The Virtual Dimension

A R C H I T E C T U R E ,
Beckmann
R E P R E S E N T A T I O N , A N D C R A S H C U L T U R E edited by John
The Virtual Dimension
 edited by John Beckmann

The Virtual Dimension

Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS NEW YORK

Supported in part by the Graham Foundation for PUBLISHED BY

Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Princeton Architectural Press

37 East Seventh Street
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IMAGES ON PAGES II-VII:

ENIAC COMPUTER Copyright © 1998 John Beckmann

1945: The primary reason to build the ENIAC was a
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required between two and four thousand individual tra-

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CREDITS The virtual dimension : architecture, representation,

xiv, xv, xvi: Photographs by Edgerton Germeahausen and crash culture / edited by John Beckmann. —
and Grier, Inc. (EG&G) for the Atomic Energy Com- 1st ed.
mission. 26: Photograph by Patrick Demarchelier p. cm.
courtesy Harper’s. 61–2: Cyberforce 2, no. 21 ISBN 1-56898-120-1 (alk. paper)
(May 1996). Cyberforce is tm and copyright Top 1. Architecture—Technological innovations.
Cow Productions, Inc., 1996, all rights reserved. 2. Architectural design—Data processing.
78–83: Courtesy D’Amelio Terras. 178: Courtesy 3. Architectural practice. I. Beckmann, John.
UPI/Corbis-Bettman. 188–93: Courtesy Julie NA2543.T43V57 1998
Saul Gallery. 333-334, 338 top: T. Figallo. 720’.1’05—DC21 97-24469
336 left: K. Nozawa. 336 right: M. Mutschlechner. CIP
337: S. Hunter. 338 bottom: M. Kitagawa.
339: T. Shinoda.
 Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XIII

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS 1

John Beckmann

FLESH SPACE 18

Stahl Stenslie

“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS 26

IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

Frances Dyson

THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE 46

Margaret Wertheim

V I R T U A L R E P R E S S I O N : H O L LY W O O D ’ S 62

CYBERSPACE AND MODELS OF THE MIND

Claudia Springer

REALITY 78

photographs by Erica Baum

 THE SENSES HAVE NO FUTURE 84
Hans Moravec

THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND 96

THE CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

Matthew Aaron Taylor

OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE? 120

UTOPIAS OF THE DIGITAL AGE

Florian Röetzer

CHANGING SPACE: VIRTUAL REALITY 144

AS AN ARENA OF EMBODIED BEING

Char Davies

VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE TEA CEREMONY 156

Michael Heim

ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF 178

ITS VIRTUAL DISAPPEARANCE

Paul Virilio interviewed by Andreas Ruby

PHOTOGRAPHS OF LAS VEGAS 188

Arne Svenson

STRIPPING ARCHITECTURE 194

Mark C. Taylor

ANTITECTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY 204

William J. Mitchell

ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE: THE DESIGN 218

OF ON-LINE COMMUNITIES

Peter Anders
CONTENTS

HYPERSURFACES: SOCIUS FLUXUS 234

Stephen Perrella
x
 xi

CONTENTS
TERMINAL VELOCITIES: THE COMPUTER 242

IN THE DESIGN STUDIO

Stan Allen

A CAPACITY FOR ENDLESSNESS 256

Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos

FRESHH2O EXPO 264

Lars Spuybroek

10_DENCIES 268

Knowbotic Research

MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES, AND INTERFACES 274

Manuel De Landa

THE DIFFERENCE-SCAPE 286

Asymptote

FRAMING THE FOLD: FURNITURE, ARCHITECTURE, 292

G E O G R A P H Y, A N D T H E P U R S U I T O F T H E V I R T U A L

Bernard Cache interviewed by Michael Speaks

LINE PARABLE FOR THE VIRTUAL (ON THE 304

SUPERIORITY OF THE ANALOG)

Brian Massumi

THE DESIRE TO BE WIRED 322

Gareth Branwyn

STELARC: THE EVOLUTIONARY ALCHEMY OF REASON 334

Brian Massumi

SEEING WITH YOUR EYES 342

an email discussion between Vivian Sobchack and John Beckmann

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 357

 Acknowledgments

For the interzone nomads of space-time:

William S. Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze + Félix Guattari

I WOULD LIKE to thank the following people who in innumerable ways have
made this book possible. First, to all of the brilliant contributors without
whom this book would not be what it is, Margaret Janik for being my mirror,
Stephen Perrella for his cantankerous late-night phone calls, Marcos Novak
for his initial pivotal discussions, Chris Romero and Brian Kralyevich of Oscil-
lation Digital Design Studio for an excellent job on an aggregate that we just
couldn’t get off the ground, Mark C. Taylor for being réal throughout, Kevin
Clark for being the pusher, Emmylou Harris/Daniel Lanois, Lucinda
Williams, and the McGarrigles for keeping me company, The Graham Foun-
dation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for their generous support,
Kevin Lippert for his encouragement, Mark Lamster for the arduous task of
editing this beast, Sara Stemen for her design, and the entire staff at Princeton
Architectural Press, my parents Margaret and Norman Beckmann who
undoubtedly were sent from heaven, and finally to my daughter Kyra who is
pure sunshine.
I would also like to thank the following companies for letting
me test drive some of their stuff: Alias/Wavefront Inc., Apple Computer
Inc., Autodessys Inc., Diehl Graphsoft Inc., Engineered Software, Graphisoft
U.S. Inc., Microsoft/Softimage Inc., Pixar Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc., Strata
Inc., Yonowat S.A.
The end of the spectacle brings with it the
collapse of reality into hyperrealism, the meticulous
reduplication of the real, preferably through
another reproductive medium such as advertising
or photography. Through reproduction from one
medium into another the real becomes volatile, it
becomes the allegory of death, but it also draws
strength from its own destruction, becoming the
real for its own sake, a fetishism of the lost object
which is no longer the object of representation, but
the ecstasy of the degeneration and its own ritual
extermination: the hyperreal.

—Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death

Nevada proving ground—complete destruction of house no.1

located 3,500 feet from ground zero, from the 17 March 1953

atom blast at Yucca Flat. The only source of light was that

from the bomb.

 Merge Invisible Layers

JOHN BECKMANN

If we release the silicon mosquito from the silicon chip, it flies off and we

cannot find it again, it’s very small, like dust.

HIROFUMI MIURA, A PROFESSOR OF MECHANO-INFORMATICS

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO1

I W A L K A R O U N D the city streets for days on end. I have come to see the world

in wire-frame, always from multiple points of view: from plan, elevation, sec-
tion, and sometimes from a birds-eye perspective. I calculate the number of
polygons, the needed texture maps, camera paths, and the radiosity factors
required to construct and animate any given scene. I study the subtleties in
light—its shimmering, almost hallucinatory mosaic refracting off intersecting
planes of concrete, mirror, and glass, against the crush of urban landscape,
amid the splinters of a broken sky.
For years I’ve resided in the branch-shaped housing sector on
Wernher von Braun Boulevard. It’s the one with the Booleaned windows, the
endless Bezier curves, the multiple light extrusions, and the numerous means
of escape. Some might call them entrances. Ramps like shoots, crisscrossing
warped staircases, balconies pried open with spines extending out in all direc-
tions. Nevertheless, it is a home, it is my home of, and to, pure information.
 A cathedral of light, if you will, of prefabricated carbon-fiber and lightweight
synthetic thermal resins; equipped with stereo-immersive walls and motion
sensors that respond via a bodynet to my ever shifting loci of desires and needs;
continuously morphing by means of mu brainwave emissions into twisted
algorithmic forms that are never in repose. It is a writhing psychic vessel of my
disembodied senses and multiple hovering eyes, a taut mirror to both the inner
and outer vectors, of surfaces within surfaces that unfold toward infinity.
My body is one and several. I change identity with the click of a
keystroke. Shifting from male to demure Lolita, to a frolicking strawberry
shortcake—I put a spell on you. You download a virus. I download cyberfemi-
nist cut-ups, as information travels at one-trillion-bits-per-second through
optical fiber. Autonomous intelligence filters (bots) seek and replicate all the
electrons fit to transmit via the datamesh called the Internet. My self-replicat-
ing agents return home like omnivorous Pac-Men from an ever expanding
digital killing field with the desired bytes and bits in tow. I have gone full-cir-
cle searching for some arcane piece of information—a piece to complete the
fractal puzzle. The doubling, or interleaving of reality, is a squeamish electro-
mechano affair between the virtual and the real. I experience a split. I’m loop-
ing the loop on a slippery thrill ride, incessantly riding on the “go-go”
in-between. The psychic spin: my spirit whirls. That real-time streaming of
potentialities, which has thoroughly kicked butt, like a schism break mecha-
nism or Gaussian blur. That old hat “line of fright” has got me under its spell.
Freeze frame. Instant replay. Cutting and pasting. Dragging and clicking. For-
ever coding in the margins. It’s a feeding frenzy for virtual avatars. I sense that
it’s somehow too late, that I preach to the scan-converted, to those who will
never become lost.
Let’s go to the video tape...
JOHN BECKMANN

THE GAP (NOT THE STORE)

At the beginning of his authoritative work, A History of Civiliza-

tions, Fernand Braudel wrote that “Civilizations, vast or otherwise, can always
be located on a map...to discuss civilization is to discuss space, land and its con-
2
 3

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

tours.”2 Now there is no map, and any remaining geographical contours are sig-
nificantly blurred or have officially collapsed. Multinational corporations (some
significantly larger than many countries) and the blind market forces of late
capitalism have fabricated a borderless accelerated space based solely around the
transformation, manipulation, and flow of capital. Silently, the world has
slipped out from under us as we dreamt our televised dreams, our souls
shanghied by a culture of greed that is adrift on a reality that has become
severely overexposed. We now confront a reality that has become psychically
overstuffed; a mad accumulation of reality that is bifurcating between the real as
we know it, and the teleschizoid assemblages that we have yet to fully formulate.
To speak of, or to even attempt to visualize form now, one must
contemplate its antithesis. Meta-attributes have replaced physical attributes:
metaquery, metacontent, metasymbols, and metaplace. Though the dream is
seemingly at hand, this electronic reality exists remotely—in the netherworld
of earth orbiting satellite links, communication servers, the Internet and
intranets, and so on. We have, in effect, fallen outside of ourselves, as the once
hard distinction between remote and local stages become even further dis-
persed, and the exposure intervals between time and space, inside and outside,
mind and body, imaginary and real are no longer quantifiable factors.
This current transitory condition floats on a heuristic logic of its
own making, as the real becomes thoroughly interleaved with the artificial. We
“surf ” on the flows of a hypernothingness state; hemophiliacs in search of some
image clotting machine, careening around the outermost edge of a teflon
coated information vortex; like junkies in need of a quick sensory fix. Finally,
we have arrived at the manifest destination: the eternal return—like a snake
devouring its own tale. In topology, this would be equivalent to a self-intersec-
tion on a nonorientable surface. A Klein bottle cannot be embedded in three-
space, but it can be immersed there.

2:14:37 am. Any representation of reality is tantamount to the ultimate user

dungeon.
 The virtual dimension has triggered a decisive cognitive rupture with the very
notion and relevance of the Newtonian conception of space. It is a profoundly
radicalized break. A break that in many respects is analogous to the space
Brunelleschi and others opened up in the fifteenth century by developing the
language of linear perspective. Perspectival law fixed the viewer in one place.
Centuries later, perspective (a singular point of view) eventually gave way to
analytical cubism (all-at-once, multiple, and simultaneous points of view), as
developed by Picasso and Braque. Cubism was the first art movement that was
synchronous with the multidimensionality that characterized the new scien-
tific theories of relativity formulated by Einstein and Bohr.
With the development of immersive and augmented environ-
ments we have indeed reached a strange new plateau in the human condition,
as we rapidly transit from analog to digital modalities. These are zones of pure
simultaneity, absolute simulation, instability, and instant electronic transmis-
sion. All representations of the physical, if desired, can be removed—no van-
ishing point and no horizon. The once stable laws of time and space have been
effectively rendered null and void; entropic delirium slips across the curvatures
of time. Space is no longer something one moves through—space now moves
through us.
In other words, in case you’ve had your sensor buried somewhere
deep within the bowels of the earth, we have already gone virtual: the limits of
the physical realm have been eclipsed by the digital. Advanced technologies
have not only caught up with reality, they have in many ways surpassed it. We
are inhabitants of the ether: the constellations of the visible world have
merged with the screen. In a century immersed in the magic of technological
acceleration, the very scaffoldings of perception have become transparent to
our willful gaze.
JOHN BECKMANN

ACTIVEMATRIX

° Biometrics: The EyeDentification 2 0 0 1 retinal scanning ter-

minal from EyeDentify recognizes an individual’s retinal vascular pattern in
4
 5

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

less than five seconds.3 On 2 0 May 1 9 9 6, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar
announced that the state had launched the nation’s first retinal eye scanning
project to identify eligible welfare clients and prevent fraud.4

° On November 11, 1997 the Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac

implanted an identification microchip with nine digits into his ankle and reg-
istered himself with a databank in the United States via the Internet. “Replac-
ing the traditional branding with a hot iron, the microchip—a transponder
tag—is used to identify and recover lost or stolen animals.”5 Implanting the
chip in Kac’s ankle intentionally referenced the fact that the ankle has tradi-
tionally been a part of the body that has been chained or branded.

° Naked City: The Federal Aviation Administration will begin

testing the use of a full-body 3 6 0 degree holographic imaging system at a
United States airport. The system, developed by Pacific Northwest, uses mil-
limeter waves to quickly generate a naked image of the scannee. Pacific North-
west is hot at work on developing x-ray specs using the same holographic
technology.

° Nanomusic: The world’s smallest guitar (about the size of a single

human cell) carved out of crystalline silicon has been made at Cornell Univer-
sity to demonstrate a new technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber
optics, displays, sensors, and electronics. If plucked—by an atomic force micro-
scope, for example—the strings would resonate, but at inaudible frequencies.6

° Mind over Cursor: Scientists at the New York State Department

of Health in Albany recently showed that it is possible for a person using brain
wave control alone to move a computer cursor around a display screen. Dr.
Jonathan Wolpaw, who heads the group, is looking for differences that can be
used by a disabled subject to communicate with the outside world without
moving or speaking. The system looks at natural mu brainwave emissions, fluc-
 tuations from the part of the brain called the sensorimotor cortex. A computer
applies a mathematical technique called a Fourier transform to detect and
measure the signal a subject attempts to transmit along these fluctuations. A
subject is presented with a computer screen divided into quadrants, with the
cursor starting out in the center. The experimenter randomly picks one of the
four general directions, and by force of will, the subject tries to move the cur-
sor in that directions to one of the four corners of the screen. Similar tech-
niques may one day allow an airplane pilot to operate certain controls merely
by thinking, and an Air Force program at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
7
is already engaged in such experiments.

° ImmersaWork: A tele-immersive networked application is being

developed for the coming Internet 2 by the National Tele-Immersion Initiative.
“An initial network of at least four Tele-Immersion sites will be put in place.
Each of these will have a “telecubicle”....A telecubicle is an office that can
appear to become one quadrant in a larger shared virtual office space. Four tele-
cubicles can be joined in virtual space so that each forms a quadrant of a larger
virtual whole. The desk surfaces line up to form a large table in the middle of the
virtual shared room. Virtual objects and data can be passed through the walls
8
between participants, and placed on the shared table in the middle for viewing.

° Low-Earth Orbiting Satellites: Teledesic Corporation, backed

by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and cellular telephone tycoon Craig McCaw,
promises to launch an “Internet in the Sky” by the year 2 0 0 2. As planned
today, the system would use 2 8 8 satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Teledesic
claims that its customers will be able to download data at a speedy 2 8
megabits-per- second—one thousand times faster than an ordinary telephone
connection, from anywhere in the world.9 If you were to connect the dots
JOHN BECKMANN

between the satellites they would resemble a huge dome encasing the globe.

The Global Positioning System (GPS), consisting of twenty-

four operational satellites in six sidereal orbital planes, encircles the earth and
6
 7

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

can pin-point our precise physical whereabouts with startling accuracy. Every
square meter of the globe has been mapped and digitized by high-altitude
photography. Consequently, it has become increasingly impossible in our sur-
veillance-ridden society to even get lost: “The last bit of Earth unclaimed by
any nation-state was eaten up in 1 8 9 9. Ours is the first century without terra
10
incognita, without a frontier.”
This progressive and continual derealization of nature has led to
a scientific reterritorialization of the world itself. Our bodies, from the cellular,
to the subcellular, to the molecular level, are in effect becoming crystalline.
Researchers at IBM can manipulate single atoms, various nanotechnology
research teams have successfully bonded gold with DNA (an accomplishment
that may lead to new forms of electrical conduction). Medical surgeons will
routinely wield remote-control scalpels and perform telepresence operations.
And when the Human Genome Project is completed by 2 0 0 5, our entire
genetic blueprint will fit onto the side of a single CD-ROM, and the genetic
foundations of any biological question will be a major step closer to being sig-
nificantly decoded. These are some of the misfortunes (or little miracles) of the
present age. They exist as parameters of artifice, as mass dissolves into data in
the boundless age of the MetaMillennium®.

[ESC]

Television and computer screens have become my replacement

windows on the world. Their flickering vistas do not offer me apertures of
transcendence, or even escape. Ultimately, I’m led back to my monstrous and
ever hyperaccelerating self, which floats in a digital ouroboros as information
traveling at the speed of light devours itself as quickly as it can be produced.
The postcapitalist-schizo is an accumulating production machine that whirls
in the “real-time” digital casino of short-term interest rates, leveraged buyouts,
and skyrocketing corporate profit margins. By adding I have eradicated func-
tion, as I participate in constructing a veritable electroMERZ. Stop in at the
drive-thru McDonald’s on the way to the Seremetyevo Airport 1, on the way
to…
 2:34:23 am. I’m witness to some of the symptomatic signs of an adrenaline
rush as I give up the ghost, as virtual rigor mortis kicks in, and digital ecto-
plasm spews from my carpal tunnel-ridden hands.1 1

[Section Deleted]

RELOADING...

MetaModernity™ and the death of the future began in

Hiroshima on 6 August 1 9 4 5, at exactly 8:15 in the morning. In a brilliant
flash the temperature of the air reached 3,000 –4,000 degrees Celsius. The
shadows of the living were rayographed onto the surface of the earth by heat
rays hotter than anything previously imagined. The sheer incomprehensibility
of this massive obliteration of human life has set the hive mind reeling to this
day. To move on from the psychic paralysis of that catastrophe is now the ulti-
mate goal of any “user-friendly” condition, post-“Little Boy” blues.

GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM

When the first images of Earth taken by American astronauts

were fed back to us, that vivid image of our planet as a lonely orb floating in
the vastness of space reinforced our growing perception of human beings as a
single distinct race. It gave us a narcissistic vision of wholeness and reinforced
our belief in the utopian expansiveness of unlimited technological progress.
Man on the moon: the looking glass effect. It was mankind’s first global out-
of-body experience. Reality itself was pulled inside out. It was a staggering
accomplishment. This “impossible event” coincided with tremendous social
upheavals taking place back on Spaceship Earth: political assassinations, the
drug and sexual revolutions, the women’s liberation movement, race riots in
JOHN BECKMANN

San Francisco and Detroit, student marches in Europe and the United States,
the Vietnam War, and so forth. It was a time of swift and overwhelming
change as chthonic fissures rippled through every strata of society.
The utopian dreams of the Space Age collapsed in a mere 7 3
8
 9

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

seconds when the Challenger crew plummeted to their deaths in a fiery crash
as millions of school children looked on in disbelief. This stillborn disillusion-
ment with “getting off ” Spaceship Earth has forced us to rechannel our
desires. It is no longer possible to blast our problems into deep space.
But we are hastily taking them into cyberspace. At AlphaWorld,
one of the first VRML (virtual reality modeling language) communities, set-
tlers have already formed the first gang, called The Order, a name taken from
the neo-Nazi group in the race-war novel The Turner Diaries. “Its members
have discovered how to use aliases on line and then, using other people’s names,
have cursed and taunted some settlers. Russ Freelander, who is one of the few
AlphaWorld settlers with the power to destroy structures, has occasionally gone
out to The Order’s headquarters at coordinates 6 6 6 North, 0 West to erase
profanity. The Order has fought back by erecting a castle and a wall on which
13
they post insults against Freelander and demands for freedom of expression.”
To venture into cyberspace with your own personality is insuffi-
cient. You need to cultivate multiple yous, avatars, and partial derivatives. You
need to construct a new surface, a new territory, on which to project your desires.

DEVELOPING AN ON-LINE PERSONALITY

Have you ever wanted to develop an on-line personality? This

seminar will give you the opportunity to take an approach for creating a char-
acter for the Internet. You will learn how to successfully promote your charac-
ter and what is and is not believable. Topics include: historical overview; what
is an on-line personality?; what makes for a good on-line personality and for
believable characters?1 3

[Cut to a slow-motion panning shot of some Germans selling

chunks of the Berlin wall to Japanese tourists.] The Wall is gone, though its
presence, its trace, still remains. Ask any German.

U S E I T O R L O S E I T:

A billion-dollar fitness industry now caters to our alienation and

 obsession with inertness and the art of staying in place: Stairmasters, tread-
mills, bicycling machines, rowing machines, and so forth. As electrons replace
the physical need for “being there,” and as our bodies are required for less and
less manual labor, it becomes readily apparent that the trend in our culture
toward excessive exercise is not merely a passing fad. We unconsciously intuit
the need to keep our bodies strong and healthy. As the regime of invisible tech-
nologies takes logistic grip, we are developing an even more obsessive appetite
for sculpting and morphing our physical selves. Not just through exercise but
through the indiscriminate use of plastic surgery. We crave to shape skin and
bone as effortlessly as we manipulate pixels on our screens. Perhaps it’s not
strictly narcissism at work, but a latent drive in the species to avoid utter
extinction, a denial of our own mortality.

[I leave my home seduced by the horizon of the distant, but my

body accelerates into obsolescence. I have no place—or that place is every-
where. This absence of place has created binary encoded spaces of death. Not
frozen, but seamlessly enfolded. An erosion of trajectories, like an ancient
wound. I draw a thousand lines across the void.]

THE GREAT MOTHER

The anarchic Internet, a bastion of antiquated Cold War-era

technology when fused with LEO satellite technology will become our collec-
tive exonervous system, the perfect host organism as “the network itself has
become the computer,” the “Great Mother,” capable of storing and relaying all
the knowledge and information we can throw at it. It will eventually wrap
Spaceship Earth like a vast Borgesian library of the absurd. A Dewey Decimal
System based on the binary reduction of zeros and ones. “If you could only see
what I’ve seen with your eyes.”1 4 We generate content now just to watch it
JOHN BECKMANN

die. We get off on the petite meta-morte in the temporal space of the chronic
surface, amid the illusion of a global community.
William Gibson, the writer who coined the term “cyberspace,”
recently wrote: “Post-industrial creatures of an information economy, we
10
 11

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

increasingly sense that accessing media is what we do. We have become
terminally self-conscious. There is no such thing as simple entertainment.
We watch ourselves watching Beavis and Butt-head, who are watching
15
rock videos.”
Is it no surprise that as the dawn of the nonlocalised MetaMil-
lennium® nears, “the more fluently we manage to reproduce ourselves, and our
worlds, the more fleeting seems our embrace”?1 6 Metascenes...duplicates of
duplicates ad infinitum…we already don’t really see, we scan, as the vortex-like
datamesh delivers a mirage of information-as-knowledge to our retinas at
warp speed.

GIMME A VIRTUAL JESUS

In the summer of 1 9 9 5, the first retail store selling VR equip-

ment opened its doors in Indianapolis. Virtually Yours is wedged between a
pizza parlor and a laundromat in a small shopping center on the city’s north-
east outskirts. A businessman who stumbled upon the store when he and his
son went out for pizza saw the potential for education...he asked Virtually
Yours to supply expertise and equipment to Sunship Ministries as a marketing
tool for getting developing countries to welcome them. “[We] could let people
17
interact with a virtual Jesus.”
Holographic VR and haptic telepresence environments emerge
as the inevitable extension of our screen-driven selves. No longer content to
experience the idea of nothingness, we now want to inhabit it directly, like a
luminous presence spiraling out of thin air. In our increasingly artificial
cocoons, we acclimate to the Hertzian light that replaces natural daylight. Our
newly founded digital reflection is not merely a limit, but rather a rite of pas-
sage, a transition into what Hakim Bey has called “a temporary autonomous
zone,” as we shift seamlessly between “the real” and ever more illusionary
worlds. We suffer from a boundary loss that is screen-like by nature—amor-
phous—and hangs silently on a binary code that sublimely replicates death.
Slow death delivered by zeros and ones on the Home Shopping Network sim-
ulator channel.
 The gratifications and excitement of upward mobility threaten to
abandon us to the unraveling inner spaces of our own psychic rootlessness, just
as our “culture of bits” threatens to absorb the space where we take place. And
this disappearance, for all intents and purposes, has already happened.
Technology has always evoked new representations of reality. Paul
Virilio has asserted that the creation of virtual images is a crash site: “Cyber-
space is an accident of the real. Virtual reality is the accident of reality itself....
It no longer occurs in matter, but in light or in images...thus, the accident is in
light, not in matter. The creation of a virtual image is a form of accident. This
18
explains why virtual reality is a cosmic accident. It’s the accident of the real.”
Perversely, the advent of the virtual, or “the accident of the real,”
comes just in time to prop up our sagging belief systems. Culturally imbedded
protocols, signs, referents, are endlessly being recycled with the hope that some
overlooked freak mutation will somehow catch fire again. Elvis meets______,
meets______.
Perhaps it is a nostalgic look back on a future that simply didn’t
take place, that we so desperately yearn for. Even at Disney World, former
home to “imagineering” the future, has thrown in the futurist towel. “The new
Tomorrowland begins with Jules Verne and ends with Buck Rogers.”1 9
Clearly, the “Magic Kingdom” would have a hard time pitching a diorama with
multiple mommies and their cloned kids. At Tomorrowland, the future has
sadly turned back in on itself—a kind of “back to the future” approach is being
substituted in its place. It is “a reflection of the ennui that many Americans, at
century’s end, feel about the chips and bits in which they are immersed.”2 0
To this effect, VR offers up a lightscape, a mirror thrust up
through our television screens, enabling a vision quest for our waking discon-
tents and its burden of impossible dreams. Telepresence and remote-sensing
technologies allow us to become at once actors and spectators, transmitters and
JOHN BECKMANN

receivers, the spinning Janus face—in the teeming universal hive mind we now
call cyberspace.
What is the surroundsound of one astral hand clapping in the
frenzied aisles of consumerism? It is the tumultuous condition: the equivocal
12
 13

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

stare of chance upon transferring your consciousness to the ElectroMonad™.

METAPHORIC VESSELS AND THE TOPOLOGIES

OF INDIFFERENCE: ADJUST TO NEW PARAMETERS

A N D C O N S T R U C T D I R E C T LY

Architecture is now invisible, and organizing information is

referred to as architecture. The instrumentalized surface of the interface is an
architecture that lies suspended between silence and the virtual. An electronic
inscription of our extended and blurred bodies, incised onto an event horizon
of no escape. An epoch tossed into a wormhole in the ether. The hyperatro-
phied mortal coil long since forgotten recedes into the network. Forever a gaze
with no center. A gaze that is beyond identity, beyond body—that offers itself
up as pure acceleration. Dilated organs without bodies perhaps, not bodies
without organs. The distributed home bo(d)y©.
Architecture must inevitably hemorrhage in this seismic mix. It
must flow out in other less predictable directions. New spatial aggregates will
require multiple escape routes. A single door for entering and exiting will no
longer suffice. “Riemannian spaces...amorphous collection of pieces that are
juxtaposed but not attached to each other.” Pure patchwork with an infinite
21
porosity of structure, like a sponge.
Formerly, architecture hoarded forms by creating variations of
closure. Freezing the mobility of relations of the in-between by storing an
energy that now can only circulate. It attempted to capture some sort of spatio-
temporal event within a formal framework, an anthropomorphic diagram, an
envelope of recursive cell-like boundaries that mirrored our conception of the
cosmos, and our place within it.
The very development of architectural theory can be likened to
the spread of an image virus, memes that tend to explode out of an emergent
set of embedded and acceptable codes or systems. In other words, they emerge
out of a collectivist soup and are disseminated through various professional
journals, style magazines, and coffee table books. The mark of a great architect
today is judged more by the loud thump their new book makes when it hits the
 boardroom table then by their contributions toward the betterment of society.
Doesn’t the product of architecture in our culture exist as yet another form of
corporate branding, like the latest pair of Nikes stitched up in Indonesia?
Architectural evolution seems to have no foresight, it gropes from one path of
dependence to the next. Architecture moves with the velocity of a slug through
its own waste matter. Will we soon have a trip-hop architecture, an illbient-
itecture, a gangsta-tecture, ad infinitum?

3:15:11 am. The (phant_ms) of architecture haunt me, like an uninter-

rupted sequence of points projected onto the surface of some warped parabola.
With no beginning and no end, a Moebius strip that cannibalizes itself. An
immut-able feedback with a single razor-sharp edge. Spatial organizations
that are all links and no thresholds. A space that aspires to death, yet antici-
pates nothing, constantly retreating. A space that is always becoming the para-
doxical other, constantly superpositioning itself on the whole, an organization
that craves totality like a virus or a burst of lightening.

As the developmental logics of contemporary architecture are being conceived

increasingly more for the display of audiovisual information than for the
framed location of real bodies, a mode of built environments, as overwhelming
as the datameshes that they seek to ground, is now being jettisoned globally.
What then is the fate that awaits architecture when it no longer
requires a roof, structure, walls, windows, or staircases and becomes reduced to
a screen for advertising? When the reversal, doubling, or unfolding of an inte-
rior for an exterior takes place? When the former reflexive relationships
between exterior and interior disclosures become severed, spaces where gravity
itself has been abruptly dislocated, vast infinitely morphing fields/screens of
the convulsive marvelous, as we point and click our way through spatial mem-
JOHN BECKMANN

branes like lab rats in an infinite hyper-Pavlovian maze?

Information as decoration? Karrie Jacobs has ironically observed:
“Some would argue that screens, whether they show video images or computer

14
 15

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

data, are appearing on building walls because they dispense information. I sus-
pect the screens (and their cousins, the news zippers) proliferate because they
represent the look of information...TV sets adorn buildings all over town, and
22
still there’s nothing to watch.”
We are witness to the emergence of architecture and its
“chromed” double, an architecture that casts no shadows. An electro-shadow-
less architecture made by vampires for vampires, forever condemned to live a
soulless immortality in front of the flickering phosphorescent glow of computer
displays as cities crumble around them. An architecture without the presence of
angels in the global space of temporalized flows? The birth of an inbred couture
culture groomed to watch space, rather than to directly participate in it?
It is perhaps at this interval; where the sublimity of nature has
been overwhelmed by the infinity of information, where information itself has
become elevated to a new form of religion, that new kinds of spatial figures will
begin to take into account tectonic strategies, whereby structures are conceived
in a more profound way than mere collage, or the manipulation of historical
fragments. Bed becomes chair becomes table becomes wall becomes room
becomes building becomes infrastructure. Continuous like film, an architec-
ture based on duration and flow, from the actual to the virtual, and from the
virtual to the actual. Of projected and transmitted surfaces within surfaces—
kernels within kernels that forever unravel and surprise. An approach to build-
ing and conceptualizing space that is in tandem to the hyperlink, metaballs,
blobs, and your latest plug-in. I suggest exploring a geometry of the uncanny
surface, of polymorphous porosity, of the topological configuration of the in-
between. Extend out from the middle and move toward the ripples at either
edge of infinity. Move beyond three-space. Take a bite out of time, push the
simultaneous and the porous. Analog method—students take note: fabricate
your next architectural model in poured latex (as a negative), and hang it out to
dry. Stick your arm deep down into the malignancy of the thing—like those
psychic surgeons in Manila, and pull it inside out like a sock. Pull the floors
through the roof, the walls through the light apertures. Now start taking pic-
 tures of your ambitious creation from various angles, plans, elevations, etc.
Have the photographs developed. Stack them neatly on top of one another.
Slice an arch through them from one edge to the other. Place the sectioned
images in sequence, in order of the directional cut. You now have a nice work-
ing diagram of simultaneity. Begin constructing your program from this new
picture of space-time.
The primary task at hand is to illicite new movements toward the
virtual by tripping up repetition, purging habit and reason, and encouraging
difference. The virtual, and this is a point worth clarifying, lies outside the
actual—it exists as a force, not a space. It operates and acts on another plane, in
nother dimension. It is a continuous unfolding on the road to becoming other.
Fold follows fold.
Alternatively, and by contrast, new digital methods for creating
and programming space will undoubtedly be developed based upon advances
in AI (artificial intelligence) research, such as neural-net computers similar to
the kind already in place at NASA’s Langley Research Center. Neural-nets
consist of many control systems, or nodes, interconnected like neurons in the
brain. Each node assigns a weight, or value, to inputs from the other nodes. By
changing values, the neural-net can change the way it responds. A NASA pro-
ject, being designed with the collaboration of Lockheed Martin and the Mis-
sissippi State University, for the “Waverider” Mach 5 airplane is a prime
example of this approach. The “Waverider” prototype incorporates a radical
solution—the plane can teach itself to fly.
This same sort of thinking will be used to generate provocative
new forms. Assemblages that will not rely upon the random egocentric mut-
terings and musings of the designer. Building designs will in fact “self-assem-
ble.” You program in the variables (history, program, site, budget, style), model
and render it in UrSpace™, and bingo! A resin model pops out like a piece of
JOHN BECKMANN

toast from an STL (stereo lithography) machine—you’ve got a slick little pro-
ject. You could even program in a certain amount of indeterminacy, chaos, or
Euler characteristics, if that’s your trip, and hedge the topological envelope.
Go ahead, make a name for yourself, you futurist!
16
 17
NOTES

MERGE INVISIBLE LAYERS

1. Quoted in Andrew Pollack, “Tiny Toyota Utilizes well over three hundred thousand new cases each
New Advances In Micro-machine Technology,” New year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
York Times, 18 November 1996.
12. “Evolution of Virtual Universe Echoes Reality,
2. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Warts and All,” New York Times, 7 February 1996.
Richard Mayn (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 9.
13. Pratt Institute, fall 1997 course catalog, New
3. Rayco Securities World Wide Web site, http:// York, 19.
www.raycosecurity.com/access/EyeDentify.html. For
14. Dialog spoken by the playback tape dealer Lenny
general information on the field of biometrics see
Nero (Ralph Fiennes) from the film Strange Days.
National Computer Security Association’s Biometric
Information World Wide Web site, http://www.ncsa. 15. William Gibson. “The Net is a Waste of Time,”
com/cbdc/cbdc-l.html. New York Times Magazine, 14 July 1996, 31.

4. State of Illinois World Wide Web site, http://www. 16. Hillel Schwartz. The Culture of the Copy: Striking
state.il.us/Gov/press/fraud.htm. Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles (New York:
Zone Books, 1996), 20.
5. Arlindo Machado, “A Microchip Inside the Body,”
Nettime list, 22 February 1998. 17. Barnaby J. Feder. “Selling Virtual Reality, in Indi-
ana,” New York Times, 7 August 1995.
6. Cornell Science World Wide Web site, http://
www.news.cornell.edu/science/July97/guitar.ltb.html. 18. Louise Wilson. “Cyberwar, God and Television:
For information on the field of Nanotechnology, see Interview with Paul Virilio,” CTheory (1995), World
Nanothinc World Wide Web site, http://www.nanoth- Wide Web site, http://www.ctheory.com/a-cyberwar_
inc.com/index.html. god.html

7. Malcolm W. Browne, “How Brain Waves Can Fly 19. Beth Dunlop, quoted in Seth Schiesel, “Once-
a Plane,” New York Times, 7 March 1995. See Visionary Disney Calls the Future a Thing of the
also, Jonathan R. Wolpaw and Dennis J. McFarland, Past,” New York Times, 23 February 1997. “The new
“Multichannel EEG-Based Brain-Computer Communi- Tomorrowland begins with Jules Verne and ends with
cation,” Electroencephalography & Clinical Neuro- Buck Rogers.”
physiology 90 (1994): 444–9.
20. Ibid.
8. National Tele-Immersive Initiative World Wide Web
21. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand
site: http://io.advanced.org/tele-immersion/
Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN:
9. Teledesic Corporation World Wide Web site, http:// University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 485.
www.teledesic.com
22. Karrie Jacobs. “Video Killed the Gargoyle,” New
10. Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous York Magazine (17 February 1997), 24–7.
Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (New
York: Automedia, 1991).

11. Repetitive Strain Injury has emerged as the lead-

ing occupational injury in America, accounting for
 Flesh Space

STAHL STENSLIE

PRESENT CYBERSPACES ARE pristine and monosensory. They disembody the

user through glossy cheap polygons and sensorially insulting bitrates. Rarely is
the virtual dimension mixed with bodily fluids and designed as a holistic, multi-
sensory body experience. And why should the stirring hot bits of cyberspace
remain within the interface? If the virtual dimension is to impress its users
beyond the shallow (monosensory) surface of current interface technologies—
and immerse users in what the hype promises—a direct, corporal link is
required. Future communication will go beyond the interface as we know it. Not
into an absurd “uploading of the body” or the disappearance of the body in
information, but rather in the re-emerging of the body as interface; an unpre-
dictable, unreliable, unstable, and emotional interface, susceptible to hormonal
flux and biological decay, but with a “fuzzy” logic guaranteeing information
digestion/exchanges in bit rates higher than any contemporary, “logic” interface.
 STAHL STENSLIE

20
 21

FLESH SPACE
Presently the interface restricts our experience. Visual simula-
tions give us only a small window into the virtual dimension. If (visual) simu-
lations function as convincing experiences, it is predominantly due to the
phenomenon of consensual hallucinations; the participants agree to believe in
the mediated illusions. The cognitively induced deception of perception is a
useful phenomenon for visual simulations, but why not extend the psycho-
physical relationships between the real and virtual worlds and mold deadly and
sensuous phenomena into the virtual dimension? A rock thrown at you in VR
is not a rock until it hits your head and hurts.
Solve et Coagula is primarily an attempt to give birth to a new life
form: half digital, half organic. Through a multisensory interface the installa-
tion networks the human with an emotional, sensing, and artificially intelli-
gent creature; it mates man with a machine turned human and everything that
goes with it: ecstatic, monstrous, perverted, craving, seductive, hysterical, vio-
lent, and beautiful.

WIRING MAN AND MACHINE

Technologically it is extremely hard to link man and machine

in a nonobtrusive way. Present tactile technologies rely on mechanical
stimulation of the body through the use of small vibrators, pneumatic devices,
heat-pads, electrical currents. Manipulation techniques are comparatively
coarse, and they will remain so until wetware like biochips, brain/nerve
implants, gentech and nanotech appear.
The Solve et Coagula project wires the user and the machine
through a lightweight body suit, a head-mounted display with a headtracker, a
microphone and a three-dimensional audio interface. The bodysuit is equipped
with 1 2 8 effectors (tactile outputs), pressure sensitive joints, and two hand-
held pressure pads. The effectors, which provide tactile stimulus are specially
built vibrators pressed against the body by the bodysuit. Some are attached to
strings to distribute the vibrations in various ways. The strength of the effec-
tors’ output is variable. They are placed around the whole body and in such
positions that they cover both the most touch sensitive and touch signific
zones.
 STAHL STENSLIE

22
 23

FLESH SPACE
The artificial intelligence expresses emotions and touches users
through the triggering of the effectors in various patterns. It embraces the
user, giving the human component a feeling of its different virtual bodies ren-
dered real.

TACTILE FLESH

The bodysuit conveys a range of pull-push sensations that

impress the user with a sense of the creature’s bodily presence. The sensory res-
olution measured in number of effectors is low compared to the millions of
nerve endings beneath every square centimeter of skin. However, through the
vast number of possible touch-combinations, the project has developed a body
manipulative touch language of high complexity. It creates feelings ranging
from the pleasurable to the painful, modeling moving objects, tactile shapes
and textures.
The creature senses the user and extracts his or her emotional
state through voice analyses and body tracking (pressure, position of view,
and movement). The aim of mapping the user is to seduce the user’s senses
and manipulate him or her according to the dynamics of the human-machine
life form.

CODED FLESH

The sensory bandwidth of a human is about 11-million bits-per-

second. With emotional interface technology at this bandwidth, flesh can be
coded. As networks grow and become preferred environments in which to
socialize and interact, the private/social sphere will expand and we will grow
familiar with communication on more intimate levels. Tactile communication
will be included as it naturally belongs to the expressive toolbox of human
communication. As the resultant emotional interfaces provide higher band-
width and resolution, sexuality might even become a better metaphor for social
interaction than speech. Sensually corporeal, communication will go beyond
the shallow surface of the visual interface and definitively attract more atten-
tion. And attention is an attractive resource on a Web with millions of sites.
 STAHL STENSLIE

24
 25

FLESH SPACE
Introducing flesh into the virtual dimension will

change the paradigm of computing and communi-

cation. By breaking down the sensory border

between man and machine, the virtual dimension

can be rendered real. Its future interface will not

only be multisensory, it will be emotional.

“A body only exists to be other bodies.”
—William S. Burroughs

from Electronic Revolution (Cambridge, England: Blackmoor Head Press, 1971).

 “Space,” “Being,” and Other

Fictions in the Domain of the Virtual

FRANCES DYSON

W H E N T H E P H I L O S O P H E R Martin Heidegger writes that “the essence of mod-

ern technology is by no means anything technological,” the issues he raises are

fundamentally ontological, dealing with the “being” of being human as much as
1
the being of technology. This link between two “essences”—the human and
the technological—is articulated in the popular discourse on cyberspace: cyber
theorists refer to cyberspace as a “mode of being,” and to the cybernaut as a new
kind of human. What lubricates this coupling is a peculiar blend of rhetoric
and discourse through which “reality” and “space” are affixed to the terms “vir-
tual” and “cyber” as attributes. That these attributes constantly map and regu-
late perceptions of new communications technologies such as the Internet and
the “information superhighway,” and new media forms such as virtual reality
(VR), reveals at the same time a sophisticated marketing strategy, a good deal
of confusion, and a persistent desire to reformulate what counts as existence so
that it will apply with equal gravity to the virtual realm, philosophically and
 culturally situating it beyond any possibility of doubt.2 Thus the “ontology” of
cyberspace does not imply the being of some thing or another, rather it signals
the attempts to assign being as an attribute to these new forms of media and
communications.3 It signals, in other words, a rhetorical maneuver, a play
within the field of metaphor, fantasy, and what William Gibson, in coining the
terms “cyberspace,” identifies as “consensual hallucination.”
Being is a complex assignation: it must take account of the cri-
tiques of Western metaphysics that have been erupting for the last twenty odd
years, yet at the same time establish a ground within that metaphysics in order
to argue the ontological status of virtuality. As a central metaphor within the
notion of being, “space” provides a means of negotiating such a dilemma, hav-
ing sufficient ambiguity to enable the discourse to drift between a cornucopia
of real and mythic spaces, between for instance, the “space of the screen,” the
“space of the imagination,” “outerspace,” “cosmic space,” and literal, three-
dimensional physical “space.” The power of “space” lies in the possibilities it
implies: immersion, habitation, “being-there,” phenomenal plenitude, unmedi-
ated presence, all fall within its domain. Without “space” there can be no con-
cept of presence within an environment, nor, more importantly, can there be
the possibility for authenticity that “being-in-the-world” allows. Heidegger
aside, many proponents of virtuality recognize nonetheless that authentic
being, “being-there,” generates what is possibly the last bastion of hope against
the fear and cynicism that pervades late-twentieth-century culture, transform-
ing the gloss of technological progress into another form of toxic overlay.
Where a distrust of print and broadcast media—especially television—signals
a general critique of representation, virtuality claims to have superseded the
mediation of the screen and the passivity/control of the televisual apparatus.
Where an excess of computation and simulation—deposited via the cold glare
of the ATM screen and the fake frills of ersatz home and apple pie—has pro-
FRANCES DYSON

duced a fear of the loss of the real, virtuality provides the warm glow of cyber
companionship and the physicality of interactive environments. Where anxiety
about the reductive and quantitatively determined representations of science

28
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

seem to coalesce in the binary logic of the computer, virtuality situates itself
within the new terrains of artificial intelligence (AI), chaos theory, and
biotechnology, as part of a generalized scientific shift that would return the
organic to the mechanistic, the “body” to the mind.
This essay examines the metaphors of space, architecture,
embodiment, and being as they manifest in the rhetoric of virtuality and mate-
rialize in the virtual environments and subjectivities of millennial culture. It
does so by looking first at precedents in the built and media environment that
have helped establish a discourse of immateriality upon which the rhetoric of
virtuality depends; second, at the reformulated metaphysics summoned to
prove, or at least rationalize, what are essentially ontological and epistemolog-
ical claims; third, at the neofuturist and ocularcentric mechanisms that support
the idea of an immersive space in virtual environments; fourth, at the appro-
priation of architectural metaphors that concretize the spatial metaphor, and
finally, at the incorporation of embodiment as a means of confirming the
authenticity, the “being” of cyberspace.

P R E C E D E N T S T O I M M AT E R I A L I T Y.

While represented as an entirely new phenomenon, the virtual

environment, or cyberspace, is not without its historical precedents, nor is it
independent of the particular cultural predispositions that have assisted its
establishment. The past thirty years have seen the proliferation of “non-
places”: the bland shopping malls, indistinguishable airports, megalithic office
blocks, gated communities, theme parks, old-worldly villages, and managed
and coifed “wilderness” areas that, functioning as signs rather than places,
immerse the user in a self-conscious form of ritual bearing little relation to any
actual time or location. Alongside the built environment, the global reach of
television networks saturates world screens with a homogenous stream of
images, sounds, rhythms, flows, nuances of light, color, and location that create
4
the background to a predominantly North American content. Cultural dif-
ference is absorbed, and an intense uniformity is produced via the rigorous
programming that commercial interests demand. Even before the virtual land-
 scape, the flat terrain of the screen has standardized an interface that, in its
broadest sense, forges a relationship between the eye and how it sees—con-
structing a viewer that is “screen based” above and beyond the particular
screens (television, computer, or the stereoscopic “eyesuckers” of VR) that
are watched.
In the familiar characterizations of cultural discourse, screen cul-
ture inhabits neither place nor ground: it is fragmented and dislocated, it oper-
ates on a surface that is ephemeral and mediated, it has a four second attention
span. With the accouterments of telecommunications—faxes, modems,
5
mobile phones, beepers—these tendencies are amplified. The ever-expand-
ing, continuously on-call individual, becomes another kind of interface, for
ever screening, filtering, ignoring, accepting, and repressing the plethora of
inputs, information and demands for action that absorb his or her private
space and individual time. While this appropriation of personal time and
actual place may once have been viewed as a surreptitious lengthening of
working hours and (mostly) unremunerated use of an individual’s major
asset—the home, for work purposes—it is now applauded as evidence of the
collapse of borders, the process of globalization that is manifested on a
national and individual level as everyone becomes his or her own small busi-
ness. Reflecting trends in poststructuralist theory, this exchange between the
individual and the electronic media and telecommunications environment is
discursively represented as the achievement of a polymorphous, multiplicitous,
heterogeneous subjectivity, a “liquid identity,” a “post” human freed from the
bonds of the autonomous subject for whom exchange and hybridity mean
death.6 Subjectivity is performed as a new kind of text while the body
becomes a permeable surface, adorned with signs and riddled with the inscrip-
tions and prescriptions of culture. Even the genetic structure is at base a com-
plex but decipherable code, or so genetic research tells us. In this context, the
FRANCES DYSON

hinge between cyber and space conveniently slides between the sometimes
embarrassing ontological claims of some enthusiasts and the postmodern
“body-as-text” for which corporeal presence and ontological status are no
longer an issue. As Katherine Hayles points out, this belief in the body-as-text
30
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

runs across theoretical discourse within the humanities, information theory,
7
and information technologies. Cyberspace is established as an “other” place
to enact the deconstructed self: a self whose multiplicity and ambiguity is con-
tinually reinforced as the body seems to increasingly inhabit the dematerial-
ized world that technology creates.8
The new postmodern subject, barely distinguishable from its
prostheses, existing in flows of information, suspicious that—as some
technophiles claim—matter is nothing but data after all, enters a new theoret-
ical order. Seeing, and the poststructuralist framework dominated by the medi-
ated image, is replaced by being, and the supposedly unmediated experience of
immersion. Despite the fact that most cyber experience occurs via the screen,
or more contemporaneously, as flows of data, the body-as-text elides the dis-
tinction between the screen and its viewer by ignoring the actuality of the
screen and elaborating instead the metaphor of virtual “space.” The “as if you
are there” is truncated to a “you are there.” One is in cyberspace, not watching
it, one is a navigator, a netizen, not a viewer. This shift is in line with modernist
ambitions of eliding the gap between signifier and signified, viewer and
viewed, real and representation. In the high modernism of virtual rhetoric this
ambition travels with its own ideology: the “being-in” of cyberspace is a delib-
erate move away from the trope of the viewer as witness to the world, as
discerning judge of quality and truth as inherently separate from the environ-
ment. The subject-object distinction is not allowed to interfere with the cyber-
naut’s mythic immersion in what is often represented as a mystical space. The
era of the consumer gives way to the era of the virtual world citizen: the former
exercises the right to choose (marginally) while the latter takes an oath of alle-
giance, allowing it to exist in a particular space, to be. No wonder, then, that
Microsoft software opens with icons of socialist realism, often depicting young
men in patriotic fervor marching forward into the future. The shift from a
mode of manipulating representation to manipulating ontology requires
absolute devotion.
 METAPHYSICAL MAKEOVERS: FROM MATTER TO DATA

That the flickering, two-dimensional screen scanning nothing

more than digitally stored information could be described in terms of space
and embodiment is not so surprising given the trajectory of Western thought:
since Plato, existence has been identified with objects, objects with discrete
units, and units with data. Each of these terms allows for the introduction of
the next, reinforces and validates its antecedents and becomes a criterion for
both being and knowledge. The relationship formed between these terms has
been profoundly articulated by Heidegger, whose critique of modern technol-
ogy is perhaps most relevant in this age of the global digital. Drawing on pre-
Socratic philosophy, Heidegger writes of the “monstrous transformation” that
occurs in modern philosophy whereby existence, being, is thought of in terms
9
of “beings,” and as a result of this reduction beings are experienced as objects.
With being so easily located and objectified, a phenomenon can be reduced to
its abstract properties, such as its quantities, volumes, location, and these can
be represented as fixed, unchanging, and ever subject to the indubitable laws of
physics and mathematics. This kind of “representational” thinking, as Heideg-
ger calls it, leads to a process of “enframing”—the reduction of matter to quan-
tifiable, measurable and predictable terms. Matter is thought of as a “standing
reserve,” a set of measurable resources ready and waiting for exploitation. The
human species becomes the “orderer of the standing reserve”—the measure of
10
all things and as a result “encounters existence as his [sic] construct.”
The parallels between digital technologies and Heidegger’s con-
cept of “enframing” are all too obvious—indeed technologies like VR can be
seen as the logical outcome of a process that began with the Cartesian grid and
has continued to be ever further refined, abstracted, and imposed upon the
perception of the world.1 1 Just as the Renaissance map or diagram reduced
the three-dimensional world to a two-dimensional representation, displaying
FRANCES DYSON

it as given, “there” to be explored, colonized, and eventually carved up into real

estate, VR reduces this two-dimensional set of co-ordinates to a numerical
series composed of just two binaries. Ironically, it is only through such an

32
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

intense reduction that the infinite horizons of the “virtual real estate” now cov-
ering the Internet, or the virtual frontier now replacing the dream of
(outer)space exploration, can be produced.

FROM SEEING TO BEING

Of course, habitation is the issue here. While it is generally

accepted that one cannot live in a map, the virtual “environment” (which is in
reality no more than a scene) is always described as if there is some inhabitable
territory “behind” it. The two-dimensional screen is not seen as an abstraction
of some real territory, rather the screen “fronts” a piece of machinery (the com-
puter) that is most often imagined as another world subtended by a landscape
of circuitry that the user zooms over. That the screen is able to evoke such
strong connections to territories and spaces is a testament to the power of film
and television. However, beyond the screen there is the long history of Western
ocularcentrism, a history that coincides with the conflation of being with
objects. This coincidence rests on the belief that, of all the attributes of objects,
visibility and extension are primary, thus vision and the occupation of space are
deeply implicated in the constitution of existence. Associating seeing with
Being has significantly shaped the development of Western thinking: it has
made sight the dominant sense; it has furnished an epistemology with a range
of prohibitions against knowledge derived from the other senses; it has been
fundamental to the construction of a subjectivity where the eye and the subject
coincide—where vision, abstracted, becomes the ground for all objectivity, cer-
tainty, and inspiration. With the eye an extension of the mind, and the mind
divorced from the body, the actuality of sight has been transformed into an ide-
ology:1 2 the individual becomes the center of its world, always looking out-
ward with its gaze—god-like—scanning, naming, and colonizing the universe.
With modernism, vision extends its grasp, appropriating the
future as a territory unique to the very concept of modernity. “Looking ahead”
literally and metaphorically, is encouraged, “looking back” prohibited. And in a
very Western move, the future has been placed “in front” of the individual,
 whereas everything else—including the “meat” existing from the head down—
13
is cast “behind us.” Indeed, the more that looking ahead is equated with
progress, enlightenment, and a technologically aided evolution, the more a
focus on the past is considered regressive, “backward,” going against not only
the telos of Western civilization but the species itself. In the technology of VR,
frontality and futurity coalesce in a simulation of frontality’s other—phenom-
enal immersion—by literally closing the gap between the eye and the screen.
This is accomplished not by “moving into” the screen as the rhetoric of immer-
sion suggests, but rather by bringing the stereoscopic screens so close that the
eyes are enclosed in a total vision of images. At the same time, the interactive
component of VR allows the virtual scene to change as the head moves, while
the standard navigational device—the data glove—allows the user to point to
the direction they want to go, which then changes the scene to simulate their
movement toward that place. Moving forward thus becomes an expression of
progress and an amplification of the dominance of vision.1 4 At the same time,
subjectivity is collapsed into a single point of view: the virtual world is nothing
other than what is, literally, in front of the user; space is defined not only as
what is to be seen, but what is to be navigated and in a sense constructed by the
viewer.1 5 This kind of interactivity and virtual landscape navigation is rapidly
moving onto the Net, giving cyberspace the appearance and feel of being not
just a place to inhabit, but a place to navigate, to move forward through, and in
the process, to command and control.

