. Lecturer in Architectural Design School of Architecture Technical University of Crete sgiannoudis@arch.tuc.gr
The promise of urban simulation games
body (3) reconstructed to form a selfrepresented, self-described, selfpromoted entity, of new gender and behavior, of new identity.
Contemporary digital urban simulation games such as Second Life, the most widely used virtual world, are commercially promoted as places of endless possibilities beyond the limits of reality. In Second Life website we read: “Enter a world with infinite possibilities and live a life without boundaries, guided only by your imagination� (1). Many other virtual grids, based on the same operating software (OpenSim) are advertised similary. Yet this "cyberpunk" promise of escapism from physical reality to the digital world through a supposedly disembodied purely mental experience (2) seems to be exaggerated. In fact, despite the existence of elements that would be impossible in real life such as manipulation of gravity, the potential to fly, or teleport, user crafted built forms are confined to conventional and archetypical forms as well as traditional notions of inhabitation. This is true despite the fact that avatar embodiments and identities are multiplied, reconstructed and virtualized. Constructing Second Identity Avatars reflect the user’s redefined identity represented by a particular mediated form. The avatar is a synthetic extension of the actual earthy
Figure - : Advertisements for skin products by Laq and RedGrave companies (4)
Many users choose to construct multiple identities, experiment on human behavior and live through them. According to Yvonne Kosma (5) identity as a single coherent concept is undermined by the presence of this new virtually reconstructed self: "Virtual identities function as visual representation of the end of the consolidated body, blurring the distinction between the organic body and the computer" (5). She foresees the emergence of a new social reality remote from physical embodiment a state of total control on the construction and promotion of identity, built and represented entirely by users themselves (5). Within this space of identity reconstruction the limits of virtual environments diffuse into reality, through physical, emotional and economic ways (3 p. 45). The blurring of the boundaries is not biased by the computer hardware or software, but instead it occurs naturally and unintentionally leading to a kind of virtualisation of the real as Pierre Levy
would have it (6). Virtualisation, according to Levy, is a phenomenon involved in all aspects of reality changing and redistributing the proportions of spatiotemporal components. He will assume that virtual reality is rather a process of transition from the virtual to the actual, the development and management of the multiple possibilities of the real. The virtual is not a de-realisation (as Baudrillard would have it) but a transformation of identity, a move from the 'here and now' to the 'out of here' (Serres), and a participation in a common space without necessarily a common place. This deconstruction of spatiotemporal structures and concepts, this redefinition of identity, the diffusion of object and subject, public and private, inside and outside, is, for Levy, a new humanism and a new historical development of human culture. In place of the view of disembodiment, as is evident in several commonplace criticisms of cyberculture and cyberpunk fiction (7 p. 368), Levy proposes the virtualization of the body, namely its re-invention and multiplication, the activation of a hybrid hyper-body having both a social and a technobiological character. Avatars and forms of dwelling This virtualization of the body, this hybrid identity, places questions about the ways the built environment and dwelling forms in SL are conceptualized and designed. Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrow consider this challenge: "It's not just the construction and reconstruction of the bodies, but the construction and reconstruction of worlds that is critical here” (8 pp. 1-19). New spatial needs result from the presence of the avatar. Its size, the way
it moves, flies, swims, communicates, sees, set new requirements for space. In addition to the virtual ergonomics, plasmatic physical needs of sleep, nutrition, etc are infused in the essence of the avatar. Senses of kinesthesia, proximity (closeness), co-presence, violation of personal space (griefing), physical abuse (pushing)1 are perceived through the digital bodies of the users. Building practices and collective memory Open Sim building practices bear specific spatial, social and economic attributes, such as speed and ease of construction, low prices, quantity, decentralization. A large proportion of users virtually build their spaces on their own, since the program provides the basic design tools for object modeling. Buildings range from realistic representations to imaginary constructions, amateur and professional, artistic or even accidental, experimental and repetitive, custom or prefabricated designs. In general, new urban space and new building shells bear properties of physical structures. They obtain floors, walls, windows and doors, furniture and pets, when none of the aforementioned is prerequisite in digital habitation. Despite the promise for radical shifts from the experience of real world, “immigrants”, “colonists” (3) or “commuters”2 (9) of the metaverse, find themselves established in places, under conditions of physical habitation and real world representations. 1
Actions that are prohibited via Terms of Use Contract.
2
More accurate term since the user has to travel often among virtual and real life, due to the presence of his/her real body. He/she cannot permanently “immigrate” in cyberspace.
