ACM Multimedia'96 Hynes Convention Center

November 18 - 22, 1996 Boston, MA, USA

Architecture, Time and Fragmented Space

Friday, November 22, 9:00 - 10:30 am, Room 303, Panel 8,

Moderator: Peter O. Anders

Panelists: Wolfgang Strauss, Dirk Luesebrink, Gerhard Schmitt, Gerhard Eckel

__________________________________________________________________

#Peter. O. Anders

MUD Archeology

Multi-user Domains (MUDs) are mediated environments on the Internet. Originally intended for role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, they have since developed into elaborate social settings serving on-line social and professional communities. Although the bulk of the MUDs currently are text-based virtual realities, the advent of HTML,VRML and Java networking software will bring rich graphic and three-dimensional settings for social interaction.

Preliminary efforts in evoking realistic environments (the Palace, World Chat and Alphaworld) have proven disappointing. The ephemeral quality of these cybereal communities argues for an architecture which is dynamic, responsive to its social needs and its subjective nature. While some of these text-based environments have a specific spatial structure, their descriptions are highly subject to the user's interpretation. Current graphic MUDs, on the other hand, lose this depth of reading by plainly illustrating architectural environments. In many cases the spatial illustration comes at the expense of poetry.

In the spring and fall semester of 1995, graduate and undergraduate students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology's School of Architecture surveyed ten MUDs on the Internet. The students were asked to become citizens of their selected MUDs and to explore the spatial metaphors provided by the text. While these scenarios were based on the linkages found in the adjacency models, their intent was to portray the poetry of the text as an architecture. The development of a truly spatial cyberspace will draw on the skills of many disciplines including the fine arts, theatre and architecture. As spatial MUDs are being created, the input of these

skills will be vital to creating a rich, cultural setting for future societies.

CV

Peter Anders is architect and educator with record of accomplishment in: application and teaching of information technologies in design, leadership of a wide variety of projects, publication in architectural theory, including the broad-based implications of electronic technologies for the profession.

Peter Anders is Acting Director of NJIT Graduate School of Architecture, New Jersey Institute of Technology. Teaching Experience: Directed design studio research on Multi-User Domains on the Internet. New Jersey Institute of Technology, Fall1995.

email: anders@hertz.njit.edu

Media: Video, Internet via beamer

__________________________________________________________________

#Wolfgang Strauss

The Dice Time of Dynamic Space

Digital techniques have re-defined the role of design and the mediation of its contents. New concepts of space are investigated in their capacity to mediate knowledge and to depict the spatial dynamics. With the "Responsive Workbench" or the "Virtual Balnce" the user, spectator becomes part of the system in a non-immersive way. He/she is embedded in the real space as well as in virtual space. The Object is reoriented in reference to the subject. Space sheds its unity, it is composed of fragments of different viewpoints. Media using interactive or distributed communication technologies influence and change both human perception and artistic design. Virtual media open unlimited space, they handle the disintegration of space and the narratation of non-linear stories. (0&1) into interactive actions in space and time. Changing from observers into co-actors people can interfere in their virtual environment and influence it. The interface becomes the very heart of the work, the key to the entire apparatus that it drives. Interactive systems introduce multisensory experience, potentially mobilizing all the senses. But as ingenious as an interface may be, it cannot be reduced to its instrumental or ergonomic features, for it is also the nexus of metaphorical and conceptual issues. Interaction is communication in real time. Digital media emphasize the idea of interactivity, people's own experience of simulation on their body. The body is exposed to a new perception of space. Yet interactive operating procedures and interface experimentation also provide the possibility of rethinking the very relationships between sense organs, rethinking their roles.

CV

Wolfgang Strauss is architect and professor for interactive media studies at the School of Fine Arts Saarbrücken, Germany. Strauss studied Architecture at the Academie of Fine Arts Berlin and has held teaching positions at the HDK and at the KHM Media Art School Cologne. He was co-founder of ART+COM, Berlin in 1988. Strauss and his partners' (Monika Fleischmann, Christian A. Bohn) work has been included in exhibitions and festivals of new media art worldwide, awarded in 1992 at Ars Electronica with the Golden Nica, nominated for the Unesco Award 1993.

email: strauss@gmd.de, http://viswiz.gmd.de/projects/art/art.html

Media: S-VHS PAL Video, 2x Slidesprojector, Internet via beamer

__________________________________________________________________

#Joachim Sauter, Dirk Luesebrink

Time in Space - Space in Time

VR enables us to communicate information in space. A main question thereby is which metaphors are we developing to organise this information and which metaphors will be developped to navigate and interact in this infospace. Two main approaches to this question are discussed in the project " Space in Time - Time in Space." As an example to visualise this two strategies we have choosen the organisation of historical Filmmaterial according to the place and time where an when they were shot.