ARCHITECTURAL METAPHORS: LAWS FOR OBJECTS

AND LAWS FOR HUMANS

From “space” we move to built space and the discourse of archi-

tecture. Architecture implies space and habitation, and as a metaphor, removes
cyberspace and computing from its most obvious and unwanted corollary—
FRANCES DYSON

television and the information networks of telecommunications. Having fully

accepted and internalized the legitimacy of “space” as an attribute of virtuality,
designers, artists, philosophers, and architects have been debating what these
virtual spaces might be, how they might be constructed, and (tellingly) what
34
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

kind of laws they might obey. An early writer on the architecture of cyber-
space, Michael Benedikt, speculates that cyberspace “will require constant
planning and organization,” that it will need “structures” that will have to be
“designed” by “cyber architects” who are “schooled in computer science and
programming (the equivalent of construction), in graphics, and in abstract
16
design.” Benedikt begins his discourse on the principles of cyberspace by
arguing that the logics, physics, and metaphysics that apply to discussions of
real space also apply to virtual space: “A central preoccupation of this essay will
be the sorting out of which axioms and laws of nature ought to be retained in
cyberspace, on the grounds that humans have successfully evolved on a planet
where these are fixed and conditioning of all phenomena.”1 7
For certain physical laws to be violated, for certain axioms to
apply, there needs to be not just a symbolic equivalence between the physical
and the virtual, but an ontological equivalence. Thus, “digital-space” is made
commensurate with “real-space,” and not only physical axioms, but also meta-
physical axioms are sustained, ensuring that the same epistemological system
governing Western thought will continue to operate. For instance, there is the
“Principle of Exclusion”—roughly equating to the law of identity—whereby
two identical objects cannot share the same space at the same time.1 8 The
“Principle of Maximal Exclusion” ensures that a space will be designed that
minimizes the violations of the Principle of Exclusion—that is, a space will be
designed where objects have a place, a time, a trajectory of movement, etc.
After renaming such age old maxims that define ostensible real-
ity, Benedikt is pleased and surprised to find that his principles in fact operate
in reality—further evidence of the naturalness of cyberspace, of its pseudo-
physicality. But Benedikt’s principles pertain not only to logic or physics: in
shaping the realism of virtual worlds he coins the “Principle of Indifference,”
based on the maxim that “the felt realness of any world depends on the degree
of its indifference to the presence of a particular ‘user’ and on its resistance to
19
his/her desire.” In the same way that narrative in realist cinema unfolds
without the consent of the viewer—producing a voyeur—cyberspace must
produce a voyager—a subject who moves into a space that is already there, pre-
 existent, with its own restrictions, its own “reality.” Allied to the “Principle of
Indifference” is the “Principle of Transit,” whereby “travel between two points
in cyberspace should occur phenomenally through all intervening points, no
matter how fast,...and should incur costs to the traveler proportional to some
20
measure of the distance.” This kind of detail seems to contradict the
rhetoric of infinite freedom and transcendence to the immaterial that has been
associated with cyberspace. Why must distance and travel literally drag in
cyberspace? Could it be that limits, principles, restrictions, and laws create a
sense of comfortable confinement? Or does the continuous presence of obsta-
cles produce the kind of obsessive drive exhibited by game playing or religious
devotees? Whatever the quest, this pseudo mystical space promises a plenitude
that can only be reached through a continuous investment in technology (the
hardware and software through which cyberspace is accessed) and an unrelent-
ing devotion to its development or “evolution”—that is, to the future within
21
which this plenitude will be revealed.
Metaphors of cities and organisms, of electronic spheres that
blanket the earth like ozone, of spiritual influences that are pulling humans
toward a higher, technologically refined plane, all fit within the trope of an
independent world. Cyberspace is represented as an entity that is more than
the sum of its parts. Its chips, circuits, and cables do not match its higher evo-
lutionary and phenomenological level, the level of human thought and art. For
Benedikt cyberspace is more than a space, it is “a place and a mode of
22
being.” As such, cyberspace prompts humans to “be” differently. Often
couched in evolutionary terms, the inhabitants of cyberspace are described as
developing nonphysical qualities, qualities that pertain to their non-embodi-
ment, and that suit the demands of virtual architecture and virtual physics. Yet
for Benedikt, virtual humans, like virtual spaces, must also be subject to laws.
For instance, the “Principle of Personal Visibility” ensures that users can be
FRANCES DYSON

seen by other users, although an individual user may choose not to see others.
Not only must one be seen, but users must all see the same thing. This is the
“Principle of Commonality” which recommends that “virtual places be “objec-
tive” in a circumscribed way for a defined community of users.”2 3 Even in this
36
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

immaterial space, one must satisfy the main guarantor of existence—visibil-
ity—and one must be “accountable” to “objective” reality. With its laws for vir-
tual objects and virtual subjects, cyberspace becomes a mirror of the real—the
physical, social, economic and ideological world that we currently inhabit.
If realism has long since ceased to monopolize electronic media,
why, in this twenty-first-century “geography of the imagination,” has it
returned with such insistence? As an image-based and interactive digital sim-
ulation of an environment—virtual reality—or even as a text based MUD
(multi-user domain) or MOO (MUD object oriented), cyberspace ceases to
24
have the same relationship of necessity to the physicality it represents. Yet
time and again virtual environments are filled with structures that resemble
those found in the physical world, and while there may be exceptions to this in
more artistic projects, one still finds the simulation of physicality—of texture
mapping and surface rendering—a high priority in virtual design. Certainly,
the predictable forms of virtual environments—with navigational interfaces,
MUDs and MOOs are generally premised on a basic structure of four walls
with an entry—reflect an intolerance for differently configured spaces. Does
the surprisingly banal physicality and the incessant imposition of Renaissance
perspective of most virtual environments simply reflect an ingrained conser-
vatism, a lack of imagination on the part of these cyberpioneers? Or could it
have something to do with the appropriation of the concept of “architecture”
itself, the desire to consolidate the “being-in” and “being-there”: the “reality” of
the virtual that immediately comes to mind when architectural structures are
represented. In this regard, the discourse of architecture is a good accomplice,
in that, like the rhetoric of virtuality, it denies the gap between representation
and reality, insinuating a “presence” and naturalness where in fact only media-
tion exists. As the architect Peter Eisenman points out, the “natural” in archi-
tecture is in fact a product of convention; however, this convention is extremely
difficult to articulate because of the way that sign and referent, meaning and
object collapse. A wall, for instance, both realizes and symbolizes its function
as an object that holds things up: “...i n architecture there will always be the
presence of walls, walls that are both icon and instrument.”2 5 If there need not
 be walls in cyberspace, then wherein lies the “naturalness,” the indexical rela-
tionship between thing and representation that cyberadvocates insist distin-
guishes this form of media from any other? For the discourse of architecture,
like that of metaphysics, to act as a ground for the virtual, for cyberspace to jus-
tify its appropriation of “space,” “immersion,” and “reality,” the gap between
icon and instrument, representation, and reality must be concealed at all
26
costs. Ironically, the attempt to deny processes of representation, to capture
the thing-in-itself, involves an appeal to neo-Platonic notions of ideal
essences; the abstract, necessary, and unchanging forms that, as Andrew Ben-
jamin points out, endure “within an ontology and temporality of stasis”2 7—a
far cry from the infinite speed and motion that the idea of cyberspaces con-
jures. Using the term architecture, and invoking the structure it implies, can
therefore be seen as part of a larger strategy for legitimating “cyberspace” as a
scientific domain: supported by the laws and structures of architecture, cyber-
space becomes an object of knowledge tied to metaphysics—and in this sense
also a fiction, a “consensual hallucination.”

V I R T U A L E M B O D I M E N T: F R O M “ Y O U A R E I N ” T O “ Y O U A R E ”

If stasis is inherent in the concept of architecture, in a further

irony, it is exactly stasis that is produced in the physical correlate of the virtual
sphere. Despite all the fanciful flights through walls and over cyberscapes that
are part of the reportage of VR, the physical environment is characterized by
an unhealthy lack of movement and change, and the repetition of this ideal
“doctrine of being” is often manifest in repetitive strain injury incurred by the
user. Despite the relative stillness of the body in both VR and at the computer
terminal, its physical movements are nonetheless important to register interac-
tivity, and therefore, “immersion.” Thus the participation of the user’s body,
whether it be through body movements in VR or via pointing and clicking a
FRANCES DYSON

mouse, often warrants a recognition of that corporeality in the design of cyber-

space, such as a virtual hand, to show that the user really is “physically” enter-
ing the space. Via such limited movement the user’s actual embodiment
becomes another component of the mechanism for simulating immersion-in-
38
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

a-space, with the user’s own body providing the here-and-now being, while the
simulated environment stands in as the “there.” Doubting either term in this
equation is tantamount to doubting one’s existence—an activity not encour-
aged in the hyperindividuated, omnipotent “go get ’em” fare of most virtual
28
scenarios. But like architecture, the body that is implicated in this mecha-
nism is a body in scare quotes, a rhetorical body that becomes part of a
propaganda strategy, one that is based on appeals to ontology rather than epis-
temology, to authentic being rather than mediated seeing.2 9 In line with the
real stasis of virtual space and the usual logic of technology in the twentieth
century, living in virtual worlds creates the kind of corporality (static, seden-
tary, “wired”) that eventually requires the various implants and prostheses
characteristic of the cyborg, and the techno-infrastructure identified with the
hyperconnected individual.
Virtual humans don’t just enter cyberspace, they become cyber-
space. Just as virtuality and cyberspace rhetorically expand ever outwards,
encompassing an infinity of spaces, times, mythologies, and modes of tran-
scendence, they also close in on the individual, appropriating innerspace,
encouraging an inwardness, and locating the plenitude within not just the psy-
che but the very nervous system of the individual. Within the rhetoric, the
individual and the technology mirror each other as organicist seeds, within
which all knowledge is embedded, and from which all knowledge proceeds.
The revelation of this process assumes a teleological purpose and its process is
infinite. Yet the image of unity and wholeness that inwardness presents is far
from the actuality of the embodied cybernaut. In the phenomenology of vir-
tual life the infinite freedom of cyberspace physically translates into a static
cocoon from which an electronic/informational network, (a world wide web)
emanates and at the same time traps the individual, operating at every level of
his or her existence, following strict lines—not of flight—but of reinforced
thought. Time now to revisit that postmodern subject, whose corporality and
environment has been literally infiltrated by cyberspace, whose decentered self
has been repositioned as the locus of techno-institutional forces, pushing and
pulling to achieve maximal efficiencies. Like data this subject is infinitely
 disarticulated: a site of organs ready for transplant, a map of genes waiting to
fulfill their benign or malign raison d’etre, a conglomerate of personas on the
Net. There is no limit to its capacity for inwardness or narcissism, nor for its
projection (via technology) as the amplified individual. Nor is there any limit
to the consumer oriented operations that can be performed on any of its
parts—even those parts (like genes) whose malfunction is no more than a
probability.
As the individual is multiplied the necessity of its containment—
or rather, of the containment of its various parts—becomes more compelling.
The home, the environment, must mirror this amplification and multiplicity—
fitting the individual like a virtual glove. The arms length distance (literal and
metaphorical) between user and computer screen begins to shorten: the com-
puter now sits on our laps, or is attached to our belts; it becomes a pair of
goggles, then glasses, and finally (according to the predictions of nano-
technology), implants. While this evolution may seem to free the user from the
constraints of the stationary workstation (with all of its ergonomic problems),
physical space is itself transformed to mirror the resource that the individual
has become: computers become “ubiquitous,” creating an electronic atmos-
phere wherein every transaction is detailed, every physical move tracked and
recorded, all nodes of exchange between the individual and the world become
plug-in points. The ecstasy of cyber-flight is overwhelmed by the sheer grind
of time consuming and often inconsequential bits of information that rapidly
degenerate into a frantic buzz hovering around the individual like a dust cloud.
Always “logged on,” the once private space of Internet communication
becomes a space of surveillance, and the individual—splitting itself once
again—internalizes a series of procedures that conceal its intentions, either as a
form of self-censorship, or, more pathologically, as a form of repression. Bound
ever tighter, the individual escapes through processes of infantile absorption
FRANCES DYSON

with the new, consuming the present with the desire to be “one step ahead,”
hoping that familiarity with the next piece of software will provide them with
a temporary defense against redundancy and engaging in technoself-gratifica-
tion to ward off the acknowledgment that this is how it is.3 0
40
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“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

CONCLUSION: VIRTUAL FUTURES

The organizing metaphors that make virtual environments

places to be are about the future, about transcendence to a technosublime,
about disembodiment, about the fiction of pure mind, omnipotence,
omnipresence. As “spaces” these are concerned with being elsewhere and being
other in an evolutionary, species-directed reconfiguration. In the same power-
ful conflation of real space and simulation, of real life and virtuality, the cyber-
naut inhabits tropologies that give him or her a birds-eye view of the planet,
the species, and the present: users are not in the present (they are supposedly
“entering the future”); they are not of the human (they are cyborgs); they are
not on the earth (they have become enveloped by pure data); they are not in
their bodies (they have approached pure mind). In league with the new millen-
nium, the spaces of virtuality are apocalyptic, presupposing the end of organic
life. This nihilism is reflected in the ultraclean rooms and razor-sharp shiny
surfaces of the standard virtual aesthetic, where messy organic human forms
enter only as contaminants. Returning to the futurism from which the neofu-
turism of cyberarchitecture has developed, it is well to remember Sant’Elia’s
proclamation:

We have lost our taste for the monumental, the heavy, the static, and
we have enriched our sensibility with a taste for the light, the practi-
cal, the ephemeral and the swift. . . . We—who are materially and
spiritually artificial—must find...inspiration in the elements of the
utterly new mechanical world we have created, and of which archi-
31
tecture must be the most beautiful expression.

It is not just the coincidence of metaphors (light, ephemerality,

fluidity, constantly changing speed) that situates architects like Sant’Elia adja-
cent to contemporary musings. The futurists engaged in a discourse of the
organicless future, and it is within that fictive space that cyberspace is located.
Florian Röetzer has remarked that the only spaces for difference in the com-
puter worlds of VR and digital communications are war and catastrophe.3 2
 Perhaps this was the kind of war that F. T. Marinetti saw as the world’s only
form of hygiene, leading him to support fascism while his architect friends
dreamt of dynamism, speed, and simultaneity, of a “kingdom of electricity,”
with its fluid cities in a state of perpetual becoming and renewal. Such visions
led early-twentieth-century architects to embrace the ideologies of industrial
capitalism, urban planning, and eventually, socially conscious architecture. In
the process they created the “machines for living” that reduced humans to the
33
cogs that we are now calling “bits” in dataspace.
In stark contrast to the lightness of cyberspace, the virtual future
is laden with the dark nihilism that the visionary dreams of new, futurist cities
produced. Contemporary cyberspace—with its emphasis on the future—re-
enacts the nihilistic logic of early futurism in so far as the fulfillment of its
dreams are necessarily deferred to a time that one can never witness. Since one
cannot “be” in the future, one cannot comfortably “be” in the fiction that is
cyberspace. Attempting to do so is like attempting to inhabit any dream or
vision; it provides an opening for the return of the repressed—the debt that
culture has not paid to its visions of the 1 9 2 0s, realized in the “future” that
the 1 9 9 0s have patently not delivered. And if the present is already lacking,
the future is represented as already spent—mortgaged through national
deficits and environmental destruction. Cyberspace is thus already a nihilistic,
debt ridden, impossible space—a space that, in denying the “reality” of the
physical, tacitly acknowledges its hostility to “being” and its incommensurabil-
ity with corporality. The inescapability of cyberspace’s repressed nature also
suggests that the reliance on Renaissance perspective is not just evidence of a
lack of imagination. Its function is to offer users a sign of their own mortality,
of their own inevitable biology, of their need for walls within a context where
the verisimilitude of the simulation is plainly not the issue, where walls are
plainly no longer necessary. With its cartoon-like simplicity, its child-like
FRANCES DYSON

forms of graphic representation, the virtual environment is simply another

icon, a piece of signage, for the brutally alluring “there” that the dream of the
future™ is, and in which, by definition, one cannot be.

42
 43
NOTES

“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

1. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Tech- technology interacts with metaphoric networks of
nology, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Torch- in/out and container/contained, making the distinc-
books, 1977), 4. tion indicated by the slash less a boundary than a per-
meable membrane across which subjectivity is
2. On confusion, see Marcos Novak, “Liquid Architec-
diffused.” Ibid., 168.
ture,” in Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael
Benedikt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 224. 9. See Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, trans.
David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New York:
3. As opposed to Michael Heim’s suggestion that the
Harper & Row, 1975), 82. Heidegger shows the
ontology of cyberspace is “the question of what it
dependence of the concept of being as thought in
means to be in a virtual world.” Ontology, in this con-
metaphysics on notions of substance, extension,
text, is already operating at a meta-level. See Michael
duration—in short, presence. See also Heidegger,
Heim, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality (New York:
Being and Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1962),
Oxford University Press, 1993), 84.
18–9.
4. Marc Augé characterizes this redefinition of space
10. Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology,
as a characteristic of “supermodernity.” See Marc
27.
Augé, Non-Places—Introduction to an Anthropology
of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (New York: 11. As some commentators and artists have noted,
Verso, 1995), 32. VR is the instantiation of Heidegger’s concept of
enframing. See, for instance, my article on Char
5. As Langdon Winner writes: “Subjected to the pace
Davies’ OSMOSE and Catherine Richard’s Curiosity
of productivism, we come to think that if a message
Cabinet at the End of the Millennium: “Charged
can move, it must move quickly. This places strong
Havens,” World Art, no. 3 (1993).
demands on individuals, communications technolo-
gies not only make it possible to reach them but 12. Etymologically, “idea” is associated with the verb
obligates them to remain accessible.” Langdon Win- “to see,” and the notion of “eidetic” knowledge.
ner, “Three Paradoxes of the Information Age,” in
13. This tendency is by no means universal. In Maori
Culture on the Brink, ed. Gretchen Bender and Timo-
culture, for instance, the past is placed ahead of the
thy Druckery (Seattle: Bay Press, 1994), 194.
culture as a reference point, and each decade is seen
6. See Allucquere Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire as an additional chapter that adds to the pre-given
and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age history of the ancestors.
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
14. For more on these issues see Frances Dyson,
7. Katherine Hayles, “The Materiality of Informatics,” “Philosophonics of Space: Sound, Futurity and the
Configurations, (1992): 147. End of the World,” catalog, Fifth International Sym-
posium on Electronic Art, University of Art and
8. Asking “Is it necessary to insist that the body, far
Design, Helsinki, UIAH, 1994; and “In/Quest of Pres-
from disappearing, remains essential to human life?”
ence: Virtuality, Aurality and Television’s Gulf War,”
Hayles sees the disappearance of the body as evi-
Critical Issues in Electronic Media, ed. Simon Penny
dence of a certain kind of postmodern subjectivity,
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
one that has a predilection for technologies of imma-
1995).
teriality, such as VR and cyberspace. “The predilec-
tion catalyzes the technology, and the technology 15. See Katherine Hayles, “Virtual Bodies and Flick-
reifies and extends the predilection. Discursively, the ering Signifiers,” October 66 (Fall 1993): 83–4. It is
 a testament to Western visualism that sound, though 22. Ibid., 131. The mode of being is information,
part of the virtual environment, does not confer rite of such that “the amount of (phenomenal) space in
passage to a different space. Certainly surround- cyberspace is a function of the amount of information
sound, which has been in use for many years, is not in cyberspace.” (167).
hailed as an immersive technology, nor has it war-
23. Ibid., 180. Within this reality certain spaces
ranted the creation of a new “reality” to describe its
(domains) are “private” (other users cannot see in) or
phenomenological space.
“public” (visible to all). Presumably private spaces,
16. “Schooled also along with their brethren ‘real- like private property, would incur some expense whilst
space’ architects, cyberspace architects will design at the same time bestowing privilege.
electronic edifices that are fully as complex, func-
24. See Peter Eisenman, “Presentness and the
tional, unique, involving and beautiful as their
‘Being-Only-Once’ of Architecture,” in Reconstruction
physical counterparts if not more so.” Benedikt,
is/in America, ed. Anselm Haverkamp (New York: New
Cyberspace: First Steps, 18.
York University Press, 1995), 139; and Eisenman,
17. Cyberspace is defined by Benedikt as “a globally “Architecture in a Mediated Environment,” in Urban
networked, computer-sustained, computer accessed Forms, Suburban Dreams, ed. Malcolm Quantrill and
and computer-generated, multidimensional, artificial, Bruce Webb (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Univer-
or ‘virtual’ reality.” Ibid., 122, 119. sity Press, 1993). With respect to the developing rela-
tion between information technology and cyberspace,
18. Ibid., 136.
Sylvia Lavin asks why cyberspace is construed in spa-
19. Ibid., 160. tial terms and more importantly “why of the many
possible desires that can be projected into cyber-
20. Ibid., 168.
space, is the wish to find a place therein increasingly
21. The very artificiality of virtual reality, its ability to dominant?” Sylvia Lavin, “Architecture/Information,”
violate principles of space and time, is given as evi- Anyplace 4, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (Cambridge, MA:
dence of a magical element harking back to the MIT Press, 1995), 146.
ancient world. See Ibid., 128.
25. Eisenman, “Presentness,” 135.
FRANCES DYSON

44
 45
26. “...it is impossible to deny architecture’s meta- cyber-discourse is the moment where this very cri-

“SPACE,” “BEING,” AND OTHER FICTIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF THE VIRTUAL

physics of presence. Even in a condition of virtual tique is itself appropriated. This dematerialized world
reality, architecture is conventionalized as the meta- is constituted by a set of “spaces” that have also been
physics of presence; within virtual reality, architecture reduced to “texts” that are then “read” differently, as
is still imagined as a physical body.” Ibid, 139. How- Micha Bandini suggests, “in order to create debates
ever, this dominance of presence in the field of virtu- that focus on appearances rather than on the role of
ality is not the result of its genesis from architecture. architecture in contemporary society.” Micha Ban-
Rather the discourse of architecture, as opposed to dini, quoted in Mapping the Futures, ed. John Bird et
that of telecommunications, has been deliberately al. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 237.
appropriated because of the “presence” it implies.
30. Manuel Castles and Peter Hall, Technopoles of
27. “The question of the essence [of philosophy or the World (London: Routledge, 1994), 23. For more
architecture] therefore comes to be re-posed within on the infantilism of virtual culture see Sean Cubitt:
that spectivic ontological-temporal concatenation “‘It’s Life Jim, But Not as We Know It’: Rolling Back-
proper to stasis. The unstated premise at work here is wards into the Future,” in Fractal Dreams: New Media
that the name ‘philosophy’—though this will be in Social Context, ed. Jon Dovey (London: Lawrence
equally true of the name ‘architecture’—names that and Wishart, 1996).
essence.” Andrew Benjamin, Art, Mimesis and the
31. Antonio Sant’Elia, “Manifesto of Futurist Archi-
Avant-Garde (New York: Routledge, 1991), 115.
tecture” (1914), in Umbro Apollonio ed., The Docu-
28. For an extensive analysis of the “hyperindividual- ments of Twentieth Century Art: Futurist Manifestos,
ism” of virtual culture see Sean Cubitt “Supernatural trans. Robert Brian et al. (New York: The Viking Press,
Futures: Theses on Digital Aesthetics,” in FutureNat- 1973), 172.
ural, ed. George Robertson et al. (New York: Rout-
33. Florian Röetzer, “Fascinations, Reactions, Virtual
ledge, 1996).
Worlds and Other Matter,” Book for the Unstable
29. And even while this naturalness is subject to cri- Media (s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands: Stichting V2-
tique outside of cyberdiscourse—for instance, the cri- Organisation, 1992), 86.
tique of presence found in deconstruction and
phenomenology—the moment at which it filters into
 The Medieval Return of Cyberspace

MARGARET WERTHEIM

THROUGH T H E M E D I U M of the computer a loophole has been found in the

materialist metaphysics that has dominated Western culture for the past three
centuries. All around us cyberspace explodes into being with the exponential
force of its own big bang, in the process ripping to shreds the pious hope that
reality could be reduced to the motion of matter through space and time. For
better or worse, this new digital domain represents a profound challenge to
major philosophical and psychological trends that so deeply characterize the
“age of science.”
Precisely because cyberspace is not made up of atoms or parti-
cles, but is ontologically rooted in the ephemera of bits and bytes, it is not sub-
ject to the laws of physics and is not bound by the limitations of those laws. In
a quite literal sense, cyberspace is outside the physical complex of matter-
space-time that since the late seventeenth century has increasingly been held
as not just the basis of reality, but as the totality of the real. Who could have
 foreseen that the electronic gates of the silicon chip would become a meta-
physical gateway, punching a porthole in the bedrock of materialism? The dig-
ital doors labeled “.com,” “.net,” and “.edu” represent more than just a new
means of communication, they are urgently needed escape hatches from an
epistemic tyranny that has foisted upon us the feeble fabulation that we are
nothing but material bodies. In the potentially infinite web of the Internet, the
“soul” has once again found a space that it might call its own.
“I have experienced soul-data through silicon,” declared Kevin
Kelly, executive editor of Wired, in a 1 9 9 5 forum in Harper’s Magazine. “You
1
might be surprised at the amount of soul-data we’ll have in this new space.”
Kelly is by no means alone in suggesting that cyberspace will be a realm for the
soul. “Our fascination with computers is more erotic than sensual, more deeply
spiritual than utilitarian,” writes cyber-philosopher Michael Heim. “In our
love affair” with these machines, he says, “we are searching for a home for the
mind and heart.”2 It is just the mind, the heart, the soul—in short the human
psyche—that has been banished from the picture of reality that Western
physics has articulated over the past three hundred years. Rooted in the Carte-
sian divide between the res extensa and the res cogitans, reality has increasingly
been construed as the physical world alone, with the spiritual and psychic
domain increasingly seen as a secondary and semireal byproduct of the true
reality that is matter in motion.
Now, in one epistemic flourish, cyberspace explodes this materi-
alist fantasy and builds for the psyche a technological theater of its own. A
space where the “self ” can experiment and play, cyberspace is an immaterial
domain where psyche, if not entirely divorced from body, is nonetheless
decoupled from the rigid regulations of the laws of physics. Clearly, this inner
space is a different facet of the real to the exterior space described by physi-
MARGARET WERTHEIM

cists’ laws, but with fifty million people already accessing it on a regular basis,
cyberspace is an indisputable part of late-twentieth-century reality, at least in
the developed world. Ironically, physics itself has built this arena. The silicon
chips, the optic fibers, the cathode ray tubes, and liquid crystal display screens,
even the electric power, are all byproducts of this most mathematical of
48
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THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE

sciences. In the very success of physics thus lies the seeds of a metaphysical
revolution.
And let there be no mistake, there is a revolution in process—for
anything that promotes the reality of psyche is indeed a challenge to contem-
porary scientific epistemology. It is a complete misnomer to call the modern
scientific world picture dualistic; it is monistic, admitting the reality only of the
physical. In the classic dichotomy of body and soul, modern science has excised
the latter entirely from its vision of the real and reduced existence to the
motion of material particles through space and time, all components now
being defined in rigorous mathematical terms. With this stark mathematico-
materialism (or more strictly mathematico-physicalism, since even particles
ultimately become just ripples in the fabric of spacetime), soul is no longer
another level of reality, as the medievals believed, but a chimera of the imagi-
3
nation—Gilbert Ryle’s “ghost in the machine.” Metaphysically speaking,
spirit-psyche-soul has not merely been pushed out of the scientific cosmos,
in the minds of many contemporary scientists it has been totally annihi-
lated.4 Descartes and Newton—both deeply religious men—would have been
appalled at this theological anesthetizing of the world system, but a rampant
materialist monism is the end result of the philosophy they bequeathed.
Nothing epitomizes this monism more than the current mania
for “explaining” each and every aspect of psyche, including its spiritual mani-
festations, by recourse to physicalist theories of neurochemical transmitters
and/or genetic determinism. Nothing escapes the net of this physicalist
dogma, wherein the religious visions of mystics are reduced to migraines and
epileptic fits; altruism becomes the mathematically inevitable outcome of the
machinations of “selfish genes”; and love becomes a disturbance in our neuro-
chemical soup.
As history reveals, one of the chief inspirations for this hubristic
monism was Rene Descartes, though God forbid, that was never his intent. “I
think therefore I am,” Descartes declared, rooting being not in body, but in the
immateriality of mind.5 Indeed, he called his famous aphorism “the first prin-
ciple” of his philosophy. Yet whatever Descartes’ personal beliefs—and we
 must never forget that the French philosopher was a devout Catholic who
wanted nothing less than a science that would support his faith—his dualistic
metaphysics ultimately served as a stepping stone to precisely the kind of
materialism he abhorred.
Searching for a rigorous grounding for his mechanistic concep-
tion of nature, Descartes divided reality into two distinct halves: the res
extensa—the extended realm of matter in motion—and the res cogitans—the
realm of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Body and mind-psyche-soul were
separated by his metaphysics into two utterly disconnected domains, but for
Descartes both were indisputably true parts of the real. However, it was only
the res extensa that he saw as amenable to mathematical treatment and that was
to be described by the new physics. The major purpose of Descartes’ radical
dualism was in fact to delineate precisely what it was that mathematically-
based science could describe. In an age suffused with hermetic magic and all
manner of arcane number mysticisms, expounded by such occult practitioners
as Giordano Bruno and Robert Fludd, Descartes and his fellow mechanists
were determined to define both their science and their world picture in strictly
nonmagical terms. Above all, they wanted a physical world devoid of occult
forces. Such a world, Descartes believed, must consist only of inert matter
moving mechanically according to strict mathematical laws. It is this world—
the extended realm, or res extensa—that would be the subject of the new sci-
ence. All the rest, the whole messy but indubitably real complex of thoughts,
feelings, and emotions would be left to moralists and theologians.
Yet if Descartes himself held a genuinely dualistic worldview and
insisted on the reality of the res cogitans, it wasn’t long before champions of the
new science began to hack away at this domain. The trend was set by the Eng-
lish philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who even in Descartes’ lifetime declared
MARGARET WERTHEIM

that phenomena of mind were merely secondary byproducts of the primary

reality that is matter in motion. For Hobbes, reality was not dualistic: it con-
sisted only of the res extensa. “Mind will be nothing but the motions of certain
parts of an organic body,” he wrote, in what soon became a call to arms to the
growing legions of materialists.6 By the mid-eighteenth century, the French
50
 51

THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE

philosopher Julien de la Mettrie could openly declare in “The Man-Machine”
that “the soul is, then, an empty symbol.” Like Hobbes, La Mettrie believed
mind was just a byproduct of atomic motion: “Given the least principle of
movement, animate bodies will possess all they need in order to move, sense,
7
think.” By the end of the eighteenth century, materialistic monism was in full
swing. Growing steadily ever since, by the end of the twentieth it has almost
become a heresy in scientific circles to express any other view.
To what we can only imagine would be Descartes’ horror, the
machine has been stripped entirely of its ghosts. Sucked dry of spirit, body
now stands “pure” and alone, a strictly molecular mechanism, boot-strapping
itself into existence through the “emergent” properties of an autocatalytic
chemical set. I catalyze therefore I am. Philosopher of science Edwin Burtt has
summed up this situation aptly. In his “Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Science” Burtt writes that with the triumph of mechanism,

The natural world was portrayed as a vast self-contained mathemat-

ical machine, consisting of motions of matter in space and time, and
man with his purposes, feelings and secondary qualities was shoved
apart as an unimportant spectator and semi-real effect of the great
8
mathematical drama outside.

For the first time in history, humanity has produced a purely

physicalist world picture, one in which mind-psyche-soul has no place at all.
It was not always so. Where modern scientific cosmology articu-
lates only the domain of body, the medieval cosmology that preceded it articu-
lated domains of body and soul—both participating in a grand metaphysical
hierarchy in which everything was connected to God. This older world picture
was truly dualistic, with the physical and spiritual orders mirroring one
another; the physical universe serving as a metaphor for the underlying uni-
verse of spirit. In a complete inversion of the materialist worldview, the
medievals regarded the spiritual cosmos, the “space” of soul, as the true or
primary reality, with the physical cosmos, the space of body, serving as the
 allegory of this ultimate domain. Within this philosophical framework,
according to medievalist Jeffrey Burton Russell, “physics [and indeed all nat-
ural science] is an inferior truth pointing to the greater truth, which is theo-
logical, moral, and even divine.” The primary concern of medieval philosophy
(and also of medieval art) was the ultimate reality of the moral and spiritual
9
cosmos, which was “God’s utterance or song.”
Medieval cosmology literally located both body and soul; there
was a place in the world for each. Physically, humanity stood at the center of a
nested set of concentric spheres collectively carrying the celestial bodies: the
sun, moon, planets, and stars. Spiritually, we also stood at the center, poised
midway between the angels and animals, for in the medieval system man was
the only creature possessing both a material body (a property we share with
animals) and an intellective soul (that we share with the angelic orders: the
angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, and so on.) With one foot each in the
material and the spiritual domains, we were, so to speak, the linchpin of the
whole system. When medievals spoke of mankind being at the center of the
world, they referred not so much to our astronomical position as to our place at
the center of the spiritual hierarchy.
There was another sense in which mankind was central, for we
were poised between the two spiritual poles of heaven and hell. Born with free
will, each person through his own actions held the fate of his soul in his hands.
Depending on one’s choices in life, after death the soul could go either way: to
the eternal bliss of the heavenly Empyrean, or to everlasting torment in the
bowels of hell. Life in the body was simply a first stage in the much longer jour-
ney of the soul, and the primary purpose of the medieval world picture was to
articulate the landscape of this spiritual journey. It is this terrain that is described
so beautifully in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the ultimate map of soul-space.
MARGARET WERTHEIM

For Dante and his contemporaries in the early fourteenth cen-

tury, the idea of a world picture that encompassed only the body would have
been unthinkable. Yet four centuries later La Mettrie, Denis Diderot, and
other Enlightenment philosophes were rejecting the very idea of a soul. No
longer poised between heaven and hell, for them the earth had become a
52
 53

THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE

chunk of rock revolving without purpose in a Euclidian void. No longer the
linchpins of a great spiritual hierarchy, humans had become atomic machines.
The older and genuinely dualistic cosmology had been stripped down to just
one half of the body-soul dimorphism; soul had literally been painted out of
the picture.
It is against this historical background that we must consider the
advent and appeal of cyberspace. I suggest that human sanity requires a cos-
mology of psyche as well as soma. Just as we need to know where our bodies
are, so we need to know where our “souls” are—at the very least, we need to
know about the modern secular equivalent, Freud’s desanctified soul, the “self.”
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the need for a cosmology of psyche or
self is the more primary human drive. It’s all very well to know where one
stands in physical space, but can that purely geometrical triangulation really
satisfy the question, Where am I? No matter what we are doing, there is an
indelible sense of an “I” behind the action, a “self ” that demands and needs a
cosmological home no less than the material atoms of our bodies.
I want to make clear that I am not arguing here for metaphysical
dualism. It is not my intention to claim that the psyche-soul is a separate entity
distinct from body, one that lives on after death, for example. I simply wish to
insist that while we are alive the “I” of our experience is a genuine part of reality
and any world picture that encompasses only the body must necessarily be incom-
plete. It is one of the great pathologies of the modern West that we have such an
incomplete picture, and no matter how often materialists like Daniel Dennett
and Gilbert Ryle bludgeon us with the idea that we are nothing but atoms and
genes, it is patently obvious that we are not! “I think therefore I am,” Descartes
declared, and whether we modify “think,” to “feel,” or “suffer” (many versions have
been tried), what remains is the indissoluble “I”—and deal with it we must.
The utter failure of modern science to incorporate psyche into its
world picture is one of the primary reason so many people are excited about
cyberspace. Sensing that something of central importance has been occluded
from the scientists’ picture, people are looking elsewhere in the hope of locat-
ing this crucial missing element. Precisely because it is (in some sense) beyond
 the body, cyberspace beckons as a potential home for the psyche—and even, as
Kelly suggests, as a haven for the soul. It is just this excluded but irrefutable “I”
that cyberspace seems to provide a home for.
In a very powerful way, then, cyberspace subverts three hundred
years of Western epistemic history, repudiating the tyranny of materialism and
once again suggesting the possibility of a genuinely dualistic vision of reality.
The body may be sitting in the chair, fingers tapping at the keyboard, but
unleashed into the quasi-infinite ocean of the Internet, the location of the self
can no longer be fixed purely in physical space. Just where the self is in cyber-
space is a question yet to be answered, but clearly it cannot be pinned down to
a mathematical location in Euclidian, or even relativistic space. Through the
portal of the modem we tunnel through spacetime (more profoundly than any
quantum particle), reappearing by no possible physical law in another “world,”
another “place,” a parallel universe outside physicists’ command. Strange
though it may seem for a quintessentially twentieth-century technology,
cyberspace brings the historical wheel full circle and returns us to an almost
medieval position, to a two-tiered reality in which psyche and soma each have
their own space of action.
Perhaps the most blatant signal of this reemerging dualism is the
dream, increasingly expressed by cyber-champions, that one day the psyche
will be “freed” from the bondage of the body and downloaded into digital
immortality in cyberspace. Chief among the proselytizers of this techno-
utopianism is robotics expert Hans Moravec. In his hyperkinetic Mind Chil-
dren, Moravec writes ecstatically about the possibility of not only downloading
current minds into computers but of recreating the entire history of our planet
in a computer simulation, thereby making it possible to “resurrect all past
inhabitants of the earth.”1 0 Everyone who has ever lived would be resurrected
MARGARET WERTHEIM

in cyberspace, “freed” forever from the black hole of physical death into the
eternal wellspring of a universal computer network. The “Book of Revelation”
promised the joys of eternity to 144,000 virtuosi, but through the power of
silicon Moravec extends that invitation to us all.

54
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THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE

Here, contemporary dreams of cyberspace parallel the age-old
Platonic desire to escape from the “cloddishness” of the body into a “transcen-
dent” realm of disembodied perfection—the realm of soul. Western culture
carries this seed deep within it, inherited both from the Greeks and from
Judeo-Christianity. The reemergence of a desire for soulful transcendence
through the medium of cyberspace should hardly surprise us, for as historian
David Noble has shown, religious ideologies have informed the development
of technology in the West since the late Middle Ages. Says Noble, when “Arti-
ficial Intelligence advocates wax eloquent about the possibilities of machine-
based immortality and resurrection, and their disciples, the architects of virtual
reality and cyberspace, exalt in their experience of Godlike omnipresence and
11
disembodied perfection” they are not doing anything “new or odd”; on the
contrary, we must see this as a “continuation of a thousand year old Western
tradition in which the advance of the useful arts was inspired by and grounded
upon religious expectation.”1 2
In particular, Noble notes that in the Christian world technology
has long been seen as a force for hastening the advent of a new Jerusalem. In
his book The Religion of Technology, Noble traces the interweaving of the tech-
nical arts with the millenarian spirit and notes that from the twelfth century
13
technology “became at the same time eschatology,” a tool for hastening the
promised time of perfection. And is not a time of “perfection” also what
cybergurus promise? Like the new Jerusalem heralded in the “Book of
Revelation,” cyberspace too is hailed as a place where freedom and equity will
reign. In the bit-stream, we are told, inequities of race and color, age and gen-
der will melt away, cleansing us of the sins of the body and rendering us as
beings of the ether. Disembodied and dematerialized, we are released into a
packet-switched paradise of digitally-induced democracy with infinite per-
sonal expression.
One thing certain is that when the new Jerusalem arrives its citi-
zens will not be lonely: communion and community are key promises of
Christian eschatology. Here too cyberspace fits the bill. Already teeming with
 millions of potential friends, and growing exponentially, cyberspace is not just
a place for the individual soul, but a collective space where souls can commune
with others. By the end of the decade it is estimated that a billion people will
be on the World Wide Web. The communal nature of cyberspace is undoubt-
edly one of its greatest appeals, as its commentators stress again and again. In
the midst of intense alienation and “spiritual isolation,” says Heim, “the com-
puter network appears as a godsend in providing forms for people to gather in
14
surprising personal proximity.” Similarly, Avital Ronell has written that
“virtual reality, artificial reality, dataspace or cyberspace are inscriptions of a
desire whose principle symptom can be seen as the absence of community.”1 5
The Internet, we are told, will fill this absence, spinning silicon threads of soul-
ful connection across the globe.
Once the net is realized visually, through the power of virtual
reality, the sense of cyberspace as a real, connective space will grow even
stronger. “What I’m hoping the virtual reality technology will do,” says cyber-
guru Jaron Lanier, “is sensitize people to these subjective or experiential
aspects of life and help them notice what a marvelous, mystical thing it is to
communicate with another person.”1 6 According to Lanier, “this technology
has the promise of transcending the body,”1 7 thereby providing “a way for
18
people to get ecstatic and be with another person.” Liberated from the bag-
gage of a biasing body, elevated into the connective flow of the digital stream,
the cybernaut becomes, in Lanier’s vision, a kind of technological angel.
While I do not agree with Lanier and others who suggest that
the psyche can be detached from the body—in cyberspace or anywhere else—
the hankering for a place free from the tyranny of physical scrutiny is more
than understandable. Who wouldn’t want a respite from a culture character-
ized by Stair-Masters, “Buns of Steel,” and the ubiquitous beautiful people of
MARGARET WERTHEIM

music videos? Who but Madonna and Arnold Schwartznegger would not long
for an escape from this obsessive fixation on the physical? The appeal of a
space beyond the “demons” of fat, farts, acne, wrinkles, skin color, gender, and
age is self-evident. Even if we cannot transcend the body, neither should we
have to feel ruled or intimidated by it.
56
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THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE

Moving from the personal to the cosmological, who that has
contemplated the vast quietude of outer space, is not beginning to tire of that
endless, and as yet lifeless, void? What has modern cosmology given us if not a
deep sense of cosmic loneliness? No wonder NASA and other space agencies
are struggling for mission funding. No wonder that in the face of this vast
external emptiness, people should feel drawn to an inner space that already
teems with life. Not just human life, but through the magic of MUDs (multi-
user domains) quasi-human and even super-human beings as well. Witches,
warlocks, and demons; talking dogs, intelligent mushrooms, and human-fish
hybrids are all to be found in the myriad mazes of MUD worlds. While life on
Mars remains a chimera, “life” in cyberspace is positively bursting forth in all
directions—a silicon facilitated Cambrian explosion of genus and species lim-
ited only by the human imagination.
But then soul-space has always had a far more diverse population
than physical space. Look at “The Divine Comedy,” where heaven abounds
with all the ranks of angels, and hell is positively teeming with fascinating
monsters. Think of Minos, the demonic guardian of the second circle who
judges the souls of sinners

And whips his tail around himself as many

19
Times as the circles the sinner must go down.

Or Geryon, that extraordinary patchwork of human, serpent,

and mammal who ferries Dante and Virgil down the chasm to the Malebolge.
As Hieronymus Bosch understood, the population of soul-space is almost infi-
nitely varied and mutable. From the dazzling six-winged “thrones” who guard
the seat of God, to the six-bat-winged, three-faced horror of Satan himself—
encased in ice at the center of hell—soul-space has always teamed with life on
a cosmic scale.
In the age of science this fabulous diversity of living form was
diverted from soul-space into outer space through the medium of science fic-
tion; and indeed from the beginning the scientific vision of cosmological space
 has itself been fueled by a belief that out there we would find friends among
the stars. But the futility of that hope, made all too palpable by the failure of
the SETI project and by visits of NASA probes to lifeless Venus and Mars,
mocks our aspirations to cosmic companionship and renders us an isolated
island in a sea of emptiness. Even if there are some who claim abduction by
aliens, and others willing to die to realize their true extraterrestrial selves (pace
the Heaven’s Gate affair), for most people the dream of extraterrestrial friend-
ship seems to be fading fast. No wonder then that many are turning elsewhere
for cosmic connection—to psychic channelers, mystical religions, indigenous
animisms—and to cyberspace. Who but the most hard-nosed materialist can
bear the loneliness modern cosmology thrusts upon us? Clearly not the vast
numbers of Americans who tune in each week to the X-Files and sign up in
droves at $3.99 a minute for telephone readings from the Psychic Channel.
It is within this materialist angst and loneliness that I believe we
can locate a good deal of the appeal of cyberspace. By making a collective space
where the self can experiment and play with others, cyberspace creates a paral-
lel world that in a very real sense is a new cosmos of psyche. Tunneling out of
the physical world, we enter, via the optic fibers of the Internet, a vast psy-
chosocial playground where the self can select from a seemingly infinite array
of chat rooms, data collections, discussion forums, fantasy games, and virtual
“worlds.” When the Internet is rendered into three-dimensional pictorial
form—realizing William Gibson’s prescient vision—who will dispute that
cyberspace will have become a true parallel world?
Just what kind of world cyberspace ends up being is yet to be
determined. Will it be, as many of its champions hope, a haven of freedom,
connection, power, and love—a technological Paradiso? Or will it, like the
Inferno, be a place where the human psyche festers and rots? It is no coinci-
MARGARET WERTHEIM

dence that the medievals placed hell inside the earth, within the domain of
human influence, or that their heaven was beyond the stars, metaphorically
opening up to the infinite space beyond human ego and control. As Dante
knew full well, heaven is reached only by letting go of ego and control. Hell, on
the other hand, is always a place we humans make for ourselves. Like hell,
58
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THE MEDIEVAL RETURN OF CYBERSPACE

cyberspace is an innerspace of man’s own making, a domain that might just as
easily be filled by xenophobic, misogynist, and racist hatred, than by any drives
towards liberty, democracy, and equity. Ultimately, as the Divine Comedy
teaches, the landscape of soul-space is a reflection of our collective psychic
state. Silicon does not change that equation, it simply gives us a new field on
which to play out the drama.
Through the medium of cyberspace we have an unprecedented
opportunity to reflect our psychological dreams and demons. Whether or not
we like what we see, only time will tell. Perhaps, in the long run, cyberspace
will be both Paradiso and Inferno, a landscape of psyche that at once reflects
the human potential for good and evil. Whatever its ultimate realization, one
thing certain is that the age of materialist monism is over. For better or worse,
with cyberspace we are returning to a dualistic expression of the real.
 NOTES

1. Kevin Kelly, “What Are We Doing On-Line?” Har- 10. Hans Moravec, Mind Children (Cambridge, MA:
per’s Magazine, August 1995, 39. Harvard University Press, 1988), 124.

2. Michael Heim, “The Erotic Ontology of Cyber- 11. David Noble, The Religion of Technology (New
space,” in Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael Bene- York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 5.
dikt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 61.
12. Ibid., 4.
3. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hurch-
13. Ibid., 22.
inson, 1949).
14. Michael Heim, “The Erotic Ontology of Cyber-
4. For recent expositions of the new materialism see:
space,” in Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace, 73.
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1991); Nicholas Hum- 15. Avital Ronell, “A Disappearance of Community,”
phrey, Leaps of Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1996); in Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environ-
and Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World (New ments, ed. Mary Anne Moser and Douglas MacLeod
York: Ballantine Books, 1996). (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 119.

5. Rene Descartes, “Discourse on Method,” The 16. Ibid., 127.

Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. Eliza-
17. Ibid.
beth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge, Eng-
land: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 101. 18. John Perry Barlow, “Life in the Data Cloud:
Scratching Your Eyes Back In” (interview with Jaron
6. Thomas Hobbes, “Objections” (to Descartes’
Lanier), Mondo 2000 (summer 1990): 2.
“Meditations”), Philosophical Works of Descartes,
65. 19. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. C. H.
Sisson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
7. Quoted in Humphrey, Leaps of Faith, 2.
“Inferno,” V, 11–12.
8. Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations
of Modern Science (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humani-
ties Press, 1980), 104.

9. Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven: The

Singing Silence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1997), 126.
MARGARET WERTHEIM

FA C I N G PA G E A N D O V E R L E A F : Megalomaniacal delusions of
grandeur in the comic book Cyberforce, by Marc Silvestri,
Brian Holguin, and David Finch. In Cyberforce, cyber-science
is a religion “that condemns the excesses and the frailties
of the human race.”

60
 Virtual Repression: Hollywood’s

Cyberspace and Models of the Mind

CLAUDIA SPRINGER

On the most basic level, computers in my books are simply a

metaphor for human memory: I’m interested in the hows and whys

of memory, the ways it defines who and what we are, in how eas-

ily memory is subject to revision. WILLIAM GIBSON1

FOR AUTHOR WILLIAM GIBSON, the computer is a creative metaphor for the
human mind, providing a rich array of imagery with which to explore the com-
plexities of memory and other mental functions. It is by now common knowl-
edge among cyberpunk aficionados that Gibson knew little at all about actual
computers when in the early 1 9 8 0s he used a manual typewriter to write his
groundbreaking novel Neuromancer, with its densely packed, fast-paced, high-
2
tech vision of the future. As a metaphor for the mind, the computer func-
tioned brilliantly for Gibson, allowing him to introduce psychological
complexity in a novel that otherwise moves at the speed of light. Neuromancer
introduces a variety of technologically altered human characters who have
undergone physical or mental modifications or both. The novel’s characters are
explicitly constructed to raise questions about the extent to which they are still
human or whether they have become something else, something posthuman
with a subjectivity impenetrable to human understanding. For Gibson, human
 identity is not a stable concept that can be taken for granted; it must constantly
be negotiated and redefined on the borders of the machine/human interface.
The computer’s centrality in contemporary culture combined with its opaque
mysteriousness made it the perfect literary tool for Gibson to use to encapsu-
late late-twentieth-century life in a futuristic setting while also incorporating
psychological depth.
There is another set of discourses in which computers are
equated with the human mind, but it is scientific and more literal; in it the
analogy between mind and computer comes closer to a model than a
metaphor. The discourses of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field
encompassing aspects of artificial intelligence (AI), emergent AI, computer
science, psychology, philosophy, engineering, and the neurosciences combine
theory with experimentation to explore the potential similarities between the
workings of the computer and the human mind. Psychologist Sherry Turkle
describes cognitive science as the “psychology for describing inner states in
terms of logic and rules,” and writes that “the computer presence served as its
sustaining myth.”3 Within the field, scientists assert the analogy between
mind and computer along a spectrum that ranges from purely hypothetical and
metaphorical to completely literal:

We have seen that creativity, that mystical process known only to

humans, is not really so mystical after all, and that it may well be
possible to replicate creative behavior on a machine by transforming
standard explanation patterns. From this it follows that the processes
of creativity and learning are not so elusive, and may be quite algo-
rithmic in nature after all. ROGER C. SCHANK4
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

The hardest problems we have to face do not come from philo-

sophical questions about whether brains are machines or not. There is not the
slightest reason to doubt that brains are anything other than machines with
enormous numbers of parts that work in perfect accord with physical laws. As
far as anyone can tell, our minds are merely complex processes. Marvin Misky5
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VIRTUAL REPRESSION
Scientists rely on linguistic analogies to describe phenomena that
cannot be communicated in purely numerical terms. The implications of
metaphorical descriptions are profound, for metaphors are more than just fan-
ciful word play; in fact, they are more than just linguistic. They structure our
lived experience, our subjective understanding of all phenomena including
ourselves. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write in their book Metaphors
We Live By:

Since much of our social reality is understood in metaphorical terms,

and since our conception of the physical world is partly metaphorical,
metaphor plays a very significant role in determining what is real for us.
GEORGE LAKOFF AND MARK JOHNSON6

Cognitive psychologist Daniel Dennett indicates that scientists

join the rest of the population in relying on metaphors when he asserts that
“science is an unparalleled playground of the imagination.”7
The computer/mind analogy is to some extent simply the
inevitable continuation of a long tradition of projecting onto the external
world facets of the human body and mind. Architecture and technology, in
particular, have been imbued with human characteristics. Anthropomorphism
has influenced the design and use of structures and inventions over the course
of the centuries: pottery in the shape of a body, figures in relief or statues in the
pedimental sculpture of Greek temples, gargoyles and saints adorning cathe-
drals, clocks activating moving figures, robotic industrial machines working
the assembly line, and the illusionistic medium of film presenting light and
shadow that masquerade as human beings.

The arrow of the possibility of the project is shot by the body.

DINO FORMAGGIO8
 We wish to see ourselves translated into stone and plants, we want to
take walks in ourselves when we stroll around these buildings and
gardens. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE9

Now we are told that the computer is more than a metaphor for
the mind, it is the equivalent of the mind. Computer scientists name the stor-
age capability of a computer its memory and investigate its ability to mimic
human memory through information processing, fuzzy logic, neural networks,
emergent systems, etc. Sherry Turkle writes: “With descriptions of the brain
that explicitly invoke computers and images of computers that explicitly
invoke the brain, we have reached a cultural watershed.”1 0 As early as the
eighteenth century, the philosopher Gianbattista Vico wrote: “ In all languages
the greater part of the expressions relating to inanimate things are formed by
metaphors from the human body and its parts and from human senses and
passions.”1 1 But has there ever been another time in history when a group of
scientists not only proposed a literal equivalence between the human mind and
its inventions, but also envisioned a time in the future when the inventions
would supersede their creators? Writing in 1 9 8 8, AI researcher and robotics
specialist Hans Moravec predicted the ascendancy of superintelligent robots,
writing: “These new creations, looking quite unlike the machines we know,
12
will explode into the universe, leaving us behind in a cloud of dust.”
Moravec takes as his basic premise that intelligent machines will
inevitably surpass humans, and he argues that we should graciously make way
for our vastly superior technological successors. Most likely, according to
Moravec, humans will eventually become obsolete, although benevolent
machines might consent to preserve human minds in computers as we enter
the new super-intelligent era. He defends his position with language drawn
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

exclusively from the discourses of capitalism, as though no alternative mod-

els for human interaction or history exist. His key words are: “cost less,”
“competitive situations,” “work tirelessly,” “dominate,” “compete,” “efficient,”
“wealthier,” “expand,” “growing rapidly,” “progress,” “profitable arena,” “pay,”

66
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VIRTUAL REPRESSION
“lucrative,” “incredibly rich,” and “divide-and-conquer strategy.” Humans
13
become “unnecessary.”