Castronova (3) finds resemblances among real and virtual worlds in terms of persistency, physicality and interactivity. Symbols and monumental structures are transferred from the physical into the digital reality. A large fragment of space in the Open Sim worlds, consists of representations of the urban fabric, references from real life, fragmentary monuments, uniforms, public buildings, parks, museums, ruins, paintings, statues and other works of art, palaces, castles, familiar textures from the city or the countryside, native plants and landscapes. The forms and the objects come with an anachronistic desire to create an ambience of a false or illusory historical presence. The built environment is a palimpsest of fragments of the history of cultures from around the world, utopian or dystopian images from the past, the present and the future, bearing references to the earth or other fictional worlds. The memories of users, the archetypal forms of habitation bound to a sense of belonging, stability, familiarity, rootedness, organic solidarity between man and a synthetic place (10; 11) are the bases to recreate a sort of virtual “genius loci� (11). In SL this seems to persist despite the sense of nomadism that characterizes virtual environments. Users in the form of their avatars are willing to install themselves, live and create in a place that looks familiar and intimate. Faced with the immaterial essence of the internet, and a constructed globalized pattern, they will attempt to recreate history. Memories and images are retrieved, stirred and reconstructed in the new medium. This urban reincarnation is carried out by the production companies in the case of prefabricated environments such as MMORPGs (Everquest, Warcraft, etc.), the Sims, Sims Online,
etc. In the case of user crafted environments, physical analogies may be implied and imposed by producers, in various ways: the presence of land, sea and sky, of earthly bodies and the implementation of physics engine (OpenSim), the use of prefabricated building materials libraries (Active Wolrds) etc. Users also exploit every available means, in order to fetch exhausting details and essences of their previous life in the new digital one.
Image : Snapshot from Second Life. Simulation of the city of Athens (Sim Umina beach – Art & Desire. Owner and creator Nitsuko Rocokoco, January 2011).
Conclusion: Facing a contradiction While in open-sim worlds identities are multiplied and bodies are reconstructed, the built environment, the digital urban space, seems to be limited to conventional representations. Synthetic worlds constitute augmented extensions of reality tied on persistent references and metaphors that are pumped out of the real world (6; 12). But this is no recent phenomenon in game design. The first MUDs (MultiUser Dimension , game Adventure for example ) as well as chat rooms (IRC, Talk), and interface design in early computers, systematically embodied references and loans from the real world, reproducing real spaces, through the use of verbal descriptions, before visual or 3-dimensional representation was possible. These practices would claim to bring the user in a position of mastery within a familiar and intimate anthropocentric environment.
We thus seem to face a contradiction. While avatars as expressions of the users’ second life identities seek to “fly” into an imaginary world, seemingly bearing endless possibilities for living, these very identities are fused with the real ones, virtualized and embedded within cultural codes and building styles copied from the real world. This phenomenon is not only due to the design constraints of the platform, the users’ expressive limitations or their persistent cultural and memory load. In our view, it reveals the need to enhance the sense of escape into a virtual reality through references to pre-existing forms and familiar images. Virtual realities, are effectuated versions of the real where users can lead alternative lives and acquire multiple identities (13). In a psychoanalytic interpretation, they give the users what they are deprived from in real life. Leading a second life in these worlds comes as a mimetic act referred to past events and places. It functions as a process of purification [Aristotelian “catharsis” (14)] of past traumatic life experiences (15). This complex of a simulated familiar world hosting multiple, reconstructed and augmented identities eventually enhances the feeling of escape. REFERENCES 1. Linden Research, Inc. Second Life Official Site. [Online] December 2012. https:// secondlife.com.
2. Dery, Mark. Escape velocity: cyberculture at the end of the century. New York : Grove Press, 1996. 3. Castronova, Edward. Synthetic worlds : the business and culture of online games. Chicago, London : The University of Chicago Press, 2005. 4. Linden Lab. Second Life Marketplace. [Online] July 2013. www.marketplacesl.com. 5. Kosma, Yvon. Fluid Identities/ Virtual Worlds: the boundaries of subjectivity in internet. Gender Workshop. Rhodes : Pstgratuate program: gender and New educational and Vocational environments in the Inforamtion Society , 2011. 6. Levy, Pierre. Virtual Reality: Philosophy of Civilization and Cyberspace. [trans.] Michael Karahalios. Athens : Kritiki, 1999. 7. Lister, M, et al. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London/Νew York : Routledge, 2003. 8. Featherstone, Mike and Burrows, Roger. Cultures of Technological Embodiment: An Introduction. Body and Society. 1995, Vol. 1, 3-4. 9. Hudson-Smith, Andrew. Digitally Distributed Urban Environments:The Prospects for Online Planning. UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). [Online] 2005. http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/digtialplanning/. 10. Heidegger, Martin. Περί πολιτικής, περί αλήθειας, περί τεχνικής. [trans.] Δημήτρης Τζορτζόπουλος. Athens : Hridanos, 2011. 11. Norberg-Schulz, C. Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York : Rizzoli, 1980. 12. Bennetsen, Henrik. Immersion vs. Augmentation. SL Creativity. [Online] December 2006. http://slcreativity.org/wiki/index.php? title=Augmentation_vs_Immersion. 13. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1995. 14. Aristotle. Poetics. 15. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London, Vienna, New York : Intl. PsychoAnalytical, Bartleby.Com, 1922.