In a few months, access to the web, by cable or satellite, will ensure a download time for images, sounds, and videos equal to that of texts. In the meantime, computer speed, memory and power will continue to increase, while phone rates will continue to decrease due to competition. It will then be possible to take maximum advantage of rendering, animation and immersion softwares such as those currently used in film production, using smaller and smaller files than those used for video. Web art development, net-art, art-of-the-net and their new virtual exposition environments can only become more complex and advanced while at the same time easier to use. If one were to recall the dawn of the desktop and compare it to those of today, the metaphor of a simplified version of the actual desk on the screen - the 'desktop' -has been enriched to become increasingly functional and elegant. It is now the time to think of non-linear developments for interfaces that can guarantee an appropriate complexity and allow for the exhibition of any kind of art.
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From: lauf-s@quondam.com
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: AD[vocating] PUBLICITY
Date: 2001.01.25
Steve wrote:
Furthermore, I hope it takes less than twenty years for architects to begin creating and directing web sites that are just the same as television channels.
Howard wrote:
Again, let virtual architecture stand on its own. It can be a new architecture in a virtual world. It can be a fascinating world to explore. It is a fascinating world that is being explored. Unfortunately is incorrectly a mostly representational world. It represents a physical world. It should not.
Steve writes:
I'm curious about how exactly Howard's comment relates to my previous comment, and I have to ask: is virtual architecture then correctly a not-so-much non-representation non-world? (to put it in extreme polar terms)
When I mention web sites that are the same as television channels, I'm simply mentioning something that is already in the works. Anyone that saw Charlie Rose's interview with George Bell (Chairman of excite.com) last night will know exactly what I mean. I don't have to hope for web sites to be like television channels because once broad band becomes common, web sites will be capable of being exactly just like television channels, in fact more like television plus. [remember television literally means vision at a distance.] My hope lies in architects recognizing this media metamorphosis, and hence using their design skills and design thinking to take this medium to places that other designers might not think to take it. In simple terms, architects for the last fifty odd years could design the buildings that facilitate today's television channels, whereas with broad band web, architects can then design (their own) actual television channels [without buildings].
Virtual architecture can be many things, and not necessarily something facilitated by the Internet. Virtual architecture that is facilitated by the Internet, however, should reasonably utilize whatever the Internet has to offer. There can be representation and there can be presentation. Virtual architecture can represent the world as we know it or it can present something other than the world as we know it. Personally, I think it more challenging and design-wise more stimulating to use virtual architecture facilitated by the Internet to try presenting something other than what is already available.
I have been dealing with virtual architecture facilitated by the Internet for over four years now. This experience's greatest reward as always been the fact that I as an architect have been able to create a real place with nothing more than a connection through a telephone line, lots of digital data, and my own initiative and not really a whole lot of money. Because I focused on creating an 'other than what is already there' museum I learned that collecting and exhibiting digital data only begets more and more and more digital data, i.e., I found myself with a[n architectural] collection that is virtually infinite. This virtual infinite characteristic comes from the intrinsic mutable nature of digital data. As an architect, I now see a virtual architecture challenge in now trying to design a virtual museum [of]architecture that matches the virtual infinity of its collection. I think having a web site that is just like a television channel could well help me meet the challenge.
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