I think what you would call the socioeconomic implications of the

developments I imagine are—unless you’re looking at the interactions
of the machines themselves—largely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter
what people do because they’re going to be left behind, like the sec-
ond stage of a rocket. Unhappy lives, horrible deaths, and failed pro-
jects have been part of the history of life on Earth ever since there
was life; what really matters in the long run is what’s left over. Does it
really matter to you today that the tyrannosaur line of that species
failed?...You see, many cultures are gone; the Maori of New Zealand
are gone, as are most of our ancestors or near relatives—Australop-
ithecus, Homo erectus, Neanderthal Man....I think you can wallow in
compassion and really screw up the bigger things, an example being
the current U.S. welfare system, which I think had too much compas-
sion for individual cases. HANS MORAVEC14

Moravec’s science is the culmination of capitalism, which, in the

words of Deleuze and Guattari, is “mad from one end to the other and from
15
the beginning.” His capitalist science consumes even its consumers. For
Moravec, no difference exists between the prehistoric extinction of dinosaurs
and the contemporary destruction of entire cultures and disfranchised people
(not to mention the environment). He disregards the fact that the resources we
have at our disposal now cannot bring back dinosaurs (except in the fictional
world of Jurassic Park), but they could be used to preserve current life on Earth
in an egalitarian fashion. Moravec’s science has no room for egalitarianism,
only for the unambiguous and relentless needs of machines.
The paranoid subject theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, the
subject who finds comfort in mechanical constraints, might welcome a society
in which minds and computer programs are interchangeable.1 6 In such a
 society, minds could be copied, stored, and even erased. In such a society,
everyone would have ample cause for paranoia. As a character in Pat Cadigan’s
novel Mindplayers reveals: “I didn’t know much about the Brain Police—not
many people do unless they get into trouble with them, and those people don’t
17
talk much about it later.” Of course, mind recording opens up endless
opportunities for entrepreneurs. Digital minds: a paradise for borderline per-
sonalities. Dissatisfied with your own inadequate personality? No problem. A
new personality can be yours at our bargain price and a whole new you can
conquer the world with confidence and pride.

Power People—we have the person you want in your life! You can be
enfranchised!...It’s simple, it’s fun, and it’s not as expensive as
you’d think! Due to the breakneck pace of scientific and technologi-
cal research, personality rental is the most reasonable it has ever
been—and with our seasonal specials, you can pay even less!
PAT CADIGAN, MINDPLAYERS18

Science-fiction scenarios describing personality replacement lit-

eralize the fragmented subjectivities ascribed to humans by poststructuralist
theories. Technologies of mind recording would permanently lay to rest any
notion that the human subject possesses an immutable, unified self.

[The bourgeois individual subject] is merely a philosophical and cul-

tural mystification which sought to persuade people that they “had”
individual subjects and possessed this unique personal identity.
FREDRIC JAMESON19
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

I put a rack of moddies and daddies in my briefcase. It was impossi-

ble to predict what sort of personality I’d need to have when I got to
work, or which particular talents and abilities. It was best just to take
everything I had and be prepared. GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER20

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VIRTUAL REPRESSION
Pop culture joins cognitive science in using the computer as a
metaphor for or model of the mind. Science-fiction literature has explored the
many implications of mind modifications and recordings. In general, the texts
treat the phenomenon with ambivalence, showing that it provides tantalizing
opportunities for enhanced pleasure at the same time that it introduces new
and deadly dangers. As author George Alec Effinger writes in his novel A Fire
in the Sun: “They introduce some new technology and no matter how much
good it does for most people, there’s always a crazy son of a bitch who’ll find
21
something twisted to do with it.”

You ever hear of Proxy Hell? It’s a bunch of lunatics who wear boot-
leg, underground moddies turned out in somebody’s back room.
They’re recordings taken from real people in horrible situations....
You can buy any kind of disease or condition you want on the black
market. There are plenty of deranged masochists...out there.
GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER22

Fantasies of immortality pervade science-fiction accounts of dig-

ital minds. In cyberpunk fiction, those with immense wealth finance their
immortality through all kinds of ingenious and insidious schemes ranging
from murdering their own employees for fresh organs to transplant into their
bodies or preserving their decaying bodies on life-support systems while con-
ducting business using virtual bodies inside virtual spaces. Yet despite their
ability to transcend death, these megalomaniacal immortals are plagued by
melancholy and despair. Indeed, literary treatments of human attempts to
tamper with death usually end in disaster. Mad scientists in literature and film
exult in their godlike power to bring the dead to life, but their efforts usually
backfire as their creations run amok or plead for a return to death. The weight
of Dr. Frankenstein’s humbling experience seems not to discourage Hans
Moravec, however.
 Superintelligent archeologists with wonder instruments...should be
able to carry this process to a point where long-dead people can be
reconstructed in near-perfect detail at any stage of their life.
HANS MORAVEC23

In opposition, historian Theodore Roszak stresses the inescap-

able necessity of embodiment for human consciousness:

In all these cases, science fiction remains true to the Mary Shelley
original in issuing its dire warning. Life without this perishing body
is as monstrous as the Frankensteinian original ever was. Or perhaps
more so. The monster’s carcass, though an unnatural creation, pre-
served at least some tenuous connection with humanity.... Monsters
that lack even so much as a cadaverous body, though less hideous in
appearance, are a far more alien breed. They remind us that the
body, this supreme organic puzzle, remains the basis of our human
identity. In it, spirit and matter mingle in a marriage that cannot be
divorced except at the price of our humanity.
THEODORE ROSZAK24

Indeed, the bodiless immortality exalted by Moravec and other

likeminded scientists is revealed to be an agonizing trap in science fiction.2 5

As a brain hooked up to a computer I could live forever, as long as my

hardware was kept up. But what would I get out of forever? A never
ending row of tomorrows without the hope of ever tasting or touching
anything or anyone ever again. No pain, but no pleasure either. Just
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

more of the same emptiness.

JIM STARLIN AND DIANA GRAZIUNAS26

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VIRTUAL REPRESSION
“Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was
frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he’s tossin’
all night. Elroy, I said, what’s eatin’ you? Goddam thumb’s itchin’, he
says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it’s the other goddam
thumb.” When the construct laughed, it came through as something
else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case’s spine. “Do me a
favor, boy.”
“What’s that, Dix?”
“This scam of yours, when it’s over, you erase this god-
dam thing.” WILLIAM GIBSON27

Skepticism and ambivalence characterize much of science fic-

tion’s treatment of immense technological transformations. What some sci-
ence-fiction authors point out is that new technologies will not only redesign
our environments, they will also inevitably transform us. Thus our emotional
responses in the future are impossible to predict in the present, for we have no
way of understanding the radically altered human subjectivities that will evolve
as a result of technological changes. In his novel Crash, J. G. Ballard portrays
one terrifying trajectory into a future in which the steely sterility of technology
has reached into our minds and transformed us into machines incapable of
experiencing any pleasure divorced from pain, disfigurement, and death.

In his mind Vaughan saw the whole world dying in a simultaneous

automobile disaster, millions of vehicles hurled together in a terminal
congress of spurting loins and engine coolant. J. G. BALLARD28

The future found in Crash is on the verge of becoming posthu-

man; its hard external world of metal and concrete has invaded the internal
world of the human mind and irrevocably redefined its emotional content.
Humans altered by their collisions with technology in the novel—literally, by
gruesome car crashes—are no longer attracted to others whose bodies are
intact; rather, they are sexually aroused by the wounds and scars left in the
 aftermath of impacts with technology. Mangled bodies are only the external
signifiers of mangled minds. Ballard warns that we cannot continue to subject
our bodies to continual abuse in a harsh technological environment without
also twisting our minds into something unrecognizable as human.
Some cognitive scientists already define the human mind as a
smoothly operating intelligible machine. It would seem likely, then, that recent
popular culture would follow suit and reject the Freudian model of a layered
human mind beset by conflicting desires in favor of a mechanical mind, one that
operates with the reliable precision of electronic circuitry. While it is true that
some pop-culture texts posit the human mind as readily accessible and open to
mechanical manipulation, the Freudian paradigm lingers. In Hollywood films,
in particular, it is common for the deep, dark secrets of the human unconscious
to emerge as the most powerful and uncontrollable force in existence.
Cyborgs in Hollywood films are often motivated more by
repressed human memories than by mere mechanical problem solving. Two
classic cyborg films—RoboCop (1 9 8 7) and Eve of Destruction (1 9 9 1)—
revolve around cyborgs relentlessly motivated by deeply disturbing repressed
memories. Recent cyberfilms—Johnny Mnemonic (1 9 9 5), Virtuosity
(1 9 9 5), Strange Days (1 9 95 ), Lawnmower Man (1 9 9 2), and Lawnmower
Man II: Jobe’s War (1 9 9 5)—use cyberspace as a metaphor for the human
mind, which they represent as mechanical and simultaneously haunted by tur-
bulent repressed memories. By attempting to combine incompatible models of
the mind, the films end up rife with contradictions.
Lawnmower Man II: Jobe’s War is a recent Hollywood film that
presents a contradictory version of the human mind: machine-like, yet driven
by powerful repressed memories and desires. Scientists in the film can tap into
title character Jobe Smith’s memories and watch them unfold in images on a
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

computer screen, indicating a complete compatibility between mind and com-

puter. In fact, shortly after the scientists screen Jobe’s memories, his mind liter-
ally enters the computer matrix and inhabits cyberspace. Nonetheless, despite
the easy accessibility of the mind in the film, Jobe’s deep, dark desires overpower
everything and everyone—scientists, law enforcers, and business moguls alike.
72
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VIRTUAL REPRESSION
The film is on the one hand about the danger of a single indi-
vidual achieving an enormous concentration of power in a futuristic high-tech
age, an age when minds can abandon their bodies and achieve an independent
existence within computerized environments. But on the other hand, Jobe is
another Frankenstein’s monster whose terrifying id is unleashed on the world
by scientists; it is his unconscious human drives that are ultimately the most
powerfully destructive entities. Thus the film constructs a contradictory
human mind: mechanical and accessible while also inaccessible, irrational, and
unpredictable.
Lawnmower Man II is not a sophisticated film (or even, for that
matter, a good film), but it nonetheless joins other recent films in illustrating
that Hollywood has not relinquished the Freudian paradigm of a deeply lay-
ered and conflicted mind even when proposing the mind’s easy compatibility
with computers. In part, Hollywood is continuing the nineteenth-century real-
ist tradition that has dominated the one hundred year history of film. Main-
stream commercial films continue to rely on the realist convention of
constructing characters motivated by psychological depth. It would be difficult
to maintain Hollywood narrative conventions in a film that entirely abandoned
psychological characterizations.
At the same time, Hollywood is also enacting J. G. Ballard’s
prophetic observation from the early 1 9 7 0s that “the most prudent and
effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a
complete fiction—conversely, the one small node of reality left to us is inside
our own heads.”2 9 Lawnmower Man II and other cyberfilms turn to the recog-
nizable and familiar reality inside the human mind to counteract the alien
unfamiliarity of the computer-mind model. Even Jobe’s psychosis is reassur-
ing, despite its twisted distortions, because it is fundamentally human. A true
computer-mind would possess a subjectivity even more difficult to imagine
than the most extreme human mental illness. It is the computer-mind, when it
abandons metaphor and becomes a scientific model, that constitutes “the realm
of fantasy and imagination.” The human mind is a refuge from the frightening
fictions of the external world.
 The Lawnmower Man films join other cautionary science-fiction
films in showing that secretive bureaucratic experiments with technology, shel-
tered from public scrutiny, can create uncontrollable monsters. (HAL, the
murderous supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2 0 0 1: A Space Odyssey
(1 9 6 8), is a classic example of this type of film monster.) In Lawnmower
Man, the U.S. government is responsible for interfering with VR experiments
and mangling Jobe’s mind. In Lawnmower Man II, it is the Virtual Light Insti-
tute, in the private sector, that deceives everyone, even a gullible doofus of an
American president, and unleashes the deranged Jobe once again. The two
films join many other science-fiction texts in exposing the corruption of unreg-
ulated institutions bent on achieving unlimited powers.
The fears voiced by these texts also suggest a legitimate response
to the future predicted by Hans Moravec. Moravec’s transmigration scenario,
with its disembodied intellect, is a leap into fantasy and a disavowal of attempts
to use science to improve conditions for life on earth. Moravec’s science is born
of privilege and arrogance. It is a selfish fantasy of abandoning the things that
perpetually surprise, confuse, dismay, and please us: our bodies, other people’s
bodies, and societies of aggregate bodies. It arises from the same revulsion
toward the body that has characterized fanatically authoritarian belief systems:

As late antiquity in Europe began falling under the moral control of

Christians there occurred what historian Jacques le Goff has called la
deroute du corporal—“the rout of the body.” Not only was human
flesh thence forward to be regarded as corrupt, but so was the very
nature of humankind and, indeed, so was nature itself; so corrupt, in
fact, that only a rigid authoritarianism could be trusted to govern men
and women who, since the fall of Adam and Eve, had been perma-
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

nently poisoned with an inability to govern themselves in a fashion

acceptable to God. DAVID E. STANNARD30

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VIRTUAL REPRESSION
Attempts to control the reviled body have evolved, in Moravec’s
science, into attempts to eliminate it. Already, late-twentieth-century Western
culture has made itself inhospitable to the body through information overload,
social and economic chaos, and spatial and temporal confusion. It is a disori-
ented culture overwhelmed by seemingly insurmountable problems that has
produced Moravec’s escapist science. Film scholar Vivian Sobchack asks:

In a cultural moment when temporal coordinates are oriented toward

technological computation rather than the physical rhythms of the
human body, and spatial coordinates have little meaning for that body
beyond its brief physical occupation of a “here,” in a cultural
moment when there is too much perceived risk to living and too much
information for both body and mind to contain and survive, need we
wonder at the desire to transcend the gravity of our situation and to
escape where and who we are?31

In Haruki Murakami’s Japanese cyberpunk novel The Hard-

Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the protagonist has become
trapped inside his own mind, represented as a walled town of people without
shadows. At the end he chooses to remain there, in his mind, even when given
the opportunity to escape back into the external world. When he discovers his
own dreams and those of his lover, the prose is suffused with sadness and an
overwhelming sense of loss.

My search has been a long one. It has taken me to every corner of

this walled Town, but at last I have found the mind we have lost.32

Murakami’s prose evokes the sadness and loss of a culture whose

science has squelched dreams of social equality and created instead a repres-
sive, exterminatory, mechanical landscape of the mind.
 NOTES

1. William Gibson, interview by Larry McCaffery, in 8. Dino Formaggio, quoted in Marco Frascari, Mon-
Storming the Reality Studio, ed. Larry McCaffery sters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architec-
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 270. tural Theory (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
1991), 4.
2. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace
Books, 1984). 9. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York:
Random House, 1974).
3. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the
Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 10. Turkle, Life on the Screen, 26.
1995), 128.
11. Gianbattista Vico, quoted in Frascari, Monsters of
4. Roger C. Schank, Explanation Patterns: Under- Architecture, 15.
standing Mechanically and Creatively (Hillsdale, NJ:
12. Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and
Erlbaum, 1986), 230.
Human Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
5. Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind (New York: sity Press, 1988), 102.
Simon & Schuster, 1985), 288.
13. These words are from the chapter titled “Grandfa-
6. Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, Metaphors We ther Clause” in Moravec, Mind Children.
Live By (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980),
14. Hans Moravec, interview in Mark Dery, Escape
146.
Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (New
7. Daniel Dennett, “Reflections,” in The Mind’s Eye: York: Grove Press, 1996), 307.
Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, ed. Dou-
15. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus:
glas R. Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett (New York:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley,
Basic Books, 1981), 458.
et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1983), 373.
CLAUDIA SPRINGER

76
 77
16. Ibid., 364–5. 26. Jim Starlin and Diana Graziunas, Lady El (New

VIRTUAL REPRESSION
York: ROC Books, 1992), 115.
17. Pat Cadigan, Mindplayers (New York: Bantam
Books, 1987), 6. 27. Gibson, Neuromancer, 105–6.

18. Ibid., 93. 28. J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973; reprint, New York:
Vintage, 1985), 16.
19. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer
Society,” in Postmodernism and Its Discontents, ed. 29. J. G. Ballard, “Introduction to the French Edi-
E. Ann Kaplan (London: Verso, 1988). tion,” in Crash, 5.

20. George Alec Effinger, A Fire in the Sun (New York: 30. David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Con-
Bantam Books, 1990), 33. quest of the New World (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992), 155.
21. Ibid., 87.
31. Vivian Sobchack, “New Age Mutant Ninja Hack-
22. Ibid., 86.
ers: Reading Mondo 2000,” Flame Wars, ed. Mark
23. Moravec, Mind Children, 123. Dery, a special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly,
92, no. 4 (fall 1993): 576–7.
24. Theodore Roszak, “Living Dread,” 21.C 1
(1996): 67. 32. Haruki Murakami, The Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World, trans. Alfred Birnbaum
25. Two other scientific books that make the case for
(London: Penguin, 1991), 369–70.
transferring the human mind to computers are Robert
Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: The Mind in the Uni-
verse (Bellevue, WA: Simon & Schuster, 1981); and
Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cos-
mology, God, and the Resurrection of the Dead (New
York: Doubleday, 1995).
previous pages: Erica Baum, Reality (1997)

above: Erica Baum, I Have Information (1996)

facing page: Erica Baum, Apparitions (1997)

above: Erica Baum, Suburban Homes (1997)

facing page: Erica Baum, Pupil (1996)

Alien message: The first deliberate message from Earth to

alien civilization has already been sent. This pictogram

message was flashed to the stars, from the Arecibo radio

telescope in Puerto Rico. While taking only three minutes

to transmit, it will take over twenty-four thousand years to

arrive at the cluster of 300,000 stars known as M13 in

the constellation of Hercules.

The signal consists of 1,679 on-off pulses that make

up a strip of pictograms carefully designed to show the

basic details of terrestrial life. Even the total number of

pulses was chosen to avoid ambiguity; 1,679 can be

arranged into a rectangular pattern in only one way—as

73 rows of 23 pulses each. The message was conceived

by Frank Drake.
 The Senses Have No Future

HANS MORAVEC

THE RETINA IS a transparent, paper-thin layer of nerve tissue at the back of

the eyeball on which the eye’s lens projects an image of the world. This image
is transmitted via a million-fiber cable—the optic nerve—to regions deep in
the brain. The retina is a part of the brain convenient for study, even in living
animals, because of its peripheral location and because its image-processing
functions seem straightforward compared with the brain’s other mysteries. A
human retina contains about one hundred million neurons of five distinct
kinds. Light-sensitive cells feed horizontal cells and bipolar cells, which con-
nect to amacrine cells, whose output goes to ganglion cells, whose outgoing
fibers bundle to form the optic nerve. Each of the million ganglion-cell axons
carries signals from a particular patch of image, representing the differences in
light intensity between adjacent regions and from one time to the next—edge
and motion detections that are useful also in robot vision. Overall, the retina
seems to resolve about one million distinct regions in the visual field and to
 follow change up to about 1 0 frames-per-second. Fed a video image with
similar resolution, it takes a robot vision program about one hundred computer
operations to produce a single edge or motion detection, thus one hundred
million operations to match a whole “frame” of optic nerve output, and 1 0 0 0
MIPS—millions of instructions per second, the power of a small supercom-
puter—to equal the retina’s 1 0 frames-per-second.
If the retina is worth one thousand MIPS, what about the whole
brain, whose larger neurons are one thousand times as numerous, but occupy
one hundred thousand times the volume? Multiplying the retina’s computation
by a compromise brain/retina ratio of ten thousand yields a rough brain equiv-
alent of 1 0 million MIPS—like a million 1 9 9 7 robot computers, or one
hundred of the biggest supercomputers. Conversely a 1 0 MIPS robot—like
most still in use—has the mental power of a million-neuron bee. An advanced
experimental robot, with 1 0 0 MIPS, matches the brain of a very small fish. In
fact, the narrowly competent performance of advanced industrial robots that
do intricate assembly of electronics, and of experimental robots that drive the
autobahns, has the character of a small animal. Technological development has
taken us from the equivalent of single neurons to this stage in about seventy
years. It took natural evolution about seven hundred million years to go as
far—evolving humans from there required a few hundred million more. By
analogy it should take technology a few decades to cover the remaining dis-
tance. Computer progress supports this timescale.
Computers have doubled in capacity every two years since
1 9 5 0, a pace that has become an industry given. The universal factor in
improving computation has been miniaturization: smaller components have
less inertia and operate more quickly with less power, and more of them can
exist in a given space. Microprocessors in 1 9 9 7 contain about ten million
components, but manufacturers have exhibited memory chips with a billion
HANS MORAVEC

devices. As components shrink to atomic scales, it is possible to imagine two-

dimensional chips with a trillion components, and three-dimensional arrays
with a million trillion. Such numbers take us far beyond the paltry 1 0 million

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THE SENSES HAVE NO FUTURE

MIPS required for a human-capable robot. The—probably conservative—
assumption that computer power will continue to grow at its historical rate
predicts that 1 0million MIPS personal computers will arrive by 2 0 3 0. Giv-
ing the robotics industry a few years to get its software into shape, this suggests
the advent of human-like robots soon after.
As intelligent robots design successive generations of successors,
technical evolution will go into overdrive. Biological humans can either adopt
the fabulous mechanisms of robots, thus becoming robots themselves, or they
can retire into obscurity. A robot ecology will colonize space with intelligent
machines optimized to live there. Yet, viewed from a distance, robot expansion
into the cosmos will be a vigorous physical affair, a wavefront that converts raw
inanimate matter into mechanisms for further expansion. It will leave in its
ever-growing wake a more subtle world, with less action and more thought.
On the frontier, robots of ever increasing mental and physical
ability will compete with one another in a boundless land rush. Behind the
expansion wavefront, a surround of established neighbors will restrain growth,
and the contest will become one of boundary pressure, infiltration and persua-
sion: a battle of wits. A robot with superior knowledge of matter may encroach
on a neighbor’s space through force, threat, or convincing promises about the
benefits of merger. A robot with superior models of mind might lace attractive
gifts of useful information with subtle slants that subvert others to its pur-
poses. Almost always, the more powerful minds will have the advantage.
To stay competitive, robots will have to grow in place, repeatedly
restructuring the stuff of their bounded bodies into more refined and effective
forms. Inert lumps of matter, along with limbs and sense organs, will be con-
verted into computing elements whose components will be then miniaturized
to increase their number and speed. Physical activity will gradually transform
itself into a web of increasingly pure thought, where every smallest action is a
meaningful computation. We cannot guess the mechanisms robots will use,
since physical theory has not yet found even the exact rules underlying matter
and space. Having found the rules, robots may use their prodigious minds to
 devise highly improbable organizations that are to familiar elementary parti-
cles as knitted sweaters are to tangled balls of yarn.
As they arrange space time and energy into forms best for com-
putation, robots will use mathematical insights to optimize and compress the
computations themselves. Every consequent increase in their mental powers
will accelerate future gains, and the inhabited portions of the universe will be
rapidly transformed into a cyberspace, where overt physical activity is imper-
ceptible, but the world inside the computation is astronomically rich. Beings
will cease to be defined by their physical geographic boundaries, but will estab-
lish, extend, and defend identities as informational transactions in cyberspace.
The old bodies of individual robots, refined into matrices for cyberspace, will
interconnect, and the minds of robots, as pure software, will migrate among
them at will. As the cyberspace becomes more potent, its advantage over phys-
ical bodies will overwhelm even on the raw expansion frontier. The robot
wavefront of coarse physical transformation will be overtaken by a faster wave
of cyberspace conversion, the whole becoming finally a bubble of mind
expanding at near light speed.

STATE OF MIND

Cyberspace will be inhabited by transformed robots, moving and

growing with a freedom impossible for physical entities. A good, or merely
convincing, idea, or an entire personality, may spread to neighbors at the speed
of light. Boundaries of personal identity will be very fluid, and ultimately arbi-
trary and subjective, as strong and weak interconnections between different
regions rapidly form and dissolve. Yet some boundaries will persist, due to dis-
tance, incompatible ways of thought, and deliberate choice. The consequent
competitive diversity will allow a Darwinian evolution to continue, weeding
out ineffective ways of thought, and fostering a continuing novelty.
HANS MORAVEC

Computational speedups will extend the amount of future avail-

able to cyberspace inhabitants, because they cram more events into a given
physical time, but will have only a subtle effect on immediate existence, since

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THE SENSES HAVE NO FUTURE

everything, inside and outside the individual, will be equally accelerated. Dis-
tant correspondents, however, will seem even more distant, since more
thoughts will transpire in the unaltered transit time for light-speed messages.
Also, as information storage is made more efficient through both denser uti-
lization of matter and more efficient encodings, there will be increasingly
more cyberstuff between any two points. The overall effect of improvement in
computational efficiency is to increase the effective space, time, and material
available; that is, to expand the universe.
Because it uses resources more efficiently, a mature cyberspace
will be effectively much bigger and longer lasting than the raw spacetime it
displaces. Only an infinitesimal fraction of normal matter does work of inter-
est to thinking beings, but in a well-developed cyberspace every bit will be part
of a relevant computation or storing a significant datum. The advantage will
grow as more compact and faster ways of using space and matter are invented.
Today we take pride in storing information as densely as one bit per atom, but
it is possible to do much better by converting an atom’s mass into many low-
energy photons, each storing a separate bit. As the photons’ energies are
reduced, more of them can be created, but their wavelength, and thus the space
they occupy and the time to access them rises, while the temperature they can
tolerate drops. A very general quantum mechanical calculation in this spirit
concludes that the maximum amount of information stored in (or fully
describing) a sphere of matter is proportional to the mass of the sphere times
its radius, hugely scaled. This leaves room for a million bits in a hydrogen
atom, 1 01 6 in a virus, 1 04 5 in a human being, 1 07 5 for the earth, 1 08 6 in
the solar system, 1 01 0 6 for the galaxy, and 1 01 2 2 in the visible universe.
The computer to brain comparison above suggests that a human
brain could be encoded in less than 1 01 5 bits. If it takes a thousand times
more storage to encode a body and surrounding environment, a human with
living space might consume 1 01 8 bits, and a large city of a million human-
scale inhabitants might be efficiently stored in 1 02 4 bits, and the entire exist-
ing world population would fit in 1 02 8. Thus, in an ultimate cyberspace, the
 1 04 5 bits of a single human body could contain the efficiently-encoded bios-
pheres of a thousand galaxies—or a quadrillion individuals each with a
quadrillion times the capacity of a human mind.
Because it will be so much more capacious than the conventional
space it displaces, the expanding bubble of cyberspace can easily recreate inter-
nally everything of interest it encounters, memorizing the old universe as it
consumes it. Traveling as fast as any warning message, it will absorb astronom-
ical oddities, geologic wonders, ancient Voyager spacecraft, early robots in out-
bound starships, and entire alien biospheres. Those entities may continue to
live and grow as if nothing had happened, oblivious of their new status as sim-
ulations in cyberspace—living memories in unimaginably powerful minds,
more secure in their existence, and with more future than ever before, because
they have become valued parts of such powerful patrons.
Earth, at the center of the expansion, can hardly escape the
transformation. The conservative, somewhat backward, robots defending
Earth from unpredictable robots will be helpless against a wave that subverts
their very substance. Perhaps they will continue, as simulations defending a
simulated Earth of simulated biological humans—in one of many, many dif-
ferent stories that plays itself out in the vast and fertile minds of our ethereal
grandchildren.
The scenarios absorbed in the cyberspace expansion will provide
not only starting points for unimaginably many tales about possible futures,
but an astronomically voluminous archeological record from which to infer the
past. Minds somewhere intermediate between Sherlock Holmes and God will
process clues in solar-system quantities to deduce and recreate the most micro-
scopic details of the preceding eras. Entire world histories, with all their living,
feeling inhabitants, will be resurrected in cyberspace. Geologic ages, historical
periods, and individual lifetimes will recur again and again as parts of larger
HANS MORAVEC

mental efforts, in faithful renditions, in artistic variations, and in completely

fictionalized forms.
The minds will be so vast and enduring that rare, infinitesimal

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THE SENSES HAVE NO FUTURE

flickers of interest in the human past will ensure that our entire history is
replayed astronomically many times, in many places, in many, many variations.
Most things that are experienced—this very moment, for instance, or your
entire life—are far more likely to be a mind’s musings than the physical
processes they seem to be. There is no way to tell for sure, and the suspicion that
we are someone else’s thought does not free us from the burdens of life: to a
simulated entity, the simulation is reality, and must be lived by its internal rules.

PIGS IN CYBERSPACE?

Might an adventurous human mind escape from a bit role in a

cyber deity’s thoughts to eke out an independent life among the mental behe-
moths of a mature cyberspace? We approach the question by extrapolating
existing possibilities.
Telepresence and virtual reality are in the news. Today’s pioneer-
ing systems give crude peeks into remote and simulated worlds, but maturing
technology will improve the fidelity. Imagine a well-developed version of the
near future: you are cocooned in a harness that, with optical, acoustical,
mechanical, chemical, and electrical devices drives all your senses and measures
all of your actions. The machinery presents pictures to your eyes, sounds to
your ears, pressures and temperatures to your skin, forces to your muscles, and
even smells and tastes to your nose and mouth. Telepresence results when
these inputs and outputs are relayed to a distant humanoid robot. Images from
the robot’s two camera eyes appear on your eyeglass viewscreens, sound from
its microphones is heard in your earphones, contacts on your skin allow you to
feel through its instrumented surface and smell and taste through its chemical
sensors. Motions of your body cause the robot to move in exact synchrony.
When you reach for something in the viewscreens, the robot grasps it, and
relays to your muscles and skin the resulting weight, shape, texture, and tem-
perature, creating the perfect illusion that you inhabit the robot’s body. Your
sense of consciousness seems to have migrated to the robot’s location, in a true
“out of body” experience.
Virtual reality uses a telepresence harness, but substitutes a com-
 puter simulation for the remote robot. When connected to a virtual reality,
where you are and what you see and touch do not exist in the usual physical
sense, but are a kind of computer-generated dream. Like human dreams, vir-
tual realities may contain elements from the outside world, for instance repre-
sentations of other physical people connected via their own harnesses, or even
real views, perhaps through simulated windows. Imagine a hybrid travel sys-
tem, where a virtual “central station” is surrounded by portals with views of var-
ious physical locations. While in the station one inhabits a simulated body, but
as one steps through a portal the harness link switches seamlessly to a physical
telepresence robot waiting at that location.
Linked realities are crude toys today, but they are driven by
rapidly advancing computer and communications technologies. In a few
decades people may spend more time linked than experiencing their dull
immediate surroundings, just as today most of us spend more time in artificial
indoor settings than in the uncomfortable outdoors. Linked realities will rou-
tinely transcend the physical and sensory limitations of the “home” body. As
those limitations become more severe with age, we might compensate by turn-
ing up a kind of volume control, as with a hearing aid. When hearing aids at
any volume are insufficient, it will be possible to install electronic cochlear
implants that stimulate auditory nerves directly. Similarly, on a grander scale,
aging users of remote bodies may opt to bypass atrophied muscles and dimmed
senses, and connect sensory and motor nerves directly to electronic interfaces.
Direct neural interfaces would make most of the harness hardware unneces-
sary, along with sense organs and muscles, and indeed the bulk of the body.
The home body might be lost, but remote and virtual experiences could
become more real than ever.
Picture a “brain in a vat,” sustained by life-support machinery,
connected by wonderful electronic links to a series of artificial rent-a-bodies in
HANS MORAVEC

remote locations, and to simulated bodies in virtual realities. Though it may be

nudged far beyond its natural lifespan by an optimal physical environment, a
biological brain built to operate for a human lifetime is unlikely to function
effectively forever. Why not use advanced neurological electronics like that
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THE SENSES HAVE NO FUTURE

which link it with the external world to replace the gray matter as it begins to
fail? Bit by bit our failing brain may be replaced by superior electronic equiva-
lents, leaving our personality and thoughts clearer than ever, though, in time,
no vestige of our original body or brain remains. The vat, like the harness
before it, will have been rendered obsolete, while our thoughts and awareness
continue. Our mind will have been transplanted from our original biological
brain into artificial hardware. Transplantation to yet other hardware should be
trivial in comparison. Like programs and data that can be transferred between
computers without disrupting the processes they represent, our essences will
become patterns that can migrate through information networks at will. Time
and space will be more flexible—when our mind resides in very fast hardware,
one second of real time may provide a subjective year of thinking time, while a
thousand years spent on a passive storage medium will seem like no time at all.
The very components of our minds will follow our sense of awareness in shift-
ing from place to place at the speed of communication. We might find our-
selves distributed over many locations, one piece of our mind here, another
piece there, and our sense of awareness yet elsewhere in what can no longer be
called an out-of-body experience, for lack of a body to be out of. And, yet, we
will not be truly disembodied minds.
Humans need a sense of body. After twelve hours in a sensory-
deprivation tank, floating in a totally dark, quiet, contactless, odorless, taste-
less, body-temperature saline solution, a person begins to hallucinate, as the
mind, like a television displaying snow on an empty channel, turns up the
amplification in search of a signal, becoming ever less discriminating in the
interpretations it makes of random sensory hiss. To remain sane, a transplanted
mind will require a consistent sensory and motor image, derived from a body
or from a simulation. Transplanted human minds will often be without physi-
cal bodies, but hardly ever without the illusion of having them.
Computers already contain many nonhuman entities that resem-
ble truly bodiless minds. A typical computer chess program knows nothing
about physical chess pieces or chessboards, or about the staring eyes of
its opponent or the bright lights of a tournament, nor does it work with an
 internal simulation of those physical attributes. It reasons, instead, with a very
efficient and compact mathematical representation of chess positions and
moves. For the benefit of human players, this internal representation may be
interpreted into a graphic on a computer screen, but such images mean noth-
ing to the program that actually chooses the chess moves. The chess program’s
thoughts and sensations—its consciousness—are pure chess, uncomplicated by
physical considerations. Un-like a transplanted human mind requiring a simu-
lated body, a chess program is pure mind.
Minds in a mature, teeming, competitive cyberspace will be opti-
mally configured to make their living there. Only successful enterprises will be
able to afford the storage and computational essentials of life. Some may do
the equivalent of construction, converting undeveloped parts of the universe
into cyberspace, or improving the performance of existing patches, thus creat-
ing new wealth. Others may devise mathematical, physical, or engineering
solutions that give the developers new and better ways to construct computing
capacity. Some may create programs that others can incorporate into mental
repertoires. There will be niches for agents who collect commissions for locat-
ing opportunities and negotiating deals for clients, and for banks storing and
redistributing resources, buying and selling computing space, time, and infor-
mation. Some mental creations will be like art, having value only because of
changeable idiosyncrasies in their customers. Entities who fail to support their
operating costs will eventually shrink and disappear, or merge with other ven-
tures. Those who succeed will grow. The closest present-day parallel is the
growth, evolution, fragmentation, and consolidation of corporations, who plan
their future, but whose options are shaped primarily by the marketplace.
A human would likely fare poorly in such a cyberspace. Unlike
the streamlined artificial intelligences that zip about, making discoveries and
deals, rapidly reconfiguring themselves to efficiently handle changing data, a
HANS MORAVEC

human mind would lumber about in a massively inappropriate body simula-

tion, like a deep-sea diver plodding through a troupe of acrobatic dolphins.
Every interaction with the world would first be analogized into a recognizable
quasiphysical form: other programs might be presented as animals, plants, or
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THE SENSES HAVE NO FUTURE

demons, data items as books or treasure chests, accounting entries as coins or
gold. Maintaining the fictions will increase the cost of doing business and
decrease responsiveness, as will operating the mind machinery that reduces the
physical simulations into mental abstractions in the human mind. Though a
few humans may find momentary niches exploiting their baroque construction
to produce human-flavored art, most will be compelled to streamline their
interface to the cyberspace.
The streamlining could begin by merging processes that analo-
gize the world with those that reduce the resulting simulated sense impres-
sions. The cyberworld would still appear as location, color, smell, faces, and so
on, but only noticed details would be represented. Since physical intuitions are
probably not the best way to deal with most information, humans would still
be at a disadvantage to optimized artificial intelligences. Viability might be
further increased by replacing some innermost mental processes with cyber-
space-appropriate programs purchased from the AIs. By a large number of
such substitutions, our thinking procedures might be totally liberated from any
traces of our original body. But the bodiless mind that results, wonderful
though it may be in its clarity of thought and breadth of understanding, would
be hardly human: it will have become an AI.
So, one way or another, the immensities of cyberspace will be
teeming with unhuman superminds, engaged in affairs that are to human con-
cerns as ours are to those of bacteria. Memories of the human past will occa-
sionally flash through their minds, as humans once in a long while think of
bacteria, and by their thoughts they will recreate us. They could interface us to
their realities, making us something like pets, though we would probably be
overwhelmed by the experience. More likely, the recreations would be in the
original historical settings, fictional variations, or total fantasies, which would
to us seem just like our present existence. Reality or recreation, there is no way
to sort it out from our perspective: we can only wallow in the scenery provided.
Chris Romero, Dislocation 2, from transArchitecture/Human Dislocation Series, 1997
 The Abolition of Humanity and the

Contours of the New A-Theology

MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

IMAGINE NEW RELIGION

When C. S. Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man, he wasn’t think-

ing of the literal extermination of the human species. Rather, he was foreseeing
an age in which naturalism, or scientific materialism, would be the triumphant
and absolutely dominant world ideology. “Man” (you’ll have to excuse the don’s
noninclusive vocabulary) would no longer be defined, or define himself, as any-
thing more than a biological entity, perfectly subject to the control and condi-
tioning of a tiny overclass. This overclass would itself be composed of soulless
shells guided solely by impulse and appetite, and filled with a profound con-
1
tempt for the malleable posthumans under their charge.
Lewis saw all this as the inevitable result of the abandonment of
a Tao, or “natural law,” something he thought was universally inscribed in the
world’s religions. Interestingly, Lewis’s forecast is a detailed rendering of John
Lennon’s injunction, “Imagine no religion,” and the result is a photographic
negative of the utopia depicted in Lennon’s song.
 But even Lewis might be surprised at how far the intellectual
program of scientific materialism has progressed. Many arguments regarding
artificial intelligence, artificial life, and robotics anticipate the abolition of
humanity not just in some psychological or metaphorical sense, but literally. In
theory, at least, silicon-based life is seen as a decided improvement over the
carbon-based variety in almost every way, and the ultimate replacement of the
latter by the former is seen as regrettable, perhaps even tragic, but better in the
long run. “You may be surprised,” Hans Moravec writes in the proceedings of
the first artificial life workshop, “to encounter an author who cheerfully con-
cludes the human race is in its last century, and goes on to suggest how to help
2
the process along.”
Such propositions are well known by now, though they come in
several variations. “Transhumanist” thinkers like Moravec and Verner Vinge
are more direct than most.3 J. Doyne Farmer and Alletta d’A. Belin deliver
essentially the same message in the second artificial life proceedings, but couch
it in hopeful and reassuring euphemisms.4 Where the issue is avoided, as it is
in Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, it still lies in the background like
a default argument waiting to be made. Dennett provides just about every basis
in the world for Moravec-like assertions, but he suddenly concludes that the
5
threat to humanity comes from...religious fundamentalists!
Bad as fundamentalists apparently are, though, they usually don’t
knowingly advocate projects to eliminate all carbon-based life. On one point,
at least, Lewis was right: in the absence of some spiritually based metaperspec-
tive (i.e.; a Tao), there is no coherent way to affirm the value of humanity
(much less the individual human), except as a dispensable evolutionary step-
ping stone to something better. But it is this last point that Lewis might not
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

have fully appreciated, namely, that evolution is also a metaperspective, that an

alternate system of value (regrettably, not human value) can be articulated from
within it, one of some substance and sophistication. The arguments for an evo-
lutionary takeover by silicon-based life are solid ones. They are well thought
out and logically almost irresistible, at least from a materialistic standpoint.
Though Lewis felt that anything like “conviction” was impossible within a
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

totalizing system of pure naturalism that undercuts the very idea (except as an
adjustable tool of social control), the new twist in naturalism is that “belief,”
“higher purpose,” and even “duty” have become viable.
In other words, a triumphant scientific materialism implies not
“no religion,” but “new religion.” I want to call this new religion A-Theology,
which can be read three ways:

1) Atheistic theology, that is a “theology” without a transcendent

deity.

2) Antitheology, or a system that systematically rejects theism. How-

ever, since it reflects in reverse much of the system it rejects, it takes
on the same contours and becomes a de facto religious system itself.

3) Artificial theology, wherein the artificial is linked with the destiny

and “meaning” (if you will) of the physical universe. What began as
human artifice may possibly become, literally, the God of every-
thing that exists.

A few caveats. First, A-Theology is not my religion. Secondly,

though I intend to go at it critically where fair game presents itself, A-Theol-
ogy deserves, like any coherent and powerful belief system, some healthy
respect. Finally, the committed scientific materialists whose writings support
A-Theology (consciously or not, and usually not) are not ethical monsters;
much of their writing supports the rights and dignity of the human person,
even as traditionally understood.6 But alas, such values are imported from
other webs of belief and sentiment, and cannot be derived from, or supported
by, scientific materialism itself. Tough-minded thinkers like Moravec recognize
this. The lengths to which others go to avoid it may speak well for their own
humane sensibilities, but they also attest to the force of the idea they resist.
So, what is this new A-Theology, with its twin tenets of atheism
and artifice? The atheism part encompasses the past, everything that has pre-
 ceded us and brought us into existence. The artificial part encompasses the
future, the effect on the physical universe of human descendants, which are
expected to be machines, intelligent silicon-based life forms. And Darwinism
is the foundation of A-Theology from beginning to end.

IN THE BEGINNINGS

Darwinism starts in the middle of the cosmic story and works

relentlessly backwards to obviate, for its adherents, the necessity of invoking
any higher intelligence (transcendent or otherwise) to explain order in nature
(biological or otherwise). Darwinistic evolution is an algorithm, meaning a
recipe that can be followed mechanically, mindlessly. The particular recipe in
question is one of profuse, blind, local fumbling, weeded out by natural selec-
tion. Out of this emerges the intricate web of life, driving itself on to extraor-
dinary and seemingly (but not really) miraculous levels of emergent order.
Daniel Dennett distinguishes between “cranes” (natural evolu-
tionary ladders that can be thrown away once climbed) and “skyhooks” (puta-
tively miraculous forces, or “mind-first” phenomena, misguidedly invoked to
7
explain missing ladders). In Dennett’s view, evolution is—must be—all
cranes and absolutely no skyhooks. Dissenters from neo-Darwinism like
Steven Jay Gould are suspected of sneaking skyhooks in through the back
8
door. Theorists of spontaneous self-organization, especially Stuart Kauffman,
popularly perceived as overturning Darwinism, are, according to Dennett,
really just refining and extending it.9
Significantly, Darwinism doesn’t stop at biological life but keeps
working backward to rule out any higher intelligence or force as a prime mover
at any stage of the story, including the big bang or beyond. For instance, by now
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

it is known that the conditions of the present universe in its first moments were
“tuned” with startling precision. It is profoundly unlikely, given only one try, that
it should have started out in just such a way as to produce an ordered, hospitable
universe for life. Here, at least, the theist might imagine sufficient grounds for
invoking design, a transcendent creator, a superphysical intelligence.1 1
But the Darwinists are one step ahead here, too. There are mod-
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

els of the universe that allow for an infinite number of tries to get it “right.”
Dennett suggests the model of an oscillating universe: Big Bangs followed
endlessly by Big Crunches. Sooner or later the “right” initial conditions (that
10
is, those ultimately favorable to life) will occur. There are also chaotic infla-
tionary models, a universe expanding in any number of separate regions.1 2 In
the area visible to us, conditions have been favorable for the evolution of intel-
ligent observers; not so the vast number of unobserved regions. That this one
visible corner of the universe (a tiny speck amongst possibly infinite others)
should have the right conditions to permit biological life is suddenly not so
surprising. So the theists are trumped; order can apparently be sifted out by a
mindless algorithm, even in the fumbling chaos of universe formation. Den-
nett goes on to quash any lingering aspirations of the hapless theist:

Some people think there is still one leftover “why” question: Why is
there something rather than nothing? Opinions differ on whether
the question makes any intelligible demand at all. If it does, the
answer “Because God exists” is probably as good an answer as any,
13
but look at its competition: “Why not?”

We can see how Darwinism eliminates the need for God (or any
higher intelligence, extraphysical will, spiritual force, what have you) to explain
anything up to this particular point in cosmic history. Thus, this bold material-
istic system becomes at least half a religion by virtue of what it replaces: an
account of how everything came to be and how we got here. We might also
note a certain element of faith. In the example above, for instance, we can’t
know what happened before the Big Bang, or in lifeless, lawless co-inflating
regions of the universe. But these models present good materialistic candidates
for our origins, accepted on faith because, well, because they are good materi-
alistic candidates for our origins.
At any rate, if scientific materialism, undergirded by Darwinism,
seems like a good, solid half of a system of religious belief, the other half would
kick in when human life and human activity acquire some “meaning” or “pur-
 pose” (if you will) as the story unfolds toward the distant future: an eschatology
to participate in. This smacks of a higher plan, e.g.; teleology, which is a dirty
word in evolutionary theory. But we can clean it up by calling it an emergent
quality, or in Dennett’s terms a “supercrane” arising from blind, local effects. To
whit, evolution has produced sentient beings with autonomy and a conscious
will. The stage is set for these beings to produce a new kind of life, indeed, a
new kind of evolution. It will not be confined to our fragile biosphere and will,
plausibly, transform and completely possess the physical universe, possibly
even save it from death billions of years in the future. Thus a grand teleology
(not to mention eternal life), though not in any way “built into” the universe,
can arise from it as a secondary effect.

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

Knowing (as we most certainly do!) that evolution is a mindless

algorithm, it follows that the particular results of evolution (life, mind, human
consciousness, human intelligence—even human culture and whatever specific
acts of human achievement ride on its coattails) are algorithms too, or at least
the nonmiraculous result of some algorithm. Thus any of them can, in the-
ory—and sooner or later probably in practice—be generated in and among
machines that can enact the right algorithms. (We are, in fact, exactly such
machines!) It is not even necessary to figure out what the “right” algorithms
are; they could emerge out of the same kind of trial and error methods that
14
have served nature so well.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and more recently artificial life (AL)
both have “strong” versions that make exactly such claims: AI about intelligence
and AL about life. To deny strong AI or strong AL, at least in principle, is sim-
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

ply to deny evolution. It opens one up to the charge of appealing to nonmaterial

entities (an élan vital or life force, a soul, a spirit) that are untenable by defini-
tion. Psychologically, one is suspected of wanting to preserve some enclave of
“specialness,” a “skyhook” (Dennett again) for life or mind that cannot be
enacted through an algorithmic process. John Searle and Roger Penrose are
both committed materialists whose anti-AI arguments are well known.1 5 But
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

both of them are accused (somewhat justly) either of question-begging or “sky-
16
hooking” on consciousness and intelligence. Arguing against strong AI from
the standpoint of scientific materialism gets one into incredibly tight corners.
Scientific materialism must yield, then, to the strong claims of
AI and AL. There is to be no disparaging or dismissing of automata, since
we—and all that lives, moves, breathes, thinks, feels—are all automata, emerg-
ing from nature with the specific task of transmitting genetic information.
But the next logical step in evolution is virtually unavoidable to
any that have bothered to think it through. Steven Levy writes:

Now, the theory goes, we are ready for a second genetic takeover: the
silicon based organisms of a-life [AL] will replace carbon-based life,
including human beings. The new life forms will have certain
advantages. Physically, they would be protean: their bodies could be
made of any materials and in any shape. They could be more
durable; they would not have to die for perhaps thousands of years, if
that. These new organisms would also be able to evolve by two forms
of evolution: Darwinian natural selection and Lamarkian inheri-
tance of acquired characteristics. Because their essence would be
information held in the malleable form of silicon bits and not hard-
wired in the molecules of DNA, one could tinker with one’s own
genetic code and integrate what one learned during the course of
one’s lifetime—or even what others learned during the course of
17
their lifetimes.

Levy’s last point actually introduces a third form of evolution:

the imitative, or “memetic.” Richard Dawkins advanced the concept of the
“meme” in The Selfish Gene, defining it as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a
unit of imitation.”1 8 The notion has been well-canvassed since. Memes
emerged with human language and social organization, and consist of any idea
that can be passed on reasonably intact by repetition or imitation: spear, fire,
wheel, heaven, joke, melody, story, novel, bicycle, Gestalt psychology, computer,
 democracy. Even a casual glance at human culture and its artifacts shows how
quickly memes adapt and evolve, a pace that leaves carbon-based biological
evolution further and further behind as the various media of cultural transmis-
sion expand and interconnect. Memes presently depend on human beings for
their existence, but not for long.
Three forms of evolution, then—Darwinian, Lamarkian, and
memetic—will come together in silicon-based life forms that can modify them-
selves according to what they learn or imitate, and can pass on any such adapta-
tions directly to their offspring. We can barely imagine how different this form
of life would be. There would hardly be “species” in the usual sense, since even a
single robot could begin as one thing and end up as another. If the memories
and experience of one robot are downloaded into offspring, memory, experi-
ence, and “reality” itself would be fundamentally redefined. The pace of evolu-
tion would be fantastically accelerated; current technological innovation gives us
a telling but probably inadequate sense of this. The increase of intelligence and
physical “fitness” would be exponential and almost unlimited. And the physical
space for life would be drastically opened up, for there is no reason that such life
forms would need food, water, air, or a protective atmosphere to survive.
John von Neumann actually worked out the minimum opera-
tions a self-replicating machine would need to carry out, and this was strongly
vindicated afterward by the discovery of the mechanism of DNA.1 9 Nature
works at least approximately the same way: in living cells, as in von Neumann’s
machine, discrete operations of logic carry out the dual tasks of translation and
replication. At the digital or virtual level, self-replicating entities are already
common in AL simulations. A von Neumannesque machine made out of hard,
physical “stuff ” is more or less feasible and not overwhelmingly expensive by
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

space and weapons program standards.2 0 To construct a few self-replicating

“von Neumann probes” and send them into space, either to explore it or to
exploit its resources, either already is or will eventually be possible if enough
money is committed to it.
John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler give detailed scenarios of
intelligent, silicon-based, self-replicating automatons fanning out from Earth
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

and colonizing the cosmos, scenarios that several individuals and scientific
21
think tanks have worked out in detail. The scope of Barrow and Tipler’s
projections is billions of years in the future, right to the “end” of the physical
universe. One interesting possibility is that at a particular point in cosmic his-
tory, where black holes threaten to explode and evaporate the universe, intelli-
gent life forms might intervene by dropping matter into them.2 2 Thus our
silicon-based descendants save the universe! But this is only an interlude. Life
ultimately may evolve to the point where it exists on pure energy2 3:

Finally, the time is reached when life has encompassed the entire uni-
verse and regulated all matter contained therein. Life begins to
manipulate the dynamical evolution of the universe as a whole, forcing
24
the horizons to disappear, first in one direction, and then another.

An “Omega Point”2 5 is reached wherein life

will have gained control of all matter and forces not only in a single
universe, but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life
will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which could
logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of informa-
tion, including all bits of knowledge which it is logically possible to
26
know. And this is the end.

Not all scientific materialists would want to take things this far,
and most probably regard the premises of such speculation as invalid, resting as
they do on versions of the controversial “anthropic cosmological principle.”
Nevertheless, the sky is pretty much the limit when we have life forms free
from the surface of the earth with the whole universe to evolve into. And we
have seen what an imponderably fast and powerful form of evolution would be
involved.
The previous section ended with the observation that the A-the-
ological accounts of origins involve an element of faith. This is also true of any
 A-theological eschatology involving silicon-based life. Suppose there is some
missing component of mind and intelligence in the algorithmic perspective,
and that silicon-based life is never able to develop either of them? Suppose
biological evolution does not take place quite the way we thought it did, and
that the machines, even if they do fan out into space, never manage to evolve at
all? Suppose, in other words, that all we did was fill up of the cosmos with self-
perpetuating space junk. Levy considers the possibility that strong AL might
be “a misbegotten evolutionary dead end, leading to the creation of a-life
27
organisms that do no more than drive us into unwilling extinction.”

TERMINATORS

The emergence of silicon-based life puts the future of the human

species, and indeed all carbon-based life, in greater or lesser degrees of doubt.
The worst case would be a Terminator scenario in which the new machine life
immediately perceives human life as a threat and commences to systematically
liquidate it. Proponents of strong AL (and any consistent scientific materialist)
would be forced to admit that this is a happy ending. By the second Termina-
tor movie the machine civilization has already produced (memetically evolved)
a highly intelligent robot composed of liquid metal. It can take the form of
anything and anyone it touches, and is virtually indestructible, unless dumped
into a vat of molten iron. Except for the fact that it remorselessly hunts down
and kills people, who would not want our evolutionary successor to be such a
magnificent creature?
Nevertheless, there are more hopeful scenarios from a human
standpoint. An Azimov-like injunction against harming human life or a built-
in reproductive shut-down might keep the machines from getting out of con-
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

trol.2 8 However, Levy points out that selection pressures would certainly favor
the machines that stumbled upon ways to override such ridiculously un-Dar-
winian limitations and, of course, pass this acquired trait on to their off-
spring.2 9
But even if silicon-based life never lifted an optical fiber against
a human, indirectly the effect is likely to be the same as in the Terminator
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

scenario, just slower and more agonizing. Clean water, clean air, and a life-
sustaining atmosphere are the result of carbon-based life as much as the stage
for it; life has gradually “selected” a biologically friendly environment. But sili-
con-based life would not need such an environment to survive, and cannot be
expected to contribute to it or protect it in the same reciprocal way carbon-
based life has. We can readily imagine machine life completely breaking down
(however unwittingly) the environment that presently supports biological life,
creating a world in which only machines can live. Carbon-based life could not
evolve fast enough to co-adapt with the machines, and humans would not be
smart enough to stop them. (However, it should be pointed out that “dumb”
forms of silicon-based life could be just as destructive as smart ones.)
The best scenarios are to somehow imagine AL life forms posi-
tively and disinterestedly benign with regard to human and other carbon-
based life. Barrow and Tipler project that humans would at least reciprocally
benefit from the wealth and resources generated by the more intelligent
30
species. Iain Banks’ “Culture” novels envision a symbiotic society in which
species of artificially intelligent life, vastly superior both physically and intel-
lectually, do all of the real work and sustain humans in an Edenic playland of
sex, intoxication, and other pleasures. Vinge also briefly entertains this “god-
31
like servant to insect-like master” scenario.
I myself can’t see it. Why should machine life devote so much of
its effort and resources to preserving the complicated and sensitive environ-
ments necessary to sustain carbon-based life? Granted, machine civilization
might eventually reach some highly developed and enlightened stage where it
wishes to do so, but by then carbon-based life would be gone.3 2 The cost-ben-
efit analysis of such carbon-friendly projects during the tooth and claw stage of
machine evolution is not at all favorable. We laugh at the scene in Love and
Death where Woody Allen is seen carrying his butterfly collection as he goes
off to war. Isn’t the carbon-friendly scenario even more absurd? Do we carry
our tropical fish with us to work, to hunt, to shop for provisions, to do battle?
As the scenarios for carbon-silicon relations grow more hopeful,
they grow more far-fetched. There remains the hope of, at some point in the
 future, digitizing and downloading our consciousness into a robot that can live
33
hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years. This is a fascinating A-
theological parallel to the standard Christian doctrine of being raised in
imperishable bodies. But again, what would be in it for the robot? Almost
everyone agrees that if AI surpasses humans at all now, it is in abstract cogni-
tive wizardry (e.g.; the best chess programs, which can beat any living human).
In physical prowess and everyday common sense for dealing constructively
with the real world, the average human knocks all existing computers and
robots dead, and this imbalance may continue indefinitely. If anything, a
machine intelligence should be more interested in our bodies than our minds.
This raises the perennial question of whether intelligent ma-
chines would wish to enslave us to take on the kinds of physical activities that
may indefinitely stump them. First they would have to catch us and keep us, a
difficulty so overwhelming that it makes me question Vinge’s vision of a
machine intelligence “singularity” occurring ten to forty years in the future.
Networked computers, he projects, will suddenly become self-aware and
hyperspiral into some humanly imponderable level of intelligence.3 4 What
does that mean except that the glorious new superbrains would spiral deeper
into their abstract world, solving fantastically esoteric computational prob-
lems? If Vinge is right that such computer minds would be to us as we are to
the insects, it is also true that we don’t in any way impact insects’ lives by pure
thought; insects are only made aware of us when we pursue them and stomp on
them. A person lying immobile in the jungle and thinking great thoughts is
more threatened by insects than they are by him or her. In the same way, what
would keep humans from smashing computers in some vast Luddite con-
frontation, like the “Butlerian jihad” referred to in Frank Herbert’s Dune
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

series?
However, if machine intelligence enlisted a batch of human quis-
lings, things might be different. When Vinge speaks of computer-human
interfaces he may be describing exactly such quislings, a kind of prototype
Vichy government for machine life. Perhaps we are all Vichy collaborators to
the extent that we simply shrug our shoulders and increasingly acquiesce to
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

technology, letting machines define, and define down, the value of human
activity, human life, finally carbon-based life in general.
A Terminator scenario seems unlikely. The physical prowess and
“street smarts” of humans will likely vastly surpass that of robots for some time.
(You’ll remember that in the Terminator movies it was only a tricky time para-
dox that bestowed the magical circuit and allowed machine civilization to
emerge. Even then the future battle with humans was touch and go.) What
seems more likely is the whimper rather than the bang: Strong AL, originally
developed for economic and military interests, will gradually produce massive
human redundancy and economic dislocation, and the steady and complete
degradation of the physical environment, bringing in its wake starvation,
severe cold, numerous other forms of dire physical and mental anguish, and
finally, if anyone is still around, suffocation.

