Week Two - Virtual

The idea of "virtual" is a concept which immediately brings to mind the use "technology". As our group explored the term, we began to realise how dependant we are on such devices as the internet, media and communication devices. Perhaps it is these devices which help establish said "virtual Architecture".

Some early responses to the following question; How does virtual architecture benefit Australia" included Productivity, Convenience, Communication and Connectivity. These four elements we felt would form the basis for further architectural strategies incorporating Virtual as a theme.

Other virtual technologies which have been utilized by almost everyone in today's metropolitan society is the use of mobile technology which integrates social media and social networking ie Facebook. Within this virtual technology is the ability to ‘Check-In’ giving users a scarily accurate recount of the geographic position of anyone at any time.

This technology is such that If everyone’s location is tracked, a virtual fabric or layer can be added to society. The use of this technology for information and security purposes also was discussed, yet our group was concerned this may start to imitate elements of ‘Big Brother’ - many social issues with that.

One of our group member’s Nick Gonsalves had done a past assignment which incorporated similar technology into the public transport system – giving users of this technology an up to date / real time interaction with city council activities, transport and events. This is another element, which could perhaps be added to the virtual layer of a city, helping to improve the convenience and accessibility of the built environment.

Adding to this, the more recent introduction of Augment Reality technologies could also play a strong role in the formation of a new digital architecture. Current utilization extends only to being able to visually interpret vaster amounts of information through a camera and digital screen of projection device, but this idea could be taken much further, and expanded to create a new Virtual world.

Films such as The Matrix, Inception and Tron touch on this concept, where the idea of being able to live and functioning a totally virtual world begin to seem plausible. With the aid of certain boundaries, both physically and technologically, spaces can easily be formed, manipulated within a closed loop system.

We began drawing the kind of shapes that we felt exemplified this kind of physical ‘container’ for such activitie. The Mobius Strip is the most simple example of a such a geometry, and could perhaps become quite iconic.

• A model can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a loop. InEuclidean space there are in fact two types of Möbius strips depending on the direction of the half-twist: clockwise and counterclockwise. The Möbius strip is therefore chiral, which is to say that it has "handedness" (right-handed or left-handed).

The art works, drawings and concepts of MC Escher provided some inspiration also, where his ‘closed loop’ drawings , whilst being deceiving, are exactly the kind of physical systems which need to be put in place to allow such virtual realities to b explored whilst basically stationary in the one room.

Public spaces such as libraries, museums, parks and malls could all exist purely as a physical container which utilizes this virtual, augmented reality technology, where by one or many more people can co-exist and activate the space at one time.