The first, and very common approach is to use a copy of the real world as an organisation-metaphor. In our project we are using several historical conditions of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin in form of 3-D models and areal shots, ("Space in Time")

The second approach is based on the parametrisation of the information and a specifique strategie to transform this parameters into a spacial object. In our case the infoarchitecture is created from the camera attributes associated to a certain film sequence. Atributes used are position/movement, point of interest and field of view. These leads to structures representing Time-Space which can be read and interacted with by the user intuitivly. (Time in Space")

These Filmobjects are then organised according to their place and time of origin in the historical citylayers. By time-traveling in this cityspace the user is able to navigate to the filmobjects and to interact with their timespace-structure in order to understand spacial and historical relationships.

CV

Dirk Luesebrink, born 1964, studied computer science at Berlin Technical University and was a Cofounder of ART+COM, Berlin. Together with Joachim Sauter he was awarded at the Ars Electronica '92 with their interactive installation "Zerseher".

email: crux: artcom.de

Joachim Sauter is Gestalter, Creative Director, Cofounder and Chairman of ART+COM, Professor for Digital Media at the Academie of Fine Arts, Berlin.

email: js@artcom.de

http://www.artcom.de/projects/timespace/timespace.en.shtml

Media: Video, Internet via beamer

__________________________________________________________________

#Gerhard Schmitt

Real Time Space, Algorithmic Space

I would like to report on SCULPTOR, a real time space generator, and

TRACE, an interactive algorithmic instrument for building non-physical urban spaces in the Internet. Designing, programming, and working with SCULPTOR has changed the perception of space, time, and design. It is more than a traditional CAD instrument in that it changes the process of design itself. On the scale of building objects, creating spaces from the inside out in real time is a quite natural activity even for non-architects. The results

are surprising in that the generated spaces are different from spaces designed by hand or with traditional CAD tools: they are conceptually richer and spatially more interesting.

(David Kurmann http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~kurmann/sculptor/short.html).

While these are experiences from working with more than 200 students

so far, the concept of interactive algorithmic space has a potentially even larger base of users. In the exhibition "The Archaeology of the future City" in the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art we built the interactive installation TRACE. The energy that creates TRACE is the motivation for the individual visitor or client to represent her or himself by leaving TRACEs and to read and interpret TRACEs of other visitors. The space that can

be experienced represents the state of the system at the time of the login. It emerges through a constant information exchange between a database, that stores and indexes the TRACEs through an event agent, and a geometry generator which displays the spaces.

(Florian Wenz and Fabio Gramazio: http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/trace).

CV

Prof. Gerhard Schmitt, Chair for Architecture and CAAD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zürich, offers courses in design computing and programming with emphasis on new design methods and media. He has previously taught Computer Aided Architectural Design at Carnegie Mellon University and as a visiting professor at Harvard

University. Schmitt has established a new CAAD curriculum and infrastructure at ETH Zürich. He is Dean of the Faculty and the Department of Architecture for the academic years of 1994/96. He established the Architectural Space Laboratory at ETH, where he and his junior

faculty research group develop a virtual design environment for architecture. His main research interest is the development of intelligent design support systems. Schmitt has authored and edited several books, the latest being "Architectura et Machina".

email: schmitt@arch.ethz.ch, http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~schmitt

Media: Video, Internet via beamer

__________________________________________________________________

#Gerhard Eckel

Virtual Architecture as Medium for the Exploration of Music

The articulation of architectural and musical space is motivated by a compositional approach centered around the idea of open form. In this context, composition is not any longer understood as an activity yielding a musical text, which needs to be interpreted by musicians in order to become perceivable by the audience. Music is not any longer conceived in form of finite units but in terms of models capable of producing a potentially infinite number of variants. Performing such music is closer to exploring an object or space than to interpreting a text. The problem of open form, which has a long tradition in twenties century music, is

reformulated through this conception of composition inspired by possibilities offered bynew media technology. By the means of navigable visual representations of architecturally organised space, the audience is enabled to interactively explore an open composition. Sensible connections between the visible and audible space guide the exploration and suggest directions to be taken.

CV

Gerhard Eckel is trained as a musicologist, composer, and sound engineer. He carried out his thesis research work in the field of psychoacoustics at the Sound Department of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1989, he received his doctorate in musicology from the University of Vienna. Research grants brought him to the Institute for Sonology at the

University of Utrecht and to IRCAM, the contemporary music department of the PompidouCenter in Paris. As a researcher he specialized on computer music software technology. He worked for 7 years at IRCAM where he directed the Interfaces and Sound Representation Group from 1994-96. His main interest, the articulation of art and technology, is also the driving force behind his compositional work which is focused on music installations. In 1995 he spent 3 months as composer in residence at the Banff Centre for the Artsworking on a VR-based music installation. This summer he joined the Visualization and Media Systems Design Group of the German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) where he is working on integrated simulation of image and sound in

VR applications.

email: eckel@gmd.de

Media: PowerMac, System 7.5, Quicktime, CD-ROM, 24 Mb DRAM, min 500 Mb diskspace. Stereo amplifier (e.g. 2x 100W) + 2 HIFI loudspeakers.

__________________________________________________________________