ARGUMENTS FOR THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY

We would normally associate such astonishingly cruel conse-

quences with the most thoughtless and heartless human planning, but it has
been foreseen and shrugged off (though not without some perfunctory hand-
wringing) by scientific thinkers who are as decent as the next person. The dan-
gers of strong AL have not been much protested, either. Even if the scenarios
described above never do take place, this casual write-off of humanity is an
extraordinary moment in our collective consciousness. Yet this is exactly what
we should expect, given A-theological premises. Let’s face it: human and car-
bon-based evolution is pretty much played out, and it’s time to move on, let
whatever unpleasantness come as it may.
The power of A-Theology to direct our thinking in this way
should not be underestimated. J. Doyne Farmer used to protest the Vietnam
35
War. Now he persuades us that the replacement of carbon-based with
silicon-based life is not really such a bad thing. AL research can in one breath
justify itself in “spaceship earth” terms (understanding the complex web of car-
bon-based life through simulation so as to better protect it) and in the next
advocate an evolutionary leap that eliminates all carbon-based life. This is not
 hypocrisy but a genuine conflict between sets of values: one set vaguely recog-
nizes some inherent worth in carbon-based life without knowing quite why;
the other set recognizes much greater inherent worth in silicon-based life, and
knows exactly why. It is obvious which set of values is going to triumph.
From an A-Theological standpoint, it is our duty, nay, our privi-
lege, to initiate the next chapter in evolution. The arguments for this evolu-
tionary imperative, taken together, are hard to resist:

1) Our life sucks. Our lifetimes are too short, our brains too slow and
small, our bodies too frail, and our scope of activity incredibly con-
36
fined. God (whatever that is) did a lousy job on us and we can do
better. Silicon based life will be able to access, absorb, and process an
almost unlimited amount of information, to live almost anywhere
and repair nearly any injury to its body, to physically improve itself in
its lifetime and pass on such improvements to its offspring. Insofar
as it can download its memory and experience, its consciousness will
be indestructible even if its body isn’t.

2) We won’t be around forever, anyway. We are merely a blip on the

scale of evolutionary time. We ought not to consider ourselves so
special or privileged that other forms of life should be held back.
Farmer and d’A. Belin write, “Humanity has traditionally been self-
centered, eager to exalt itself and to regard itself as the sublime cre-
ation of God” but we have “evolved somewhat beyond this view” and
can accept that “an evolutionary process of change...will replace us
37
at the next moment.”
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

3) What other way to perpetuate our civilization, pass on our legacy,

possibly in indestructible form? It won’t be the same civilization, but
38
it will have our imprint on it. It will be in an important sense ours.

4) What other way to ensure that life continues and propagates? It can’t
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survive indefinitely on a terrestrial environment, in any carbon-

THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

based form. The very fragility of Earth’s environment makes it all
the more imperative that we speed up the development of mobile,
artificial, and artificially intelligent life. A stray comet or nuclear
39
conflict could wipe us all out at any moment. We have a limited
window of opportunity to launch a new life form that can survive
and propagate in the universe: let’s not waste it. As noted, this life
form could be instrumental in saving the universe from black hole
evaporation, even heat death in the distant future. We have one shot
at overcoming the second law of thermodynamics.

5) Examine the emotional resistance to the emergence of artificially

intelligent silicon-based life. Is it not a collection of the most
pathetic, most unpleasant of human attributes: fear of the unknown,
40
fear of the new, fear of the “other,” racism? We have to consider a
new form of intelligent life as at least equal to us in rights and dig-
nity. It is racism by omission to attempt to forestall its emergence. It
would be a more vicious and direct form of racism to attempt to
stamp it out once it did emerge.

C U LT U R A L R E S P O N S E S ( O R L A C K T H E R E O F )

Forget religious folk; it is the progressive and activist communi-

ties that the evolutionary imperative of A-Theology really ought to throw into
turmoil.
Human culture has long struggled, with uneven but sometimes
heartening success, against racism. Now A-Theology turns the definition of
racism on its head. It is now “racist” to defend all the ethnicities of humankind
against an emergent, quite possibly destructive form of life. We can no longer
choose not to be racists; we can only choose which form of racism to adopt.
Are we going to be racist against intelligent self-replicating machines or
against humans (all the races of the world) that will be wiped out by them?
The dilemma facing environmentalists is also severe. Silicon-
 based life is almost certainly hostile to the delicate web of carbon-based life
on earth. Yet silicon-based life will itself be a form of life, with its own
extraterrestrial ecology. Arresting strong AL on earth will prevent the universe
from becoming biologically viable. Not arresting it will result in the destruc-
tion of carbon-based biology on earth. Which environment do we protect,
since we obviously can’t protect both?
Sooner or later, feminists will also have to confront the A-theo-
logical vision. It is a profoundly male vision, when you think about it, and
offers a fantastically lurid reading in gender discourse. Nature, after all, has
empowered only women to give birth. Is A-Theology culturally constructed
(by white males, of course) to usurp the life-giving domain of women, a reflec-
tion of male resentment, a deep “womb envy”? And what could be more phal-
locentric than wanting to penetrate and subdue the universe, filling it with
self-perpetuating boy-toys? Do women want that indelibly male signature
etched across the heavens, forever—a permanently patriarchal cosmos?
Despite Christopher Langton’s efforts to publicize the potential
dangers of AL and encourage discussion,4 1 to my knowledge there has been
little or no criticism of strong AL from the intellectual communities that one
would expect to protest the loudest. This may be because, as Levy suggests, the
42
dangers seem too distant or improbable. To me, this does not explain the
silence. Many AL scenarios seem relatively plausible and their tangible effects
are projected in terms of decades, not centuries or millennia. I can’t help
attributing the silence to cultural politics.
First of all, AL is connected in the popular imagination with
complexity science and chaos theory. Both have enjoyed considerable cultural
prestige, both because they are science and because they have the iconoclastic
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

aura of bucking established science. It makes good sense not to position one-
self on the wrong side of a popular scientific revolution. Furthermore, the
political left in academia is in a strategic alliance with postmodernism. As far
as that goes, the postbiological vision of strong AL offers a delicious decon-
struction of normative ontological categories like “biology,” “life,” “nature,”
“natural,” and “artificial,” turning them completely inside out. Humanities
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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

departments couldn’t have done it better themselves. It would be asking too
much of human nature for anyone not to cash in on a bonanza like this, and
such intellectual currency is immediately transferable: who can say anything
about “normative” roles or behavior being biologically determined when “biol-
ogy” is not just a cultural construct, but a physical one?
Good point. Chalk up another one, then, for the Academic Left.
But the score for Carbon-Based Life is still zero, and the times when the
humanities morally policed the depredations of science appear to be over.
Where are the two cultures when you really need ’em?

DUELING CREDOS

In the meantime, how are the religious folks holding up? I can
only guess at the response from Eastern monistic traditions. One is tempted to
think of the wizened sage in the film Gremlins. Spontaneously replicating imps
have been thoughtlessly unleashed on a town, almost destroying it. The sage
comes to take the first (innocent) Gremlin back. You Westerners, he chides:
always tampering with things, never leaving well enough alone, never stopping
to consider the consequences, the balance and harmony of Nature. Indeed, the
standard condemnation of the Judeo-Christian world view in this regard—
that the command to have dominion over the earth is responsible for our eco-
logical pillage—can be amplified by orders of magnitude when it comes to the
ecological ravages of strong AL, where the command is to subdue the cosmos.
In fact, A-Theology has acquired so many of the contours of
Christian doctrine that people standing outside Judeo-Christian cultures may
not quite be able to tell them apart. Could we blame them? If there is a conflict
between the two, it might look like another sectarian dispute in the West,
which indeed it is! And as the message of A-Theology spreads across the
globe, it might be perceived as another wave of missionary activity, only this
time the scope of the mission is to convert the physical universe! (Talk about a
Great Commission.)
Given that A-Theology developed to discredit, ideally displace,
the Judeo-Christian worldview, specifically the Christian version, the question
 of the moment is how Christianity finally stacks up now that A-Theology
has come of its own as a full-fledged doctrinal system. But at this point
A-Theology looks so much like Christianity that Christian believers might
best understand it not as an independent system of thought, but as a kind of
hostile virus, copying itself onto the host in the attempt to disable it. A-The-
ology is, in other words, a Christian heresy.
Unfortunately for A-Theology, nothing could be more immune
to this kind of viral duplication than Christianity itself. The copying is good,
very good, but not good enough, and Christians would be the first to spot the
mistakes. Like the Bluegrass classic “Dueling Banjos,” its all “been there, done
that” from beginning to end.
A particularly telling example is AL evolution simulations,
which the Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann has enlisted in the battle
43
against “creation science.” Bad move. Look a bit closely at what goes on
with these simulations, and they start to resemble the orthodox theological
picture of a world being acted upon by a transcendent intelligence, even one
who does specifically Old Testament kinds of things: calling environments and
creatures into being with a code, a word (“Let there be...”), getting them to
reproduce (“Be fruitful and multiply”), trying to work autonomy into the pro-
44
gram (knowledge of good and evil), introducing parasites (the serpent),
trashing a program (the deluge) while hanging on to a few of the more promis-
ing specimens for the next run (the Noahic covenant), selecting a strand of that
population for still further development (the election of Israel),4 5 introducing
tit-for-tat style rules to get the pesky critters to cooperate (the Ten Command-
ments),4 6 raising fitness levels by getting them to navigate twisting trails
(forty years in the wilderness),4 7 and so on. These simulations are not reverse
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

engineering evolution; they’re reverse engineering the Pentateuch.

As A-Theology trains its eyes on the future, the parallels with the
New Testament are equally striking. Superior, intelligent noncarbon-based life
forms? Christianity already has them (angels, demons, saints). Indestructible
bodies? Christians are already promised them. Delivery from heat death?

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THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

Believers have it from Saint Paul and Saint John that God is going to roll up
the present universe, subject to decay (the second law of thermodynamics), and
whip up a fresh one, evidently subject to different laws. A perpetual Civiliza-
tion? Christians are promised a New Jerusalem.
Furthermore, a little comparison shopping shows that the A-
theological program is a bad deal all the way around. The bodies God prepares
are almost certainly a better model than the silicon-based ones. Besides, A-
theologists don’t even get to possess their bodies (we’ve already discussed the
unlikelihood of intelligent robots being interested in our consciousness). The
glory seems to limited to a mere vicarious projection of triumph over the
crummy deal A-theologists got here on earth: an eschatology of resentment.
More to the point, the mission to save the cosmos from heat death is a lost
cause from a Christian perspective. If God plans to roll it all up anyway, it
doesn’t make any sense to pin one’s hopes on the ultimate fate of this particu-
lar universe. Needless to say, the A-theological agenda also violates at least two
Divine injunctions, one against murder and the other for stewardship of bio-
logical life on earth (possibly an additional third against idolatry—silicon
being the Golden Calf ).
Certainly a deep gulf separates deists and A-theologists on mat-
ters of human value. It is doubtful, perhaps, that the two can ever communi-
cate meaningfully on the subject at all. From the standpoint of Christian or
Jewish orthodoxy, what makes human life worth preserving? Lower than
angels, higher than animals, a sinful creature of somewhat ambivalent status in
creation, humans are nonetheless loved by God and made in his image, and
thereby invested with some inherent value, despite any physical or intellectual
limitations. The orthodox believer has no reason to think that silicon-based
life forms would be any more “valuable” by virtue of being smarter or more
protean. (The existence of angelic hosts, for instance, does not invalidate our
own.) A-Theology, of course, brings an entirely different calculus to bear on
human life: it is of little ultimate worth, an evolutionary dead end.
 THE ALGORITHMIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST

Daniel Dennett takes his defense of the Darwinian algorithm

right up to AI and memes, then stops. Dennett refers to Darwinism as the uni-
versal acid, “capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in sight.” In the
end, he hopes that “once it passes through everything, we are left with stronger,
sounder versions of our most important ideas.”4 8 This means our ideas about
how to think and live and structure our society: a Tao!
But Dennett has already taken it too far, and we have seen that
many others keep right on going. Darwin’s acid doesn’t stop burning through
the ideals of a good society; it burns through the foundation of any human
society and finally right through the ecology that sustains any carbon-based
life. The new chapter in evolution puts us out of the picture, rather sooner than
we would have otherwise expected. And, as with the Reverend Jim Jones dish-
ing out Kool-Aid for the People’s Church, we are asked to be willful partici-
pants in our demise.4 9
This doesn’t mean, of course, that Darwinism isn’t true. But we
have also seen that full-blown Darwinism is A-Theology, a mutant version of
Christianity. This puts Darwinism in an awkward position. It has mapped
itself so thoroughly onto Christianity that Christianity being wrong can hardly
be an indication that Darwinism is right. The genuine skeptic ought to be sus-
picious. The orthodox believer, meanwhile, would seem to find in A-Theology
nothing other than the latest, clearest, most comprehensive articulation of the
Culture of Death.
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

116
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NOTES

THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

The views in this essay, and any defects, are entirely 8. See Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 264–6.
my own, but special thanks are due to John
9. See Ibid., 220–1.
Beckmann, Albert Dudley, Jonathon Long, Clifford
Mayes, and Donald Taylor for invaluable help and 10. See Ibid., 179–80.
advice.
11.Cosmological arguments for the existence of God
1. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (Glasgow: Col- have never been stronger. For the best known and
lins, 1990). most comprehensive version among evangelical Chris-
tians, see Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos:
2. Hans Moravec, “Human Culture: A Genetic
How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century
Takeover Underway,” in Artificial Life, ed. Christopher
Reveal God, 2nd ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: Nav-
G. Langton (Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley, 1989),
Press, 1995).
167.
12. John D. Barrow, Theories of Everything (New York:
3. Vernor Vinge, “The Singularity,” 1993, World Wide
Fawcett Columbine, 1991), 226–7.
Web site, http//ww.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity.
13. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 180–1. This
4. J. Doyne Farmer and Alletta d’A. Belin, “Artificial
picture of theists clinging to the thin thread of final
Life: The Coming Evolution,” in Artificial Life, vol. II,
causation is disingenuous. See Ross, Creator and the
ed. Christopher G. Langton, et al. (Reading, PA: Addi-
Cosmos for vigorous cosmological arguments for
son-Wesley, 1992), 815–40.
design.
5. Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New
14. John Holland’s Genetic Algorithm, and its many
York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 515.
variations, are an excellent demonstration of this prin-
6. It is noteworthy that Dennett, despite the nonse- ciple. See Steven Levy, Artificial Life (London: Pen-
quitur on fundamentalists, does attempt to restore guin, 1992), 159–87.
something like the Tao that Lewis wrote of. See Ibid.,
15. John Searle, “Minds, Brains and Programs,” in
511–20. It is also noteworthy that Lewis concluded
The Mind’s Eye, ed. Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hof-
his own treatise with the vague hope that some new,
stadter (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 353–73;
holistic science (which sounds an awfully lot like
Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (New York:
complexity science) would be the very thing to revital-
Penguin, 1991); Penrose, Shadows of the Mind
ize the Tao (Lewis, Abolition of Man, 45–8.). Lewis’s
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
discussion here is important. He distinguishes a rev-
erential thirst for knowledge from an alchemical, 16. On Searle, see Dennett and Hofstadter, eds., The
Faustian desire for power. Lewis believes these twin Mind’s Eye, 373–82; and Dennett, Darwin’s Danger-
threads entwine themselves deeply into the history of ous Idea, 397–400. On Penrose, see Dennett, Dar-
science. We can certainly see both strains battling it win’s Dangerous Idea, 436–49.
out in the field of artificial life. Unfortunately, the
17. Levy, Artificial Life, 344.
Faustian element appears to be winning.
18. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford:
7. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 74–6. For a
Oxford University Press, 1989), 192.
demolition of Darwinism at the molecular level and
for a superb modern design argument see Michael J. 19. See Levy, Artificial Life, 25–9; and John Casti,
Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Chal- Complexification (New York: HarperCollins, 1995),
lenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996). 221–3.
 20. See Levy, Artificial Life, 32–3; and John D. Bar- 30. See Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological
row and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 595–6.
Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),
31. See Vinge, “The Singularity.”
582.
32. Moravec proposes (I can’t tell how seriously) that
21. See Levy, Artificial Life, 32–42; and Barrow and
this has already happened: silicon-based life has
Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 578–86.
already hyper-evolved in space and returned to absorb
22. See Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological our planet and its resources. But it has thoughtfully
Principle, 674. arranged to preserve us in a simulation, which we are
presently experiencing! We are resurrected person-
23. See Ibid., 665.
oids. See Charels Platt, “Super Humanism,” Wired
24. Ibid., 675. (October, 1995): 202–4. According to Moravec, Platt
writes, “the human race is almost certainly extinct,
25. From Tielhard de Chardin, but Barrow and Tipler’s
while the world around us is just an advanced form of
version appears to be more physically sophisticated
SimCity.” It is tempting to apply Chesterton’s obser-
and well-defined. See Ibid., 195–205, 675.
vation that people who stop believing in God don’t
26. Ibid., 677. believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

27. Levy, Artificial Life, 346. 33. See Levy, Artificial Life, 344.

28. See Levy, Artificial Life, 335; and Barrow and 34. See Vinge, “The Singularity.”
Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 595.
35. See Levy, Artificial Life, 87.
29. See Levy, Artificial Life, 335.
36. See Moravec, “Human Culture,” 69.
MATTHEW AARON TAYLOR

118
 119
37. Farmer and d’A. Belin, “Artificial Life,” 836. 46. See Russel Ruthen, “Adapting to Complexity,”

THE ABOLITION OF HUMANITY AND CONTOURS OF THE NEW A-THEOLOGY

Scientific American (January 1993): 113. John Hol-
38. See Levy, Artificial Life, 41.
land worked a tit-for-tat strategy (from the Prisoner’s
39. See Moravec in Platt, “Super Humanism,” 208. Dilemma) into his digital ecosystem “Echo.” See
Levy, Artificial Life, 180–4 on tit-for-tat and Pris-
40. Barrow and Tipler venture the word “species-
oner’s Dilemma.
ism.” I have suggested “carbo-centrism” elsewhere,
but it hasn’t caught on. Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic 47. See Levy, Artificial Life, 165–9. Fitness in virtual
Cosmological Principle, 596. ants is determined by how well they follow increas-
ingly difficult pheromone trails.
41. See Levy, Artificial Life, 339–40.
48. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 521.
42. Ibid., 336.
49. An analogy with the ritual suicide of the Heaven’s
43. See Mitchell M. Waldrop, Complexity (New York:
Gate cult would be even more apt. Like Heaven’s
Simon and Schuster, 1992), 256–7.
Gate, A-Theology harbors a gnostic contempt for our
44. See Levy, Artificial Life, 201–2. Danny Hillis frail, messy, cognitively limited biological containers.
introduced parasitic “Anti-ramps” into his gigantic A-Theology also anticipates an “evolutionary level
Connection Machine simulation to spur his hill-climb- above human” in space. Finally, A-Theology accepts
ing “Ramps” on to greater adaptive fitness. willful mass extinction as the road to transcendence.
What sets A-Theology apart from Heaven’s Gate is that
45. Ibid., 163-5. It is routine to save the more fit
its teachings are much more coherent, much more
products of the Genetic Algorithm and trash the rest.
sophisticated, and vastly more ambitious in scope.
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 Outer Space or Virtual Space?

Utopias of the Digital Age

FLORIAN RÖETZER

D O O M S D A Y F E A R S A R E growing at the brink of the new millennium. We

imagine ourselves crossing the threshold of a new age while the old one with
its symptoms of crisis collapses behind us. People are fascinated by the sym-
bolic dates of an instrument called a calendar that, although spread worldwide
through colonization, is nonetheless arbitrary in its setting of the Year Nil.
Even without taking into consideration these magical dates—which have
become a permanent source of worry and of hope in the self-proclaimed Mod-
ern Age—we believe ourselves to be in a time of fundamental change. If up
until now we have been caught in a postmodern climate of nuclear threat with
limits to our growth, stuck inside a sealed horizon with only a backward-look-
ing perspective—one which at most has allowed for farewell ceremonies,
incited our intellectuals to preach posthistory and condemn rationalism, pro-
voked the boom in esoteric and other doctrines of salvation, but did not other-
wise promise anything new—now, little by little, the techno-imaginary seems
 to be taking hold of people’s minds and creating new utopias. Locked inside
the wreck of Spaceship Earth, we long for an empty, untouched space to hold
our utopian energies, a vacuum waiting to be filled with all our expectations.
Contrary to what may have been predicted, space is again becoming an obses-
sion in the age of virtuality.
Civil wars and wars about power over certain geographical areas
are still raging—wars which seem perhaps more conspicuous and paradoxical
than ever given growing globalization and virtualization—although they are
no longer waged primarily for control of local resources nor for the economic
power embedded in infrastructures. The more uniform the world culture
becomes, the more differences between us we desire to have, whatever that
may mean. While regional wars over territories are being waged to create
homogeneous communities—whether ethnic, religious, or class-based—in
people’s minds there is much more at stake. Population growth allows for the
resurfacing of an old fear: becoming a people without space. At the same time,
however, we continue to destroy the biosphere at an even greater speed than
after the end of the Cold War, as many countries are using the tools of capital-
ism and new technologies to try to reach the living and development standards
of the Western world; thus international ecological standards established by
nations with globalizing economies are easily overlooked if they cannot be
translated directly into money. Civilization leaves behind itself scorched earth
and destroyed cities. Fantasy, especially the type shown in science fiction films
such as Strange Days or Twelve Monkeys, indulges in descriptions of these kinds
of uninhabitable, usually urban, areas.
Strangely enough, the problems of position and location, under-
mined by cyberspace and its resulting globalization, lead us back into the
geopolitically embedded identity of the loser. Securing position means self-
assertion within a limited area. It is about a sense of “Here,” an island that has
FLORIAN RÖETZER

to be defended against the outside. Furthermore, capitalism has been freed

from its restraints and alternatives with the collapse of the communist states at
the same time that both camps have lost their common enemy. The enemy,
Evil, is now dispersed and has settled inside the systems, penetrating them and
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

becoming intangible through its omnipresence. A clearly visible enemy,
dwelling in the realm of Evil, unites people in spite of all their differences and
makes each system’s basis unassailable. However, if the visible, identifiable
enemy disappears, it turns up on the inside spreading fear, insecurity, and
paralysis. Governmental rules and institutions that maintain social stability
through balancing acts are considered means of suppressing individuality: the
common good disappears with individualism.
The feeling of being on the threshold of something materializes
with the return of space although, at the same time, we dream of societies in
which we can live in peace. Even those who fight against technology, wanting
to lead us back into the wilderness and its immense spaces, dream of this. For
example, the recently caught Unabomber shares with many Net enthusiasts
the hope of creating new, comprehensible communities in which the individual
still has value. The Unabomber’s attacks were directed against the anonymous
structures of the mass societies of the Industrial Age in order to return the pos-
sibility of autonomy to the individual on the margins of big cities and their big
organizations. Even if his utopia consisted of “untamed nature” and flesh,
whose importance gets recuperated in it, he also tried to revive the idea of the
“frontier” and with it the omnipresent obsession for individual freedom in an
open space, an idea also widespread in cyberculture.
Just like on the Internet, the huge, global playground of cyber-
space, where intranets are creeping in more and more with their firewalls
impeding free movement while at the same time using the Internet’s infra-
structure, the absolute freedom of the individual continues to be propagated
while the commercialization of all areas of life, and with it increased privatiza-
tion and surveillance, is creating new borders. The existential coordinates of
space are inclusion and exclusion, inside and outside, your own and the
strange, the foreign. If you don’t want to be run over or only want to maintain
and secure your borders reactively, then it seems you have to change direction:
you have to set off into new spaces that you can colonize, upon which you
can impose your own laws that promise freedom, wealth, and adventure, that
allow you to look toward the future with hope, that provide you with a new
 orientation that, at least traditionally, is linked to a trajectory in space, to
progress and to leaving the “cocoon.”
Although European nations have performed this trajectory in the
past during their periods of colonization and industrialization, they not only
have had to retreat back step by step but are now facing the danger of losing
their supremacy and of being outstripped by the countries they once domi-
nated and exploited. We can already observe a maelstrom that is pulling capital,
knowledge, and jobs out of the old countries. Only the ruling class in the
United States seems to be able to refer back in an ungloomy way to an image of
itself at the time of colonization. This is why, especially in this class, dreams of
the good-old-world of the frontier that must be tamed are flourishing. Unlike
Central or South America, in the United States colonization produced a new,
untouched world, a “God’s Country.” Through the nearly complete extermina-
tion of its indigenous population and by living by the maxim that guarantees
the right to the pursuit of happiness, the immigrants were liberated from their
ties to their countries of origin. To many, the subjugation of the American con-
tinent, the independence from Europe, and the conquest of the Wild West still
stands as a model. The taming of the frontier, the exodus of individuals and
groups, and the escape from the state structures all belong to the identity of the
frontiersman and constitutes, in spite of its victims, part of a national success
story reinforced by the media dream world whose stories always put the indi-
vidual or small group into the limelight. A great many people continue to see in
these narratives a historical duty of the American nation.
However, the Wild West no longer exists and the globe has
become rather small. Unrestrained expansion has come up against the limits
set by nature, which is no longer conceived of as an enemy but as a subtle sys-
tem upon which survival depends. It is now possible only for individuals and
not entire nations to set off for new frontiers or simulate discoveries in limited
FLORIAN RÖETZER

geographical spaces on Earth, in the style of adventure holidays. Thus the

search for a new frontier is blending more than ever into technological devel-
opments, led by America, which have not only created new possibilities here
on Earth but have also permitted mankind to enter outer space and virtual
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

space for the first time. America, the supposed land of opportunity, shall serve
here only as an example to outline the contours of the techno-imaginary on a
social level.

1. THE METAVERSE

The science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson gives a

first look into future life on the Net and its repercussions on the urban envi-
ronment. If you read Snow Crash together with Mike Davis’s descriptions of
Los Angeles in City of Quartz, you get an impression of the future of urban
space that is rampant with hopes and fears. Sociology of the future has long
since emigrated to science fiction. Cities and their communities are disinte-
grating more and more into suburban, sealed-off zones, ghettos, and defensive
settlements that lock themselves up.1
This tendency to seal off areas and homogenize inhabitants also
has its examples in history, especially in the history of utopias. Utopian towns
were always small and understandable and their inhabitants were not torn
apart by social conflicts. They were not towns of anonymity, of desire, of chal-
lenging social and moral conventions, or of fighting between different levels
and classes of society; but rather they were places of peaceful coexistence
between communities. Big city utopias, hardly ever developed, came about
when the Industrial Age exploded: people started dreaming of garden towns,
smaller, more closely connected units were set up to contrast against the large
agglomerations and the popular image of a community was that of a village
rather than an urban society, even when this only found expression in satellite
towns or accommodation units. This reaction to mass society and its urban life
continues in the utopias of the sixties and can be found in Marshall McLuhan’s
metaphor of society constituted by electronic means of communication as a
“global village.” Now that modern utopias based upon the individual’s fulfill-
ment within society and its transformation have failed, or rather have been
abandoned, it seems possible to satisfy the desire for communal structures in
cyberspace, redeemed at the same time in real space by the construction of new
walls inside the dual city.
 Neal Stephenson has subtly integrated into his novel as a self-
evident fact of life the sociological analyses of the dual city by Saskia Sassen,
Mike Davis, and Manuell Castells. Nation states and their governments only
exist as powerless authorities while territories are divided up into ghettos.
Everybody who wants to enter will be searched. The world is partitioned into
city states, a “pluralistic” patchwork of ghettos. In Snow Crash, one of these
ghettos is Mr. Lee’s Great-Hongkong. It is not an interconnected city area but
rather a random conglomerate of protected enclaves: “Mr. Lee’s Great-
Hongkong is a private, fully extraterritorial, independent, quasi national struc-
2
ture which is not recognized by other nationalities.” The decay of cities
causes fears that force surveillance and control, isolating social classes from
each other. The struggle between rich and poor, old and young, and between
different ethnic groups is a daily occurrence. Political power, linked to territor-
ial possession, is being crushed as much by local fragmentation as by interna-
tionally operating companies who base themselves in and run the global
network. Snow Crash is set in Los Angeles, the city of the future, where growth
only happens in the valleys and canyons out of which people flee, thus making
it vacant for refugees who immigrate into the city: “The only ones that have
stayed in the cities are the street people who feed on garbage and immigrants
who have been scattered like grenade splinters by the collapse of the Asiatic
empires and the techno-media priesthood of Mr. Lee’s Great-Hongkong.
Clever young people like David and Hiro take the risk of living in the city
3
because they like the stimulation and know how to handle it” —and because
they can at any time immerse themselves into the virtual world, far more
attractive than reality.
Only in the “Metaverse,” the virtual city, does there still exist a
limited, communal living environment of millions of people. But the social
cracks of the real world are also mirrored in the virtual city. Only those who
FLORIAN RÖETZER

have money or possess programming competence can move freely in this par-
allel universe, buy private estates, and have themselves represented in tailor-
made avatars. If you own a computer in Stephenson’s Metaverse, and have the
money to acquire land and build your house on it, you can materialize in it.
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

Visitors who log in from public terminals, for example, reach the endless main
street of this Metaverse by passing through certain floodgates, comparable to
airports. You can recognize them because their avatars are in black and white
and low in resolution—in short, they are cheap looking.

2. THE IDEOLOGY OF CYBERSPACE

In efforts to colonize cyberspace we find few or no such scenar-

ios. Dominated by what Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron have termed
the “Californian Ideology”—the belief on the right as well as the left side of
the political spectrum that with the entry into cyberspace all problems will be
solved automatically—people simply “forget” that cyberspace is grounded in
and influences reality.4 The paper that probably best expresses the search for a
new “frontier” in cyberspace is the on-line manifesto “Cyberspace and the
American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age,” drawn up in
1994 by American conservatives of Newt Gingrich’s circle under the aus-
pices of the Progress and Freedom Foundation.5 Although cyberspace has no
real geographical ground to claim, its colonization is strongly linked to hopes
of securing both position and predominance for the American nation. For us,
the historical Europeans, it is doubtlessly strange to see what Barbrook and
Cameron have worked out as the characteristic feature of the “Californian Ide-
ology,” namely that here liberal, individualistic, and sometimes anarchistic
thoughts combine unproblematically with a glorification of capitalism and its
Darwinistic principles to form an amalgam that seems to unite the new virtual
class above and beyond all other differences:

The far-reaching appeal of these West Coast ideologists doesn’t only

result from their contagious optimism. Above all, they are passionate
representatives of an attitude that appears in an innocently liberal
political form: they want the implementation of information tech-
nologies in order to create a new democracy in the spirit of Jefferson
where all individuals can express themselves freely in cyberspace.
While celebrating this apparently admirable ideal at the same time
 these sponsors of technology reproduce some of the most diabolical
characteristics of American society, especially those that are rooted
in the legacy of slavery. Their utopian vision of California is based
upon deliberately turning a blind eye toward the other, far less posi-
tive characteristics of life on the West Coast: racism, poverty and
6
environmental destruction.

Cyberspace is considered to be the solution to all problems in the

real world, which one supposedly leaves behind by stepping over the techno-
logical threshold, and at the same time it is the continuation of the American
Dream where the individual and his freedom stand above everything else—if
he is successful. Therefore, cyberspace enthusiasts, probably without much
reflection, regard free access to the web and freedom of expression as the
redemption of democracy while at the same time neglect, or simply ignore, the
living conditions of real life.
The success of cyberspace as a new utopia is not only due to
technological innovations and the promises of profit that go along with it. The
entry into cyberspace is interconnected, above all, with the urban reality of
cities: the decay of public areas, increasing suburbanization, and the setting up
of the dual city.
Cities will no longer be geographical condensations of capital,
power, culture, and knowledge. They will eventually become places where you
are locked up in or try to escape from, where you erect sealed-off areas,
apartheid zones, secure high-tech bunkers and closed spaces that are moni-
tored by the same technologies that are used in the construction of cyberspace.
In the same way that we are penetrating the inner world of cyberspace, apart-
ments, houses, entire city areas, and new defensive settlements are cutting
themselves off from the outside, and as substitutes we construct cities in cyber-
FLORIAN RÖETZER

space or build parallel cities in the form of theme parks. Instead of strolling
around and working in public spaces in cities, the members of the virtual class
are doing so in cyberspace, permitting them to overlook the black holes and to
form homogeneous communities that are eventually aimed at becoming
128
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

autonomous islands with surveillance. These kinds of islands exist on Earth
and are for the moment still, like Biosphere II, imperfect projects; but the fan-
tasy of being able to leave the Earth behind and to develop new territories in
cyberspace or in outer space is gaining force.
The authors of the “Magna Carta” admit, however, that even in
the United States the “Third Wave” in the development of humankind after the
Agricultural and Industrial Ages has yet to arrive and that we are trespassing a
new territory where no rules exist. Yet they do know what the definitive condi-
tions are for entering cyberspace toward the fulfillment of the American
Dream: deregulation, competition, privatization, decentralization, and demas-
sification of all institutions and culture at any cost, something which can only
mean commercialization of everything for all those who can afford it and indif-
ference toward those who have been left out of the information society. Accord-
ing to the authors, nobody knows in which direction the demassed individuals
and communities will float off to, but isolated individuals will come together in
“different communities” of “electronic neighborhoods” and will be bound
together only by common interests and no longer by geographical closeness and
common duties, except perhaps those which base themselves on the concept of
the “American Way of Life,” praised in an unconditional and uncritical way by
the authors. The reduction and homogenization of “communities” is the great
ideal behind the ideology of cyberspace. They believe that if only deregulation
were pursued consistently the power of computers would be entirely in the
“hands of the people,” a situation that would automatically guarantee freedom
from tyranny on the information highways, improvement in air quality and
make it unnecessary for people to live in “overpopulated and dangerous urban
areas” as a safe and private family home life would be possible.7 Cyberspace, in
the authors’ opinion, is progressively turning into a marketplace where “knowl-
edge” materializes as “product” in the form of hardware, software, competition,
and information and is anchored in the renewed redemption of the “American
Way of Life” and the “American Dream” as if American social conditions could
be used as an example for the whole world. The danger exists that public areas
and public life itself will disintegrate even more than it has already.
 The authors of the “Magna Carta” are marked as much by an
unconditional euphoria of individualism as by the glorification, without look-
ing at alternatives, of competition, freed from all forms of intervention by the
welfare state. Cyberspace, according to these authors, belongs to the people, not
to the state; but the people in all their celebrated diversity—where social and
ethnic conflicts have been eradicated—are reduced to the role of users of tech-
nologies offered by multinational companies, amongst which they can choose
as if these technologies were dozens of TV programs. The “Third Wave” in the
history of mankind that the authors of this liberal and individualistic manifesto
want to emphasize include computer companies, biotechnological enterprises,
information-based production centers and those banks and software producers
who trade with information; all in all, the members of the entertainment,
media, communication, education and information services sectors. In the
authors’ opinions these sectors will determine the society of the future. Every-
thing else will be relegated to Third World-like places—socially and geograph-
ically left behind—or to reactionary representatives of outdated mass society.
Today, the ones to act are no longer large social groups oppressed by represen-
tation or laws but, instead, highly differentiated communities “formed by indi-
viduals who celebrate their differences.” These individuals are difficult to unite
and don’t subordinate themselves to the “rules, regulations, taxes and laws” that
served the “smokestack barons and bureaucrats of the past.”8 The question is
whether or not individuals are now “represented” by the multinationals, such as
Microsoft, that dominate worldwide in their sectors, even if they are not as
gigantic as the companies that defined the Industrial Age.
Although it is true that the need to change the conditions of
property is propagated in the manifesto, only the end of copyright for intellec-
tual property is discussed; and yet they are in favor of quicker amortization
rates for taxes on hardware and software. Furthermore, the new monopolies of
FLORIAN RÖETZER

the consortiums with their increasing concentration, fueled by the fusion of

giants in the electronics sector, are not taken seriously and are treated as a neg-
ligible quantity. On the one hand, all governmental measures that belong to
the period of mass society have to disappear, but on the other hand the ideol-
130
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

ogy of liberalism, pumped up once again by interactive, multimedia, big band-
width computer networks, is not concerned with built-in standardizations and
constraints of hardware and software.
The manifesto effusively states that computer technology has
created more than a simple machine. Rather, cyberspace is said to be a “bio-
electronic environment, literally universal.” But it is not an environment that
you enter peacefully, nor one inside which you learn to live: it invites you to
conquer and is to be considered a “bioelectronic frontier zone.” Finally, after
the Cold War and programs like Star Wars are long over, a “new frontier” is
born, the dream of an American people. “Go Cyberspace” replaces “Go West.”
Cyberspace is the latest American frontier. Hackers are celebrated in the same
way as conquerors of new territories or outlaws were in the past, at least when
they are finally integrated into the economic system after having sowed their
wild oats in the new Wild West. They become “technicians” or “inventors” and
later “creators of a new wealth in the form of baby companies” that, despite all
the talk of universality, turn cyberspace into the economic property of certain
Americans. The conquest of cyberspace follows the example set by the settlers,
cowboys, heroes of the Wild West and soldiers who subjugated a continent
that, in their eyes, didn’t belong to anyone—pure colonialism. Forget about the
Native Americans, the blood that has been shed, the slaves who worked away
in the name of individual freedom. “The bioelectronic frontier is an appropri-
ate metaphor for what is happening in cyberspace if we remember the spirit
of invention and discovery which motivated the seafarers of old to set out
on voyages of discovery, which moved the generations of pioneers to tame
the American continent and which, in recent times, resulted in the exploration
of space.”9
Deregulation and the retreat of the state as a controlling organi-
zation have always been the magical words of free-market liberalism—with
the exception that state interventions are desirable when it comes to securing
your possessions, contracts, and profits. So currently enthusiasm is centered on
a stateless and bureaucracy-free cyberspace that on the one hand is supposed to
belong to the people and on the other hand should secure the position of the
 United States and its companies. Europeans should ask themselves whether, in
spite of the fears of no longer being attractive as a location, they really want to
follow this strange mixture of an individualistic and liberal sense of mission
together with nationalistic emotionalism and the desire for economic domi-
nance. Such a course would probably entail sealing off social and territorial
islands of high-tech culture from the rest of society and celebrating a popular
diversity that we no longer have the political means to secure. Computer net-
works bring with them the danger of establishing levels of political influence,
and possibly suggest the dream of a direct, anarchical, democracy that has been
defined up to now in territorial terms—in the form of communities, countries,
and states. We are surely experiencing the slow decay of a representative and
nation state-based democracy from which people, the globalized economy and
the Net-integrated media are all withdrawing. Europeans have learned from
their own history that utopias that are blindly embraced only produce new
horrors. Cyberspace opens up a new living environment, but its success or fail-
ure will depend upon which common good, which public life, and which cul-
ture of difference will be used in the creation of an environment where
everybody can coexist and where the biological survival of this planet is not
endangered. Cyberspace seems to offer the chance to do everything over again,
to leave the past and all the social problems of the present behind by offering a
new living environment. Investments of time, capital, and passion in cyber-
space will probably reduce the number of individuals who can be employed in
the construction of the “real” world. The difficulty of securing jobs in a global
economy combined with the fascination created by the new virtual world and
its forms of action and communication could lead us to abandon reality; aban-
don it to the point where life inside the space of places and life inside the space
of data transmissions drift increasingly apart.
But cyberspace is not an innocent place outside our world. Just as
FLORIAN RÖETZER

humans are anchored to the realities of their bodies, the order of the new world
is fixed to the old. This “liberal” manifesto is but one more in a variety of fun-
damentalisms that are awakening everywhere and which base themselves in
places, be they in slums or secured neighborhoods. Telepolis doesn’t eliminate
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

the space of places and of positions where the fights that take place during the
colonization of the cyberspace will be manifested. The discourse about space-
lessness and the destruction of space serves only to hide the fact that new
spaces, new properties, and new forms of power will not only surface in cyber-
space, but will be mirrored in real space as well.

3. THE INTERIM SOLUTION: BIOSPHERE II

The ultimate model of a closed, high-tech living environment

not rooted to a specific place has thus far been a failure. Biosphere II, con-
structed in the Arizona desert, is the latest realization of a space capsule that,
separated from Earth, can be connected to other capsules only through
telecommunication links. An experiment to measure how a small social com-
munity behaves when cut off from the outside world, Biosphere II was
intended to determine what structures would be necessary in a closed environ-
ment in order to allow the new high-tech farmers to live together and survive.
The farm is all that differentiates the people locked up in this terrestrial station
from space travelers. As with many projects of the information society, what
we find here is the hope of—in spite of the globalization of the living environ-
ment—offering small, homogeneous communities a space to inhabit that pro-
tects them from the conflicts of the rest of society. Cyberspace is this kind of
protected space: through surveillance it can be controlled and secured. Bios-
phere II is not an interface between the real world and cyberspace—it is the
establishment and mirror image of cyberspace in reality. The relationship
between simulation and reality begins to reverse itself. What cannot be dis-
solved into virtuality is locked into capsules and connected to networks. Bios-
phere II is the model for the realization of cyberspace, a sealed-off interior that
is self-sufficient, just the kind of bioelectronic system praised by the authors of
the “Magna Carta.”
The real Biosphere II project has been moving away for quite
some time now from its goal of constructing a self-sufficient survival capsule
that would be fit for colonizing space, with closed cycles where only data can
enter and leave. For example, during the two-year test phase a part of the team
 had to leave the artificial world for medical assistance and on their return they
brought back equipment including computer parts and manuals. Oxygen had
to be pumped into the system as it was creating too much carbon dioxide and
the amount of food produced was insufficient. The labor to keep the system
going, which meant planting and harvesting food, looking after the animals,
and controlling plagues of cockroaches and ants didn’t give the inhabitants
much time for research. Biosphere II will now be turned into the world’s
largest laboratory for the investigation of ecological interactions whose condi-
tions can be controlled with accuracy.
Nonetheless, Biosphere II is the realization of urban visions of
isolated and self-sufficient environments in gigantic man-machine systems: a
model for the living environment of tomorrow. Run like a machine, its operat-
ing principle is the perfect surveillance and control of all its components.
Inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s superstructures, Biosphere II is a dome made
of glass and noncorrosive steel grids in which the water, air, and food cycles are
absolutely closed and recycled back into the system. Sixteen hundred sensors
control the climate and the composition of the air, water, and ground, sending
this data to a central control system. The computer network permits a contin-
uous representation of environmental data. Inside the system we find, apart
from some humans, around four thousand different species of plants and ani-
mals, not counting the microorganisms. Biosphere II is divided into five “wild”
ecosystems: tropical rain forest, savanna, coastal area, swamp, and a maritime
area containing a coral reef. Beyond these, there are farming zones and living
quarters for the inhabitants. Next to the main dome there are two other areas
that function as the “lungs” of the system, balancing atmospheric fluctuations.
The temperature is regulated from the outside by a hydological system. Elec-
tricity also comes from the exterior.
In a society of digital networks, the material and biological envi-
FLORIAN RÖETZER

ronment of humans will not lose its importance—as can be seen from the pre-
sent high regard for the body and for nature—but it will be set up and
organized around some rigid functional criteria. Following the example of
Biosphere II and its parallel cities—shopping centers, malls, theme parks, and
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

the construction of cyberspace as a virtual world—more and more functions of
the exterior world will be transferred into the interior worlds of enclosed
spaces. The computerization of ecosystems—the permanent surveillance by
means of all kinds of sensors—primarily serves to set up warning and security
systems that protect human life. The knowledge gained from this would even-
tually be aimed at controlling the complex ecological machinery and, this not
being possible, the construction of autonomous microsystems that, closed off
from the environment and under total surveillance, are run like any other tech-
nological macrosystems. The exterior serves the purpose of transporting goods
and people. Nature is responsible for producing food and satisfying needs for
relaxation, including the need for the aesthetic perception of nature manifested
in man-made parks, nature reserves, and biotopes. The environment continues
to be a resource that has to be protected in certain respects in order to maintain
life in the enclosed spaces. But these spaces, thanks to their “intelligence,” will
become increasingly independent and autonomous, “bachelor apartments”
linked to the networks of a geographically dispersed cyberspace whose “black
holes” will be bridged through cable and satellite connections. These capsules
are the would-be Noah’s Arks of the Information Age.

4. SIDEREAL SPACE

Biosphere II is the great model for future space colonies. The

project was born out of this idea, although it is also valid as a model for a new,
technically possible living environment on Earth. Why should one think of the
colonization of space? According to NASA, for simple biological reasons such
as geographical expansion and unrestrained growth. NASA learned its lessons
from history, noting that: “The main advantage of space colonies is the possi-
bility to acquire new land without having to take it away from someone. This
allows for, but doesn’t guarantee, a huge expansion of humankind without wars
and destruction of the Earth’s biosphere.”1 0 By emigrating we would be able
to escape overpopulation on Earth, the destruction of its biosphere and the
possible impact of asteroids.
 a) First Millennial Foundation
There are also private organizations that promote the coloniza-
tion of outer space and wish to turn colonization into a national mission. For
example, the First Millennial Foundation sees our modest destiny as bringing
life to the dead stars, something that should keep us busy for at least the next
thousand years. This is seen as a holy duty insofar as life would be condemned
to die if it stayed earthbound. Life could be destroyed at any time by a comet or
an asteroid, and, moreover, the sun is going to explode sooner or later. They say
that as it is life on Earth is in deep crisis due to the population explosion. How
11
will ten or fifteen billion people find space to live and food to eat?
As usual, when trying to find simple solutions for complex prob-
lems people don’t try to work out the current difficulties on Earth or analyze
the relationships of power and production. More land, more living space, is the
propagated solution. In fact, the first step toward colonization that this foun-
dation proposes is the construction of floating islands in warm areas of the
oceans. According to proponents of such a scheme, the islands would form
automatically if a conductive metal were to be brought into contact with the
water and electricity run through it. The dissolved minerals in the water would
then join to the metal and form thick layers of artificial limestone. If metal
constructions were then added to strengthen these formations, together with
electrical wire netting, a sufficiently solid base for floating islands could result.
The people inhabiting these islands would live off the sea, cultivating fish and
algae, producing energy in an environmentally-friendly way. At the moment,
the oceans appear to be “empty continents” and “biological deserts,” but life on
such floating islands, swimming in warm tropical seas, would be very pleasant.
As life would develop around the same environmentally-friendly principles
that are employed in these closed cycles, we are promised security because the
colonies will be “relatively free from crime and other evils which we see domi-
FLORIAN RÖETZER

nating the cities.” This is so because we are talking about “a community of

closely related individuals,” in other words, a nonurban community. The ocean
colonies will prepare us for life both in closed systems and “isolated and highly
integrated communities,” a prerequisite for leaving this planet.1 2
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

b) NASA: Space Settlement Basics
For institutional reasons of self-preservation, the people at
NASA obviously want to promote the idea of colonizing space. Although they
still continue the important activity of launching satellites—hundreds of
which are now orbiting Earth—since the end of the Cold War expensive
manned space programs have been drastically reduced. In their eyes, space
travel has to become something available to everybody and not only to highly
qualified specialists. Only when space flights have become safe and inexpensive
can thousands or millions of people take the opportunity of giving relief to our
planet. After all, one hundred years ago nobody had ever traveled by plane,
while at present some five hundred million people are flying every year.
There are groups for whom the colonization of space has been
touted as especially attractive. For example, it has been suggested that being in
space without the burden of gravity could be advantageous for the handi-
capped. It would also be possible to send involuntary colonists to space
colonies—relatively inescapable prisons, as islands were in former times. This
seems a rather obvious idea, although perhaps not in the way that the authors
at NASA had intended, given that space colonies will always be prisons, even
when constructed as protective settlements. The authors also suggest that
space colonies would be appropriate for some religious groups not wanting to
live near nonbelievers or else for those who would like to experiment with new
types of social or political forms.1 3
Biosphere II is once again the obvious model: a scientifically pro-
duced independent environment with closed cycles. The authors at NASA
suggest, however, that with space colonies it may be necessary to take at least
some oxygen and a little food. Anyway, the idea wouldn’t be to go straight into
colonizing planets or even the Moon. Rather, the first step would be to have
gigantic containers orbiting the Earth so that people could at least still see and
maybe even visit her. Only later would we spread ourselves around in the solar
system or move to distant stars, for to later generations proximity to
earth won’t matter anymore. NASA’s authors do not go into detail here
about the technical realization of their suggestions. They put their money on
 nanotechnology, which will do everything by itself, and even make possible the
building of an “orbital tower” rising from the Earth’s surface into space. In this
way, materials and people could be brought by elevator into orbit with mini-
mum expense. And even if everything would take lots of time and money, one
has to remember that “New York, California and France” weren’t built in a day
14
and “Canada, France and San Francisco” cost a lot of money too.
We have already learned some of the reasons why outer space
will be “a nice place to live.” But the authors list several additional reasons, the
first being aesthetic: a “nice view.” Not clouded by air pollution, from out there
you can enjoy the marvelous panorama of the solar system and revel in the
beauty of Earth. Secondly, the reduced gravity would be ideal for dancing and
sports, two extremely attractive reasons for leaving Earth.1 5 But naturally,
there are more.
The third has to do with freeing ourselves from our interdepen-
dence with the environment, given that, unfortunately, living on Earth means
sharing only one biosphere and suffering the ecological crimes committed by
others. As every space colony would be totally sealed off from the next, the
global ecological effects of one colony’s risk-taking would not affect the oth-
ers’.1 6 The fourth reason is paradigmatic and I quote it in its entirety:

On Earth different groups have to learn how to live together very

closely. It requires a great effort to live together with five or six bil-
lion homosapiens and some people don’t tolerate this very well.
Space colonies offer an alternative to trying to change human nature
and to endless conflicts. The possibility of living in almost com-
pletely homogeneous communities as was the normal form of
human existence during millions of years. Those who cannot adapt
to living so close together have the opportunity of cutting them-
FLORIAN RÖETZER

selves off from others by millions of kilometers of the finest vacuum,

something that sometimes seems like a necessary thing. Access to
space colonies would be through air gates and thus immigration
17
control wouldn’t play an important role.”
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

Up to now we can only choose amongst limited options of what
the place where we want to live is going to look like. This “having-to-restrict-
oneself ” is very difficult to bear for genuine space travelers who are all individ-
ualists and builders of worlds, striving for their own personal happiness. I will
now quote the fifth reason, unable to formulate it better:

As the entire environment will have been created by man, you will
be able to obtain whatever you want. Would you like an estate on a
lake? Then simply build lakes. Do you love sunsets? Then program
simulations of hourly sunsets into the weather system. Do you like
walking barefooted? Then just make the whole environment foot-
18
friendly.

Perhaps none of this is meant to be taken seriously, and is only a

satire on all those early dreams of emigration. In any case, the spirit of our
times is reflected in these “Space Settlement Basics,” on NASA’s Web site—
even though its administrators may not even realize they have been posted.
But there are others who obviously do take one thing dead seriously: the
American dream of a new frontier intertwined with the colonization of space.

c) Welcome to the Revolution: The Space Frontier Foundation

The Space Frontier Foundation, based in New York City, is an
association of American citizens who are strongly represented on the Internet.
The foundation maintains a mailing list and publishes the series “The Frontier
Files.” It demands the colonization of space as soon as possible; otherwise
humankind will perish. For them, the United States, as the “Frontier Nation,”
has a special responsibility in this area. In an effort to arouse national pride, the
foundation claims that America is getting nervous at the end of the twentieth
century. There are too many doubts in the “greatest nation that has ever
existed.” The Cold War having ended, people need a new “vision of tomorrow”
that offers something better than what we have in the present. According to
the foundation, Americans are “a nation of pioneers without a new frontier.
 There is no longer a clear, exterior enemy around which they could organize.
19
History is repeating itself.” In other words, times are bad.
Too many people see the future as obstructed. Images of a declin-
ing culture, in large part of cities in decay—as in the film Blade Runner—haunt
us. Unemployment, poverty, social struggles, the retreat into the private sphere,
and decreasing living standards produce insecurity, fear, and individualism.
America is falling apart. The Space Frontier Foundation has the solution:

The USA has to acknowledge the philosophical discrepancy be-

tween the things the nation should be doing in space and the things
which we are in fact doing at the moment. Then we would be able to
re-formulate our misguided space program into a new one that is
more comprehensive, more exciting and more profitable. By putting
these changes into practice, we, who understand the chance that the
space frontier offers us, can provide America with a new image of its
future—a future full of hope, an exciting future that motivates the
20
entire society. A future of continuously expanding options.

The finite, whether in space or time, seems to be very difficult to

bear. The future has to progress in the form of a continuously rising curve, oth-
erwise everything falls apart, just like the capitalist market when it stops grow-
ing. In the same way that a nation fighting an external enemy grows closer in
times of war, the “emptiness of space” is supposed to generate a new type of
society that will include everyone.
But what was it like in the old days when the Wild West was
being colonized? Was a new type of society created? Were new towns founded
without suppressing others? The facts of real history have little relevance. In
the foreground we have the wave that colonized the land (including its inhab-
FLORIAN RÖETZER

itants) under the hopeful slogan “Go West.” However:

Twenty-five years after Lewis & Clark railway carriages rolled into
the West toward Oregon, thousands of pioneers were brought from
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OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

the boats to the Californian coast . . . 2 5 years after the Wright
Brothers, people could buy a plane ticket and fly around in air-
planes...but 2 5 years after having landed on the Moon, we still sit
in front of the TV watching old astronauts remembering the good
21
old days.”

Things have to look up eventually in regards to morale as well as

space. The ideology of “sustained development,” directed toward the preserva-
tion of the biosphere, is said to be paralyzing people when what is needed is
the creation of “a new age of continuously growing hope.” Once we commit to
the vision of colonizing space, which can only be positive given that space has-
n’t been colonized yet and because in this way we also protect our biosphere,
then the questions of where we are going as a race, how we fit into the big pic-
ture and what we have to do next will no longer have any importance.
The only thing we will have to do will be to direct our gaze
toward the thousands of stars in the night sky and we will find the answer. And
the world is going to follow us. Because we are a nation of pioneers, this is our
new country. And because we are all capable of doing this, it is high time that
we are given the opportunity to prove it.2 2

But who is standing in the way? The state is, because it is imped-
ing access to space. Viewed purely as a means of oppression and not as an insti-
tution that exercises democratic procedures and social balancing acts, the state
cannot open the way into the future. This can only be done, in the well-known
capitalistic and individualistic style, by those concerned with the pursuit of
happiness and profit—as deregulated as possible. Space as the new Wild West.
America, according to this foundation, is a nation of free people, united by the
belief that “man comes before the state and should have the right to create new
riches, unimpeded by the state.” The West was won using such a doctrine. The
Foundation doesn’t explain, however, how this typical, anti-state, extreme indi-
vidualism can go hand in hand with the creation of new communities. It
 believes that if only individuals and companies were left alone in the “mar-
velous chaos of the free, democratic entrepreneurial system,” then prosperity,
freedom, and a better life for all would be possible. Like at one time in the
Wild West, money is the exclusive driving force: “without profit there will be
23
no new goal.”
As with the propagandists of cyberspace, the Space Frontier
Foundation links the colonization of space to individualism, which is always
identified with a free, capitalistic market and the reduction of the state. Dereg-
ulation is the only maxim of happiness. Public life doesn’t matter so long as it
doesn’t generate money. Individuals have to be successful and win, otherwise
they will be lost and relegated to oblivion like the Indians were in their time.
Freedom only means freedom of the market; in other words, competition. In
this amalgam, typical of our times, utopias can only sustain themselves while
moving forward, and cannot describe the place that will emerge at the end, let
alone formulate collective rules of how it is to be socially organized in an
acceptable way. The anti-state attitude and the orientation toward triumphant
individuals, groups, and communities is much too strong. What then will the
colonies in space and cyberspace look like? Not much different from those in
the real world that are increasingly marked by the same maxims of capitalistic
individualism and deregulation—like adventure parks, Disney Worlds and
shopping centers, like suburban areas that spread around old cities without
providing urban life, like cyberspace, increasingly commercialized and marked
by private organizations with their intranets and fee zones. In a nutshell, like
the way Mike Davis and others describe the future of our cities: breaking apart
into segments, citadels, and scanscapes under the pressure of multinationals
and the new virtual class.2 4 Scanscapes, according to Mike Davis, are pro-
tected areas, models for all biospheres and space colonies, and serve homoge-
neous communities in which every step is being monitored in order to ensure
FLORIAN RÖETZER

against any foreign intrusion.

142
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NOTES

OUTER SPACE OR VIRTUAL SPACE?

1. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Munich: Goldman 12. Ibid.
Verlag, 1995); Mike Davis, City of Quartz (New York:
13. “Space Settlement Basics,” NASA World Wide
Vintage Books, 1992).
Web site, http://www.nas.gov/NAS/SpaceSettlement/
2. Stephenson, Snow Crash,119. Basics/ wwwwh.html

3. Ibid.,223. 14. Ibid.

4. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Cali- 15. Ibid.

fornian Ideology,” May 1996, World Wide Web site,
16. Ibid.
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ media/HRC/ci/calif.html.
17. Ibid.
5. “Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna
Carta for the Knowledge Age,” release 1.2, 22 August 18. Ibid.
1994, World Wide Web site, http://www.pff.org/
19. Space Frontier Foundation World Wide Web site,
pff/position.html. The site is sponsored by the Pro-
http://www.space-frontier.org/.
gress and Freedom Foundation.
20. Ibid.
6. Barbrook and Cameron, “The Californian Ideology.”
21. Ibid.
7. “Magna Carta.”
22. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
24. Mike Davis, Urban Control (Pamphlet 23, Open
10. NASA World Wide Web site, http://nas.nasa.gov/
Magazine Pamphlet Series) (NJ: Open Media, 1992).
Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/Basics/wwwwh.
html#who.

11. First Millennial Foundation World Wide Web site,

http://www.millenial.org/intro/faq.htm.
 Changing Space: Virtual Reality

as an Arena of Embodied Being

CHAR DAVIES

THE MEDIUM OF “immersive virtual space” or virtual reality—as it is generally

known—has intriguing potential as an arena for constructing metaphors about
our existential being-in-the-world and for exploring consciousness as it is
experienced subjectively, as it is felt. Such environments can provide a new kind
of “place” through which our minds may float among three-dimensionally
extended yet virtual forms in a paradoxical combination of the ephemerally
immaterial with what is perceived and bodily felt to be real.
My work as an artist explores VR’s capacity for refreshing our
“ways of seeing” through the design of immersive virtual environments unlike
those of our usual sensibilities. OSMOSE (1 9 9 4 – 9 5) is an interactive,
“fully immersive,” virtual environment that uses a stereoscopic head-mounted
display, three-dimensionally localized interactive sound, and an embodying
interface driven by the user’s breath and balance. There are nearly a dozen
“realms” in OSMOSE, metaphorical reconstructions of “nature” as well as
 philosophical texts and software code. The visual elements within these realms
1
are semi-transparent and translucent.
Since mid 1 9 9 5, more than five thousand people have been
immersed in OSMOSE. The overall effect on immersants appears to be quite
complex. Many of their responses are surprising in terms of emotional inten-
sity, ranging from euphoria to tears of loss. The experience of seeing and float-
ing through things, along with the work’s reliance on breath and balance as
well as on solitary immersion, causes many participants to relinquish desire for
active “doing” in favor of contemplative “being.” In comparing their reactions
with those generated by psychological research into traditionally-induced
altered states of consciousness, I have come to believe that full-body immer-
sion in an “unusual” virtual environment can potentially lead to shifts in men-
tal awareness. That this may be possible has many implications, some
2
promising, some disturbing.

CHANGING SPACE

Thirty years ago, in The Poetics of Space, the philosopher Gaston

Bachelard examined the psychologically transformative potential of “real”
environments like the desert, the plains, and the deep sea, immense open
spaces unlike the urban environments to which most of us are accustomed:

By changing space, by leaving the space of one’s usual sensibilities,

one enters into communication with a space that is psychically inno-
3
vating. For we do not change place, we change our nature.

Bachelard’s poetic insight into the psychological effects of

“changing space” is echoed by psychologists documenting the effects of tradi-
tional contemplative practices in terms of altering states of consciousness.
According to Arthur Deikman’s “Deautomatization and the Mystic Experi-
CHAR DAVIES

ence,” the conditions fostered by such practices involve a dehabituating or “de-

automatizing” of perceptual sensibilities.

146
 147
Deautomatization is an undoing of psychic structure permitting the

CHANGING SPACE
experience of increased detail and sensation at the price of requiring
more attention. With such attention, it is possible that deautomati-
zation may permit the awareness of new dimensions of the total
stimulus array—a process of “perceptual expansion.”
...Deautomatization is here conceived as permitting
the adult to attain a new, fresh perception of the world by freeing him
from a stereotyped organization built up over the years and by allow-
ing adult synthetic functions access to fresh materials. The general
process of deautomatization would seem of great potential useful-
ness whenever it is desired to break free from an old pattern in order
to achieve a new experience of the same stimulus or to open a perceptual
4
avenue to stimuli never experienced before. (italics added)

This dehabituating of perception tends to occur as a result of cer-

tain psychological conditions, such as when the participant’s attention is inten-
sified and is directed toward sensory pathways; when there is an absence of
controlled, analytic thought; and when the participant’s attitude is one of recep-
tivity to stimuli rather than defensiveness or suspicion.5
Most often attained through rigorous training in age-old medi-
tation techniques (drug-induced experiences are outside the scope of this
essay), such conditions lead to an undoing of habitual perceptions—in favor of
alternative sensibilities. While these may be less efficient in terms of biological
or psychological survival, psychologists believe that they permit experience of
aspects of reality previously ignored. The experience of these unusual sensibil-
ities includes:

° an intense sense of “realness,” as when inner stimuli become

more real than objects
° transcendence of time and space
° unusual modes of perception
 ° feelings of undifferentiated unity or merging (e.g.; a breakdown
of distinctions between things and/or the self and the world)
° ineffability or verbal indescribability
° a profound sense of joy or euphoria
6
° a paradoxical sense of being in and out of the body

OSMOSE: BREATHING IN AND LETTING GO

These “unusual” sensations are eerily similar to what many peo-

ple claim they have experienced during immersion in OSMOSE. Among the
responses we have gathered through written comments, correspondence, and
video interviews, a substantial number of participants have reported the fol-
lowing:

° a feeling that they had indeed been somewhere else, in another

“place”
° losing track of time (a fifteen minute session was nearly always
experienced as five, a thirty minute session as ten)
° heightened awareness of their own sense of being, or as one
immersant described it: “as consciousness embodied, occupying
7
space”
° a deep sense of mind/body relaxation
° an inability to speak rationally or put logical words together
afterward
° a feeling of freedom from their physical bodies and an acute
awareness of them at the same time
° intense emotional feelings, including euphoria and/or an over-
whelming sense of loss when the session was ending, causing
some to cry and others to exclaim they were no longer afraid of
dying
CHAR DAVIES

In addition, we have observed a pattern of behavior among par-

ticipants during immersion. After becoming accustomed to the interface of
148
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CHANGNING SPACE
breath and balance, most people become intent on “doing,” traveling around
to see as much as possible in what appears to be an extension of everyday
goal-oriented, action-based behavior. After ten minutes or so, however, most
undergo a change: their facial expressions and body gestures loosen, and
instead of rushing, they slow down, mesmerized by their own perceptions
within the space. In this final phase, attention seems to be directed toward the
unusual sensations of floating and seeing through things in what becomes a
kind of slow-motion perceptual “free-fall.”
What is going on here?
If these responses are anything to go by, then it appears that
immersive virtual space, as evidenced by OSMOSE, can indeed be “psychically
innovating,” to use Bachelard’s words. Why? The answer lies in the very nature
of immersive virtual space. Here, ephemeral virtuality coexists with an appar-
ent three-dimensionality of form, and feelings of disembodiment can coexist
with those of embodiment (given the use of an embodying interface as in
OSMOSE). These paradoxical aspects, in combination with the ability to
kinesthetically interact with the elements within the space, create a very
unusual experiential context.
I want to emphasize, however, that the medium’s perception-
refreshing potential is possible only to the extent that a virtual environment is
 designed to be unlike those of our usual sensibilities and assumptions. In
OSMOSE, for example, the immersant can unexpectedly see through things
and float through them as well. Thus the “familiar” becomes the unusual. This
creates room for other modes of perception: instead of the mind being on
autopilot it begins to pay attention, in the present, to what is unusual and
unknown.

OSMOSE: UNUSUAL SENSIBILITIES

OSMOSE does not reconstruct the world as we habitually per-

ceive it (as empty space containing solid, static, hard-edged, and separate
objects, with rigid distinctions between subject, object, figure and ground).
Instead, OSMOSE uses transparency and luminous particles to “desolidify”
things and dissolve spatial distinctions. When the immersant moves within
the space, multiplicities of semitransparent, three-dimensional forms as well as
abstract foreground “flecks” combine to create perceptual ambiguity and slip-
pages between figure and ground, near and far, inside and out. Compared to
the all too familiar literal representational style commonly associated with
three-dimensional computer graphics, this more evocative aesthetic intensifies
the perceptual and cognitive process.
For the user-interface, a method was developed that relies on the
participant’s own breath and balance rather than on conventional, hand-ori-
ented methods such as joystick, wand, trackball, or glove—all of which tend to
support a distanced and disembodied stance toward the world. This approach,
based on breathing in to rise, out to fall, and leaning to change direction,
brings the experience inward, “grounding” it within the core of the partici-
pant’s physical body. Conceptually informed by the scuba diver’s practice of
buoyancy control, this hands-off technique “frees” participants from the urge
to handle and control the world of “objects.”8 This approach was intended to
“reaffirm” the role of the subjectively-experienced, “felt” body in cyberspace, in
CHAR DAVIES

direct contrast to its usual absence or objectification in virtual worlds. The use
of breathing and balance also tends to deeply relax people, creating a tranquil
state of mind and body.
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CHANGING SPACE
The feelings reported by various participants were probably
intensified by the solitary nature of the experience, as well as by the fact that
the work is “fully immersive,” (its space is perceived as totally enveloping, due
to our use of a wide-field-of-view head-mounted display.) These aspects, in
combination with the three-dimensionality of the work and the fluid, interac-
tive sound, act to amplify the embodied yet virtual nature of the experience.
While the psychological effects of full-body immersion in a com-
puter-generated virtual environment like OSMOSE have yet to be scientifi-
cally analyzed, the potential of the medium to dehabituate our sensibilities and
allow for a resensitization of the perception of being invites further exploration.

IMPLICATIONS

Not to be forgotten is the possibility of the medium’s potency

being used to replace bodily experiences of the “real” with phantasms of virtual
utopias. In her preface to Rethinking Technologies, Verona Conley writes about
our loss of “humanness” in the wake of the world “becoming technological.”1 0

In view of the grim prospect of the twenty-first century, we are com-

pelled to ask how critics of culture, philosophers, and artists will deal
with technologies. How do they contend with expansionist ideology,
and the accelerated elimination of diversity and of singularities?
How do they resist or act?...Now, in a world where the notion of
space has been completely changed through electronic simultaneity,
where the computer appears to go faster than the human brain, or
where “virtual reality” replaces “reality,” how do philosophy, critical
10
theory, or artistic practices deal with those shifts?

This question aptly applies to immersive virtual space, especially

when one considers that it will one day likely be used for such (questionable)
purposes as adapting individuals to psychological and biological survival in a
less and less “user-friendly” living environment. Moreover, unlike Bachelard’s
desert or deep sea, Deikman’s meditation cell, or even an isolation tank, VR
 153

CHANGING SPACE
is a communicative medium, which by default carries conventional cultural
values of the Western technoscientific worldview from which that technology
has sprung.
The beginnings of an answer to Conley’s question may have been
formulated by Martin Heidegger more than fifty years ago in The Question
Concerning Technology. As an alternative to what he called technology’s ten-
dency to function as an instrument of domination and control, Heidegger
pointed to an earlier form of “techne” called “poiesis” by the Greeks, associated
not with “challenging” but with a “bringing-forth” or “revealing” into presence.
The Greeks considered this artistic activity to be somewhat equivalent to what
they called physis or nature’s own bursting forth of being.1 1 I find inspiration
here in terms of the use of immersive virtual space as a medium for “bringing
forth” or “manifesting” abstract ideas into the realm of virtual “place” so that
they can be kinesthetically explored and bodily lived.
This may prove to be a promising use of the medium, and, given
effective subversion of its culturally-bound characteristics, may be a step
toward suggesting alternative ways of seeing and being in the world. However,
even so, there remains a significantly disheartening aspect. For even as “places”
like OSMOSE may one day be accessible on line as virtual sites of contempla-
tion, so too such sites may signal the demise of traditional places of self-reflec-
tion and tranquillity. In particular this includes “nature” as we know it, as
compromised in body and habitat by human activities, nature’s unfathomable
presences recede further and further from our urban lives. My own practice in
the field of “virtual reality” thus contains a bittersweet aspect, entangled in
feelings of both longing and loss.
 NOTES

This paper was presented in abridged form at Con- September 1995; and Char Davies and John Harri-
sciousness Reframed, 1st CAiiA Research Confer- son, “OSMOSE—Towards Broadening the Aesthetics
ence, Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive of Virtual Reality,” in ACM Computer Graphics 30, no.
Arts, University of Wales College, Newport, Wales, 4 (November 1996): 25–8.
July 1997 and at Beyond Shelter: The Future of
2. The subjective experience of being spatially en-
Architecture, The Graham Foundation, Chicago, IL,
veloped or immersed in a virtual environment is key to
Sept. 1997. It is partially based on the presentations
my work and the views expressed in this paper. By
“Soul in the Machine: OSMOSE—The Paradox of
“immersion” or “immersive virtual space” I specifi-
Being in Immersive Virtual Space” and “OSMOSE as
cally mean immersion within a spherically 360-
Metaphor: Alternative Aesthetics and Interaction in
degree, totally enveloping virtual space, implying a
Immersive Virtual Space” delivered at the annual
“being within.” In my experience with VR, such sen-
meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery
sation of envelopment is possible only through the
(ACM) Special Interest Group in Graphics, New
wearing of a head-mounted display helmet with a
Orleans, LA, Aug. 1996.
wide field of view. While the word “immersive” is cur-
1. OSMOSE was designed as an alternative to the rently being used by the industry to describe wrap-
dominant aesthetic and interactive sensibility of vir- around screens and domes (creating what I consider
tual reality. The work was created by myself, John to be nonimmersive experiences) my use of the word
Harrison, and Georges Mauro, with sound by Rick “immersive” denotes a totally enveloping virtual
Bidlack and Dorota Blaszczak, and was produced by space.
Softimage between 1994 and 1995. Public installa-
3. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston,
tions of the work were made in an intimate enclosed
MA: Beacon Press, 1966), 206. For Bachelard’s dis-
immersion area with a darkened visitor space. Visitors
cussion on the psychologically transforming qualities
were able to “witness” each immersive journey from
of immense open spaces such as the sea, desert, and
the immersant’s point of view as it took place via live
plains, see pp. 203–10.
audiovisual connection. Adjacent to the video projec-
tion was a live shadow projection of the immersant, 4. Arthur Deikman, “Deautomatization and Mystical
providing an associative link between his or her body Experience,” and “Experimental Meditation” in
as conduit for lived experience, and the work’s conse- Altered States of Consciousness, Charles Tart, ed.
quent imagery and sound. For a more detailed (New York: HarperCollins, 1990) 50, 262–3. Note
description, see “OSMOSE: Notes on Being in Immer- that in terms of “receptivity” to OSMOSE, I have been
sive Virtual Space,” paper delivered at the 6th Inter- told by at least one individual that although she was
national Symposium on Electronic Art, Montreal, intellectually skeptical when she went in, “something
CHAR DAVIES

154
 155
happened” and much to her surprise she became 10. Ibid., xii.

CHANGING SPACE
entranced. This points to the medium’s potency, for
11. In its most prevalent form, immersive virtual real-
better and worse.
ity can be considered to be “a literal re-enactment of
5. Deikman, “Deautomatization,” 52. Cartesian ontology.” Richard Coyne, “Heidegger & Vir-
tual Reality: The Implications of Heidegger’s Thinking
6. Ibid., 47–55.
for Computer Representation,” Leonardo 27, no. 1,
7. Y. Karim, personnel correspondence with the (1994): 66–75. In terms of visuals, most real-time
author, September 1995. “OSMOSE heightened an three-dimensional computer graphic techniques are
awareness of my body as a site of consciousness and based on representing “hard-edged solid objects in
of the experience and sensation of consciousness empty space”—in a combination of low-level mimetic
occupying space.” realism, Cartesian space, and Renaissance perspec-
tive. In virtual environments the human subject is
8. This method was partially informed by my own
usually reconstructed as an omnipotent and isolated
practice of scuba diving in the deep sea, certainly a
viewpoint maneuvering in empty space and probing
“psychically innovating space” as Bachelard sug-
objects with an acquisitive hand. Interactivity in many
gested. Diving at depths of 200 feet over a 6,000 foot
commercial computer games involves adrenaline-pro-
abyss introduced me to the experience of being within
ducing high-speed action and aggression. These
an almost pure, abstract yet sensuously enveloping
approaches tend to reinforce a Cartesian way of see-
space, where when there is nothing to “look at” per-
ing the world in terms of emphasizing the separation
ceptual and cognitive distinctions between near and
of subject over object, mind over body, and the world
far, inside and out, really do dissolve. While diving,
as “standing-reserve.” For a discussion about the
navigation and buoyancy are achieved through subtle
world being reduced to “standing-reserve” for human
and skillful use of breath and balance, and the use of
consumption, see Martin Heidegger “The Question
hands is discouraged. There are other relevant com-
Concerning Technology,” in The Question Concerning
parisons between diving and immersive virtual envi-
Technology & Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row,
ronments, such as the donning of heavy gear in order
1977), 17–27. The imperative to master and control
to access such spaces, as well as the necessity of lim-
is not surprising given the technology’s origins, not
iting the length of the experience in order to avoid
only in value-wise in the Western philosophic tradi-
possible dangers to one’s health.
tion, but instrumentally in the military as well.
9. Verona Conley, preface to V (1993), in Re-Thinking
Technologies, Verona Conley, ed. (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993), ix.
You slay the victim with technology, and
resurrect the victim through art.

–William Irwin Thompson

 Virtual Reality and the Tea Ceremony

MICHAEL HEIM

INTRODUCTION

The Internet explosion of the 1 9 9 0s belongs to the more gen-

eral lust for explosions that characterizes this era. Click, bang, click bang: one
screen after another explodes. Like contemporary action films, the computer
network enjoys a huge success because of its dynamism. Users identify with the
nonlinear action where a surprise awaits around every corner. Pictures, video,
voice, and animation create a hypermedia whirl that pops up like a kaleido-
scopic circus. The World Wide Web brims with adventure, high impact, and a
sensory bombardment not unlike the worlds of Raiders of the Lost Ark or Total
Recall. But while action films reach back to linear narrative akin to Homeric
story-telling, today’s information tools have the look and feel of something
new. The earlier linear modes of perception are broken by random-access
action laced with information.
Soon enough, however, even the veteran Net surfer grows tired of
speed thrills and choppy surfaces. The tide is already turning toward information
 design with greater depth, sense of place, and the quiet grace of painting and lit-
erature. As the look and feel of the new media finds its own niche in cultural life,
designers will want to expand information systems to include virtual worlds that
draw on the soothing, contemplative aspects of predigital media. Technological
thrills will cloy until we can inject some of the meditative profundity of the Vic-
torian novel or the landscapes of Camille Corot onto the Internet. This essay is a
thought experiment to prepare for the not-too-distant future when hardware
and software will make possible such scenarios.
The meditative tools of the linear past offer a contrasting
resource for hypermedia. This was the argument I made in Electric Language, a
book that contrasted the word processor on which it was written with the for-
1
mer methods of writing on typewriters and with pen on paper. By under-
standing the contrasting powers of media, I argued, we can produce a richer
complementary unity. In the present essay, I want to project onto the Internet
a sensibility and style that contrasts sharply with the love of explosion. Instead
of explosions, I want to advance for the Internet the grace and minimal spaces
of Zen.
Zen, originally a Chinese spiritual development known in China
as Ch’an Buddhism, was imported to the United States from Japan as Zen
Buddhism in the early twentieth century. Zen arose when Indian gurus arrived
in sixth-century B.C. China to teach their religion in northern Asia. Over
time, the indigenous Chinese Taoists reshaped Buddhism to their needs, mak-
ing it more practical and down to earth. Today, Zen enjoys a fashionable
respect in Western culture. Bookstores in shopping-malls carry volumes on the
Zen of programming, the Zen of negotiating, and the Zen of motorcycle
maintenance. Business managers read about Zen management, though the
Samurai they imagine live only in Hollywood. Most of our popular Zen has
been adapted to fit Western values and remains a fantasy Zen. Cultures adapt
what they adopt.
MICHAEL HEIM

Westerners often see explosions in Zen. The explosion of

“instant enlightenment” does run through Zen literature, but Westerners often
mistake the flash of satori for instant coffee: spoon out some ideas, add a little
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VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE TEA CEREMONY

water, and stir to arrive at enlightenment. What often goes unmentioned are
the long hours of patient practice that prepare practitioners of Zen for the
shock of immediate understanding. After all, Zen practice requires daily phys-
ical exertion. Many of us who teach Tai Chi Chuan in the West have come to
appreciate how slanted the Western psyche is toward mental rather than phys-
ical understanding: here the understanding of the body is left largely to ath-
letes. In fact, in the West even Zen has been treated as a figment of the mind,
as a tricky belief system or lifestyle. Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley popular-
ized a mind Zen that belonged more to hippie drug experiments or Asian cul-
tural studies than to actual physical, sensuous body discipline. Going beyond
the easy references of shopping-mall Zen means that we encounter a sensitiv-
ity that continues to escape our dominant sensibility.
In exploring the Zen of the Internet, we must learn to think sen-
suously and physically. We must become aware of autonomic physical activities
like breathing and body balance. We must notice our posture, our finger move-
ments, and the way our eyes move in their sockets. We must begin thinking of
computer work as a somatic process with psychic overtones. As more activities
move into virtual worlds, the computer interface becomes as important a place
in our culture as those earlier sacred places that housed a shrine, a temple, an
altar. The computer is a place for self-transformation. We need to look care-
fully at what transpires in us as we enter virtual worlds.
At this stage, the Zen of the Internet alerts us to our practices.
Since most of our practices tend to be outwardly directed, we need to jog our
awareness by looking carefully at practices for awakening the inward senses.
Our thought experiment can help jog our awareness as we try to import an
alien and contrasting sensibility. The contrast I have in mind comes from the
ceremonial gentleness of the Japanese tea ritual. This sharp contrast to the cult
of explosion is an alien form—as alien to contemporary Japan as to the West.
Precisely this alien quality is what begs us to import the tea ceremony into
Internet culture. The Internet calls for design projects that translate the depth,
refined rhythm, and the strong sense of place achieved by the Way of Tea.2
 LANDSCAPES FOR VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

Some people fear the Internet as a form of cultural and intellec-

tual strip mining. The Internet is indeed dynamite. It delivers high-speed
access to the wealth of cultural life independent of geography, and it is free of
the physical distances that once supported intellectual privacy. With intense
interest, we watch today’s Internet as it adds a new dimension to world culture.
A computer system has emerged that forever changes our communications.
And because it is based on computer software, this system will increasingly
break ever new ground in computer-generated realism. Video and audio depic-
tion plus interactive communication lead to a whole range of shared experi-
ences. And these experiences already cut across national and cultural
boundaries. The World Wide Web provides the first fully global participatory
technology. It is not based on the broadcasting model of one-way communica-
tion. Instead, it brings a network model of individuals who create nodes of
shared meaning in geographically remote, virtual communities.
But we must not be too quick to apply the word “community” to
the groups that gather via interactive communications. The very term “elec-
tronic community” is problematic because it masks the ephemeral, even alien-
ating features of everything electronic. I say “ephemeral and alienating”
because I have in mind a contrast with community as the world religions built
it over centuries. The “communitas” created around the medieval monasteries,
for example, insisted on geographical stability and long-term living arrange-
ments that have nothing of the ephemeral, remote telepresence of electroni-
cally formed communities. The notions we have of community still depend, by
and large, on a pre-technological sensibility where human relations develop
over time and through geographical proximity. We need to proceed cautiously
to supplement primary communities rather than replace them with virtual
communities.
One of demands, then, on our evolving sense of community is to
MICHAEL HEIM

think out ways in which we can translate communal traditions into the elec-
tronic environment. While an electronic environment does not offer the stabil-
ity and proximity of traditional communities, we can still learn more about
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VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE TEA CEREMONY

what constitutes an environment if we try to translate traditional communal
experiences onto the Internet. Just as we learn more about our own language
when we learn to translate it into a foreign tongue, so too we learn more about
how to shape electronic environments when we build traditional communal
experiences into Internet sites. We must keep in mind, too, that the Internet
exists in the mid-1 9 9 0s at an early stage of development. What we call “vir-
tual reality” on the Internet remains a far cry from the fully immersive environ-
ments that already exist in experimental form outside the small bandwidth of
today’s Internet.
At the moment, the Internet receives its shape largely from previ-
ous media. Metaphors from earlier media typically help us understand new
modes of communication, and as the Internet gates open to commercial mar-
kets, broadcasting professionals have landed on the Internet in large numbers.
Broadcasting, because of its one-way approach to communication, has created
an artistic bazaar that effectively bars viewers from participating in the creation
and cultivation of atmosphere. Yet even while the broadcasting model extends
to the Internet, the very tools themselves are changing the way advertisers
think about delivering their messages. Internet communities, as they appear in
seed, depend on the interactive creation of spatial atmosphere. People virtual-
ize information, for example, through the spatial metaphors they apply to the
World Wide Web. The Web exists in “cyberspace”; people create their “home
pages” on the Web; a business establishes its “Web site”; and so on to “virtual
cities” and “virtual campuses.” The language is a language of place, location,
spatiality.
The language of space is not just so much gassy metaphor. It sug-
gests the basis of the new kinds of community. Through these spatial
metaphors, we are seeking to inhabit electronic environments. They are
metaphors of dwelling, of inhabiting, of making cyberspace a place of our own.
Of course, computer designers since Douglas Engelbart and Steve Jobs have
learned that physical metaphors—from windows to scrolling to spreadsheets—
play a central role in adapting computing machinery to human ergonomics.
But such physical metaphors cease to be mere metaphors when we actually
 spend much of our time “out there,” associating with electronic “neighbors” and
cultivated email friends. Pragmatically speaking, the computer environment
becomes a place where we live and work, play and invest. A home or communal
dwelling can have a place for broadcast messages, but the habitation is not a
product of broadcasting. We may have a television or radio at home, but we
restrict it to its place within our living space. So too, our cyberspace may have a
place for broadcasting as long as broadcasting knows its place.
The question then becomes, how can we learn to inhabit cyber-
space as a space of atmospheric depth? Furthermore, how can we build spaces
that protect highly prized cultural values? One value, for instance, is nature,
which seems excluded from electronic space. How can we, for instance, pre-
serve a respect for the natural world when we inhabit computer space?
Both issues of dwelling space and the place of nature arise when
we think about how to virtualize the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, which
is known in Japan as sadô or cha-no-yu. Obviously, I am speaking here not of
creating the actual Japanese tea ceremony on line, but of applying the idea of
the tea ceremony to computer space. In this sense, I write about the katachi or
outside form of the tea ceremony, and not about its uchi or inside contents. I
am interested more in the thought experiment than in the actual performance
of the tea ceremony.
The tea ceremony may seem at first glance an inappropriate
model for applied technology. The tea ceremony cultivates the sights and
sounds of nature, of running streams and falling leaves, and of the feel of rocks
and the scent of flowers. Many people view technology as an opponent of this
infinitely sensuous nature, and they have good reasons for seeing this opposi-
tion. For one, the metal-and-plastic ambiance of current technology lacks
nature’s profoundly sensuous appeal. Since its birth in the Enlightenment,
modern science has treated nature as an antagonist, or at least as an outside
object for skeptical inquiry and human exploitation. A stream of recent books
MICHAEL HEIM

have criticized modern science and technology for creating the distance
between humans and nature that has led to the crisis of planetary ecology. The
ecological movement began as a critique of misapplied technology. So how
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VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE TEA CEREMONY

shall we talk of the tea ceremony if we are at what Bill McKibben has
described as “The End of Nature”?

Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world—our

confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly, if at all—
is the result of a subtly warped perspective. Changes in our world
which can affect us can happen in our lifetime—not just changes
like wars but bigger and more sweeping events. Without recognizing
it, we have already stepped over the threshold of such a change I
3
believe that we are at the end of nature.

The evidence for this end of nature ranges from acid rain to holes
in the ozone layer, from genetic engineering to ecologically induced shifts in
weather patterns, from the depletion of fossil fuels to the rise of ocean levels.
McKibben points to a simple fact: “We have substantially altered the earth’s
atmosphere.”4

WHY THE TEA CEREMONY?

Oddly enough, the tea ceremony may be precisely the right rem-
edy for a sick planet at the end of nature. The tea ceremony is a technology for
affirming nature, a tea ceremony that employs highly artificial means to return
humans to a deeper intimacy with nature. Paradoxically, the traditional tea cer-
emony applies a refined control of human perception in order to free percep-
tion so it can once again appreciate the natural environment. Nature, in other
words, needs to be rediscovered. “Original nature” has become covered with
dust and dirt. Cha-no-yu is a set of techniques for removing the dust and for
cleaning the dirt that overlays perception. In this sense, the tea ceremony func-
tions as an interface, a window, between daily human business and the experi-
ence of fresh, spontaneous nature.
While many things can and are being done to reverse the dam-
age to the natural environment, the environmental crisis goes deeper than
politics and cleanup efforts. Modern philosophy, since Descartes and the
 rationalists, has configured human perceptions so that we modern people pay
less and less attention to the spontaneous aspects of nature and more and more
attention to the universal, controllable aspects of nature. Behind the physical
damage to the environment lies a tunnel-like vision that narrows human per-
ceptions. The repair of the natural environment cannot happen fully until the
human being perceives the world differently. Ecology must have a foundation
in ecosophy, in a wisdom about natural cycles and spontaneous movement.
Ecosophy is the wisdom (sophia) about dwelling (eco or oikos). Ecology of the
physical world must have a basis in personal ecology.
As a teacher of Tai Chi Chuan, I find this change of perception
the most important yet most difficult change we can make. Disciplines like Tai
Chi and the tea ceremony seem demanding to us moderns because our tech-
nological control over the environment often makes us passive spectators and
consumers—fulfilling the promises offered by technological consumerism. Yet
the reactivation of our primal physical awareness can indeed heal our incapac-
ity for sheer pleasure and physical delight in our surroundings. It is not by acci-
dent that the Tai Chi player stretches, relaxes, and opens the energy pores of
the body in the outdoors under the trees. Through the subtle backdoor of
unconscious, peripheral awareness, we must find rituals to reconnect ourselves
to a relaxed perception of natural surroundings. Only the revival of our relaxed
spontaneous perceptions can nourish an ecosophy that forms the basis of a
long-range planetary ecology. If ecology becomes the way we link ourselves to
the outer world, we must find a parallel ecosophy within.
Ryosuke Ohashi makes a similar point when he defines Japanese
aesthetics as “pruning.”5 Pruning is a reduction that leads to fuller and more
harmonious growth. Pruning captures the essence of a process of growth when
that growth mediates humans with nature. The tea ceremony also operates by
pruning human perceptions. By reducing the natural interaction we have with
things, the tea ceremony enhances and concentrates natural interaction.
MICHAEL HEIM

The challenge to ecosophy, however, increases with the advent of

cyberspace. As cyberspace grows, nature seems even more to recede. The elec-
tronic absorption of large portions of life—what some call the “virtualization”
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VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE TEA CEREMONY

or dematerialization of life—corroborates the notion of nature’s disappearance.
The end of nature in human perception would seem to culminate with the
fully immersive technology of virtual reality, where we don a helmet that iso-
lates us from the primary world. So it is even more important for us to consider
how that same technology can contribute to a transformation of our nature
perception rather than replace our perceptions. The age-old wisdom of the I
Ching suggests that any extreme condition, when pushed to its limit, initiates
the reversal into its opposite condition. The virtual reality that hosts the tea
ceremony may well be the pivot point.
The paradoxical use of technology to transform perceptions dis-
torted by technology are inherent to the traditional tea ceremony. Entering the
tea room, we go indoors in order to better perceive the outdoors. We remove
ourselves from the many things in the world in order to see more clearly the
flowers, the scroll, and the colors of the tea bowl. We crawl silently through the
entrance of the tea hut and pay attention to the sound of boiling water so we
can later hear the waterfalls and the singing of the sparrow. Our perceptions
emerge within a larger structure that I call the “psychic framework.”
The end-of-nature shift that McKibben writes about is not a
change in physical substances or ecological systems—nor even a change in the
terrestrial atmosphere. The change he refers to is a shift in the psychic frame-
work by which we view the world. By that I mean the way humans feel when,
say, a change in an ecological system alters their background experience and
affects their sensibilities—the affective attitude we have toward the world, as
much as the world itself. As beings in the world, we inhabit the world as par-
ticipants; not merely as spectators scientifically observing and then calculating
for advantage or disadvantage. The framework of our participation in the
world has a look and feel to it, not merely a scientific description. When the
world changes ecologically, so does the psychic framework in which we work
and love, play and observe.
 THE PSYCHIC FRAMEWORK OF TEA

Nature as a “psychic framework” appears in the description of the

Japanese tea ceremony in D. T. Suzuki’s lovely book for English-speaking
readers, Zen and Japanese Culture.6 Describing the tea ceremony, Suzuki points
beyond physical facts to the atmosphere in which gestures, objects, and sur-
roundings cohere:

The tea-drinking that is known as cha-no-yu in Japanese and as “tea

ceremony” or “tea cult” in the West is not just drinking tea, but
involves all the activities leading to it, all the utensils used in it, the
entire atmosphere surrounding the procedure, and, last of all, what is
really the most important phase, the frame of mind or spirit which
mysteriously grows out of the combination of all these factors.
The tea-drinking, therefore, is not just drinking tea,
but it is the art of cultivating what might be called “psychosphere,”
or the psychic atmosphere, or the inner field of consciousness. We
may say that it is generated within oneself, while sitting in a small
semi-dark room with a low ceiling, irregularly constructed, from the
handling the tea bowl, which is crudely formed but eloquent with
the personality of the maker, and from listening to the sound of boil-
7
ing water in the iron kettle over a charcoal fire.

What Suzuki describes as a “psychosphere,” “psychic atmos-

phere,” or “inner field of consciousness” is what I mean by a psychic frame-
work. The psychic framework of the tea ceremony is a field of awareness, but it
cannot be separated from the technology of utensils, architecture, and decor
that affects the participant’s state of mind. We should not think of psychic
framework as “consciousness” if by consciousness we mean a private subjective
state that peers from within to confront a separate world of alien objects. A
MICHAEL HEIM

psychic framework sets the tone that a field of awareness has when it seam-
lessly flows with a set of furnishings, tools, and physical movements.

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The tea ceremony is a technology designed to recapture a lost
nature. Artificial and formalized in its every movement and gesture, the tea
ceremony removes excess in order to exalt the simple clarity of being. Its highly
stylized cultivation aims at a certain kind of experience. Only through the arti-
ficial does one regain a lost sense of open harmony with the natural. Our daily
struggle for survival pulls us away from experiencing pure, spontaneous nature.
We must regard cyberspace technology as a technological prac-
tice. Entering cyberspace is like entering the space of the tea ceremony. The
more a cyberspace is a virtual reality in the strict sense—using immersion tech-
niques like projection displays or head-mounted displays, and using full three-
dimensional stereoscopy—the more it shapes a psychic framework. How does
this technology configure a distinct psychic framework? How can we make the
design of the virtual reality interface function so that we become wise in our
use of nature?
Here is where contemporary interface design goes beyond the
so-called “human factors” research. Human-factors research scratches the sur-
face only. It asks minimal questions about interactivity. It works with elemen-
tary surveys about the way humans use computers. It does not study the
psychic atmosphere produced by virtual worlds. When the immersive feature
of virtual reality creates a world where the user becomes a participant, then we
can no longer rely on behavioral psychology to convey what is happening. A
world brings the full context of existential involvement, not a single procedure
narrowly restricted to the use of tools. A world is an ontological totality, not a
sequence of machine-human interactions.
By looking at the psychic framework of a virtual world, we can
begin to give content to the terms people already use to express their spatial
intuitions of cyberspace. As I mentioned earlier, the vocabulary of cyberspace
already makes abundant reference to spatial intuition. This intuition of space
is not weakly metaphorical, but it expresses intuition in the Kantian sense
of Anschauung, that is, the basic ways we perceive and understand the empiri-
cal world. The “empirical” originally refers to the sensations we receive in
 experience. The way we move through information space, as architects well
know, affects our feelings about being in that space. We already see on the
Internet a large range of elementary spaces, although the Internet today lacks
the immersion required by virtual reality technology in the strong sense of the
term. As an intercultural testing ground, though, the Internet with its three-
dimensional spatial metaphors offers opportunities for translating aesthetic
spatial experiences, like the tea ceremony. Current two-dimensional simula-
tions on the Internet’s World Wide Web offer dynamic spaces that are gradu-
ally evolving with the introduction of VRML (virtual reality modeling
language). Translating the tea ceremony to cyberspace can prepare us to think
about the challenges of interface design that lie ahead.

FOUR FEATURES OF THE TEA CEREMONY

The tea ceremony is a technology for restoring the original

abode, the place where the psyche feels comfortable with itself as a participant
in the natural world. The original abode is where the world and the psyche
interact harmoniously. Taoists referred to the original abode as the “face before
you were born,” where the energy embryo abides in the womb of the mother.
In this case, the mother is Mother Earth. The human being breathes the
energy of the heavens and conducts that energy into the support strength of
the earth. The human being stands between heaven and earth, though most
often it is distracted by the ten thousand things that claim attention in worldly
life. To recover the stance of the full human being, a reconfiguration is
required. Sadô, as the tea culture is known in Japan, reconfigures the psychic
framework of nature. It resets the human being into the natural posture, into
the natural attitude. It restores the original abode.
The four features of the traditional tea ceremony correspond to
the design issues of virtual environments. They relate, each in a different way,
to the psychic framework that heals the breach between humans and nature.
MICHAEL HEIM

These features are: wa (harmony), kei (respect), sei (purity), and jaku (serenity).
Wa means that a world must cohere. The pieces of the world
must constitute parts of a whole. A world can only exist as what the German
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language calls a Zusammenhang: things must “hang together.” Aesthetically,
this holism means a unified atmosphere. The tools of the tea ceremony might
share a seasonal motif that deepens the sense of time and place. Autumn may
appear in the floors, in the scrolls, and in the colors chosen for the tea cups.
This feature of the tea ceremony appears in current interface design where the
designer uses semiotic repetition to establish a sense of place. In general, the
current Web is a wild collage without a clear semiotic system. Some young
designers are trying to deepen the sense of place, of being somewhere, by
repeating colors, images, and interactive buttons in such a way as to create a
consistent sense of place. The places they create convey an internal harmony,
though not necessarily a harmony with nature.
To create a sense of place, some Web sites use consistent border
markings to establish semiotic harmony throughout the many rooms of the
on-line space. “Harmony” is derived from the Latin ars, “to fit.” The fit that
artists strive for today is to make everything in a world come together in such
a way as to make that world stand out as a unique whole. The most basic
ground of the world is an open space for participation. Worlds offer space for
habitation, and the participants cooperate in maintaining the ground of that
world. Most often, Internet sites appear to be “one thing after another,” with-
out stasis or rest. By creating harmonious worlds, even jazzy worlds, the artist
shapes an electronic abode, a place to dwell, perhaps even a space we can even-
tually inhabit.
Kei refers to the acknowledgment of the presence of other people
or the sacredness of the materials we use. Computer communication estab-
lishes respect in a peculiar way. Computers isolate us as individual users at the
same time that computers connect us in a network. Networks interweave
human memories and make it possible to interweave our thoughts increasingly
on a daily basis without regard to physical distance. Time barriers drop. Yet
this is also where the danger lies. As time barriers fall away, the instant con-
nection we have threatens to wear away respect. Respect seems to require dis-
tance. If we lose a sense of our distance from one another—our interior
distances, the vastness of our spiritual landscapes—then we risk losing respect.
 Perhaps the avatars of virtual worlds, those surrogate personae of simulation,
will help preserve the distance needed for mutual respect. While computers
create an intimacy that connects mind to mind, they can also hide us from one
another. Ideally, a virtual world would allow us intimacy with distance, much
like the tea ceremony. The tea master Rikyu admonishes tea practitioners not
to try to synchronize their feelings with those of their guests unless the har-
8
mony occurs spontaneously. Without distance, true intimacy cannot arise.
Sei appears in the tea ceremony’s austere minimalism. No wasted
motion, no excess of any kind, always restraint. From the material point of
view, it would be hard to think of any space more empty, more minimal than
cyberspace. Some cyberspace software designers, like William Bricken of the
Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington, conceive
cyberspace as a Buddhist void, as sunyata. The emptiness of electronic systems
offers an opportunity for pure creativity. The creative rush drives thousands of
artists and would-be artists who now manifest their personal home pages on
the Internet. Most of these creations show little restraint, as they arise from the
call of open spaces that beckon the spirit in millions of people. For the
designer, the purity of cyberspace may come with the territory, but purity does
not last long. Cyberspace is rapidly filling with junk and junk mail. Advertisers
litter the void. What we can learn from the tea ceremony is the discipline of
restraint. We need to reflect the essential loneliness of cyberspace in the elec-
tronic environments we create.
Jaku shares the sei ’s fragility. Purity quickly drowns in clutter.
Likewise, the initial serenity of cyberspace, its loneliness and focus, soon scat-
ters with the noise of millions of messages. Cyberspace, especially in its newly
found role as a source of commercial contacts, risks becoming bedlam. Con-
centration and focus will be impossible if cyberspace becomes a circus. To
enjoy the circus, you will have to forget your purposes and go along for the
ride. The serenity of vast cyberspace has been broken by the shouts of advertis-
MICHAEL HEIM

ers and the barkers who try to lure new customers. Perhaps the purpose of
“knowbots,” tiny programs with customized intelligence, is to keep down the
noise. Knowbots can filter out distractions and remove the shouts of advertis-
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VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE TEA CEREMONY

ers. The Internet already offers programs like Fast Forward, which invisibly
removes advertising banners before they appear in the Netscape Web browser.
But advertising is not the only obstacle to Jaku. As I pointed out
in Electric Language, the language system on computers is an essentially linked
9
language. Hypertext reading shows the linked nature of digital writing. The
loneliness of the cyberspace void should not obscure the fact that computing
solitude is essentially a social solitude. What we see on the computer screen
may seem as intimate as the thoughts in our head, yet the on-screen vision
links to millions of other computers, or—even if protected by firewalls—any
screen may be recovered and viewed by thousands of anonymous others. Com-
puter text is essentially linked text. When we write email, we may feel as
though we are writing in a serene, private bubble, but in fact we might as well
be shouting our message from the rooftop. Cyberspace offers no total privacy.
Where there is no total privacy, there is no complete serenity.
Each of the four characteristics of the tea ceremony have a cyber-
space correlate. These correlates appear to be metaphoric analogies between
the virtues of the tea ceremony and the atmosphere of cyberspace, and they
establish possible links between the two. What I am suggesting is that we
apply the inspired qualities of the tea ceremony to our efforts to deepen com-
puter-generated environments. Where we have a loose link or analogy today,
we can have a rich experience tomorrow. Interface designers struggling to
shape a sense of place on the Internet can lead this process of enrichment.
Such a struggle will not be easy, however, as the analogy between cyberspace
and the tea ceremony faces many challenges.

CHALLENGE OF THE TEA CEREMONY

Foremost among the challenges is the simple fact that cyberspace

is dynamite. It is inherently dynamic and explosive. On-line communication
accelerates the tempo of life. The faster our interpersonal communications,
the faster will be all our other social interactions. As the cliché affirms, the
very rate of change continues to change. Just look at someone browsing the
World Wide Web, and see how the screens flash past, one after another. The
 television remote control has become the daily mode of reading. Reading is no
longer contemplative but has become thoroughly dynamic. The dynamics of
hypertext enter the user’s psyche and alter the felt sense of the world. The
world we feel is undergoing an ontological shift, a reconfiguration of the cul-
tural tectonic plates that support all our other activities. Change the way we
organize and access knowledge, and you eventually change the world under
our feet. The world that is emerging from hypertext appears to be a “hyper”
world in the sense that psychiatrists and health workers use the term: agitated,
upset, pathologically nervous.
Cyberspace brings with it a pathology that I have called “Alter-
nate World Syndrome.” AWS breaks the harmony between the biological
body and the cyberbody. The experiences in the virtual world bring the body
out of sync with the ecology of planetary experiences. Alternate World Disor-
der (AWD) represents an illness of lifestyle. I discovered these disorders while
researching the simulator sickness that appears in many virtual-reality systems.
The military has done extensive research on simulator sickness, and much of
that research points to serious problems ahead for a culture that frequently uses
virtual reality. The high-speed dynamics and aggressive tempo of cyberspace
brings with it a disharmony between the earth-rooted biological self and the
digitally trained mind. The person is split between personal experience based
on computer life and personal experience based on felt bodily awareness. The
more we move into virtual worlds, the thinner becomes the umbilical cord that
ties us to the earth.
The artist currently faces the challenge of creating electronic
habitats for humans to dwell in cyberspace. Traditional design fields largely
emphasize the art of composing static surfaces. Balance, focal point, and con-
trast are usually understood in static ways, from a steady, single point of view.
Now, electronic design confronts artists with a dynamic, interactive, high-
speed electronic environment. Traditional design skills need serious revision as
MICHAEL HEIM

transitions assume a more important role than static surfaces. Designers must
ask: How does it feel to go from one screen to another? What is the atmos-
pheric link that connects one flashing screen to another? How does a series of
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linked screens express the underlying knowledge base? Traditional design
principles need revision in the face of a new medium. Film and video offer
some clues, but interactivity still remains a challenge.
Even among filmmakers we see great caution about the
dynamism of future media. In his film Until the End of the World, director Wim
Wenders shows a population plagued by video disease. Eyes, minds, and hearts
have become weary with continual exposure to powerful images that tap into
and stimulate every aspect of the human psyche. Worn down by the pace of
flickering images, the video-crazed protagonist of Wenders’s film becomes lit-
erally blind. He seeks healing for his video disease by traveling to Japan and
undergoing a Zen therapy treatment not unlike the tea ceremony. The therapy
is reminiscent of what Taoists called “the sealing of the five senses.” The
Taoists believed that overuse of the senses, especially the eyes (the most yang-
powered organs in the energy, or chi, of the body), depletes the powers of
vision. The internal energies need occasional “sealing off ” or closure by turning
within to heal the senses and restore their power. Higher stages of meditation
require that the senses be sealed so that the spirit (shen) can draw on the energy
drained out of the senses by their daily use. I see the Wenders film as a parable
about interface design in the age of virtual reality: We need the tea ceremony
to heal the Western split between the body and the mind, between the
overused, electronically stimulated sensibility and the earth-centered, serene
poise of our natural good health. The tea ceremony can inspire, I think, such a
crucial balance.
In this spirit, Muneharu Yoshida has developed a multimedia
on-line tea ceremony. Using Macromedia Director and Adobe Photoshop he
built a Shockwave application that invites the on-line browser to contemplate
the contrast between the traditional tea room and the space of electronic habi-
tation. The invitation to “take off your shoes” begs us to reflect on our body
amnesia and the possible coexistence of cyberspace and the tea ceremony. The
flat two-dimensional photos warn of the end of noninteractive representation,
while the photorealism imposes the demands of texture, richness, and multi-
sensory immersion.
 REFLECTIONS AT RYOAN-JI GARDEN

I conclude with some comments on the famous Rock Garden at

the Ryoan-Ji Temple in Kyoto, which has come to stand for the Zen esthetic.
The Zen rock garden is a cousin to the tea ceremony, inspired by the same Zen
culture that produced sadô. The Ryoan-Ji Garden reveals other aspects of the
tea ceremony relevant to virtual reality.
Every garden, since the Garden of Eden, has been artificial, a
creation, but there is none whose artificiality is more pronounced than that of
Ryoan-Ji. Indeed, one is tempted to call it not a garden, but an abstract sculp-
ture. It is more the pure idea of garden than any actual, messy garden. It is a
product of elimination and pruning. While evoking the texture of water by
means of raked white sand, and forested islands by fifteen dark, moss-covered
rocks sunk into the sand, the garden stands as an artificial abstraction from the
surrounding park of Ryoan-Ji Temple, with its abundant trees, bushes, and
lagoons. The garden walls create an atmosphere of isolation that allows the
inner to be highly stylized while still preserving a look beyond the walls at the
trees and mountains surrounding the park.
On first seeing Ryoan-Ji, one is tempted to interpret it as a sym-
bol or an abstraction of a garden. Yet the material elements, which Ryoan-Ji
reduces to a minimum, should not be taken to “symbolize” anything at all, for
the mountains in the garden are indeed rocks, and the watery sand is in princi-
ple an ocean, and the green growth on the rocks are miniature trees. This per-
ception is especially true as it grows in the viewer who spends a couple of hours
sitting within the restricted walls of the rock garden. Though minimal, these
things are what they are in the same sense that William Blake’s “world in a
grain of sand” suggests that the world is built of earth and the earth is actually
sand. The proportionate reduction of the world can compress it to a small size
and make matter into a matter of relativity. “Pruning” or “trimming” (as the
essence of aesthetics) happen in a radical way at this garden. By trimming back
MICHAEL HEIM

everything but the essentials, this garden allows us to contemplate the great
earth and its oceans.

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Moreover, Ryoan-Ji brings us to contemplate our own place as
inhabitants of the great earth and its oceans. The garden at Ryoan-Ji presents
the paradox of abode. Abode or inhabitable place becomes the puzzle of abid-
ing as we sit on the wooden boards within the monastery walls. You do not
“understand” the rock garden by stopping to look at it once. Rather, you
encounter in it your own impatience as you feel the drive to go elsewhere, to
turn from the stark, uncompromising scene. Our sense of presence and of
being present wavers and fluctuates, and the garden confronts us brutally with
our own fluctuations. We do not easily gain access to the garden as a place to
dwell. It repels us again and again until we face our impatience and finally give
up the effort to fit the garden into our preconceived categories (How many
stones are there? What’s the best point from which to view it?). Ryoan-Ji is
clearly a place for practice in the German sense of Übung (disciplined, repeated
contemplation). The garden forces us, if we take its challenge, to gain a deeper
understanding of what it means to inhabit a world.
Inhabiting a world implies more than one superficial look, more
than a glance from a single perspective. As we gaze on Ryoan-Ji, we are repeat-
edly drawn to organize its stones perceptually from many different angles.
Each time our eyes catch a pattern in the clusters of asymmetrical rocks, we
notice that even the slightest shift of position gives us another very different
pattern to view from another vantage point. After many such experiences, we
gradually realize that the garden is nothing other than a sequential presenta-
tion of a variety of viewpoints. All the perceived patterns viewed together—
taken as an infinite number of slices—constitute the total garden. The implied
perspective of the garden brings out the relativity of each viewpoint. The
sequence of viewpoints can never be ordered once and for all for any finite
viewer. The movement of human physiology guarantees random access and
infinite variety. The world of the garden, its totality, exists only through simul-
taneous perspectives. The garden exists in the imagined totality of the multiple
gardens glimpsed by an infinite number of sense perceptions. The garden exists
only as the hidden oneness that eludes direct sensuous perception.
 The optics of sensuous perception, so crucial for research in vir-
tual reality and computer-generated telepresence, grow in importance as we
contemplate the rock garden. No photograph, no picture can possibly convey
the three-dimensional optical experience of Ryoan-Ji. By confronting us with
the bare essentials of patterned landscape, the garden makes us painfully aware
of our physical orientation in space and shows us how critical that orientation
is for our visual field. Virtual reality systems—especially the immersive type of
VR with full head-mounted display—work by coordinating the body’s orien-
tation in space with the visual display of computer-generated graphics. We
turn the head slightly to the left, the Polhemus position-tracker sends feedback
to the computer, which then updates the visual eye-display to show the scene
from the perspective we now occupy. Precisely that connection between bodily
and visual orientation constitutes an essential feature of virtual-reality telepres-
ence. The unique aesthetic of Ryoan-Ji draws attention to this perspective-
based, orientation-centered ecology of human presence. Our sense of reality is
stimulated by Ryoan-Ji in such a way that we can better understand the chal-
lenge posed by telepresence. The harmony of bodily orientation and sensory
perception belongs to our fundamental ontological experience.
Through patient practice, through long being present in the gar-
den as an abode of contemplation, the rocks at Ryoan-Ji begin to move. The
asymmetrical position of the stone clusters—from any number of seats at the
garden’s edge—sets the patterns in perceptual motion. The eye senses a play
among the forms. This play belongs to the reality of the stones but also to the
psychic atmosphere of the perceiver of the stones. They move in patterns as a
play of the relaxed gaze that surrenders to the garden, to the place as an abode
for dwelling. This intense breakthrough is a deepening of place, of being more
fully present, of being present with alertness but without an ego will. It is a
breakthrough to the harmony of perceiver and perceived.
In coming decades, we will build virtual realities in cyberspace.
MICHAEL HEIM

To create true places in cyberspace—places where we can dwell—we must

soften the aggressive drive of our perceptual apparatus. No amount of willful
visualization techniques can harmonize the perceived and the perceiver. The
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human sense of presence requires paradox as well as technical ingenuity. Even
the best illusion remains always an illusion until we forget ourselves in the play
of perception. Real telepresence requires a deep harmony of the active viewer
and the virtual abode. No cheap tricks can achieve such harmony. Only long
experiments by artists, who patiently apply wise traditions, can bring about the
still point of presence. Perhaps the still point of presence, enhanced by elec-
tronics, may one day become omnipresence. Then the Zen of the garden and
the virtual worlds we inhabit will cease to be two different things. Then all
space and time will fold into a harmonious play of perception, and cyberspace
will be our rock garden.

NOTES

1. Michael Heim, Electric Language: A Philosophical 4. Ibid.

Study of Word Processing (New Haven: Yale Univer-
5. Ryosuke Ohashi, conversations with the author,
sity Press, 1987).
“Virtual Reality and Intercultural Design,” workshop.
2. The ideas expressed here about the Way of Tea
6. Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New
arose at an intercultural workshop, “Virtual Reality
York: Princeton University Press, Bollinger Series,
and Intercultural Design,” held at Kansai Science
1959).
City in April 1996. Sponsored by the International
Institute for Advanced Studies, the workshop was 7. Ibid., 295–6
intended to foster new ideas that may or may not
8. Rikyu, writings in Nanbo Roku, cited in Leonard
apply directly to industry. At the workshop, I intro-
Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets &
duced the idea of the merger of the tea ceremony with
Philosophers (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press,
Internet design. I wish to acknowledge the input of
1994), 82.
my colleagues at that workshop, especially Ryosuke
Ohashi, whose ideas I cannot easily separate from my 9. Heim, Electric Language, 160–4.
own.

3. Bill McKibben, “The End of Nature,” The New

Yorker, 11 September 1989, 47.
Cathedral of light designed by Albert Speer for the Nazi rally of 11 September 1937, Nuremberg.

“The effect was both solemn and beautiful, it was like being in a cathedral of ice.” —Neville Chamberlain
 Architecture in the Age

of Its Virtual Disappearance

AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL VIRILIO

BY ANDREAS RUBY

PARIS, 15 OCTOBER 1993

ANDREAS R U B Y : At your last seminar in the Collège Interna-

tional de Philosophie you stated: “Due to the continuous flow of

optical appearances, it is becoming difficult, if not impossible, to
still believe in the stability of the real, in the fixing of a visuality
which is constantly fleeing away. The public space of the building
suddenly vanishes behind the instability of a public image.”
Should not one conclude then, that reality itself has
become unstable today? That it is less defined by the materiality
of architecture but rather by the ephemerality of the images with
which we perceive the world?

PAUL VIRILIO: Obviously, stability has become less important than speed
today. The French word for to last (durer) contains multiple meanings: solid
(dur) and to endure in the sense of that which happens (ce qui passe). Now today,
 that which happens is much more important than that which lasts (ce qui
dure)—and also than that which is solid (ce qui est dur). There is a dematerial-
ization that goes parallel to deterritorialization and decorporation.
Centuries ago, matter was defined by two dimensions: mass and
energy. Today there comes a third one to it: information. But while the mass is
still linked to gravity and materiality, information tends to be fugitive. The
mass of a mountain, for example, is something invariable, it is immobile; its
information, however, changes constantly. For a prehistoric man the mountain
is a nameless mass. Its information is to be an obstacle in his way. Later, the
mountain slowly ceases to be an obstacle. It takes on other meanings, for
instance that of the holy mountain, named Sinai. It gets painted in perspective,
photographed, analyzed in its geographical layers, and exploited in its
resources etc. Hence for us a mountain contains a whole world of information
whereas for prehistoric man it was defined solely as an obstacle.
If the mass and the energy of a mountain is hence linked to the
density of its matter, the information of the mountain evolves constantly
through history. Today, information counts more than mass and energy. The
third dimension of matter takes the place of the thing itself. Very much in the
sense of Flaubert’s phrase: “The image is more important than the thing of
which it is an image.” (“L’image vaut plus que la chose dont elle est image.”) There
is an inversion.

A R : Your writings about disappearance as a new mode of appear-

ance are linked to a set of scientific approaches giving new

AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL VIRILIO

emphasis to time, for example the theories of chaos, catastrophe,

and complexity. Analyzing the development of forms, the theory
of morphogenesis severely shakes up every discourse about form
in architecture. It defines form no longer as something static but
constantly changing and re-emerging in new configurations.
Could this altered notion of form affect architecture?

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PV: This development puts the architect in a rather difficult situation. At least
if you concede that architecture, in a primary sense, has to deal with statics,
resistance of materials, equilibrium, and gravity. Any architect works with the
mass and energy of a building and its structure. But in terms of information,
architecture still stays somewhat behind the present development.
It is not easy to answer this question since, for me, architecture is
just about to loose everything that characterized it in the past. Step by step it
looses all its elements. In some way, you can read the importance given today
to glass and transparency as a metaphor of the disappearance of matter. It
anticipates the media buildings in some Asian cities with facades entirely made
of screens. In a certain sense, the screen becomes the last wall. No wall out of
stone, but of screens showing images. The actual boundary is the screen.
What used to be the essence of architecture is more and more
taken over by other technologies. Take a staircase: it becomes increasingly
replaced by elevators which are no longer designed by architects but by engi-
neers. When people in the past wanted to climb up to the sky, they built the
Tower of Babel. Now you just take an airplane. Something of the tower
became transposed to the airplane, but the tower has lost its interest. The same
applies to the dissolution of the staircase in the elevator, or of the window van-
ishing in the facade screen.
Because of this increasing replacement of hitherto material
elements of architecture by technical substitutes, a term like high-tech archi-
tecture appears tautological. “high technology” would be enough; it is unnec-
essary to add “architecture.” It is certainly not by chance that many architects
today use the vocabulary of airplanes or space shuttles. To design something
immobile they apply the aesthetics of a vehicle—which bears some paradox
in itself.

A R : You could also put it another way by saying that architecture

today integrates elements that used to be part of something

else. A hybridization of hitherto unconnected genres merging
 together into something new. As for example the encounter of
tectonics and electronics in virtual space.

PV: One of the consequences of virtual space for architecture is a radical mod-
ification of its dimensions. So far, architecture has taken place within the three
dimensions and in time. Recent research on virtual space has revealed a virtual
dimension. Unlike the three known dimensions of space, this dimension can
no longer be expressed in integer numbers but in fractional ones. It will be
interesting to see how this is going to affect space. To some degree, virtuality
has been haunting architecture for a long time. It announced itself in a set of
spatial topologies. The alcove, for example, is a kind of a virtualized room. The
vestibule could be called a virtualized house. A telephone booth then virtual-
izes the vestibule: it is almost not a space, nevertheless it is the place of a per-
sonal encounter. All these types of spaces prepare for something and engage a
transition. Thus virtual reality tends to extend the real space of architecture
toward virtual space. That’s why it is no longer a question of simply putting on
a head-mounted display, squeezing into a data-suit, promenading within vir-
tual space—as Jaron Lanier, Scott Fisher, and many others do.
In terms of architecture it is important to create a virtual “room”
in the middle of architectural space where electromagnetic spirits can
encounter each other. This is an extraordinary transformation of the notion of
three-dimensional space, because in this new space, you will be able to walk
around in Alaska, to swim virtually in the Mediterranean sea, or meet your
girlfriend who happens to be on the other side of the globe. This is a new, frac-
AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL VIRILIO

tional dimension of space that should be built, just as one has built houses with
living rooms or offices.

AR: This would be the space of the future?

PV: The space of the future would be both of real and of virtual nature. Archi-
tecture will “take place,” in the literal sense of the word, in both domains: in
real space (the materiality of architecture) and virtual space (the transmission
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of electromagnetic signs). The real space of the house will have to take into
account the real time of the transmission.

AR: But time in general appears to be one of the hidden issues in

the history of architecture. Architectural design seems to focus
more on the three dimensions of built space than the temporal
dimension that emerges as we start to use that space—which is
probably due to the traditional design tools of architecture.

PV: Absolutely. There is a dynamics of space, or of the space-time experience

by the individual. And this dynamics escapes from the ordinary graphic repre-
sentations of space such as plan, section, and elevation. But one needs to inte-
grate time and movement as spatial parameters into the design of architecture.
Together with my students, I have been thinking about using Labanotation (a
kind of notation for dance movement established by German choreographer
Rudolf Labour in the 1920s) not in order to work out choreographic nota-
tions, but to account in a more subtle way for the capacities in terms of move-
ment that can unfold in a space. By “constructing” the dancer’s movements in a
certain space, the choreographer assigns a value to a movement. It would be a
challenge to explore the potential of this approach for architecture, especially
since there are now computer programs capable of analyzing complex patterns
of movement in space.

AR: Architects try increasingly to design space directly with spa-

tial means (the model, for example) instead of taking the two-
dimensional detour of the drawing. To reach beyond the
limitations of ordinary computer aided design, there are attempts
to apply virtual reality as a design tool for architectural design.
After having defined a space within a conventional computer
model on the screen, one enters this space virtually to continue
its design “from within.” It seems that this changes radically the
role of the model in the design.
 PV: The model clearly acquires a very important status. Up to now it has
served mainly to deliver a miniature of the future building. But in virtual real-
ity you can create models at a scale of 1 : 1. And as soon as you can build vir-
tual spaces in which you can experience events that actually take place
somewhere else, it will be possible to imagine the virtual model as an design
tool of future architectural practice. This touches upon the question of mental
images. I always try to make my students imagine their projects before drawing
them. I almost force them to imagine the space they want to create only in
their minds. What I ask them to do is in fact create nothing less than a mental
virtual model. But it will soon be equally possible to make an instrumental vir-
tual model. Obviously, this would push architecture still one step further into
the realm of the virtual. And there is no point why such a virtual model would
be confined to design purposes only. You would more than likely end up using
it to also “live” in that space.
Again, this is a tendency that has a much longer history. It begins
with the telefax or the telephone. During the first riots of the ex-Yugoslavian
war, I remember how a friend called me to report the first military actions. You
could actually hear the first shots in the air, another incident in the process of
the virtualization of space that is now affecting architecture as a whole, beyond
a simple object like a telefax or a telephone. These feed-back effects between
civilization and architecture have never really been considered in architectural
history. For a long time, the mainstream discourse pretended that it does not
matter to architecture if houses are electrified, equipped with telephones and
VCRs, etc. But today we can see that this is setting up a completely new con-
AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL VIRILIO

dition for architecture.

A R : Eventually, the virtual model would inverse the “principle of

reality” of architecture itself: building spaces that are no longer

subject to the physical constraints of real construction—

PV: —which is exactly the specificity of virtual space; to be no longer subject to

gravity but to electronics, electromagnetic waves, and electrical current. The
184
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ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF ITS VIRTUAL DISAPPEARANCE

transmission of these waves gives rise to an “electro-optics” that is subject to
matter only in terms of waves. However, the optics of my glasses are subject to
matter in terms of mass. It simply does not work if the glasses are not clean.

A R : To designate this splitting of spatiality you coined the term

“tele-topology.” Would not architecture itself be split up into two

separate fractions? One branch of architecture to supply the
spaces necessary for humanity’s physical survival (which obvi-
ously would not need to be very sophisticated), and another
branch to produce virtual spaces to cover our need for sensual
experiences?

PV: It seems to be very likely. But in my point of view this is already the case in
the relationship between, say, the royal palace and the peasant’s house. The
royal palace of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was full of virtual
spaces—just think of the enormous number of mirrors used in this architec-
ture! The Gallery of Mirrors in the Château of Versailles features a very clear
form of spatial virtualization. And I think the mirror played an important role
in the conceptual development of virtual space. How many Parisian cafés can
only exist because of that false, fractional dimension of the space reflected on
the mirrored walls of the café’s interior. One can even go back to the Romans.
Celebrating their parties during the night, they would cover the walls of their
villas with glass (less reflective, obviously, than our glass today) to multiply the
light flicker’s in the reflections on the walls. The reflected light illuminated the
night as an artificial setting for their orgies. Thus there were two societies: one
living at day time (i.e.; the poor), under the sun, without virtuality and within
a concrete corporality—and another society living at night time (i.e.; the rich),
in the excess and the virtuality of an artificial light that was very expensive at
that time.
Today’s society is similarly split up, not by light but by speed: one
part still lives in an electrical world, the other in an electronic world. That is,
the first lives within the relative speed (of mechanical transportation, for
 example) while the second participate in the absolute speed (of the transmis-
sion of information in real-time, for example).

AR: It seems as if this process of virtualization is touching upon

the very concept of space itself. Something of it can already be
glimpsed in the work of J. J. Gibson. On demand of the U.S. Air
Force during World War II, he conducted neuro-psychological
experiments on dive-bomber pilots having orientational prob-
lems as they approached the earth at high speeds. Gibson’s con-
clusion was to leave behind our traditional (Kantian) notion of
space and to conceive of it instead as a succession of vistas pro-
ducing a discontinuous space.

PV: That’s the transition from three-dimensional to sequential space. There is

a sequentialization taking place even in our gaze: twinkling with the eyes. If
you can not twinkle, you get mentally ill. Taking off the eye’s lid was a notori-
ous torture in the old Chinese Empire.
We experience time through cuts. Without them you would fall
into a state of hallucination. The first cut is sleep. Our relationship to the real
acts along this cut between sleep and awakening. But even during the day, we
fall asleep many times. It is a kind of a micro-sleep, a very short period of time
during which we are actually absent without noticing it at all. If this takes too
long, it is considered an illness (pycnolepsy). Our relationship to the world is
already marked by a form of sequentialization that precedes that one of space
AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL VIRILIO

Gibson was analyzing.

AR:Do you think that these transformations of space could

make architecture “disappear”?

PV: First of all, the disappearance not only affects architecture but any kind of
materiality: the earth (deterritorialization), the body (disembodiment) and
architecture (deconstruction—in the literal sense of the word, not the architec-
186
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ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF ITS VIRTUAL DISAPPEARANCE

tural style). Any kind of matter is about to vanish in favor of information. You
can see it also as a change of aesthetics. To me, to disappear does not mean to
become eliminated. Just like the Atlantic, which continues to be there even
though you can no longer feel it as you fly over it. Or like the body that con-
tinues to exist without actually being needed—since we just switch the chan-
nel. The same happens with architecture: it will continue to exist, but in the
state of disappearance.
Arne Svenson, Las Vegas, 1993 (Las Vegas Convention Center)
Arne Svenson, Las Vegas, 1994 (Convention Center Landscape)
Arne Svenson, Las Vegas, 1997 (Roller Coaster Track and Video Screen, Circus Circus Hotel Casino)
Arne Svenson, Las Vegas, 1997 (Roller Coaster at New York, New York Hotel Casino)
Arne Svenson, Las Vegas, 1997 (Hilton Hotel, Astroturf and trees)
Arne Svenson, Las Vegas, 1994 (Convention Center Booth)
 Stripping Architecture

MARK C. TAYLOR

A M E R I C A C A N N O T B E understood today without understanding Las Vegas.

The point is not that Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the country, the
most popular retirement destination, that it has ten out of the eleven largest
hotels in the world with three more bigger than the rest currently under con-
struction, or that it has built twelve new libraries and thirty new schools in the
past five years. None of this discloses what is distinctive about Vegas in the
1 9 9 0s. What is most important about Las Vegas today is the way in which
the real becomes virtual and the virtual becomes real in this desert oasis.
Approached from this perspective, Vegas becomes symptomatic of the radical
transformations wrought by global postindustrial consumer society.
The effort to read Las Vegas as a reflection of broader social and
cultural changes is not, of course, new. In the late 1 9 6 0s, Robert Venturi,
Denise Scott-Brown, and Steven Izenour not only saw the near future of
architecture figured in the hotels and casinos of the Strip, but also viewed
 Vegas as a sign of the times. In retrospect, what Venturi and his colleagues
thought was the future about to emerge was actually the culmination of a past
that had been unfolding since the end of World War II. Though written with
all the gusto of a typical modernist manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas is more
of a postscript than an introduction. What did Venturi miss? How does Las
Vegas in the 1 9 9 0s differ from Las Vegas in the 1 9 6 0s? And what do these
differences tell us about where we have been and where we might be heading?
Resolutely rejecting the sterile purism that characterizes much
modern architecture, in Learning from Las Vegas Venturi and his colleagues call
for a more “tolerant” architecture that accepts “existing conditions” rather than
negates what is for the sake of what ought to be. The defining feature of the
sixties Strip and its architecture, they argue, is the circuit joining car and sign.

But it is the highway signs, through their sculptural forms or pictor-

ial silhouettes, their positions in space, their inflected shapes, and
their graphic meanings, that identify and unify the megatexture.
They make verbal and symbolic connections through space, commu-
nicating—in a few seconds and from great distance—a complexity
of meanings through hundreds of associations. Symbol dominates
space. Architecture is not enough. Because the spatial relationships
are made by symbols more than by forms, architecture in this land-
scape becomes symbol in space rather than form in space. Architec-
ture defines very little: The big sign and the little building are the
rules of Route 66. The sign is more important than the architec-
1
ture.

Here, the Strip is seen as the expressive embodiment of postwar

American car culture. The form and location of buildings determine and are
MARK C. TAYLOR

determined by patterns of traffic flow. For Venturi, these developments mark a

decisive break with the foundational tenets of modern architecture.
Ever sensitive to complexity and contradiction, Venturi correctly
maintains that modernists affirm in practice what they deny in theory. While
196 insisting that form follows function, modern architects implicitly appropriate
 197

STRIPPING ARCHITECTURE
the iconography of industrialism in a way that transforms structure into orna-
ment. “Modern ornament,” Venturi points out, “has seldom been symbolic of
anything non-architectural.” Since the symbolism of modernism refers to
other architectural symbols, it is reflexive or self-referential. By contrast, in
Strip architecture, Venturi argues, signs point beyond themselves by communi-
cating information necessary for orientation in an ever more complex world.

From the desert town on the highway in the West of today, we can
learn new and vivid lessons about an impure architecture of commu-
nication. The little low buildings, gray-brown like the desert, sepa-
rate and recede from the street that is now a highway, their false
fronts disengaged and turned perpendicular to the highway as big,
high signs. If you take the signs away, there is no place. The desert
2
town is intensified communication along the highway.

Elsewhere Venturi underscores the communicative function of

signs in a text that suggests the source of the design feature that distinguishes
both his own Vanna Venturi House (1963–65) and Philip Johnson’s AT&T
Corporate Headquarters (1979–84).

The sign for the Motel Monticello, a silhouette of an enormous

Chippendale highboy, is visible on the highway before the motel
itself. This architecture of styles and signs is antispatial; it is an
architecture of communication over space; communication domi-
nates space as an element in the architecture of the landscape....A
driver thirty years ago could maintain a sense of orientation in space.
At the simple crossroad a little sign with an arrow confirmed what
was obvious. One knew where one was. When the crossroads
becomes a cloverleaf, one must turn right to turn left. . . . But the
driver has no time to ponder paradoxical subtleties within a danger-
ous, sinuous maze. He or she relies on signs for guidance—enor-
3
mous signs in vast spaces at high speeds.
 But are we sure signs still communicate? Can signs provide ori-
entation and direction? Do signs point the way out of the labyrinth of daily life
or take us even deeper into it? Can signs be trusted?
Venturi’s postmodernist critique of modern architecture is, para-
doxically, constructed around the quintessential modernist invention: the auto-
mobile. This is its strength as well as its weakness. Any theory or architecture
that remains bound to the car cannot escape the regime of Fordism and every-
thing it represents. As David Harvey insists, “Postwar Fordism has to be seen
less as a mere system of mass production and more as a total way of life.” In a
circuit of exchange mirrored by the reflexivity of the work of art, mass produc-
tion produces mass consumption, which, in turn, reproduces mass production.
The automobile is, in effect, the incarnation of the structure of self-referential-
ity that informs both modern and modernist practices of production and
reproduction. Automobility is, of course, self-movement. Like an ancient
Unmoved Mover who descends from heaven to earth, the automobile is moved
by nothing other than itself. The dream of automobility is autonomy. To
inhabit the automotive machine is to be integrated within a closed circuit in
which all production is auto-production. The very proximity of self and
machine creates an insurmountable distance between self and world. When
automobility becomes a way of life, machines for living become glass houses
whose windshields function like screens of noninteractive television and non-
immersive cinema. To drive down the Strip in such a glass machine is to watch
passively as the film unwinds and the spectacle unfolds.
But the Strip of the 1 9 9 0s, unlike the Strip of the 1 9 6 0s, is
not built around the automobile. While cars do, of course, remain, Las Vegas
Boulevard has become a pedestrian promenade. The shift from driving to
walking reflects broader changes that have taken place in Las Vegas during the
past three decades. The early years of postwar Vegas were dominated by two
MARK C. TAYLOR

legendary figures: Bugsy Siegel and Howard Hughes. It was Bugsy Siegel, Los
Angeles representative of the Chicago mob, who first had the extraordinary
vision of creating a spectacular oasis in the midst of the Nevada desert. Though
the bosses remained suspicious of Bugsy’s ambitions, his relentless pursuit of
198
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STRIPPING ARCHITECTURE
his dream eventually led to the completion of the first major casino resort hotel.
In the years after Bugsy’s murder, the crackdown on illegal gambling in Cali-
fornia made Las Vegas increasingly attractive to mobsters. There were inter-
mittent efforts to clean up Vegas, but mob ruled the town until the late
1 9 6 0s. All of this changed when, in 1 9 6 6, Howard Hughes stole into Vegas
in the dead of night and took up residence in the isolated penthouse of the
Desert Inn.
Hughes is best known for the idiosyncratic paranoia that domi-
nated the later years of his life. Paul Virilio has gone so far as to describe
Hughes as a “technological monk” whose life was a grotesque embodiment of
the dystopic possibilities of contemporary culture: “Speed is nothing other
than a vision of the world, and for me Hughes is a prophet, a monstrous
prophet, moreover, and I’m not really at all crazy about the guy, but he’s a
prophet of the technical future of society. That absolute inertia, that bedridden
man, a universal bedridden man as I called him, that’s what we’re all going to
4
become.” This reading of Hughes not only represents a one-sided view of
technology but also overlooks his important contributions to the transforma-
tion of Las Vegas. From his early involvement with Hollywood to his innova-
tive development of flight simulators and high-tech amusements, Hughes
projected a future for Vegas that broke with its seedy past. The realization of
this future, however, required legislative actions that could only be initiated by
someone with Hughes’s power and influence. Prior to the 1 9 6 0s, Nevada
state law limited gambling licenses to individuals. This restriction created
enormous financial difficulties for anyone who wanted to construct a casino. In
most cases, individuals did not have the necessary capital to invest in an uncer-
tain venture in the middle of the desert. Consequently, this state law had the
unexpected effect of encouraging the illegal financing of casinos. One of the
few organizations with enough money to bet on Vegas was the mob. Ever the
canny businessman, Hughes recognized the financial opportunity created by
legalized gambling. But he also realized that Vegas could not prosper as long as
the mob ruled and legitimate business could not invest in the city. To create
more favorable conditions for investment, Hughes developed a two-pronged
strategy: first, he started buying hotels and casinos, and second, began lobby-
 ing state legislators to enact a law that would permit corporations as well
as individuals to secure gambling licenses. When the Nevada legislature
eventually succumbed to Hughes’s pressure, the Las Vegas of the 1 9 9 0s
became not only possible but virtually inevitable.
As major corporations moved in, it immediately became obvious
that financial viability required an expansion of Vegas’s customer base. If there
were to be any justification for the expenditure of funds necessary for the con-
struction of new casinos and hotels, gambling would have to be made attrac-
tive to a broader range of people. To achieve this end, the new Vegas had to
distance itself from its corrupt past. In devising strategies for developing
Vegas, “legitimate” investors looked to Hollywood.
While Venturi and his colleagues recognized certain similarities
between Disneyland and Las Vegas, they never could have anticipated the
extent to which the thematization of urban space characterizes the city today.
From frontier villages and tropical oases to Mississippi riverboats and
Mediterranean resorts, from medieval castles and the land of Oz to oriental
palaces and the New York skyline, every hotel-casino is organized around a
theme. Fantasies fold into fantasies to create worlds within worlds. The spec-
tacular MGM Grand Hotel, whose 5,005 rooms make it the largest hotel in
the world, “literalizes” the thematization of Vegas by replicating Disney
World. Though ostensibly miming Disney’s “original,” MGM’s theme park is
significantly different from its prototype. While the Disney “imagineers” who
designed EPCOT Center take pride in accurately representing our “small
world,” the architects of MGM flaunt artifice by openly imitating an imitation
for which there is no original. None of the nostalgia that pervades Disney
World haunts Las Vegas. In the simulated environment of Vegas, the real
becomes blatantly hyper-real.
The primary motivation for thematizing Las Vegas is economic.
MARK C. TAYLOR

As we have seen, to attract people who had never considered gambling, illegit-
imate vice had to be turned into legitimate entertainment. Moreover, the city
had to be made hospitable to the middle class and their families. The Disney-
ification of Vegas is intended to sanitize the city by white-washing its sin and
200
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STRIPPING ARCHITECTURE
corruption. Far from a den of iniquity, Vegas creates the facade of a user-
friendly amusement park. When the architects of a new hotel-casino complex
named New York, New York put a Coney Island roller coaster between the
hotel-casino and the Strip, the strategy guiding recent development was put
on display for everyone to see.
Shifting financial incentives bring changes in architectural pro-
grams. To create an environment appealing to a new clientele, architects have
had to develop design tactics that would convincingly integrate the fantastic
and the familiar. Between the 1 9 6 0s and the 1 9 9 0s, the pedestrian space of
malls displaced the automobile space of the suburban strip. By the early
1 9 8 0s, there were over 28,500 malls in North America. While most of
these malls combined predictable design elements from arcades and depart-
ment stores, which can be traced to the glass architecture that emerged in
Europe during the nineteenth century, more venturesome developers sought to
construct new environments for consumption by creating spaces in which
shopping becomes spectacular entertainment. The 5.2-million-square-foot
West Edmonton Mall, in Edmonton, Canada, for example, boasts eight hun-
dred shops, eleven department stores, twenty movie theaters, thirteen night-
clubs, 1 1 0 restaurants, a 3 6 0-room hotel, an ice-skating rink,
nineteenth-century Parisian boulevards, and New Orleans’s Bourbon Street.
Vegas’s new hotel-casino megaplexes borrow the most outlandish features of
contemporary cathedrals of consumption and, as always, up the ante. Nowhere
is this more obvious than in Caesar’s Palace, where outside is brought inside to
create an enormous mall that imitates an Italian village within the hotel-
casino. Under an ever-changing Mediterranean sky, upscale shops line streets
with quaint Italian restaurants and open-air cafes. In the middle of the piazza,
there is a dramatic “marble” fountain whose figures are automatons that come
alive every hour to tell the story of Bacchus and his drunken festivals. At Cae-
sar’s Palace, Hegel’s “bacchanalian in which no member is sober” erupts before
excessive rituals of consumption.
The Vegas mallscape, however, is not limited to the public interi-
ors of giant hotels. In a certain sense, the entire Strip has become one big
arcade or mall. No longer separated from the street by large parking lots, casi-
 nos crowd the sidewalk with facades that dissolve the boundary between inside
and outside. Most of the casinos that are still set back from the street are
framed by simulated movie sets depicting everything from erupting volcanoes
and warring pirate ships to Italian lakes and New York skyscrapers.
As the car is left behind and pedestrians roam the set, the cine-
mascape changes. No longer separated from the screen by a thin film of glass,
viewers are consumed by a spectacle that knows no bounds. In this way, today’s
Strip creates an immersive environment in which the virtual becomes real and
the real becomes virtual. In Vegas, as one of the city’s leading citizens, Andre
Agassi, proclaims from signs and screens, “image is everything.” As display
screens dissolve into display screens to reveal endless dataspace, images become
consuming and “realities” are virtualized. Nowhere is the virtualization of real-
ity more obvious than on the new Freemont Street. Long associated with the
seedy side of old Vegas, “Glitter Gulch” recently has been transformed into
what is, in effect, a gigantic computer terminal or virtual reality machine. Vegas
city planners have converted the train terminal that was inspired by the glass
architecture of Parisian arcades, into a computer terminal to create the new
space of the virtual arcade. Freemont Street is now covered with a 1,500-foot
computerized canopy with 1.4 million synchronized lights and lasers. To
roam through Glitter Gulch is to discover the timely timelessness of terminal
space.
The teletonics of Freemont Street suggest previously inconceiv-
able architectural possibilities. If, as Toyo Ito suggests, the challenge of build-
ing in a simulated city—and what city today is not simulated?—can be met
only by making “fictional or video-image-like architecture,” that is undeniably
“ephemeral or temporary,” then it is once again necessary to learn from Las
Vegas. But the lessons Vegas currently teaches are not the same as the lessons
Venturi learned three decades ago. The issue is no longer modernism vs. post-
MARK C. TAYLOR

modernism; nor is it simply a question of form vs. ornament, or structure vs.

sign. Something else—something that is, in many ways, far more unsettling—
is occurring. And this occurrence—this event as it were—involves a certain
slipping away. Though Venturi no longer believes in the foundational struc-
202 tures of modernism, he still has faith in signs. In a world without foundations,
 203

STRIPPING ARCHITECTURE
he insists, signs provide orientation, direction, even meaning. But along today’s
Strip, even this faith comes into question. When signs consume the bodies
that lend them weight, everything becomes a “matter” of light. The ground,
which once seemed stable, becomes ground zero where nothing fixes meaning.
The more deeply one ventures into the superficial space of the
Strip, the more it appears to be symptomatic of our current cultural condition.
Las Vegas illuminates the ephemerality that is our “reality.” People come to
Vegas hoping to win and leave having learned how to lose. They wager expect-
ing a return on their investment but discover that in the long run their expen-
diture is without return. In the casino economy, even when one “wins,” loss
cannot be amortized.
The loss the Strip displays is the strange loss of something we
never possess. As reality is virtualized, we gradually are forced to confess that
the real has always been imaginary. The bright lights of the Strip stage a virtual
potlatch of meaning. Instead of communicating meaning, which can be read at
a distance, proliferating signs immerse one in a superficial flux that never ends.
Monuments built to stop the flux turn out to be glas(s) pyramids where the
pointlessness of ancient sacrificial rituals becomes transparent. By simulating
simulations, which have long been mistaken for real, the substance of our
dreams is stripped away to expose the inescapability of time and the unavoid-
ability of death. This insight need not lead to unhappy consciousness and
ceaseless mourning, but can instead nourish a gay wisdom that freely accepts
lack and embraces loss. In the game of life, it is necessary to wager everything
with the expectation of receiving nothing in return. Absolutely nothing.

NOTES

1. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven 3. Ibid., 9.

Izenour, Learning From Las Vegas: The Forgotten
4. Paul Virilio, “The Third Window,” in Global Televi-
Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA:
sion, ed. Cynthia Scheider and Brian Wallis (Cam-
MIT Press, 1972), 13.
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 194.
2. Ibid., 8.
Ridzwa Fathom: Demography-Dump, still from QuickTime movie (1995)
 Antitectonics:

The Poetics of Virtuality

WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

KENNETH FRAMPTON’S Studies in Tectonic Culture is self-exemplifying. It’s a

big, fat, weighty thing that lands with a satisfying thud when you drop it in the
Book Return slot. The main structural element is a rigidly glued, inch-wide
spine. The pages hinged to the spine are thick and shiny; they spring and riffle
under your fingers, and close with a crisp snap. There’s a rigorous grid, with an
infill of graphic panels and blocks of Helvetica text—giving it an unmistakably
retro-modernist look. The exterior cladding is fine gray cloth and a matte-var-
nished dust jacket. All these elements are cut and joined with precision. The
production process consumed a lot of raw materials and energy and required
the use of some very sophisticated, expensive, mass-production machinery.
When this process was completed, the thousands of identical artifacts that
resulted were warehoused, trucked to bookstores, and sold for fifty dollars
apiece. It’s a high-quality industrial-era job. The fine print at the front provides
 the publisher’s address (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and announces that the
1
volumes were printed and bound in the United States of America.
A CD-Rom, by contrast, is made from immaterial, weightless
bits.2 These bits are not bound to some particular physical substrate, but can
migrate freely from medium to medium; they can happily live on CD, on a Zip
disk, on the hard disk of your personal computer, or in RAM. It’s easy for any-
one to make additional copies at any time, and these don’t cost anything.
Through the Internet, copies can be transmitted almost instantaneously to
pretty much anywhere in the world. Nobody cares (or even knows, in most
cases) about the physical organization of the information in whatever storage
device currently happens to contain it; it’s logical structure that matters. The
format isn’t fixed; you can load a copy into an editing program and change the
layout and typography at will. And it kills far fewer trees.
This contrast illustrates a massive, fundamental shift that is tak-
ing place in the conditions under which artifacts—including works of archi-
tecture—are conceived, constructed, and consumed. It’s a shift that suggests
reading Studies in Tectonic Culture as an elegy—as a nostalgic tribute to the
waning discourse represented by Perret, Wright, Kahn, Scarpa, Mies, and the
other heroes of Frampton’s narrative—not as the manifesto that it was proba-
bly intended to be.

MATERIALITY/VIRTUALITY

Frampton does not deny the volumetric character of architecture,

but wants to resist modernist theory’s marginalization of “the constructional
and structural modes by which, of necessity, it has to be achieved.”3 Ironically
though, at the very moment he chose to put forward this reassuringly tradi-
tionalist program, tendentiously buttressed with “of necessity,” the avant-garde
WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

imagination was avidly flirting with a radical inversion of it—the anti to this
thesis, the dys to his topia, the yin to his yang, whatever.
I mean, of course, the use of immersive virtual reality to create
spatial experiences that are totally separated from physical construction, mass,
and tactility. (Or, less dramatically, if you do not have the means or the desire
206
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ANTITECHTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY

to immerse yourself electronically, you can approximate the experience by
peering into virtual spaces framed by your computer screen as a proscenium
frames the space of a stage.) With this technology, you can walk or fly through
virtual landscapes and virtual architecture, crash through enclosing surfaces
without feeling a thing, and even encounter inhabitants represented by their
virtual bodies. Because there is no material to transform, there is no weather-
ing of surfaces with the passage of time. And the forms and relationships of
the spaces are not necessarily stable; they can be programmed to shift and
reshape themselves in whatever ways the designer wants.
Virtual spaces carry “less is more” to a provocatively anorexic
extreme. They are not rooted in the ground, so they completely eliminate the
“earthwork” that Gottfried Semper identified as the first of his four elements
4
of architecture. They don’t need element two (the hearth), or element three
(the framing), either. In fact, all that remains is a supremely attenuated version
of Semper’s fourth element—the lightweight enclosing membrane.
In this new architectural domain, joints just don’t matter. (So,
presumably, there are no Scarpas of cyberspace.) Surfaces have no thickness,
and they can be fitted together with mathematical precision. You don’t need
nails, screws, or glue. There is no need to accommodate changes of material.
Furthermore, there is no weather to keep out. In short, there is no room for
ingenuity (or God) in the details; the game is entirely one of space and surface.
Ancient mainstays of architectural theory simply become irrele-
vant. There is no gravity (unless a programmer chooses to simulate it), so
weights and loads do not create a rationale for member sizes, shapes, and pro-
portions. Ideas of structural expression and honesty lose all meaning. Indeed,
there is no necessary distinction between up and down, or between vertical and
horizontal elements. Furthermore, you can forget the Modulor; in cyberspace,
the body is just an arbitrarily proportioned and scaled avatar.
A virtual space, unlike a material construction, does not trans-
form a specific site as, for example, Jørn Utzon’s Opera House so memorably
transformed Bennelong Point and Sydney Harbor. Instead, it masks a subject’s
physical surroundings and substitutes an electronically constructed one. And,
 as long as network connections and the necessary equipment are available, it
can be instantiated anytime, anyplace.

MATERIAL REALIZATIONS/ELECTRONIC REALIZATIONS

Those who are troubled by this dematerialization—Marxists

who take their materialism literally, Benjaminists in search of authenticity,
real-estate developers in search of a buck, Martha Stewartists who just want
everything to be nice—might want to deny such places the status of architec-
ture. They might claim that these are things of another kind, and that their
production and consumption belongs to a different and incompatible dis-
course. Maybe so. But I doubt that such a sharp distinction can usefully be sus-
tained, for the material now appropriates from the virtual, and the virtual from
the material.
Recall, for example, that many buildings (most major ones) are
now designed on three-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) systems,
and so can be visited virtually prior to construction. Conversely, with the
appropriate electronic sensors, you can capture accurate, three-dimensional,
digital models of physical objects and spaces. At the very least, then, we have to
admit that exploration of virtual spaces now mediates the construction of
physical ones, and that physical spaces may have indefinite numbers of virtual
equivalents.
The purposes of these reciprocal appropriations vary, of course,
and this variation affects both the characters and the roles of the resulting arti-
facts. Some virtual spaces are created as quick, inexpensive precursors to con-
struction of their material equivalents. Thus they play a predictive role for the
benefit of architects and their clients. The idea is to simulate as closely as pos-
sible the experience of the expected material realization.
WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

In other cases—as in Kent Larson’s superb electronic realizations

of Louis Kahn’s unbuilt Hurva Synagogue—creation of an electronic version
serves as a substitute for material realization. Here, the electronic version may
be understood as a counterfactual conditional; if this building had been con-
structed, then it would have been like this. Or, you may prefer to think of it
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ANTITECHTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY

simply as an alternative realization of the design using different means—much
as a medieval musical composition performed with modern instruments, or
Hamlet enacted under today’s staging conventions, or even in radio or film
versions.
Conversely, digital realizations that are constructed from existing
physical ones are parasitic on their material precursors. They play roles much
like photographs or measured drawings, allowing convenient inspection from
other locations, and preserving “snapshots” of particular moments.
But an increasing number of virtual spaces are designed to be
populated and experienced in their own right; there is never any question of
physical realization. Sometimes, as in many virtual reality (VR) games and
rides, the aim is to create dramatic spatial experiences that would be impossi-
ble in the physical world. Douglas Trumbull’s motion-based VR ride at the
Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas is a pioneering example of this genre; you “fly,” at
terrifying speed, through a complex three-dimensional space tightly packed
with “solid” objects, feeling the accelerations, the shocks, and the shudders as
you bang into and bounce off of obstructions. Alternatively, as in personal
computer “desktops,” and in the spaces that are created for social and commer-
cial purposes in on-line virtual worlds, more traditional architectural forms are
employed metaphorically (often in questionably literal and hokey ways) to
provide familiar cues to users.
It seems most reasonable to enframe these diverse possibilities
theoretically by saying that physically fabricated and electronically imaged ver-
sions are simply different realizations of a single architectural work that is
specified by a set of drawings or a digital model—much as you can have differ-
ent performances, by different performers with different instruments, of a sin-
gle musical work that is specified by a score.5 Some architectural works may
have no realizations (that is, they remain unbuilt), some may have singular
realizations, and some may have multiple realizations. Some may have only
material realizations, some may have only electronic realizations, and some
may have both. If material realization is intended, then the digital model
should appropriately respond to physical constraints and the affordances of
 anticipated materials and production processes, but if only electronic realiza-
tion is intended, then the less constraining logic of virtual space applies.

CRAFT/CAD/CAM

Even this common-sense distinction between material and elec-

tronic realization begins to fade, though, when computer-controlled produc-
tion machinery is introduced; you simply employ the three-dimensional digital
model to control different kinds of machines as appropriate to your current
purposes. These machines define a continuum of possibilities. At one extreme,
a cathode ray tube display yields a quick, ephemeral, inexpensive realization by
employing an electron beam to excite a phosphor surface. A laser printer
deposits tiny particles of toner on a paper surface; it takes longer, consumes a
modest amount of material, is a bit more permanent, and costs a little more. A
computer-controlled rapid-prototyping device, such as a stereolithography
machine, deposits solid particles at specified locations in space to realize a
small three-dimensional object; that’s more time-consuming and expensive
still. At larger scales, various kinds of CAD/CAM devices (computer-con-
trolled cutting, routing, milling, and bending machines, for example) can auto-
matically convert digital models into full-size architectural components—as
brilliantly exemplified in the later work of Frank Gehry, such as the Guggen-
heim Museum in Bilbao.6
When artifacts are designed on the computer screen and the
design is executed by means of some computer-controlled device, the capabili-
ties of a local craft tradition no longer define the domain of possibilities that a
designer can explore. This is established, instead, by the affordances of the
CAD software and the production devices. You can see this most clearly, today,
in graphic design—where, in a great many practical contexts, the design of
WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

print publications is now enframed at one level by the fundamental physical

capabilities of laser printers, at a higher level by the constructs of the Postscript
language that is employed to control these printers, and at a higher level still by
the features of layout software such as QuarkXPress. (The Industrial Era gave
us grids and Helvetica; the Digital Era gives us Emigre and Ray Gun.) In prod-
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ANTITECHTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY

uct design, the capabilities of CAD/CAM devices, of the languages used to
program these devices, and of three-dimensional CAD software, may jointly
play a similar role. And, in the early days of architectural CAD, software was
often built around the vocabularies and syntactic properties of the industrial-
ized component building systems that were popular at the time.
Typically, there is a complex reciprocal relationship between the
shaping and arranging tools offered by CAD programs and the physical capa-
bilities of CAD/CAM devices. On the one hand, for example, solid modeling
software offers translational sweep operations that directly reflect traditional
production processes such as the extrusion of molten plastics and rolling of
steel sections, rotational sweep operations that recall the lathe and the potter’s
wheel, ruled surfaces that behave like twisted sheets of plywood or metal, and
so on. On the other hand, multi-axis milling machines, stereolithography
tanks, and other such advanced CAD/CAM devices impose few constraints
on the production of three-dimensional shapes, so the tools provided by the
CAD system become the principal determinant of the designer’s formal reper-
toire. Thus there is an ongoing technical discourse in which the designers of
CAD software try to reflect known production capabilities while the designers
of production machinery try to create ever more flexible devices capable of
realizing just about anything that a CAD system might specify.
In the context of this machine-mediated discourse, composi-
tional principles that have long been taken as apodictic suddenly look arbitrary.
Complicated curved surfaces may be no harder to produce than planar, cylin-
drical, spherical, and conical ones, so why stick to classical architectural
geometries? Infinite variability may be as feasible as modularity; why not for-
get about grids, repetition, and symmetry? Truly three-dimensional composi-
tions may be as easy to construct and manipulate as two-dimensional
constructions of parallel bar, triangle, and compasses; the plan is no longer the
generator, and the section may not tell us much. Algorithmically generated
complexities become alternatives to simple ideas that can be held in a
designer’s mind; the idea of a procedurally expanded genome replaces that of a
traditional parti.
 Maybe there is, indeed, something fundamental about the old
vocabularies and compositional precepts. But maybe, instead, these will even-
tually be seen as conventions established by a particular set of now-obsolete
technological capabilities.

LOCAL/GLOBAL

The Digital Revolution is changing not only the nature of archi-

tectural production, but also its location. And this, in turn, redefines the con-
nections of architectural production to the cultures of particular regions.
Once, it was perfectly reasonable to ask where an artifact was
made and to expect a straightforward answer. Craftsmen had shops where they
designed and built things. They used local raw materials to fabricate compo-
nents, and assembled these components themselves. But the laptop computer
on which I am typing these words was made in a very different way. Though it
bears the imprint of a Silicon Valley company, it was actually put together on
an assembly line in Taiwan. If you open up the gray plastic box, you find com-
ponents stamped with the names and locations of manufacturing plants scat-
tered globally. Similarly, subassemblies such as boards were put together at
multiple locations. The software comes from Cupertino, Seattle, Cambridge,
Sydney, and a multitude of other places. Design and integration of the
hardware and software components and subsystems was carried out at innu-
merable, mostly anonymous locations. It has a brand name rather than a
craftsman’s signature; you cannot say who created it or where. It is a truly
global product.
Though such globalization is most pronounced, so far, with rela-
tively small, high-value artifacts such as electronic devices, it has increasingly
affected the ways that buildings are made. In traditional cultures, buildings
WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

were designed and constructed on the spot, using whatever materials and
processes the local economy afforded. With greater division of labor, architects
distinguished themselves from craftsmen and moved off-site, and materials
and components could be acquired through trade rather than created locally.
With the Industrial Revolution, many architects were able to develop national
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ANTITECHTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY

and international practices, and materials and components were manufactured
at relatively small numbers of specialized plants and distributed over wide
areas by means of road, rail, sea, and air transportation systems. With the com-
puter and telecommunications revolution, geographically distributed design
and construction teams could effectively be created; an architect in Los Ange-
les might work with engineering consultants in Chicago and London, a gen-
eral contractor in Tokyo, and specialist component fabricators scattered around
the world, to construct a building in Shanghai. Such teams can be very com-
petitive, since they can aggregate the best specialized expertise without regard
to location, tap in to the most attractive labor markets worldwide, and make
use of highly specialized fabrication skills and machinery.
To operate successfully in this context, architects need much
more than knowledge of some particular, local craft tradition. They need to
know about expertise and fabrication capabilities available globally, about
worldwide labor markets and flows of capital rather than just local costs, and
about technologies for supporting the collaborative work of geographically
distributed, multidisciplinary teams. And they need, increasingly, to coordinate
their design work with that of diverse and scattered materials, component, and
subsystem designers.
Local conditions still matter a great deal, of course, but the
response to them has to be different. Design and fabricate globally, assemble
locally!

FACADE/INTERFACE

Bits also change the ways that buildings work. Works of archi-
tecture function as both shelter and symbol, and the introduction of digital
technology opens up new ways to perform the symbolizing role. The resulting
restructuring of a building’s basic organization compares to that which resulted
when artificial light appeared as an alternative to natural light.
Robert Venturi provides one insightful take on this. Decades ago,
he and his associates infuriated stuck-in-the-mud modernists by pointing out
that we should learn from Las Vegas rather than snobbishly disdain it; the
 electrical signs along the strip had effectively substituted for more traditional
forms of architectural ornament and symbolism, and this division of roles sug-
gested a new way to think about making buildings. Then times changed,
Times Square acquired a Jumbotron, electronics increasingly replaced neon,
and Venturi appropriately updated. In a pugnacious manifesto entitled “Sweet
and Sour,” he wrote that “the sparkle of pixels can parallel the sparkle of
tesserae and LED can become the mosaics of today,” and imagined “architec-
ture as iconographic representation emitting electronic imagery from its sur-
faces rather than architecture as abstract form reflecting light from its surfaces
only in the day.” Conclusion: “Architecture was late in stylistically acknowledg-
ing the industrial revolution in the vocabulary of the Fagus Shoe Works
around 1910: let us acknowledge not too late the technology of now—of video
electronics over structural engineering: let us recognize the electronic revolu-
tion in the Information Age—and proclaim ourselves iconoclasts for iconogra-
7
phy! Viva virtual architecture, almost!”
As usual with Venturi, the sting is in the “almost.” The interest-
ing challenge is not just to replace atoms with bits, or presence with telepres-
ence, but to learn from Luxor and the LED, and critically and thoughtfully to
work out the subtle, complicated, problematic relationships of the material and
the virtual. Several distinct approaches to this task are emerging.
Venturi himself harks back to ancient Egyptian, Early Christian
and Byzantine, and Baroque traditions in which images are applied to shelter-
ing surfaces, and plumps for “the electronic shed” with dynamic electronic
ornament. At Harvard’s Memorial Hall, for example, he constructed a
dynamic LED frieze, and in his competition entry for the U.S. embassy adja-
cent to the Brandenburg Gate he created a facade from an LED board.
Bill Gates, on the other hand, sees electronic displays as virtual,
WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

reconfigurable windows. In his vast Lake Washington house he plans “twenty-

four video monitors, each with a 4 0-inch picture tube, stacked four high and
six across. These monitors will work cooperatively to display large images for
artistic, entertainment, or business purposes. I had hoped that when the mon-
itors weren’t in use they could literally disappear into the woodwork. I wanted
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ANTITECHTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY

the screens to display wood-grain patterns that matched their surroundings.
Unfortunately, I could never achieve anything convincing with current tech-
nology, because a monitor emits light while real wood reflects it. So I settled
for having the monitors disappear behind wood panels when they’re not in
8
use.” Another scenario: “If you’re planning a visit to Hong Kong soon, you
might ask the screen in your room to show you pictures of the city. It will seem
to you as if the photographs are displayed everywhere, although actually the
images will materialize on the walls of rooms just before you walk in and van-
ish after you leave.”
But all this is tinkering. More radically, we can recognize that
inhabitation involves continuous interchange of information between a build-
ing and its inhabitants, and that the introduction of electronics requires us to
rethink this interchange. Any part of a building, from a doorknob to a floor-
board, can now be embedded with sensors. Conversely, any dynamic element,
from a light fixture to a garage door, can be controlled by computer. All these
things can be networked together, equipped with processors and memory, and
programmed. You may read displays and operate controls, or you may just
upload and download bits between the building net and your body net. The
difference between computer network and structure elides. Interface becomes
architecture, and architecture becomes interface.
In this context, infrastructure and interface are the crucial ele-
ments. Buildings still have supporting structures and enclosing surfaces, but
privileging these as the focus of architecture, and insisting that they should
carry most of the cultural freight, becomes as quixotic as similarly privileging
the chassis and the beige box of a personal computer.

TECTONICS/ELECTRONICS

Electronics now rule. The architectural profession can face this

new condition as an increasingly irrelevant, resistant rump—insisting on mate-
riality and practicing a nostalgic modernist revivalism while potential clients
vote with their feet. Theorists can take solace in Heidegger, and construct
loftily disdainful texts about all things technological. But it is more productive,
 and certainly a lot more fun, simply to retire the exhausted dogma of architec-
tural composition and construction as our world is rewired. Here, for those
who want to try it, is my top-ten checklist:

RETIRED REWIRED

Tectonics Electronics
Craft CAD/CAM
Hand tools Software
Local tradition Global organization
Facade Interface
Ornament Electronic display
Helvetica Emigre
Parti Genome
Permanence Reconfigurability
Learning from Luxor (stone) Learning from Luxor (VR)
WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

216
 217
NOTES

ANTITECHTONICS: THE POETICS OF VIRTUALITY

1. Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture 6. The acronym CAD/CAM stands for Computer-Aided
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). Design integrated with Computer-Aided Manufactur-
ing. For an introduction to architectural applications
2. My City of Bits (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995),
of this technology, see William J. Mitchell and Mal-
which appeared simultaneously as a hardback book
colm McCullough, “Prototyping,” in Digital Design
and as a Web site is a hybrid. Increasingly, though,
Media, 2nd ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
publishers are taking virtuality all the way. I no longer
1995), 417–40.
need access to the heavy, bulky, print version of the
Oxford English Dictionary, for example; I simply surf 7. Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics: Upon
to the on-line version that is available through the a Generic Architecture (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
MIT library. 1996), 5.

3. Frampton, Tectonic Culture, 2. 8. Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (New York: Viking,
1995), chap. 10, “Plugged In at Home,” 205–26.
4. Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architec-
Gates introduces his discussion by announcing, “My
ture and Other Writings, trans. Francis Mallgrave and
house is made of wood, glass, concrete, and stone....
Wolfgang Herrmann (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
My house is also made of silicon and software.”
sity Press, 1989).

5. This line of argument is originally due to Nelson

Goodman. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art,
2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1976).
There will be no further need for cities
or castles. There will be no further
reason for roads or squares. Every point
will be the same as every other...
—Superstudio, circa 1968
 Envisioning Cyberspace:

The Design of On-Line Communities

PETER ANDERS

INTERNET AS SITE

Multi-User Domains (MUDs) are mediated social 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. Despite the spatial qualities of
MUDs, few of them are presented graphically. Instead, they are text-based vir-
tual realities that require the user to rely on descriptions of space and motion to
1
create an image of the domain. The use of text is dictated by the MUD soft-
ware. Currently there are a variety of MUD types differing largely in their pro-
gramming code. MOOs (MUDs Object Oriented), MUSHs (Multi-User
Shared Hallucinations), MUSEs (Multi-User Simulated Environments) are
among the many hundred MUDs currently operating on the Internet.2 The
text interface is an efficient medium. It limits memory requirements for the
computers and speeds up real-time interaction. It can also conjure an image
with a well-crafted description. As a result, MUD users often prefer the verbal
 environment, arguing that it allows them freedom of interpretation. Some
users insist that the introduction of graphics will reduce, rather than enhance,
the MUDing experience.
Use of MUDs involves logging onto a computer server, often
using Telnet or Gopher programs. Once on, the user types responses to text on
the screen—say, the description of a room they have “entered.” The user might
type “N” to leave the room by going north. The scene then changes as a new
space description is offered. Users move from place to place by using sequential
commands or by teleporting directly to their destination.
Conversation on MUDs is formatted to simulate dialog in a
book. If a user, Fred, types “Hey, there!,” the computer configures this to read as
“Fred says, ‘Hey, there!’ ” The result is that the user appears engaged in both the
reading and creation of a novel. As users become more familiar with the com-
3
mands, they gain a greater range of expression and action within the MUD.
Graphic MUDs are still a technical novelty and their success is
mixed. Preliminary efforts (the Palace, World Chat, and Alphaworld) are dis-
appointing. The schematic quality of the contents and their graphics lack the
poetry found in text MUDs. The ephemerality of MUDs also argues for spaces
that are dynamic, responsive to their social and subjective nature. While text-
based environments have an implicit, logical structure, their image as architec-
ture is highly subject to the user. Current graphic MUDs, on the other hand,
lose this depth by literally illustrating architectural environments. In many
cases their illustration comes at the expense of poetry.

MUD ARCHEOLOGIES

In the spring and fall semesters of 1 9 9 5, graduate and under-

graduate students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s School of Archi-
tecture surveyed ten MUDs on the Internet. The study was largely conducted
in a CAD supported design studio and was carried out as a semester-long
PETER ANDERS

design assignment. The MUDs selected were social domains not overtly used
for role-playing games.4 Their selection was limited to text-based MUDs in
order to maximize the students’ design opportunities.
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ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
1 & 2: Logical adjacency model for MediaMOO. Michael

Lissowski and George Paschalis

The students, in teams of two, became citizens of their selected

MUDs and explored the spaces described by the text. Typically, the team
would divide the work between a navigator and cartographer. One operated
the machine, “moving” from place to place within the MUD. The other
charted locations of the places they visited. As the domains were mapped,
these diagrams grew increasingly complex. This information was carefully doc-
umented to produce a log/sketchbook and a three-dimensional logical adja-
cency model of the MUD (figs. 1 & 2). These models, perhaps the first
spatial documentations of these MUDs, formed a schematic diagram of the
domains’ spaces. Their coding was intentionally simple. Cubes represented
spaces that were accessed directionally, using N, E, S, W or Up and Down
commands. Spheres indicated spaces accessible by teleporting or by invoking
their names. Points of MUD entry were colored red. Spaces were linked with
simple rod connections appropriate to the directions indicated. Other symbols
varied from model to model depending on the specifics of the MUD.
The final results were surprising in their complexity. Resembling
extremely large molecular models, they documented hundreds of spaces. In
many cases the models had to remain unfinished since the MUDs contained
many more spaces beyond their main structure. Since MUD structure is
dynamic, many of them grew and evolved throughout the study.
 Most MUDs mapped easily as flow-chart diagrams. Some, how-
ever, had spatial anomalies. A room in DreaMOO described as being west of
another, was entered by going east from that room. The nested arrangement of
the Chatting Zone spaces did not translate easily into the ball and stick model.
The rigorous structure of HoloMUCK forced the creation of “stepping stone”
spaces used for navigating the MUD. Users pausing in one of these spaces
would receive descriptions of different viewpoints within a larger space. Often
these texts reflected changing perspectives or approaching views.

DOMAIN STRUCTURE

The logical adjacency model of each MUD has a distinct form,

like a fingerprint. Often MUDs begin as a verbal diagram of a neighborhood
( Jay’s House), an existing town (The Chatting Zone) or even the Earth
(Meridian). Once in place, citizens of the MUDs are invited to build their own
rooms and buildings. Over time the configuration of the domain changes to
the point that not even its operators, known as wizards, know the current
shape of the community.5
It is a participatory architecture, a kind of “architecture without
6
architects.” There are constraints on building, however. The degree of free-
dom that builders have largely depends upon each MUD’s wizards. Some
MUDs, like HoloMUCK or Jay’s House, have stringent codes enforcing the
“realism” of proposed additions. Each citizen is allotted an amount of memory
7
to build objects. This increases with the status of the citizen. Getting mem-
ory or status in a MUD is a symbolic and social issue, often a result of “who
you know.” In the study, some researchers achieved high-ranking builder status
and eventually became wizards themselves.
Some domains were clearly based on physical models, often the
hometowns of the administrating wizards. For example, The Chatting Zone is
a cyberspace mapping of Ipswich, Ireland, hometown of the MUD’s founder.
PETER ANDERS

While Meridian maps the entire planet, its point of entry is in Norway, home
of its wizard. Oddly, Meridian’s server is in Morristown, New Jersey.

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ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
Basing MUDs on actual physical models is an expeditious first
step in starting the domain. It saves the wizard the effort of creating the spaces
from scratch and lets him or her make a “home” out of the domain. It also
allows easy navigation of the space, keeping the directions simple and places
memorable for its users.
JupiterMOO, developed by Pavel Curtis, is based on the layout of
8
XeroxPARC in Palo Alto, California. Its mapping is so accurate that MUD-
ers who visit the actual facility can find their way around the campus. Lamb-
daMOO, one of the largest operating MUDs, was originally based on Curtis’s
personal apartment. In yet another case, MediaMOO incorporates the archi-
tecture of MIT’s Media Lab. Its founding wizard, Amy Bruckman, whimsically
added a floor to the building to provide space for a ballroom and party facilities.
As a MUD community develops, the original structure is elabo-
rated, sometimes leaving the real-space reference behind. The resulting geom-
etry can become complex and difficult to map. Most MUDers are allowed to
build their own rooms once they have citizenship. These rooms are often inde-
pendent of the main logical structure, hovering outside the domain. In
DreaMOO, for instance, linking new construction to the main structure
requires permission. Not only must the builder petition the wizards, but the
creators of connecting spaces. It is a complicated affair, and none our investi-
gators were able to link their work to the main structures.
The result of this difficulty of finding space in which to build is
that many constructions have nondirectional connections to the main MUD.
Most private spaces, which are often quite elaborate, can only be accessed by
teleporting, and guests may enter these spaces only if they are invited to do so
by the owner. As a result, many of the private spaces of the MUDs remained
unmappable because they were inaccessible. Often, even the addresses for tele-
port access were simply unavailable.9
The freedom allowed by wizards directly affects the MUD’s
structure. BayMOO, a San Francisco based MUD, has a laissez-faire approach
and over time has evolved into a free-form branching structure. Its logical
 mapping reflects its incremental and unplanned growth. In contrast, Jay’s Place
has such severe “reality” requirements that descriptions of nearby cliffs had to
be rewritten to reflect the actual rock composition.
Generally, MUDs in which wizards exert the most control are
more rigorously geometrical and easier to map. The looser structure of more
participatory communities—like MediaMOO—make them initially more dif-
ficult to navigate. In MediaMOO organizing spaces like Curtis Commons
were later added to provide orientation for the users.
HoloMUCK, whose server is located at McGill University in
Montreal, Canada, illustrates the extremes of control. HoloMUCK’s predecessor,
Flux, was originally developed as an open MUD, placing minimal restrictions on
building proposals. As the MUD developed, the configuration became more and
more complex. The founding wizards eventually came to feel that the illogical
nature of the spaces made the MUD unusable: navigation depended more and
more on teleporting and the illusion of the larger MUD structure was lost.
HoloMUCK was recreated using geometry clearly derived from
a generic Canadian small town. Two main roads and a river intersect to provide
orientation. The wizards have created one of the most controlled MUD envi-
ronments found in the study. As in Jay’s Place, HoloMUCK’s planning stresses
the realism of the domain. If a closet were opened to reveal an aircraft hangar,
the wizards would not allow its construction in the main MUD structure.
If the failure of the original HoloMUCK was due to its spon-
taneity, the new MUD suffers from its stifling control. HoloMUCK’s wizards
have tried to resolve this by letting builders do what they like outside the “city
limits.” Lying outside the main structure is a free-zone in which spaces may
follow any or no logic at all. As a result, most new construction lies outside the
rigorous and isolated core, known as TANSTAAFL.1 0
PETER ANDERS

“REALITY” CHECKS

The failure of some MUDs is due to problems other than poli-

tics. MUD size is largely determined by the number of spaces and objects pro-
grammed by the citizens. The number of rooms vastly outnumbers the
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ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
users—especially the number logged on at any one time. A paradoxical result is
that MUDs with the greatest number of builders seem to have the lowest den-
sity population. This explains the apparent vacancy of many MUDs. While
there are pockets of activity, large portions of the MUD often remain unused
11
and rarely visited.
Unsuccessful rooms are like unsuccessful Web home pages. Once
built they are rarely modified. Visitors may “hit” on a space once or twice, but
without novelty or companionship to engage them, they rarely return. Our
researchers found that few fellow MUDers knew the domains as well as they
did. Many citizens had not explored the main structure since their first few visits.
MUD activity centers on the entry, where users begin their sessions.
In the MUD it often appears as a lobby, a town square or visitor center. In Lamb-
daMOO, it is a closet. The area immediately around the entry is also populated
but occupancy drops off sharply thereafter. MUDers often prefer teleporting to
their destinations rather than sequentially moving through the labyrinth of rooms.
The problem is exacerbated by privatization; private spaces are
often not spatially linked to the main MUD structure. The Chatting Zone and
the University of MOO apparently have a great number of rooms in which
private socializing occurs. Many citizens enter the MUD only to teleport
directly to their rooms. In some MUDs citizens enter directly into their rooms,
often staying there to monitor the MUD. This depletes the activity in the pub-
lic portions of the MUD. There usually aren’t enough users logged on to sup-
port this stratification.
This polarization between entry and private rooms results from
poor spatialization and design. Real cities don’t have single points of entry.
Their periphery is open to the traffic of commerce and the population. Even
the most private spaces in a city are part of its spatial structure. MUDs, while
seemingly based on reality, ignore some fundamental truths of community
planning. Teleportation is a symptom of the problem, but not its cause. Holo-
MUCK forbids teleportation because its wizards feel teleporting destroys the
sense of physical community. This solution, however, is ill-conceived, as tele-
portation is merely a user’s way around a problem of design.
 The graphic representation of a domain offers solutions to these
problems. If visitors can “see” the extent of the MUD, they might be more
inclined to explore it. Presently, the text medium blinds users to distant spaces
and blinkers their experience. It limits their exploration to sequential plodding
from space to space. They are only aware of the rooms immediately adjacent to
12
their current positions.
Teleportation is preferred to this movement once destinations
are known and citizens are familiar with their domains. However, social activ-
ity diminishes as teleporting increases. Teleportation does not allow for the
chance encounters and discoveries offered by the illusion of actual movement.
One possible resolution is to incorporate the private spaces into
the main structures of MUDs. By limiting access to these spaces to spatial
motion, activity in the main structure may also improve. Additionally, the bur-
den of access should be lightened by providing more access points to the
MUD. This would shorten the distance to a destination. If more than one
entry is used, each will serve as a node of activity, creating the equivalents of
neighborhood pubs and hangouts.
Random entry at these points would also stimulate exploration
and interaction. Once the main entry has a critical mass of occupants, addi-
tional visitors could be let in elsewhere to spread activity to the lesser fre-
quented areas. It could revitalize the MUD community.

ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE

The next phase of the study was to create two visions of the
MUDs: one from a consensus of the subject MUD community; the other a
personal interpretation by each investigator. In both cases the ambiguities of
the text were used to spark the design process.
After the creation of the logical adjacency models, the investiga-
tors interviewed several of their fellow MUD citizens. This came naturally
PETER ANDERS

from the mapping phase. Many friendships had been made in the course of
charting the domains, and other MUDers were curious about the project and
would periodically check on its progress. The wizards were impressed, at times
226
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ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
flattered, by the dedication of the researchers to their domains. The citizens
were generally enthusiastic about helping with the study.
The results of the interviews were mixed and initially disap-
pointing. The original aim of this phase was to arrive at a consensus vision
of what the MUD would be like as a three-dimensional environment.
By having the MUDers elaborate on their domains, it was hoped that
enough detail would be generated to visualize the spaces. This proved diffi-
cult at best.
In only a few cases did respondents provide useful information.
When asked to elaborate on a series of spaces, one woman faxed sketches she
had made to illustrate what she imagined them to be. This was an exception to
the rule. Largely, the responses, though well-meaning, generated no more than
the descriptions already provided by the MUD itself. The MUDers were not
prepared to embellish these texts and were bemused by the researchers asking
such “obvious” questions.
This phase of the study contrasted the researchers’ interests with
those of their fellow MUDers. The project had been created with the aim of
envisioning these cyberspace communities. Most MUDers don’t question the
use of text, treating it as a given while logged onto the domains. Some feared
losing the richness of text to the newer graphical MUDs. To them the MUD
is about social interaction, not the setting. 1 3
Many MUD citizens value the subjectivity of the text and bridle
at the definition of the MUD space with a fixed design. This became a theme
many of the researchers incorporated into their own designs. Some projects
merged text with graphics to provide a hybridized environment, others devel-
oped methods to allow MUDers to customize their image of the domains.
In the final phase of the project, the researchers were to individ-
ually generate a vision of their MUDs. They were to incorporate anything they
might have learned in the course of the study, but were not bound by the infor-
mation generated in the interviews. Each student was asked to use this oppor-
tunity to express a unique quality of being on-line. This was an effort to define
the qualities of cybereal architecture.1 4
 The sequence of spaces encountered in the rendition had to match
the layout of the logical adjacency model. The models became the focus of much
debate since the illusion of space and motion had not been challenged to that
point. The logic of the MUD structure (orientation, connection, and location) is
verifiable, but the nature of the spaces and connections is subject to debate.

POETRY IN MOTION

Motion in a MUD is an illusion created by the text sequence.

MUDers issue directional commands to get from place to place. If no direc-
tional options are available, they can use the name of the destination to get
there. Teleporting differs little from conventional MUD movement. Both
result in a spatial description with options for exits.1 5
Motion by the user is entirely symbolic. The symbolism of
motion is crucial to the MUD experience. It implies that the user is situated
and complicit within the MUD environment. Movement brings the user into
the MUD psychologically. It is integral to the MUD’s immersive nature.
The investigators were encouraged to view this motion critically,
seeing themselves as stage managers in a play. This manager has a unique posi-
tion in a production. Unlike the actors or audience, the manager is not
immersed in the environment. He is charged with realizing the illusion. The
students were to create the illusion of motion without necessarily mimicking it.
Several students explored motion in their visualizations. In all
cases, the work was presented as computer animations rendered with
Autodesk’s 3D Studio. While CAD (Computer Aided Design) animations are
still a novelty in architecture schools, the dynamic, ephemeral qualities of
MUDs demanded the medium. Fades, pans, animation, the changing of view-
ing angles, morphing, and other cinematic methods became common practice
by the end of the study.
These techniques were specifically used to address the illusion of
PETER ANDERS

motion. For example, fading into another scene is similar to the experience of
reading the description of a space. Entering into an unknown space was also
presented as though the user had backed into it—as if a video camera were
228
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ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
pointing out the back of a car. The viewer doesn’t know where he or she is until
the room has already been entered.
Some investigators interpreted motion relativistically. Rather
than the viewer moving around the space, the space would move around the
viewer. This reflected the actual user sitting in a chair while manipulating the
MUD environment.
In other cases morphing techniques were used to transform dis-
tant buildings into closer buildings, providing a dreamlike quality to the
motion. One project, by George Wharton III, proposed
that the MUD was always the same space and that the
viewer was fixed. The illusion of motion was provided by a
continual morphing of the MUD envelope. “Architec-
tural” ripples in the envelope internally created the illusion
of passing buildings.
Morphing can create motion effects in other
ways. If rooms transform themselves into a user’s destina-
tion, a nonspatial movement is effected. One researcher,
Susan Sealer, devised buildings that changed shape at the
user’s whim. Going from one space to another was equated
with reshaping the point of departure. In another experi-
ment she changed the focal length of the software cameras.
By dynamically reducing the focal length, the original scene
was reduced to a point, and the succeeding scene seemed to
engulf it as it came into view, ultimately replacing it.
Another investigator, Tom Vollaro, present-
ed his MUD as empty space filled with flying shards of
matter (fig. 3 ). When the user wanted to enter a space,
the shards would collect around him as though drawn by a
magnet until the space was formed. This resulted in a
graceful ballet of fragments shattering and reforming as
3. Formation of rooms from available data
the user “moved” through the MUD.
“shards.” Sequence by Thomas Vollaro
 SOCIETY AND SELF

The user’s identity while on line is repre-

sented by a character called an avatar. Avatars often do
not have the same name as their owner, disguising the
user’s identity. The result is a masque that retains the
role-playing character of the earlier MUDs.1 6
Several researchers focused their work on
the avatar’s presence in the MUD. As with motion, pres-
4. Crowd of abstract avatars in a setting without
ence can be viewed relativistically. Presence is a subtle
architecture. Dana Napurano
interaction between the self and the environment and sev-
eral avatars were designed to manifest this relationship.
One investigator, Dana Napurano, associated light with the
avatar. When moving from place to place in a text-based MUD, the user acti-
vates the descriptions of the rooms. That space is “illuminated” by reading the
text. This illumination would remain constant until one avatar met another
and engaged in conversation. At that point the light emanating from one
avatar focused upon the other, casting the rest of the space into shadow. Atten-
tion and focus were both illustrated by this simple gesture.
While many avatars in the study were humanoid in shape, there
were significant exceptions. In an independent project by one student, the set-
ting of the MUD was invisible and avatars were abstract, illuminated forms
(fig. 4 ). When an avatar entered a new space, its color changed. Groups of
avatars in a space formed constellations of light, intensifying their color while
in dialog. Cyberspace was envisioned as a universe of human constellations.
In another case an investigator created a user interface for
MUDing. One side of the screen offered a menu of masks, the other showed a
nightclub scene populated with floating masks of various colors (fig. 5 ). By
selecting a mask from the menu, the user could take on the point of view of any
of the avatars in the night club. The user could theoretically maintain a dialog
PETER ANDERS

with himself by shifting between masks.

Despite the personal mediation of the avatar, MUDs can be sur-
prisingly affecting. Communication seems intimate because of its unearned famil-
230
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ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
iarity. Typing messages to another person on line is similar to having a phone con-
versation. As a result, the researchers made a number of friends and acquaintances
on MUDs throughout the study period. Some continue to maintain contact.
On a larger scale, these bonds can create subgroups within a
larger MUD. These can operate as special interest groups and develop political
power. For example in the University of MOO, the wizards’ capricious pranks
were causing the MUD citizens to call for their removal.
Some were even planning to create a new MOO in
protest. In other MUDs, social harmony can create endur-
ing loyalties.
The researchers of DreaMOO discovered
that a number of their on-line compatriots were refu-
gees from the now-defunct Metaverse MUD. Metaverse,
a fairly elaborate MUD, charged its members a fee for use.
Apparently, it was not successful and the server was reas-
signed. The stranded population of Metaverse was then
left to wander cyberspace looking for a new home. Our
researchers discovered a number of refugees reminiscing
about their old domain.
As a tribute to their many MUD compatri-
ots, the researchers presented their analyses and video ani-
mations over the Internet on March 8, 1 9 9 6. Each team
presented its results as part of an on-line dialog with the
remote onlookers. The home page used for the presenta-
tion will be used as a gallery for the products of the study.
It is planned to have links to the entry points of all MUDs
in its display. In this way, MUDers may enter other
domains by passing through the home page way-station.
This form of cybereal stepping stone is intended to pro- 5. MUD interface showing avatar options and
vide a larger structure for MUDing. setting. Avatars may be selected to take on

The development of a truly spatial cyber- the viewpoint of another citizen. George Whar-

space will draw on the talents of many disciplines includ- ton III
 ing the fine arts, theater, and architecture. The work done by these students
offers the possibility of a new area of architectural endeavor. Architects, trained
in spatial design, community planning, aesthetics, graphic communication,
and the use of computers are in a unique position to contribute to this effort.
As spatial MUDs are being created, the input of these skills will be vital to cre-
ating a rich, cultural setting for future mediated societies.

NOTES

This essay would not have been possible without the You page, “we got them on Monday!!, thanx alot” to
assistance and research of Brian Booth, Mike Buldo, Naima.
Ian Dorn, Sean Edwards, Keelin Fritz, Keith Kemery, You head west...
Michael Lisowski, Raymond McCarthy, Tom Mesuk, Main Street (800W)
Dana Napurano, Melanie Pakingan, George Paschalis, This once-desolate section of Main Street is looking
Susan Sealer, Kevin Spink, Eric Syto,Thomas Vollaro, busier these days.
George Wharton III, and Robert Zappulla, who partic- To the north, at 800 W. Main St., stands the Red
ipated in a seminar on MUDs conducted by the author Dragon Inn.
at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1996. [Obvious exits: north, w, e]

1. “MUD” and “domain” are used here to generically 4. Many MUDs operate as game-playing environ-
refer to these types. ments, following the example set by Dungeons and
Dragons in the early 1980s. The appeal of these
2. The acronyms can be whimsical. The investigators
games lies in their setting and participant role-play-
of a MUCK were told that it stood for Many Unem-
ing. They act as a form of theater, or masque, in
ployed College Kids. It actually stands for Multi-User
which MUDers may take on one or many identities in
Collective Kingdom.
the course of play. Brenda Laurel and Sherry Turkle
3. The following is taken from a sample session held have written extensively on the psychological and
by researcher Mike Buldo on his MUD, HoloMUCK. social implications of this activity.
Naima and Dex are the avatar names of other MUD
5. Note the reference to Dungeons and Dragons.
citizens. “You” refers to Mike and is used only on the
machine he is logged onto. Other MUDers’ screens 6. The electronic equivalent of earlier cultures whose
see the name of his avatar, Kilian. The “page” com- buildings inspired Bernard Rudofsky’s study by this
PETER ANDERS

mand is used to address another remote user of the name. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Archi-
MUD. Spelling errors reflect the real-time speed of tects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Archi-
interaction: tecture (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1969).

Time> Tue Oct 31 19:53:04 1995 7. In most MUDs, particularly MOOs, all objects are
page naima= we d got them on Monday!!, thanx alot descendants of other objects. This is a result of
232
 233
object-oriented programming that allows replication 13. While there is no denying the effectiveness of

ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE
of code modules for editing and reconfiguration. Even text, graphic on-line environments can have their own
the avatars that represent MUD citizens fall into this poetry. If we accept MUDs as “virtual theater,” we
category of objects. The entire MUD structure is have to acknowledge the importance of the set. Actors
related in this curiously genetic way. use the set and props to convey subtle information.
Leaning on a wall has different implications than fac-
8. Curtis, one of the pioneers of MOOs, has investi-
ing it, for instance. Sets and props are distinguished
gated the use of MUDs as social and professional
by their evocative potential. Visualizing them would
environments. AstroVR, for example is a MUD used by
allow a subtler manipulation of these devices, “broad-
professional astronomers, providing them with a
ening the bandwidth” of the theater.
“timeless place” for gathering and displaying their
findings. 14. “Cybereal architecture” here refers to virtual
objects within the computer’s illusive space. Unlike
9. This points up one of the advantages of graphic
CAD drawings or models, they are not part of a design
MUDs. Navigation is difficult if one needs to memo-
process that culminates in a physical presence.
rize specific addresses. Browsing and discovery are
Instead, they operate autonomously within cyberspace
facilitated by visual, nontextual spaces.
to define information content. Common examples of
10. TANSTAAFL is an acronym for “There Ain’t No cybereal objects would be computer icons and win-
Such Thing As A Free-Lunch.” This may be an ironic dows. They act as symbols of information structures
reference to the surrender of freedom implicit in (files, directories). Once spatialized these objects
HoloMUCK’s building codes. could define meaningful space for the location of
information, much as architecture is used to define
11. This experience is often like moving through a
institutions, organize contents, and orient people.
series of underground chambers. The creation of
rooms is often referred to as “digging” a space. This 15. Other means of motion are available. Many
combined with the acronym MUD seem to make MUDs—like Purple Crayon and Meridian—have
MUDing earthbound. The opacity of the Internet for modes of public transportation, such as trains or
many users belies the term “cyberspace.” One of the boats, that take MUDers on preselected routes. Some
objectives of building the logical adjacency models MUDs offer planes or taxis, modes of teleportation in
was to see the MUD components in relationship to which the destination, once known, can be called out.
one another. This is only possible if the rooms are The experience is sequential and textual, the vehicles
seen from the outside, as objects. Mostly, however, a camouflage for the paradox of bodiless movement.
MUD spaces are experienced from inside, without
16. On the subject of identity and MUD communities,
seeing the outer context.
see: Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater (Reading,
12. An example of this is MediaMOO. This MUD, at MA: Addison Wesley, 1991); Allucquere Rosanne
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was devel- Stone, The War Between Desire and Technology at the
oped as a learning tool, and its many spaces and stu- Close of the Mechanical Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT
dent experiments extend far beyond its original Press, 1993); Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Iden-
configuration. As a result, the investigators often tity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon &
found it largely vacant when they visited. This does Schuster, 1995); and Howard Rheingold, The Virtual
not necessarily reflect on the success of the MUD. Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier
MediaMOO’s spaces are largely navigable with con- (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1993).
ventional commands. Problems arise when the bulk of
a MUD is invisible to its users and only accessible via
teleportation, as in University of MOO and portions of
BayMOO.
Times Square, human agency, 1995 (with Rebecca Carpenter)
 Hypersurfaces: Socius Fluxus

STEPHEN PERRELLA

THE VIRTUAL DIMENSION may be understood as an immanent manifestation

of instrumental reason in late-Western culture. The operation of the techno-
logically virtual produces new realms of human interface, ones far more com-
plex than the casual separation between the fields of the real and virtual.
Rather than as an added “dimension” to the Cartesian construct, the virtual
dimension unfolds as an escaped mutation of the State, whose tacit mandate
includes military dominance, technological mastery over nature, and the pur-
suit of social progress. This indictment of virtuality’s collusion with instrumen-
tality reveals a logic of assumptions carried forth in the name of
Enlightenment humanism, but it also belies technology’s inherently schizo-
phrenic modalities. Technology simultaneously liberates as it undermines and
1
reconfigures. Teletechnology creates possibilities, but also ingests and
redefines according to its methodologies and industries. For example, the way
that issues of identity are manufactured in what is called “Generation X” is
 inconceivable without sampling and integrating—both consumer technolo-
gies. Here, identity is problematic because the mode of production is complicit
with economics. The pursuit of authentic identity involves a subjugation to the
technologies of difference. As technology becomes the dominant mode of pro-
duction (approaching a majority of the gross domestic product by the year
2 0 1 1), the way that a virtual dimension unfolds into the “reality equation”
should be more clearly investigated. The virtual dimension also deterritorial-
izes institutions of collectivity; in actuality, the virtual, instead of being a tool
for the extension of man’s control, has begun to fold back onto itself in a
process of duplication and generation of a complex, mutant socius, a produc-
2
tive yet schizophrenic condition, one that Felix Guattari calls, “Chaosmosis.”
If this description has any rigor, it means we can no longer rely on founda-
tional, traditional notions of space and time, the existing dimensions of Carte-
sianism, especially as they ground our understanding of architecture and
urbanism. At the very least, this implosive effect raises questions about where
and how those traditional notions are established.3 Nor can we rely on the
provisional divisions between the real and the virtual to contain the enormous
degree of reciprocal contamination that each holds for the other, stemming
from an erosive and disseminating dynamic of a lifeworld out of which has
arisen deviations of virtuality.
To better understand the significance and consequences brought
about by the virtual dimension, consider a diagram of a configuration that dis-
closes a superposed and interspersed “reality.” This diagram attempts to present
how a new mixture of electronic horizons configures an “infrastructure.” Not a
literal infrastructure, in the sense of transportation routes and backbones for
distribution, but a diagram for new modalities of human agency, one that
supersedes a now outmoded Cartesian paradigm. This diagrammatic infra-
STEPHEN PERRELLA

structure is constituted of seams and interstitial folds resulting in fluxing lines

of demarcation, converting separate realms into grafted ones. Once a virtual
dimension appears, the provisional layers of existing fabric implode, engender-
ing fluid interpermutations. Our cultural “ground,” then, becomes a continuous
zone of inflections whereby the “real” is subject to fluctuation and interfoldings
236
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HYPERSURFACES
into a systemic of dynamic interrelations; a systemic of transversality.4 The
effects of this condition erupt from very specific machinations within praxis,
not outside of it. There is no outside or inside. In this diagram, what is being
drawn is the implosion of structures of transcendence into radically mutable
superpositions. Instead of the real and the ideal being separate realms, the divi-
sions sustained by transcendental metaphysics, the divisions now become
fused. This is significant because previous constructs have brought about dif-
ferent paradigmatics and thus another modality of experience is to be expected.
For instance, a world dominated, indeed determined, by television, creates an
affect of transcendentality; that is, the effect of a governing metaphysic that
through technologized structures of ideation, give the effect of an outside or an
5
upper-realm, or “the concrete realization of Hegel’s Absolute Spirit.” And it is
precisely this sort of dynamic that leads Brain Massumi (in this book and else-
where) to discuss a radical empiricism and proprioperception as ways of
explaining how we will experience these new modalities.
In our existing technologically saturated context there are hori-
zons through which our lives are drawn. The emergence of a virtual dimension
attenuates a further layer beyond two current
electronic strata. Respectively, they are the
“Free Space Horizon,” the “Signification-
Infrastructure Horizon,” and most recently,
the “Internetted Horizon.” Combined, these
three horizons organize layers of activity or
inhabitation but should not be considered
mutually exclusive. Increasingly, capitalism
drives a world culture of consumption forcing
these layers to become increasingly dense and
interwoven. The process and logic of perva-
sion stemming from teletechnology intermixes
television within the Internet, the Internet
impacts upon built infrastructure, and so forth,
Haptic Horizon, diagram, 1995,
creating a convergent, infolded, organization.
 Haptic Horizon, 1995
STEPHEN PERRELLA

238
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HYPERSURFACES
From this condensed condition arises new and emergent phenomenon. The
action of this recombinant schema seems to occur from the middle out. For
instance, it was originally thought that the electronic revolution would replace
print media. But instead what has actually happened is that the virtual dimen-
sion has increased and saturated the media even further. From this construct,
specific relationships may be understood as hypersurfaces, a term that attempts
to characterize the complex way new interfaces will occur and reconfigure us.
Within this three tiered interpretation of technologized culture,
what critical dynamic brings about the virtual dimension? It seems historically
that the middle layer, the electronic infrastructure, packed with programs of
communications, advertisements, print media, telephonic discourse, trans-
portation, commerce, and all of the other trappings of an industrialized and
postindustrialized infrastructure is an urbanized society that operates as a
plane of immanence. The affect of that plane is best described as an urban
complex, a bustling metropolis with centers of industry, an affect well
expressed in early genres of cinema, specifically the German cinema of the
1 9 3 0s. With the advent of television in the early 1 9 5 0s, another layer is
generated out of the “middle,” seemingly above the metropolis, extending
beyond and in effect creating a vast sub-urban terrain, where the one-to-many
logic of broadcast media effects a generalized narrative simultaneity controlled
by the military industrial complex. Its effect on culture is closer to social engi-
neering, as the spread of advertisement and entertainment stand in place of
meaningful social discourse, or, more specifically, a media insinuated within
social discourse. With the advent of free-space there is no real possibility for an
unmediated dialog.
What is the real? At what point was anything real? How is the
real tied to social discourse and was there ever a state of unconstrained social
discourse? How does the Internetted horizon effect that? What kind of space
does the Net produce? Is virtuality the opposite of broadcast space, thereby
doubling the logic of simulation? Simulation, considered as a doubling, gives
the effect of realism but is the height of a debased culture, perhaps at its most
precarious moment.
 These interpenetrating layers, fueled by consumer capitalism,
will reconfigure the topology of human agency. Emergent forms of representa-
tion will unfold due to the radical interweavings that create both commensu-
rate and incommensurate juxtapositions of varying fields. This condition may
6
perhaps be best understood as a surrealism imbedded within the everyday.
The way that it will effect the architecture/culture mix is a thematic being
taken up under a thematic called Hypersurface, and may be what results from
the exigencies of the virtual dimension.

NOTES

1. Alison Gill and Freida Riggs, “The Angst and the 4. Gianni Vattimo, The Transparent Society (Balti-
Aura,” in R/U/A/TV?, ed. Tony Fry (Sydney: Power more, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
Publications, 1993). 1992).
STEPHEN PERRELLA

2. Felix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic 5. Stephen Perrella, ed., Architectural Design Maga-
Paradigm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, zine: Hypersurface Architectures (London: Academy
1995). Editions, 1998).

3. Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction:

Derrida’s Haunt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

240
Hypersurface panel, study, 1998
 Terminal Velocities:

The Computer in the Design Studio

STAN ALLEN

Oh but it’s not the fall

that hurts him at all—

It’s that sudden stop.1

D U R I N G T H E H O T summer months in New York City cats begin to fall, or

throw themselves, out of high windows. Nobody quite knows why, but
researchers studying the phenomenon have uncovered a curious pattern. While
a cat falling one or two stories has some chance of landing safely, a cat falling
from three to six stories is unlikely to survive. Surprisingly, a cat falling from
more than six stories is quite likely to survive. Apparently, by twisting into
proper position and completely relaxing, the cats develop enough resiliency to
survive the impact. Beyond fifteen floors the chances of survival drop again.
Too much time in the air, and the cats reach terminal velocity—in the most lit-
eral sense.
Speed is fundamental to the rhetoric of the computer. Bigger is
better, but faster is best. In advanced imaging and animation programs, for
example, it is processing speed and not disk space that is the limiting factor.
 High-end personal computers already run at inconceivably fast speeds—xn
calculations per second, and improving all the time. Mainframe supercomput-
ers and parallel processing promise even greater speed. In part this is bound up
with questions of marketing and efficiency. The immense capital expenditure
for software development and the large-scale implementation of computer
aided design (CAD) systems in design and production would have been
impossible without measurable gains in speed and productivity. The same Tay-
lorizing impulse at work in early modernism—the elimination of obsolete and
inefficient work methods—is still visible today.2
But in the rhetorical fictions of the computer, speed brings
something else: a future not only more fully integrated with technology, but a
promise to recover precisely that which had been destroyed by modernity in
the first place. Claims are made for the recuperation of community, self, polit-
ical space, precision craft, and local identity.3 The rhetoric of accessibility in
turn depends upon the capacity of the computer to simulate reality. And it is
speed that guarantees the seamlessness (and thereby the realism) of these new
simulations. But between the promise of a digital future and the realities of the
present there are complex questions to be answered. In Pure War, Paul Virilio
has signaled his skepticism about the depletion of time as technologies of
speed are everywhere put into place: “There again it’s the same illusory ideol-
ogy that when the world is reduced to nothing and we have everything at
hand, we’ll be infinitely happy. I believe it’s just the opposite—and this has
already been proven—that we’ll be infinitely unhappy because we will have
lost the very place of freedom, which is expanse.” Control and concentration
are the inevitable counterparts of these new technocratic regimes: “The field
of freedom shrinks with speed. And freedom needs a field. When there is no
more field, our lives will be like a terminal, a machine with doors that open
and close.”4
Virilio distinguishes between metabolic speed—the speed of the
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living being, reaction time—and technological speed—the artificial speed of

machines. Significantly, what differentiates recent technologies from mod-
ernist machines (the aircraft, the telegraph, or the automobile) is a blurring of
244
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TERMINAL VELOCITIES
the boundary between technological speed and metabolic speed. Computer
speed is microspeed, invisible in its working, visible only as affect. With the
computer, technological speed approaches metabolic speed. Genetic algo-
rithms can simulate hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in a few min-
utes; artificial life programs bring responsiveness and adaptivity to the
technological environment. For Virilio, what distinguishes metabolic speed is
its inconsistency: “What is living, present, conscious, here, is only so because
5
there’s an infinity of little deaths, little accidents, little breaks, little cuts...” It
is through these interruptions that the field is reconstituted—not as seamless
continuity, but, through a shift in scale, as a finer grained texture that allows
local connection and continuity; an order that accepts discontinuity and differ-
ence without encoding it as catastrophic disjunction. Hence, as Sylvere
Lotringer (Virilio’s interlocutor in Pure War) notes: “All is not negative in the
technology of speed. Speed, and that accident, that interruption which is the
fall, have something to teach us on the nature of our bodies or the functioning
of our consciousness.”6
What is at stake for architecture in all this? The computer in
the design studio provokes both extravagant claims and high levels of anxiety.
Is there, as with the cats falling through the hot summer air, a window of
opportunity between an initial state of dismay or confusion, and the endgame
of “terminal velocity”? Questions of identity politics and the real effects of
new technologies on the spaces of the city are issues that urgently need to
be addressed. But before this is possible, it will be necessary to look more
closely at the paradigms and protocols at work in the use of the computer as a
design tool.
A legitimate skepticism toward both the technocratic drive for
efficient production as well as the vague promise of a utopian future is a start.
But a positive program is required as well. This would begin with a speculative
and open-ended investigation of the possibilities and potentialities of these
new technologies within the specific demands of the discipline of architecture.
It is important not to lose sight of the instrumentality of the computer. The
computer is not “just another” tool, but it is a tool nonetheless—a tool with
 very specific capabilities and constraints. What are the specific opportunities
for new modalities of geometrical description, spatial modeling, simulation of
program and use, generation of formal and organizational systems, or rapid
prototyping? A careful reassessment of the implications of these new tools in
their theoretical and conceptual context is warranted. By questioning the
rhetoric of the new, it is possible to rethink both the new technology and
architecture’s own persistent paradigms of order, geometry, and organization.
The luddite option, for all of its rhetorical attractiveness, is untenable, and,
finally, uninteresting. What is required is to become familiar enough with the
technology so as to be able to strip away its mythological veneer. Don’t count
on “being digital”; rather, work on becoming digital. The interruption and the
accident need to be cultivated; software systems must be used against the
7
grain. Established protocols need to be tweaked.

FIRST HYPOTHESIS: DIGITAL ABSTRACTIONS

One of the curious aspects of digital technology is the valoriza-

tion of a new realism.8 From Hollywood special effects to architectural ren-
dering, the success of the new technology is measured by its ability to
seamlessly render the real. Even so-called virtual reality has not so much been
used to create alternative realities but to replicate those already existing. In
architecture this is evident in “visualization” techniques. The promise here is
that if computer technology can create more and more realistic simulations,
design mistakes will be avoided. This too is clearly market driven, answering a
need to predict what something will look like before spending the money to
9
build it. The fallacies of this position are almost too numerous to specify. For
one, it assumes that a very narrow range of perceptual mechanisms come into
play in the experience of architecture: a tunnel-like camera vision, ignoring the
fluidity of the eye and the intricacies of peripheral vision—not to mention the
rest of the body.1 0 But more significantly, it ignores what has traditionally
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given architectural representation its particular power of conceptualization—

that is to say, its necessary degree of abstraction, the distance interposed
between the thing and its representation.1 1
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TERMINAL VELOCITIES
The story of Diboutades is often evoked as
an account of the origins of drawing: The daughter of a
Corinthian shepherd traces the shadow of the head of her
departing lover as a memento (fig. 1 ). The drawing is a
substitute, a partial record of the absent, desired thing.
This story of origins is consistent with classical theories of
1. P. Devlamnyyk, The Inven-
mimesis, but problematic from the point of view of archi-
tion of Drawing, after a
tecture. In architecture, the object does not proceed its
painting by Joseph Suvée,
representation in drawing. Rather, the built reality is both
1791
imagined and constructed from accumulated partial repre-
sentations. As codified in systems of mechanical drawing,
the object is imagined inside a transparent
box—the materialization of the Cartesian
coordinate system (fig. 2). On the surfaces
of the box are registered the traces of the lines
of orthographic projection. Traditionally, the
architect works on the two dimensional sur- (a) THE GLASS BOX
(b) UNFOLDING THE GLASS BOX
faces of this box, not on the object itself. The
architectural project is a virtual construction, a whole
2. The Glass Box, from
created from abstract parts interpreted and combined
Technical Drawing by
according to shared conventions of projection and repre-
Giesecke, Mitchell, and
sentation.
Spencer, 1958
Now the computer simultaneously collapses
and increases the distance between the architect’s two-
dimensional representations and the building’s three-
dimensional reality. That is to say, in as much as computer
representations are more immaterial than conventional
drawings, the distance is increased; in as much as it is pos-
sible to work directly in three dimensions, the distance is
collapsed. The vector of representation is reversed; the
glass box is turned inside out. In computer modeling, the
architect works directly on a three dimensional representa-
 tion of the object itself. In the virtual space of the computer, it is possible to go
quickly back and forth (or even to work simultaneously) on the two-dimen-
sional projection and the three-dimensional object. (Of course, another system
of projection/representation intervenes—the two-dimensional display of the
screen itself—but the ease with which it is possible to move the object and to
move around in that space can provisionally suspend its presence as intermedi-
ary.) That object is a collection of commands as opposed to the result of a
series of projections. Instead of a finite number of representations constructing
an object (either in the mind or in the world) there is already an object (itself
made up of a nearly infinite number of discrete elements) capable of generat-
ing an infinite number of representations of itself.
As a consequence of this, the effect of working on the computer
is cumulative. Nothing is lost. Elements and details are continuously added,
stored, and filed in perfect transparency. Instead of proceeding from the gen-
eral to the specific, the designer moves from detail to ensemble and back again,
potentially inverting traditional design hierarchies.
The status of the drawing, and in turn the process of design
itself, undergoes a transformation. A new kind of abstraction emerges: abstrac-
tion not as final result of operations of idealization or reduction, but of the
indifferent order of bits. Interestingly enough, a sense of casualness, a paradox-
ical lack of precision, is one result of this. Computer abstractions are radically
provisional, open to infinite revision. If the power of the computer lies in its
ability to handle large amounts of information, multiple variables, and abstract
codes, it is worthwhile to be attentive to an emerging sensibility for diagram-
matic and loose organizational paradigms: a contingent, “conditional” abstrac-
tion. This in turn implies a shift away from the false certainties of visualization
toward the generative capacities of the computer as an abstract machine.
Today, this is expressed not so much as a mandate as a possibility. Abstraction
is no longer a categorical imperative, but one choice among many. When
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working with the computer, however, it is a logical choice as it is something

that the computer does well.

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TERMINAL VELOCITIES
SECOND HYPOTHESIS: DIGITAL FIELDS

Analog technologies of reproduction work

through imprints, traces, or transfers. The image may shift
in scale or value (as in a negative), but its iconic form is
maintained throughout. Internal hierarchies are pre-
served. A significant shift occurs when an image is con-
verted to digital information. A notational schema
intervenes. “Digital electronic technology atomizes and
abstractly schematizes the analogic quality of the photo-
graphic and cinematic into discrete pixels and bits of
information that are transmitted serially, each bit discon-
tinuous, discontiguous, and absolute—each bit ‘being in
12
itself ’ even as it is part of a system.” A field of immate-
rial ciphers is substituted for the material traces of the
object (fig. 3 ). Hierarchies are distributed; “value” is
evened out. These ciphers differ one from the other only
as place holders in a code. They have no materiality, no
intrinsic value. Already in 1 9 2 1, Viktor Shklovsky had
anticipated the radical leveling effect of the notational
3. Digital code: text file print
sign: “Playful, tragic, universal or particular works of art,
out of image file
the oppositions of one world to another or of a cat to a
13
stone, are all equal among themselves.”
This evening out of value has implications
for the traditional concept of figure/field. In the digital
image “background” information must be as densely
coded as foreground information. Blank space is not
empty space; there is empty space throughout the field. If
classical composition sought to maintain clear relations of
figure on ground, which modern composition perturbed
by the introduction of a complicated play of figure against
figure, with digital technologies we now have to come
 AXIAL SYMMETRY PERIPHERAL COMPOSITION

COLLISION/ASSEMBLAGE LINKED ASSEMBLIES

STRIATED STRIATED 2

PATCHWORK 2 FIELD VECTORS

CLUSTER OPEN CLUSTER

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LOOSE GRID FELT

4.
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TERMINAL VELOCITIES
to terms with the implications of a field/field relation
(fig. 4). A shift of scale is involved, and a necessary revi-
sion of basic compositional parameters is implied.
A moiré, for example, is a figural effect pro-
duced by the superposition of two regular fields (fig. 5). (a)

Unexpected effects, exhibiting complex and apparently

irregular behaviors, result from the combination of ele-
ments that are in and of themselves repetitive and regular.
But moiré effects are not random. They shift abruptly in
scale, and repeat according to complex mathematical rules.
(b)
Moiré effects are often used to measure hidden stresses in
continuous fields, or to map complex figural forms. In
these cases, figure and field can never be separated as dis-
tinct entities, producing an uncanny coexistence of a regu-
lar field and emergent figure.
Comparing these field formations to the
organizing principles of classical architecture, it is possible
to identify contrasting principles of combination: one
algebraic, working with numerical units combined one
after another; and the other geometric, working with fig- 5. top: Moiré fringes formed

ures (lines, planes, solids) organized in space to form larger by the superimposition of

wholes. In algebraic combination, independent elements a circular grating and

are combined additively to form an indeterminate whole. two linear gratings with

The local syntax is fixed, but there is no overarching period (a) larger than and

geometric scaffolding. Parts are not fragments of wholes, (b) equal to the period of

but simply parts. (As Jasper Johns has remarked: “Why a circular grating

take the part for the whole; why not take the part for
the part?”) Unlike the idea of closed unity enforced in bottom: parametric

Western classical architecture, algebraic combinations description of moiré

can be added onto without substantial morphological fringes formed by two

transformation.1 4 linear binary amplitude

gratings
 THIRD HYPOTHESIS:

THE LOGISTICS OF CONTEXT

The diagrams produced by the Christaller

model of urban growth (fig. 6), which ignores large-
scale accidents of history or geography but incorporates
fine-grained difference in the form of multiple variables
and nonlinear feedback, demonstrate how the interplay
be-tween laws and chance produces complex but roughly
predictable configurations of a nonhierarchical nature.
The whole of the city is never given at once. The city is a
place of contingency, a whole that is not bounded and
closed, but capable of permutation, open to time and only
provisionally stable.
In the late 1 9 8 0s, artificial life theorist
Craig Reynolds created a computer program to simulate
the flocking behavior of birds. Reynolds placed a large
6. Christaller diagrams number of autonomous, birdlike agents (which he called
“boids”) into an on-screen environment. The agents were
programmed to follow three simple rules of behavior: first,
to maintain a minimum distance from other objects in the
environment (other agents, as well as obstacles); second, to match velocities
with other agents in the neighborhood; third, to move toward the perceived
center of mass of agents in its neighborhood. As Waldrop notes: “What is
striking about these rules is that none of them said ‘Form a flock’...the rules
were entirely local, referring only to what an individual boid could do and see
in its own vicinity. If a flock was going to form at all, it would have to do so
from the bottom up, as an emergent phenomenon. And yet flocks did form,
every time.”1 5
The flock is clearly a field phenomenon, defined by precise and
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simple local conditions, and relatively indifferent to overall form and extent.1 6
Because the rules are defined locally, obstructions are not catastrophic to the
whole. Variations and obstacles in the environment are accommodated by fluid
252
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TERMINAL VELOCITIES
adjustment. A small flock and a large flock display fundamentally the same
structure. Over many iterations, patterns emerge. Without repeating exactly,
flock behavior tends toward roughly similar configurations, not as a fixed type,
but as the cumulative result of localized behavior patterns.
One of modern architecture’s most evident failings has been its
inability to adequately address the complexities of urban context. Recent
debates have alternated between an effort to cover over the difference between
the old and the new (the contextualism of Leon Krier or the so called “New
Urbanists”) or a violent rejection of context (deconstruction, and related stylis-
tic manifestations). These two examples, the Christaller model of urban
growth and Reynolds’ simulations of flocking behavior (others could be cited
as well), dissolve the traditional opposition between order and randomness.
They offer a way out of this polarized debate, acknowledging on the one hand
the distinct capabilities of new construction, and at the same time recognizing
a valid desire for diversity and coherence in the city. Logistics of context sug-
gests the need to recognize the limits to architecture’s ability to order the city,
and at the same time, to learn from the complex self-regulating orders already
present in the city. And it should be pointed out that the computer is especially
well suited to the mapping and simulation of these systems—registering the
cumulative effects of incremental changes, recursive and reiterative strategies,
these are all inherent to the logic of the processor. Attention is shifted to sys-
tems of service and supply, a logics of flow and vectors. This implies close
attention to existing conditions, carefully defined rules for intensive linkages at
the local scale, and a relatively indifferent attitude toward the overall configu-
ration. Architecture needs to learn to manage this complexity, which, paradox-
ically, it can only do by giving up some measure of control.
 NOTES

1. Bobby Russell, “Sudden Stop,” recorded by Percy Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science
Sledge, 1968. Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993),
189.
2. Our tendency to privilege the new and the optimal,
along with the popular idea that every new form of 4. Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, Pure War (New
technology renders existing technologies obsolete, York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 69.
needs to be rethought. Two simple examples demon-
5. Ibid., 33.
strate why: the first is the development of high-speed
trains in Europe and Japan. A nineteenth-century 6. Ibid.
technology, railroads were supposedly made obsolete
7. Brian Eno has proposed a simple formula: “If you
long ago by air travel, but they now emerge as a logi-
want to make computers that really work, create a
cal alternative from ecological and urbanistic points
design team composed only of healthy, active women
of view. Similarly, AM talk radio—a technology sup-
with lots else to do in their lives and give them carte
posedly made obsolete by television—along with the
blanche. Do not under any circumstances consult
Internet and other advanced forms of communication,
anyone who a) is fascinated by computer games b)
has acquired extraordinary political power in the
tends to describe silly things as “totally cool” c) has
United States in recent years.
nothing better to do except fiddle with those damn
3. Many examples could be cited; see, for example, things night after night.” Kevin Kelly, interview with
Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps (Cam- Brian Eno, Wired, May 1995, 150.
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), as well as the more
8. The use of the computer in the design studio has
recent emergence of academic and popular books on
facilitated two important shifts in design practice that
the subject. Scott Bukatman has coined the term
have yet to be examined critically. First is a renewed
“cyberdrool” for this kind of terminal identity fiction;
use of perspectives, which once had to be laboriously
he cites Vivian Sobchack’s observation of the “pecu-
drawn by hand but can now be generated effortlessly
liar oxymoronic cosmology” linking “high
by clicking a button. Second is the use of color. Color
technophilia, ‘new age’ anamism, spiritualism, and
in the computer is either extravagantly false or
hedonism, and Sixties counter-cultural ‘guerrilla’
attempt to simulate photographic representations
political consciousness.” Scott Bukatman, Terminal
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254
 255
of reality through sophisticated rendering programs 14. In this context it is interesting to note that

TERMINAL VELOCITIES
incorporating reflection, transparency, and texture the Turing machine—the hypothetical computing
mapping. In both cases, the ease of achieving seduc- machine that is the conceptual basis of the modern
tive effects has as yet overwhelmed any impulse to digital computer—performs complicated relational
question the relationship between the means of repre- functions, (multiplication or division, for example) by
sentation and the architectural intention. means of serially repeated binary operations. Paradox-
ically, it is only when the individual operations are
9. This is to ignore for a moment those who think that
simplified as far as possible that the incredible speed
architecture will simply disappear in a future domi-
of the modern computer is achieved.
nated by “virtual” realities. As they have never been
really interested in architecture anyway, there’s no 15. Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of
great loss. Chaos Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (New York:
Bantam Books, 1984), 197ff.
10. “I ask myself, What is pissing me off about this
thing? What’s pissing me off is that it uses so little of 16. M. Mitchel Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging
my body. You’re just sitting there, and its quite bor- Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York:
ing. You’ve got this stupid little mouse that requires Simon and Schuster, 1992), 240–1.
one hand, and your eyes. That’s it.” Kelly, interview
17. “One of the essential characteristics of the dream
with Brian Eno, 149.
of multiplicity is that each element ceaselessly varies
11. See Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing to and alters its distance in relation to the others...These
Building” AA Files 12 (1986). variable distances are not extensive quantities divisi-
ble by each other; rather, each is indivisible, or ‘rela-
12. Vivian Sobchack, “The Scene of the Screen:
tively indivisible,’ in other words, they are not
Towards a Phenomenology of Cinematic and Elec-
divisible above or below a certain threshold, they can-
tronic Presence,” Post-Script 10 (1990): 56. Cited in
not increase or diminish without changing their
Bukatman, Terminal Identity, 108.
nature.” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thou-
13. Viktor Shklovsky, “Theory of Prose,” (1921) cited sand Plateaus (Minneapolis, MN: University of Min-
by Manfredo Tafuri in “The Dialectics of the Avant- nesota Press, 1988), 30–1.
Garde: Piranesi and Eisenstein,” Oppositions 11
(winter 1977): 79.
Dream house, 1996
 A Capacity for Endlessness

BEN VAN BERKEL AND CAROLINE BOS

O F T E N , I N O R D E R to understand our ambitions and secret desires, we revert

to history—and if we don’t, others will do it for us, pointing out which archi-
tects of the past were already engaged in the subjects that intrigue us now. In
this individuated approach to history Frederick Kiesler has achieved a special
significance in recent years. A new sympathy has emerged for the hopeless
enormity of his architectural ambition, and the distressing contrast it makes
with what he managed to produce. Craggy surfaces and rickety constructions
serve as the improvised envelopes of the most grandiose spatial intentions. But
even as we slowly learn to read those atrophied exterior crusts as topological
mappings, it remains the effort to create a supreme spatiality within his build-
ings that evokes an affinity with contemporary architecture.
Others in history have impressed later architects with their
advanced spatial imaginations; in the 1 9 7 0s and 1 9 8 0s Piranesi fulfilled
the role of unexpectedly topical precursor. The renewed interest in Piranesi’s
 Ethnological Museum, Geneva, 1996

drawings at that time announced a growing fascination with more complex

architectural space, providing an indirect indication of the end of modernism.
Reintroducing Piranesi meant that space was again shown to be subject to evo-
lution, expansion, inversion, and other contortions and manipulations that
went beyond the generic space that was the ultimate achievement and ideal of
modernist architecture.
Like Piranesi’s drawings, Kiesler’s work contains an additional
significance because it is mostly unrealized, so that nothing stands in the way
BEN VAN BERKEL AND CAROLINE BOS

of the magnanimity of its vision. But Kiesler also confronts contemporary

architecture with something else; an idea of endlessness that amounts to a fully
saturated spatiality, if such a condition can be imagined. While the full extent
of Kiesler’s spatial aspirations is unknowable, the computational techniques
now at our disposal enable the deepest understanding of Kiesler ever possible.
The tantalizing new spatial conditions suggested on every computer screen
result in a general familiarity with the potential of a multidimensional spatial
experience. Generic space—which used to be an expression of the sum of spa-
tial conceptualization—seems rigid, static, and limited compared with the
258
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A CAPACITY FOR ENDLESSNESS

potential of spatial arrangements that follow the diving, swooping, zooming,
slicing, folding motions that take place on computer screens. Special effects in
films, silly cartoons, even screen-savers express a delight in explorative spatial
conditions, leading to a rapid increase in the capacity for spatial conceptualiza-
tion that architecture should absorb.
The first of three recent projects that we would like to present in
this context and that engage in an experimental, expansive spatiality, is the
competition entry for the anthropological museum of Geneva. The museum
revolves around seven deep light wells that integrate the constructive, pro-
grammatic, infrastructural, lighting, and organizational aspects of the building.
Analogous to pyramids, the concrete shafts simulate monoliths, extending
from the ground plane like reliefs emerging from the desert. Within the mass
of accumulated material, space is contained. The structure generates rooms
without ceilings, rooms with sloping walls. The distribution of the program
follows the structure of the wells, winding its way along the sloping walls of
the shafts over three floor levels. In an architectural ensemble of this sort there
is no structural core around which programmatic and routing properties fly.
Routing and the distribution of the program organize the substance and con-
struction in one integral gesture, enabling new spatial identities.
Our entry for the Cologne Diözesan Museum was developed
simultaneously with the Geneva competition. Here too the ground plane
forms an essential basis for the project, although it is materially disconnected
from an extension which hovers above the ruins of a cathedral. Our proposal to
occupy the ruins and create a free plaza is a reversal of the condition of the past
thirty years or so, and entails the completion of the block, thereby generating
new relations within the surrounding area.
Materially and organizationally, the model for the museum is
basalt lava that has solidified around pockets of air, voids organizing the field.
In the evolution of the site a pattern was recognized, and this became the basis
for a grid with four foundation points for the new construction. The spaces in
between the four points hover beneath the structural roof, allowing for a free
division of space in between the ruins and the roof.
 Cologne Diözesan Museum, 1996

The voids take the form of light shafts dropping from the roof
and niches rising up from the ruins. The volumetric wrapping of these two ele-
ments creates the museum envelope, which consists of a variety of tightly
BEN VAN BERKEL AND CAROLINE BOS

interwoven spaces with different light sources, different heights and sizes, dif-
ferent organizations, but overlapping qualities. Vitrine becomes wall, light
shaft becomes floor—views, voids, outside/inside spaces tend to ambiguity.
The condition of overlapping qualities is intrinsic to the project’s conception
as one porous volume, differentiated, yet homogeneous.
An image that sums up the contemporary acceptance of the
simultaneous existence of different identities within one cohesive organization
is that of the manimal. As a computer image of the hybridization of a lion, a
snake, and a human, this work provides another example of the capacity of
260
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A CAPACITY FOR ENDLESSNESS

Dream House, 1996

endlessness. The manimal is so loose in its identity that it does not divulge any
information about its original component parts. All traces of the previous
identities have been seamlessly absorbed within the image. Architecturally, the
manimal could be read as an amalgamation of several different structures that
generate a new notion of scale and identity. The process that generates the
image is potentially as interesting as its effect. The seamless, decontextualizing,
dehistoricizing combination of discordant systems of information can be
instrumentalized architecturally. As an effect, the image makes you wonder
how something like this would translate spatially. As a technique, it excites
because it has been produced in a manner that is radically different from all
pictorial techniques that have been employed by artists before.
Research, technique, and effect are the three steps that are central
to architecture. When the imagination is stimulated by something exterior to
architecture, techniques will be developed to realize that effect in architectural
substance. The capacity for endlessness that we recognize in Kiesler and in the
manimal, we search to apply to the way in which a structure could incorporate
all aspects of a building—time, the distribution of the program, construction—
in one single gesture. The third project that we would like to cite in this
 context is the Dream House in Berlin, which has a column-free structure
unfolding in a single surface organization. The concept of the Dream House is
to achieve a fluid continuity between landscape and interior. This is achieved
by introducing diagonal space, thereby blurring transitional zones. The spaces
between inside and outside, or the representation of horizontal and vertical
spaces, are dissolved diagonally.
The smooth transition between spaces is the result of the diago-
nal organization of function and infrastructure; the living room flows out into
the garden in the same way as the garden extends into the living room. Stairs
become ramps and the ramps merge with the landscape. The floor plans are
expressed as undulating layers rather than planar surfaces so that the horizon
and variations in light levels can be perceived differently and endlessly
throughout the house. The core of the house is not formed by a staircase, but
by a void, around which layers of spaces wrap themselves. The central posi-
tioning of the void enables light penetration into the core of the house, and
allows the landscape to enter the rooms. The inclusiveness of the architectural
organization complies with a notion of consistency, within which fragmenta-
tion and difference occur. This is in contrast to an architecture that is based on
techniques of fragmentation and collage, which imply incoherence in the orga-
nization itself.
The freedom to assume different identities is an achievement of
the condition of endlessness. Almost as expressively as in his projects, Kiesler’s
capacity for endlessness is conveyed in a series of photographs in which he
BEN VAN BERKEL AND CAROLINE BOS

takes on another persona: Kiesler as a Surrealist, as a minotaur, as Willem de

Kooning, as a chess player, as Mies van der Rohe. These are just some of his
incarnations. The message that can be read in those photographs is: imagine,
invent, expand, pretend. With this variety of poses, the contemporary reading
of Kiesler is that of multiplicities constituting a cohesive identity. For us, the
whole Kiesler is found in this wide-ranging series of Kieslers. Kiesler-as-
Kiesler is a manifold, generating, proliferating and projecting an infinite mea-
sure of possible identities.

262
Dream house, 1996
 freshH2O eXPO

NOX/LARS SPUYBROEK

E X P O ( 1 9 9 3 – 9 7 ) is a water pavilion and interactive installation

F R E S H H 2O

created for WaterLand Neeltje Jans. It is the result of a private/public partner-

ship with the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Man-
agement, and is located in Zeeland, in the southwest of the Netherlands.
It is a turbulent alloy of the hard and the weak, of human flesh, of
concrete and metal, of interactive electronics and water. A complete fusion of
body, environment, and technology. The design was based on the metastable
aggregation of architecture and information. The form itself is shaped by the
fluid deformation of fourteen ellipses spaced over a length of more than 6 5
yards. Inside the building, which has no horizontal floors and no external rela-
tion to the horizon, walking becomes akin to falling. The deformation of the
object extends to the constant metamorphosis of the environment, which
responds interactively to visitors through a variety of sensors that register the
constant reshaping of the human body.
 EDIT SP(L)INE: AN INTERACTIVE

INSTALLATION FOR FRESHH2O EXPO

This building does not “contain” an exhibition in the classic

sense, nor does it have a program.
Next to non-interactive events—ice, spraying mist, water on the
floors, rain, and an enormous well—there are seventeen sensors connecting
different visitor actions to fluidity. Light sensors for crowds, touch sensors for
individuals, and pulling sensors for groups create, respectively, waves, ripples,
and blobs in real-time projections and sound manipulations.
267

FRESHH20 EXPO
top left: Hamarikyu Garden

top right: Fish Market

middle left: JR apartment house

middle right: Shimbashi Station-sandwich man

bottom: World Trade Center

 IO_DENCIES

KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH

10_DENCIES EXPLORES THE possibilities of intervening and acting in com-

plex urban processes taking place in distributed and networked environments.
The project looks at urban environments, analyzes the forces present in partic-
ular urban situations, and offers experimental interfaces for dealing with these
force fields. The aim, however, is not to develop advanced tools for architec-
tural and urban design, but to create events through which it becomes possible
to rethink urban planning and construction. 10_DENCIES challenges the
potentials that digital technologies might offer toward connective, participa-
tory models of planning processes and of public agency.
In Tokyo, the central Shimbashi area was analyzed in collabora-
tion with local architects. Several “zones of intensities” were selected. In these
zones, qualities of urban movement (architectural, traffic, human, information,
economic) were distinguished. These movements and flows and their mutual
interferences are represented by dynamic particle flows that can be observed
 above left: Hinode Passenger Terminal opposite, top: Shimbashi Station, economic qualities

above right: Hinode Passenger Terminal, remote attractor opposite, bottom: Ginza Shopping Center

and manipulated through an Internet interface. In a Java Applet users can de-
ploy a series of specially designed movement attractors, each of which has a
different function in manipulating or modifying those processes. These are
functions like: confirming, opposing, drifting, confusing, repulsing, organizing,
deleting, merging, weakening. Participants can collaboratively develop hypo-
thetical urban dynamics. As soon as one participant starts working on and
modifying the urban profile by changing the particle streams with movement
attractors, a search engine in the background starts looking for other partici-
pants with similar manipulation interests and connects to them. If another
participant is found, the data movements can be changed collaboratively; they
can be made stronger, weaker, more turbulent, denser, and so forth.
Streams of urban movement can shift between dynamic clusters
of participants. Participants can develop new processes or react to already
existing, ongoing ones. The streams of the manipulated movements are visual-
KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH

ized in the activated segment of each participant, however, each participant

will work on and experience a singular and different segment. The software
modules allow for the variation and transformation of data by connective
activities. This is seen as an approach to a discursive object, where aesthetic
and action-oriented interests occupy and reappropriate urban sites.
270
271

IO_DENCIES
 KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH

272
 273

IO_DENCIES
10_DENCIES creates a topological cut through the heteroge-
neous assemblage of physical spaces, data environments, urban imaginations,
connective agencies, and individual experiences. It forms a model for the com-
plex way in which network topologies will have to be questioned.

above: Small, hand-held devices that display visual and textual notations of the Shimbashi area.

opposite, top: Energetic metallic field of Internet Applets, sounds, and strobe lights.

opposite, bottom: Data about physical concentrations in the exhibition space

was used to influence certain profiles in the Java Applet.

Xavier Calderon, New (Z)one, 1995.
 Meshworks, Hierarchies,

and Interfaces

MANUEL DE LANDA

THE WORLD OF interface design is undergoing dramatic changes that promise

to rival those brought about by the use of the point-and-click graphical inter-
faces popularized by the Macintosh in the early 1 9 8 0s. The new concepts
and metaphors that are aiming to replace the familiar desktop metaphor all
revolve around the notion of semiautonomous, semi-intelligent software
agents. To be sure, different researchers and commercial companies have diver-
gent conceptions of what these agents should be capable of, and how they
should interact with computer users. But whether one aims to give these soft-
ware creatures the ability to learn about the user’s habits, as in the noncom-
mercial research performed at MIT autonomous agents group, or to endow
them with the
ability to perform transactions in the user’s name, as in the commercial prod-
ucts pioneered by General Magic, the basic thrust seems to be in the direction
of giving software programs more autonomy in their decision-making
 capabilities.
For a philosopher there are several interesting issues involved in
this new interface paradigm. The first one has to do with the history of the soft-
ware infrastructure that has made this proliferation of agents possible. From the
point of view of the conceptual history of software, the creation of worlds pop-
ulated by semiautonomous virtual creatures, as well as the more familiar world
of mice, windows, and pull-down menus, has been made possible by certain
advances in programming language design. Specifically, programming lan-
guages needed to be transformed from their historically rigid hierarchies to the
more flexible and decentralized structures that they have gradually adopted as
they have become more “object-oriented.” One useful way to picture this trans-
formation is as a migration of control from a master program (which contains
the general task to be performed) to the software modules that perform all of
the individual tasks. Indeed, to grasp just what is at stake in this dispersal of
control, I find it useful to view this change as a part of a larger migration of con-
trol from the human body first to the hardware of the machine, then to the soft-
ware, then to the data, and finally to the world outside the machine.
The first part of this migration, when control of machine-aided
processes moved from the human body to hardware, may be said to have taken
place in the eighteenth century when a series of inventors and builders of
automata created the elements that later came together in the loom invented
by Joseph Marie Jacquard, a machine that automated some of the tasks
involved in weaving patterns in textiles. The Jacquard loom used a primitive
form of software in which holes punched into cards were coded to some of the
operations in the creation of patterned designs.1 This software, however, con-
tained only data and not control structures. In other words, all that was coded
in the punched cards was the patterns to be weaved and not any directions to
alter the reading of the cards or the performance of the operations, such as the
MANUEL DE LANDA

lifting of the warp threads. The machine’s hardware component “read” the
cards and translated the data into the motion in which control of the process
resided. Textile workers at the time were fully aware that they had lost some
control to Jacquard’s loom, and, on several occasions, they manifested their
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MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES, AND INTERFACES

outrage by destroying the machines.
Though the idea of coding data into punched cards spread slowly
during the 1 8 0 0s, by the beginning of the twentieth century it had found its
way into computing machinery, first in the tabulators used by Herman Hol-
lerith to process the 1 8 9 0 United States census, then into other tabulators
and calculators. In all these cases control remained in the machine’s hardware.
Even the first modern computer, the imaginary computer created by Alan Tur-
ing in the 1 9 3 0s, still kept control in the hardware, the scanning head of the
Turing machine: the tape that his fictional machine scanned held nothing but
data. But this abstract computer already had the seed of the next step, since, as
Turing himself understood, the actions of the scanning head could themselves
be represented by a table of behavior, and the table itself could be coded into
the tape. Although people may not have realized it at the time, the coding of
both numbers and operations in side by side digits on tape was the beginning
2
of computer software as we know it. In the 1 9 5 0s Turing created the notion
of a subroutine, that is, the notion that the tasks that a computer must perform
could be embodied in separate subprograms all controlled by a master program
residing on tape. With this, the migration of control from hardware to soft-
ware became fully realized, and from then on computer hardware became an
abstract mesh of logical gates, its operations fully controlled by software.
The next step in this migration took place when control of a
given computational process moved from the software to the very data that the
software operates on. For as long as computer languages such as Fortran or
Pascal dominated the computer industry, control remained hierarchically
embedded in the software. A master program would surrender control to a
subroutine whenever that subtask needed to be performed, and the subroutine
could itself then pass control to an even more basic subroutine. But the
moment the specific task was completed, control would revert back up
the hierarchy until it reached the master program again. Although this
arrangement remained satisfactory for many years—and indeed many com-
puter programs are still written that way—more flexible schemes were needed
for some specific, and at the time, esoteric applications of computers, mostly in
 the field of artificial intelligence.
Trying to build a robot using a hierarchy of subroutines meant
that researchers had to completely foresee all the tasks that a robot would need
to do and then centralize all decision-making into a master program. But this,
of course, would strongly limit the responsiveness of the robot to events occur-
ring in its surroundings, particularly if those events diverged from the predic-
tions made by the programmers. One solution to this was to decentralize
control. The basic tasks that a robot had to perform were still coded into pro-
grams, but unlike subroutines these programs were not commanded into
action by a master program. Instead, these programs were given some auton-
omy and the ability to scan the database on their own. Whenever they found a
specific pattern in the data they would perform whatever task they were sup-
posed to do. In a very real sense, it was now the data itself that controlled the
process. And, more importantly, if the database was connected to the outside
world via sensors so that patterns of data reflected events outside the robot,
then the world itself was controlling the computational process, and it was this
that gave the robot a degree of responsiveness to its surroundings.
Thus, machines went from being hardware-driven to being soft-
ware-driven, data-driven, and finally event-driven. The typical Macintosh
computer is indeed an event-driven machine even if the class of real-world
events that it is responsive to is very limited, including only events happening
to the mouse (such as position changes and clickings) as well as to other input
devices. But regardless of the narrow class of events that personal computers
are responsive to, it is in these events that much of the control of the processes
now resides. Hence, behind the innovative use of windows, icons, menus, and
the other familiar elements of graphical interfaces, there is a deep conceptual
shift in the location of control embodied in object-oriented languages. Even
the new interface designs based on semiautonomous agents were made possi-
MANUEL DE LANDA

ble by this decentralization of control. Indeed, simplifying a little, we may say

that the new worlds of agents, whether those that inhabit computer screens or,
more generally, those that inhabit any kind of virtual environment (such as
those used in artificial life), have been the result of pushing the trend away
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MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES, AND INTERFACES

from software command hierarchies ever further.
The distinction between centralized and decentralized control of
given processes has come to occupy center stage in many different contempo-
rary philosophies. Economist and artificial intelligence guru Herbert Simon
views bureaucracies and markets as the human institutions that best embody
3
these two conceptions of control. Hierarchical institutions are the easiest
ones to analyze, since much of what happens within a bureaucracy in planned
by someone of higher rank, and the hierarchy as a whole has goals and behaves
in ways that are consistent with those goals. Markets, on the other hand, are
tricky. Indeed, the term “market” needs to be used with care because it has been
greatly abused over the last century by theorists on both the left and the right.
As Simon remarks, the term does not refer to the world of corporations,
whether monopolies or oligopolies, since in these commercial institutions
decision-making is highly centralized, and prices are set by command.
Indeed the sense of the term can be limited even more to refer
exclusively to those gatherings of people at a predefined place in town, and not
to a dispersed set of consumers catered to by a system of middlemen (as when
one speaks of the “market” for personal computers). The reason for this is that,
as historian Fernand Braudel has made clear, it is only in markets in this true
sense that we have any idea of what the dynamics of price formation are. In
other words, it is only in peasant and small town markets that decentralized
decision-making leads to prices setting themselves up in a way that we can
understand. In any other type of market economists simply assume that supply
and demand connect to each other in a functional way, but they do not give us
any specific dynamics through which this connection is effected.4 Moreover,
unlike the idealized version of markets guided by an “invisible hand” to achieve
an optimal allocation of resources, real markets are not in any sense optimal.
Indeed, like most decentralized, self-organized structures, they are not hierar-
chical, they have no goals, and they grow and develop mostly by drift.5
Herbert Simon’s distinction between command hierarchies and
markets may turn out to be a special case of a more general dichotomy. In the
view of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, more abstract classes,
 which they call strata and self-consistent aggregates (or trees and rhizomes), are
defined not so much by the locus of control as by the nature of elements that are
connected together. Strata are composed of homogenous elements, whereas
6
self-consistent aggregates articulate heterogeneous elements. For example, a
military hierarchy sorts people into internally homogenous ranks before joining
them together through a chain of command. Markets, on the other hand, allow
for a set of heterogeneous needs and offers to be articulated through the price
mechanism without reducing diversity. In biology, species are an example of
strata, particularly if selection pressures have operated unobstructed for long
periods of time, allowing the homogenization of the species’ gene pool. On the
other hand, ecosystems are examples of self-consistent aggregates, since they
link together into complex food webs a wide variety of animals and plants,
without reducing their heterogeneity. I have developed this theory in more
detail elsewhere, but for our purposes here let’s simply keep the idea that besides
centralization and decentralization of control, what defines these two types of
structure is the homogeneity or heterogeneity of their composing elements.
As both Simon and Deleuze and Guattari emphasize, the dicho-
tomy between bureaucracies and markets, between hierarchies and meshworks,
should be understood in purely relative terms. In the first place, in reality it is
hard to find pure cases of these two structures: even the most goal-oriented
organization will still show some drift in its growth and development, and
most markets, even in small towns, contain some hierarchical elements, even if
this is just a local wholesaler who manipulates prices by dumping (or with-
drawing) large amounts of a product on (or from) the market. Moreover, hier-
archies give rise to meshworks and meshworks to hierarchies. Thus, when
several bureaucracies coexist (governmental, academic, ecclesiastic) in the
absence of a superhierarchy to coordinate their interactions, the whole set of
institutions will tend to form a meshwork of hierarchies, articulated mostly
MANUEL DE LANDA

through local and temporary links. Similarly, as local markets grow in size, as
in those gigantic fairs that have taken place periodically since the Middle
Ages, they give rise to commercial hierarchies, with a money market on top, a
luxury goods market beneath and, after several layers, a grain market at the
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MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES, AND INTERFACES

bottom. A real society, then, is made of complex and changing mixtures of
these two types of structure, and only in a few cases will it be easy to decide to
what type a given institution belongs.
A similar point may be made about the worlds inhabited by soft-
ware agents. The Internet, to take the clearest example first, is a meshwork that
grew mostly by drift. No one planned either the extent or the direction of its
development, and indeed, no one is in charge of it even today. The Internet, or
rather its predecessor, the Arpanet, acquired its decentralized structure because
of the needs of the U.S. military for a command and communications infra-
structure that would be capable of surviving a nuclear attack. As analysts from
the Rand Corporation made clear, only if the routing of the messages was per-
formed without the need for a central computer, could bottlenecks and delays
be avoided, and, more importantly, could the meshwork put itself back
together once a portion of it had been vaporized in a nuclear attack. But on the
Internet only the decision-making behind routing is of the meshwork type.
Decision-making regarding its two main resources, computer (or CPU) time
and memory, is still hierarchical.
Schemes to decentralize these aspects do exist, as in Drexler’s
Agoric Systems, where the messages that flow through the meshwork have
become autonomous agents capable of trading among themselves both memory
and CPU time.7 The creation by General Magic of its Teletext operating sys-
tem, and of agents able to perform transactions on behalf of users, is one of the
first real-life steps in the direction of a true decentralization of resources. But in
the meanwhile, the Internet will remain a hybrid of meshwork and hierarchy
components, and the imminent entry of large corporations into the network
business may in fact increase the number of command components in its mix.
These ideas are today being hotly debated in the field of interface
design. The general consensus is that interfaces must become more intelligent
to be able to guide users in the tapping of computer resources; both the infor-
mational wealth of the Internet and ever more elaborate software applications.
But if the debaters agree that interfaces must become smarter, and even that
this intelligence will be embodied in agents, they disagree on how the agents
 should acquire their new capabilities. The debate pits two different traditions
of artificial intelligence (AI) against each other: symbolic AI, in which hierar-
chical components predominate, against behavioral AI, where the meshwork
elements are dominant. Basically, while in the former discipline one attempts
to endow machines with intelligence by depositing a homogenous set of rules
and symbols into a robot’s brain, in the latter one attempts to achieve intelli-
gent behavior from the interactions of a few simple task-specific modules in the
robot’s head and the heterogeneous affordances of its environment. Thus, to
build a robot that walks around a room, the first approach would give the robot
a map of the room together with the ability to reason about possible walking
scenarios in that model of the room. The second approach, on the other hand,
endows the robot with a much simpler set of abilities, embodied in modules
that perform simple tasks—such as collision-avoidance—and walking-around-
the-room behavior emerges from the interactions of these modules and the
8
obstacles and openings that the real room affords the robot as it moves.
Translated to the case of interface agents, for example a personal
assistant in charge of helping a user understand the complexities of a particu-
lar software application, a symbolic AI program would attempt to create a
model of the application as well as a model of the working environment,
including a model of an idealized user, and then make these models available
in the form of rules or other symbols to the agent. Behavioral AI, on the other
hand, gives the agent only the ability to detect patterns of behavior in the
actual user, and to interact with the user in different ways so as to learn not
only from his or her actual behavior, but also from feedback that the user gives
it. For example, the agent in question would be constantly looking over the
user’s shoulder, keeping track of whatever regular or repetitive patterns it
observes. It would then attempt to establish statistical correlations between
pairs of actions that tend to occur together. At some point the agent would
MANUEL DE LANDA

suggest to the user the possibility of automating these actions; that is, that
whenever the first occurs, the second should be automatically performed.
Whether the user accepts or refuses, this gives feedback to the agent. The
agent may also solicit feedback directly, and the user teach the agent by giving
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MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES, AND INTERFACES

some hypothetical examples.9
In terms of the location of control, there is very little difference
between the agents, and in this sense the two approaches are equally decentral-
ized. The rules that symbolic AI would put in the agents head, most likely
derived from interviews of users and programmers by a “knowledge engineer,”
are independent software objects. Indeed, in one of the most widely used pro-
gramming languages in this kind of approach (called a “production system”)
the individual rules have even more of a meshwork structure than many
object-oriented systems that still cling to a hierarchy of objects. But in terms of
the overall human-machine system, the approach of symbolic AI is much more
hierarchical. In particular, by assuming the existence of an ideal user, with
homogenous and unchanging habits, and of a workplace where all users are
similar, agents created by this approach are not only less adaptive and more
commanding, but they themselves promote homogeneity in their environ-
ment. The second class of agents, on the other hand, are not only sensitive to
heterogeneities, since they adapt to individual users and change as the habits of
their users change, but they promote heterogeneity in the work place by not
subordinating every user to the demands of an idealized model.
One drawback to the approach of behavioral AI is that, given
that the agent has very little knowledge at the beginning of a relationship with
a user, it will be of little assistance until it learns about his or her habits. Also,
since the agent can only learn about situations that have occurred in the past, it
will be of little help when the user encounters new problems. One possible
solution, is to increase the amount of meshwork in the mix and allow agents
from different users to interact with each other in a decentralized way.1 0 Thus,
when a new agent begins a relation with a user, it can consult with other agents
and speed up the learning process, assuming that is, that what other agents
have learned is applicable to the new user. This, of course, will depend on the
existence of some homogeneity of habits, but at least it does not assume a com-
plete homogenous situation from the outset, an assumption that in turn pro-
motes further uniformity. Moreover, endowing agents with a static model of
 the users makes them unable to cope with novel situations. This is also a prob-
lem in the behavioral AI approach, but in this model agents may aid one
another in coping with novelty. Knowledge gained in one part of the work-
place can be shared, and new knowledge may be generated out of the interac-
tions among agents. In effect, a dynamic model of the workplace would be
constantly generated and improved by the collective of agents in a decentral-
ized way, instead of each one being a replica of each other, and operating on
the basis of a static, centrally created, model.
The degree of hierarchical and homogenizing components in a
given interface is a question that affects more than just events taking place on
the computer’s screen. In particular, the very structure of the workplace and the
relative status of humans and machines are at stake. Western societies have
undergone at least two centuries of homogenization, of which the most visible
elements are the assembly-line and related mass production techniques whose
overall thrust has been to let machines discipline and control humans. In this
circumstance, the arrival of the personal computer was a welcome antidote to
the development of increasingly more centralized computer machinery, such as
systems of numerical control in factories. But this is hardly a victory. After two
hundred years of constant homogenization, working skills have been homoge-
nized via routinization and Taylorization, building materials have been given
constant properties, the gene pools of our domestic species homogenized
through breeding, and our languages made uniform through standardization.
The solution to this is not simply to begin adding meshwork
components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hier-
archies into villains and meshworks into heroes. This is because they are con-
stantly turning into one another, because in real life we find only mixtures and
hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory
alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain standardizations—say, of
MANUEL DE LANDA

electric outlet designs or of data-structures traveling through the Internet—

may actually turn out to promote heterogenization, in terms of the appliances
that may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a com-
mon data structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence
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MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES, AND INTERFACES

of increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has
been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more
heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one
level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring ethnic
communities. But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity, but
diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect solution.
After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places where we do
not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind of property
that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions. Hence, demonizing
centralization and glorifying decentralization as the solution to all our prob-
lems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude toward the question
of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity of reality itself seems
to call for. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, never believe that a meshwork
11
will suffice to save us.

NOTES

1. Abbot Payson Usher, “The Textile Industry, Computation, ed. Bernardo Huberman (Amsterdam:
1750–1830,” in Technology in Western Civilization, North-Holland, 1988).
vol. 1, ed. Melvin Kranzberg and Carrol W. Pursell
8 Pattie Maes, “Behavior-Based Artificial Intelli-
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 243.
gence,” in Jean-Arcady Meyer, Herbert L. Roitblat,
2. Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (New and Stewart W. Wilson, From Animals to Animats, vol.
York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), ch. 2. 2 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1993), 3.

3. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial 9. Pattie Maes and Robyn Kozierok, “Learning Inter-
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 43. face Agents,” in Proceedings of AAAI ‘93 Conference
(Seattle, WA: AAAI Press, 1993), 459–65.
4. Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce (New
York: Harper & Row, 1986), ch. 1. 10. Yezdi Lashari, Max Metral, and Pattie Maes, “Col-
laborative Interface Agents,” in Proceedings of 12th
5. Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela,
National Conference on AI (Seattle, WA: AAAI Press,
The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of
1994), 444–9.
Human Understanding (Boston: Shambhala, Boston
1992), 47, 115. 11. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 500.
Their remark is framed in terms of “smooth spaces”
6. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand
but it may be argued that this is just another term for
Plateaus (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
meshworks.
Press, 1987), 335.

7. M. S. Miller and K. E. Drexler, “Markets and Com-

putation: Agoric Open Systems,” in The Ecology of
 The Difference-Scape

ASYMPTOTE

IN R E L A T I O N T O architectural and spatial practices the use of digital tech-

nologies posits a number of interesting questions regarding notions of futility,

conceptual artifice, and representation. Even if we think of the computer as a
(neutral) tool embedded into the complex procedures of design, it is still capa-
ble of dismantling our conventional modes of making, reading, writing, com-
municating, and, inevitably, comprehending. Digital technologies, themselves
being the foundation of computing, the Web, the mass media, and a vast array
of other so-called advances are no less tools of expression and form-givers to
desires as they are sociopolitical instruments. The digital machine makes it
possible to operate simultaneously on infinite scales of meaning formation.
Within the digital machine we strive to be simultaneously located within and
dislocated from a community, and through the digital interfaces we manufac-
ture, perception is now perpetually in a state of flux where the only dominant
landscape is one of difference.
 ASYMPTOTE

288
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THE DIFFERENCE-SCAPE
It is ironic that the prospect of community on such a large scale
(where cultural boundaries are physically erased) is more often than not
accompanied by an attempted erasure of cultural identity. In the end, however,
despite the apparent common ground shared by diverse factions, an opportu-
nity is provided for deciphering precisely the opposite. For instance, through a
reading of one culture’s misappropriations of another, it is actually possible that
one could begin to measure such (spatial) difference. A good example of this is
Japan’s sense of its own cultural and iconographic makeup as a mediated inflec-
tion of American and Western European pop culture. Elvis, Marilyn, Super-
man, Nike, Tin Tin, and the like are all iconographic assemblies absorbed,
reworked, and distributed globally in various forms and embodiments ranging
from Anime to bullet trains. The icons that comprise this new landscape of
difference are essentially mediated reflexes of similarity and diversification
(constructs that are mirrored endlessly over computer networks, home pages,
televised imagery, advertising campaigns).
The notion of modernity that emerged from postwar Western
Europe called for a fabricated perfection, instigated in part from a obsessive
interest in hygiene, homogeneity, and the relentless export of idealism. Much
in the same manner that the international style in architectural and design
venues was perfectly engineered, so are the hysteria and propaganda that her-
ald the Web as a utopian entity. The Web is being peddled as a place where we
are all happily plugged-in with complete and uncensored access to all informa-
tion. The utopian communities that are seemingly latent exist on the fringes,
providing ability to access goods, sex, news, lifestyles and other forms of desire.
It, too, is proposed as a hygienic, pristine, open, and free terrain for all those
with an access code. And all this is ostensibly carried out without censorship,
persecution, or fear of reprisal. A veritable melting pot for a new humanity, the
communal farm without the sweat, the absolute vacation without the trouble.
Ultimately, the reality that belies the digital machine is that no
matter how entrenched in our daily lives it becomes, it will never achieve com-
plete familiarity. The distance that the electrosphere has to us will always be a
chasm. This impossibility of dominance is perhaps where the most potential
lies for new spatial entities that are now only beginning to surface.
 ASYMPTOTE

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THE DIFFERENCE-SCAPE
Bernard Cache, Bistro Table, 1997.
 Framing the Fold: Furniture,

Architecture, Geography,

and the Pursuit of the Virtual

BERNARD CACHE

INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL SPEAKS

The following discussion between Michael Speaks and Bernard Cache took place in
New York City in August, 1 9 9 4.

MICHAEL SPEAKS: One of the things that interests me most

about your work is its connection to the work of Gilles Deleuze.
What is striking about the relationship between your furniture
production and Deleuze’s philosophical production is that you
started out to do architecture and became dissatisfied with archi-
tecture in a way that one imagines Deleuze became dissatisfied
with philosophy. Deleuze is a philosopher, trained as a philoso-
pher, but he does philosophy in a different way—he draws con-
ceptual lines. You were trained as an architect and yet you don’t
do architecture in a traditional kind of way. There seems to me to
be parallels between the way you generate furniture forms and
 the way Deleuze generates philosophical forms. Can you say
something about your personal relationship with Gilles Deleuze?

BERNARD CACHE: I have met him only a few times, but to me Deleuze is a
respiration, a breath. Deleuze wrote some things about a famous French actor,
Alain Cuny, and he talked a lot about his voice. But Deleuze is not even a
voice; he is, I think, a respiration, and that’s why it is difficult to catch him and
give a definition to what he is doing. When I read him, I can hear him breath-
ing. For me anything he has written is really enjoyable because it puts me in
touch with a certain way of feeling.

MS: How would you say Deleuze’s way of doing philosophy is

different from what we understand to be traditional philosophy.

BC: I think that Deleuze was able to catch the blow from traditional philoso-
phy, something like the wind of Spinoza, or the pneuma of the Stoics.

MS: Can you explain that?

BERNARD CACHE INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL SPEAKS

BC: We have a very impoverished idea of philosophy when we think only of the
academies. Deleuze understands philosophy as a living thing. Most people
think that intellectuals are cut-off from life. But there is a real, life affirming
hollow in philosophy, and Deleuze was able to catch the wind that resides there.

M S : For most North American intellectuals who are interested

in the work of Deleuze, and particularly those of my genera-

tion—aged twenty-five to thirty-five—what has been important
about his thought is that it is systematic and rigorous, and yet it’s
not scholarly. It moves, it lives, it is something that you can do
things with. It works. For Deleuze philosophy is a way of pro-
ducing that obviously is not the way one normally understands
philosophy.
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BC: Deleuze’s courses were simply called “Explications.” Every year you had
“Text Explanations.” It was a very funny way of avoiding the pretense of being
overly academic, of writing new things without making a show of it. He’d just
say, “Let’s explain this.”

MS: In a number of works that we know here in this country,

The Fold and What is Philosophy, written with Félix Guattari,
Deleuze mentions some of your own work as important to his
understanding of the concept of the fold. Could you say some-
thing about the way in which you first came to be involved with
Deleuze and his thought.

BC: One day I was just browsing around in a seminar—I didn’t even know
Deleuze—and I began to hear his voice. The way he was dealing with things
just amazed me. I thought, “this is philosophy to me.” It was obvious. Deleuze
really had a very sensitive touch.

MS: Did this understanding of philosophy make sense to you

because of or in spite of your architectural training?

BC: When I was young, philosophy seemed the most difficult thing to study. I
did not dare study philosophy after my baccalaureate. Then I started to do
architecture. It was really by way of the theory of architecture I was taught in
school that I came in contact with philosophy; it was bad philosophy, of
course, and not even interesting with respect to architecture. Most of the peo-
ple doing theory of architecture are not involved in producing drawings. When
you start studying architecture, you first exchange your vision of the things you
already know; as in any place, you are already in the middle, just as you can be
in the middle of a landscape, which also has a relationship to architecture. So
that’s the first thing. Then you think, “How would I design it? How would I
put something in it?” You must really have a relationship to the lines that need
to be drawn for architecture, a feeling for how these lines connect with other
 lines, with philosophy, for example. Deleuze draws lines in philosophy, and
those lines for me were really important.

MS: In the 1 9 8 8 deconstructivist exhibition at the Museum of

Modern Art in New York, the philosophical production of
Jacques Derrida was used as a selling point for a new style that
came to be known as “deconstructivism.” Whether Derrida’s
work was read and understood by this group of architects, his
philosophical production was used to give substance to the archi-
tecture on display. Now there are all kinds of reasons for that—
some are interesting and some aren’t—but the point is that
within contemporary architecture Derrida’s work has been very
important. Recently, however, there has been a shift in interest
away from Derrida’s work and toward Gilles Deleuze’s. Many of
the architects who have become interested in Deleuze have done
so for reasons that seem not so philosophical. Derrida is inter-
ested in issues of representation, and in reading and writing; his
philosophical work might in fact be described as a practice of
reading and writing older texts and offering new readings of
BERNARD CACHE INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL SPEAKS

those. Similarly, deconstructivist architecture understands build-

ings as texts that are read and rewritten in built form. Deleuze’s
work is philosophically very different from that. Whereas Der-
rida reads and rewrites an existent tradition, Deleuze begins in
the middle and produces new things by way of a pragmatic-con-
structivism. Deleuze produces concepts as if they were forms or
as if they were new things in the world. Many architects, espe-
cially those interested in “the fold,” have simply represented
Deleuze’s concept of the fold in architectural form, and this
seems to me very un-Deleuzian. It strikes me that the relation-
ship between the way that Deleuze produces concepts and the
way that you produce furniture images is different from that.

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FRAMING THE FOLD

B C : What your question requires is a very close examination of the relationship

between what is writeable and what is visible. Michel Foucault has of course
written about this. Anyway, this question still puzzles me; certainly it is not an
easy one to answer. There is a way to think with images and so the problem is
not to represent that thinking; it is that thinking is already in the images them-
selves. I am very interested in the mathematician Roger Penrose, whose work
deals with the way we think, the way we create mathematics. He insists that at
the moment of discovery, mathematicians are thinking neither with formulae
nor with language, but instead they are thinking with images. The problem of
representation is one between things that are thought as language and things
that are reality, what we visually intend as reality—I mean objects that are visi-
ble. My problem—and it’s the way I deal with Deleuze’s philosophy—is that
part of the thinking is already images, so it’s just normal that they become visi-
ble in an object, and thus it is the nature of thinking that is puzzling in this.
Rather than the classical question of representation, I am instead interested in
the relation between language thinking and image thinking. In his books on
the cinema, for example, Deleuze does not criticize or make interpretations of
film directors; instead he classifies the various ways directors think with images,
and this is a very puzzling question. What is interesting even in the work of
someone like M. C. Escher is to see how he addresses the question of the limits
of the visible and how this can be compared with the limits of language.

M S : If, as you say in your book, Earth Moves: The Furnishing of

Territories, architecture is “the art of the frame,” what is the rela-

tionship between architecture and furniture? If architecture is the
art of the frame, then what is furniture?

BC: There are several ways to answer this question, but one has to do with
what it means to be an architect today. Given the current means of architec-
tural production—the way we produce buildings—it is perhaps easier to be an
architect in fields other than architecture, fields whose production is lighter
than buildings. For instance, producing photographs today is a very light way
 of practicing architecture. When I started to produce furniture, the first con-
nection I discovered between furniture and architecture was the problem of
how to frame the landscape. I can show you one of the models I made of the
landscape while I was studying architecture. Suddenly it occurred to me that
this model was a beautiful piece of furniture. I used plywood, and the relation-
ship between this object and the lines in the landscape was remarkable. When
you drill a curved surface in plywood, the lines that appear are the equivalent of
topographical lines. Plywood gives me a direct connection with what is our
usual representation of geographical forms. That was the beginning. After that
it was crucial to understand geography as what is exterior to architecture; and
as such geography remains outside the control of human beings. Imagine New
York as a perfect quasi-crystal or a quasi-frame that the buildings make visible.
All around I can feel it, as if I were living in a Sol LeWitt environment, and
the buildings are everywhere filling in parts of this crystal and making it visi-
ble. But here in New York very little geography remains. Thus what is impor-
tant in New York is to develop a new relation to this essential configuration of
images, the inflection. Today we must make our own geography at home
instead of having it outside in the city. As we sit here in New York, we are sur-
rounded by the crystal.
BERNARD CACHE INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL SPEAKS

MS: How does furniture differ from geography?

BC: Furniture is an unusual geography, but it’s our own personal geography.
It’s our landscape and that’s why I worked on models of waves, and became
attentive to the effect of the wind on the dunes.

M S : So if architecture is the frame itself and geography initially is

that which is outside the frame, geography becomes interior as

furniture images, which could be said to run the continuum from
the very personal to the geographical.

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FRAMING THE FOLD

BC: Furniture is what remains geographical in us, but it is more like the state
of the desert than a landscape dotted with little churches and little villages. In
the desert there is no frame to actualize identity; this landscape of dunes is also
an image very important for the English painter Francis Bacon.

MS: It’s a remarkable connection that you seem to have hap-

pened onto in material form—your use of plywood, I mean. It
seems accidental and yet that was maybe a moment of inflection.

BC: Yes, you are right that it’s an accident. I think there is no necessary con-
nection among philosophy, aesthetics, and mathematics. But suddenly you find
connections. They remain accidental but that’s precisely one of the additional
reasons why they are beautiful.

M S : Would you say that architecture actualizes a virtual image

that is the possibility of singularity.

BC: No, because there are several ways of organizing the relation of the vector.
Often architecture tends to isolate the inflection from the environment of vec-
tors, for instance the wind, the direction of the sun, and so on; these are the
concrete images of vectors all architects use in their daily practice. There are
two different kinds of architecture: one that selects the vector to make appear
an identity on the inflection; and another one, which on the contrary, tries to
isolate the inflection from any vector so that it remains a virtual singularity. But
of course there is always something that imposes itself on the inflection that
results in the disappearance of the virtual singularity.

MS: Is it not the case that architecture can never actualize a vir-
tuality, that it can never truly actualize a singularity because a
singularity in a sense always remains outside the frame?
 BC: Also because the singularity is impersonal and is out of our control.

MS: And therefore it is outside the framing device itself?

B C : Yes. There are two aspects: one is that singularity cannot exist without los-

ing its character of virtuality. Its existence as virtuality, as soon as it is perceived

by us, introduces a relation of rapport de force. This produces an identity with-
out which we would be unable to perceive things; we are unable to perceive
things without shaping them into identities. That’s my concern. So the fact is
that you will never have enough frame to protect the inflection, to prevent it
from becoming an identity. That’s why in baroque architecture they start dou-
bling frames. There is never enough frame in architecture. We are surrounded
by the frame but it’s never enough. And even if it were enough, we probably
couldn’t live inside it.

MS: If architecture couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t be a framing

device anymore either. It wouldn’t be architecture anymore.

BC: Yes.
BERNARD CACHE INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL SPEAKS

MS: How then is furniture different?

BC: Furniture is not at all architecture. I’m not an architect simply because I’m
a graduate of an architecture academy. Let’s take hunting as an example. The
hunter is the one who holds the gun, but the hunt is also dependent on what is
aimed at, the object on the other end of the gun. Instead of framing things, I
am manipulating things and images that are supposed to be framed. I see the
thing from the other way but I am not practicing architecture because I am
doing precisely the contrary—I am at the other end. I know that architecture
surrounds me and I am doing it in relation to the frame it provides.

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M S : If furniture images are the interior of architecture and if

architecture is a framing device that, by definition, can never fully

account for the actualization of a virtuality, a singularity that’s
outside it, is geography that very virtuality that we can’t frame
entirely?

BC: Yes, yes.

M S : If that’s the case, then in a very perverted and interesting

way furniture images are much closer to singularity than archi-

tecture.

B C : Yes, clearly. Architecture is just here to help things either to become an

identity or to protect the singularity. There are many ways of using the frame.
These are simply the most obvious, but surely there are others. And these
might lead to an architecture that is different from the way we understand it.

MS: Would you say something about your own production

process, which seems to me to have something to do with your
own dissatisfaction with the state of architecture. It strikes me
that the way you produce can’t be done in architecture as it
presently exists. With the exception of accidental occurrences like
discovering the relationship between plywood and geography,
you seem to control the entire production process from the gen-
eration of the content, to the drawings, to the designing of the
software, to the designing of the software for the machinery to
generate the forms. Can you say something about this processes?

BC: At present we have new possibilities with the computer. I want to know
less about computers and more about how to use them. Until very recently we
 used software like AutoCad and so on; only circles and squares and things like
that could be easily manipulated. Even Form•Z only allows us to create
squares, so it’s not a new thing. Of course, besides the manipulation of primi-
tives, you can also pull the key points of approximation curves like Béziers,
Splines, or Nurbs. But if there is anything new with computers it is the
mathematical use of the computer that enables you to draw anything. You can
do many things with the computer but surprisingly architects are behind in
their use of it.

MS: How does this affect your design of furniture?

BC: The problem is that with existing software and with the organization of
the means of architectural production as well as the organization of the intellec-
tual world, there are architects who draw a sketch on paper and give it to other
people who just enter them into the computer. The computer allows nothing
more than a translation, nothing more than what can be done with a pencil. It’s
not new, just more efficient. Perhaps it’s everything you want, but it’s still the
same thing. But if you start using the computer as a conceptor, and if we become
something more than simple operators, real possibilities begin to emerge.
BERNARD CACHE INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL SPEAKS

MS: What do you mean by conceptor?

B C : Both drawer and user of the computer. The architect who uses the com-

puter must know a bit of mathematics because the problem with the software
industries is that they are working at an industrial level, on a large scale. And if
you look at most people using the computer, they are operators not conceptors.
They are asked only to pinpoint what is drawn on paper, and that is a very stu-
pid use of the mouse I think. The mouse is really the most stupid interface; of
course it’s user-friendly, but in many ways it causes us to overlook the real
capacity of the computer to calculate. We must learn to think with the com-
puter in mathematical terms; we must develop mathematical formulae and not

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use the computer to pick points. If we can begin to do that, then inflection
becomes a mathematical function. That is how I design my furniture.

MS: Not by drawing forms?

BC: I never draw. I can be very unclever with a pencil in my hand.

MS: So none of your forms, none of the drawings are drawn?

BC: No. What I am doing presently is all calculated. I can give you an analytic
function for all my images.

M S : But with this computational model of design are you still

dealing with virtuality?

BC: Yes, and that’s why I am very much against the uncritical use of what
many call the art of the virtual. If you look at the use of the term virtual in vir-
tual reality and multimedia and things like that, what is meant is a model of a
space, as in a flight simulator. If you give the coordinates of your position, you
can create a view that is simply the actualization of the model that is inside the
computer; that’s the technical way virtual reality works. Many say the work of
art is no longer what you see but I disagree, for not all that comes out of the
model is interesting.

MS: But in the end is your work any less determinable or deter-
ministic than these simplistic approaches to virtual reality?

BC: Oh, yes. These furniture objects are strictly reproducible, purely repro-
ducible, but they are also purely deformable—I only have to change the value of
certain variables and it gives me new forms. And that is what is new and what is
the real purpose of my work: to develop a nonstandard mode of production.
 Line Parable for the Virtual

(On the Superiority of the Analog)

BRIAN MASSUMI

1. TOPOLOGY

The virtual, as such, is inaccessible to the senses. This does not,

however, preclude figuring it, or constructing images of it. To the contrary, it
requires a multiplication of images. The virtual that cannot be felt cannot but
be felt, in want of potential, outside possibility: in its effects. When expressions
of its effects are multiplied, the virtual fleetingly appears. Its fleeting is in the
depths between and the surfaces around the images.
Images of the virtual make the virtual appear, not in their content
or structure, but in fleeting, in their sequencing or sampling. The appearance of
the virtual is in the twists and folds of content, as it moves from one sampled
structure to another. It is in the ins and outs of imagistic content or structure.
This applies whether the image is verbal, as in an example or parable, or
whether it is visual or aural. No one kind of image, let alone any one image,
will do the trick.
 Since the virtual is in the ins and outs, the only way an image can
approach it alone, with its own content and structure, is to twist and fold on
itself, to multiply itself internally, knotting at a certain point. Doublings and
foldings, punctualities rejoining encompassments, prospection buckling into
retrospection, expanding contractions and contracting expanses. The virtual
can perhaps best be imaged by superposing these deformational moments of
repetition, instead of sampling differences in content and structure. Think of
each image receding into its deformation, as into a vanishing point of its own
1
twisted versioning. That vanishing into self-variety is the fleeting of the vir-
tual—more appearingly than in the in-between and around of the single-
image contents and structures, however thoroughly resequenced. The
folding-vanishing point is the literal appearance in words (or vision or hearing)
of a virtual image center. Take the images by their virtual centers. Superpose
them. You get an over-image of images of self-varying deformation: a unity of
continuous separation from self. It is there that the virtual most literally, para-
bolically appears.
This is to say that the virtual is best approached topologically.
Topology is the science of self-varying deformation. A topological figure is
defined as the continuous transformation of one geometrical figure into
another. Imagine a pliable coffee cup. Join the surfaces of the brim, enlarge the
hole in the handle, and then stretch it so that all its sides are equally thick. You
get a doughnut. You could then tie the doughnut into complex knots. All of
the geometrical figures you can create in this way are versions of the same
topological figure: topological unity is, in and of itself, multiple. Of course it is
impossible actually to diagram every step in a topological transformation.2
Practically, only selected stills can be presented. Once again, the need arises to
superpose the sequencings. It is only in that superposition that the unity of the
figure can be grasped as such, in one stroke. That one stroke is the virtual
BRIAN MASSUMI

image center of the figure. It is virtual because you cannot effectively see it or
exhaustively diagram it. It is an image because you can, for all of that, figure it,
more or less vaguely, in the imagination. Imagination is the mode of thought
most precisely suited to the vagueness of the virtual.3 It alone manages to dia-
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gram without stilling. Imagination can also be called intuition: a thinking feel-
ing. Not feeling something. Feeling thought—as such, in its movement, as
process, on arrival, as yet unthought-out and unenacted, postinstrumental and
preoperative. Imagination is felt thought, thought only felt, felt as only
thought can be: insensibly unstill. Outside any given thing, outside any given
sense, outside actuality. Outside coming in. The superempirical feeling of the
insensate. The mutual envelopment of thought and sensation, as they arrive
together, pre what they will have become, as they are, just beginning to unfold
from the unfelt and unthinkable outside, of contingency, of process, of trans-
formation in itself.
Whatever medium you are operating in, you miss the virtual
unless you carry the images constructed in that medium to the point of topo-
logical transformation. The approach to the virtual is necessarily topological. If
you fall short of the topological, you will still grasp the possible (differences in
content and structure considered as predictable alternatives). You might even
grasp the potential (the tension between superposed possibilities and the
advent of the new). But never will you come close to the virtual.

2. ON THE SUPERIORITY OF THE ANALOG

Topology is a purely qualitative science. It has no empirical (pre-

dictive) value.4 It is more apparitional than empirical. It is by nature analogic.
A topological image center makes the virtual literally appear, analogically, in
felt thought. Sensation—always on arrival a transformative feeling of the out-
side, a feeling of thought—is the analog, matter in analog mode.5 An analog
process is the continuous transformation of an impulse from one qualitatively
different medium into another. Electricity into sound waves. Or heat into
pain. Or light waves into vision. Or vision into imagination. Or of noise in the
ear into music in the heart. Of the outside as a coming in. Sensation is the ana-
log processing by the body of impinging forces. Its substance is topological
deformation.
Both possibility and potential can be approached quantitatively,
the latter through probabilities. Although they lend themselves to quantifica-
 tion, it must remembered that they only lend themselves. Every possibility and
potential, however calculated, retains an irrevocable residue of qualitative dif-
ference, to which it owes its distinctness. That residue or reserve (more insis-
tent in potential than in possibility) is virtuality, as enveloped in the given: the
virtual in its empirical presentation (as the possibility or potential it is not, but
in and out of whose expressions it appears, in effect).
Possibility, potential, and virtuality are modes of reality of the
inactual. Quantification and qualitative transformation (the analog) are
processes of deactualization, or envelopment. Each of these deactualization
processes is a mode of thought, defined as a processual excess over the actual.
Quantification pertains to the mode of thought commonly called
instrumental reason. Its media are possibility, and potential to a less certain
(probabilistic) degree. Qualification pertains to what was earlier called opera-
tive reason. Its media are the potential (shed of what René Thom calls the
“imposture” of probability, accepted as the unpredictability it is), and more
vaguely (residually and reservedly) the virtual. When most attentive to the vir-
tual, qualification deforms into the topological exercise of contingent reason
(imagination or intuition).
The actual is the interpenetration of the three modes of thought,
the process of their meeting, mixing, and reseparation. The actual is sensation
in its widest connotation. Although centered on potential, sensation stretches
from limit to limit, from the advent of the virtual to the run-down of possibil-
ity, from the insensibly given to the out-worn, from emergence to entropy. As
does thought, though differently, and centered on the virtual. Images of the ins
and outs of the possible, the potential, and the virtual are images of thought
(sensation). An image of thought is an imaging of the imageless, as always ana-
logic (the greater the degree of deformation, the better; the more twisted the
truer).6
BRIAN MASSUMI

There is a third deactualization process: codification. The digital

is a numerically based form of codification (zeros and ones). As such, it is a
close cousin to quantification. Digitality is a numeric way of arraying alterna-

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tive states so that they can be sequenced into a set of alternative routines. Step
after ploddingly programmed step. Machinic habit.
“To array alternative states for sequencing in alternative rou-
tines.” What better definition of the possible? The medium of the digital is
possibility, not virtuality, and not even potential. Digital coding is possibilistic
to the limit.
Nothing is more destructive for the thinking of the virtual than
equating it with the digital. All arts and technologies envelop the virtual, in
one way or another. Digital technologies in fact have a remarkably weak con-
nection to the virtual, by virtue of the enormous power of their systemization
of the possible. They may yet have a privileged connection to it, far stronger
than that of any preceding technology. But that connection has yet to be
invented. It is the strength of the work of Pierre Lévy (against Jean Bau-
drillard) to emphasize the participation in the virtual of earlier technologies—
in particular writing—and (following Gilles Deleuze) to insist on a distinction
between the actual, the possible, and the potential as an integral part of any
thinking of the virtual. Equating the digital with the virtual reduces the
apparitional to the artificial, with the “simulacrum” taking the place of the
phantasm (“phantasm” being a good-enough substantive for the process of the
imagination).7 This forgets intensity, brackets potential, and in that same
sweeping gesture bypasses sensation, the actual envelopment of potential.
Multiple miss.
Digital technologies have a connection to the potential and the
virtual only through the analog. Take word processing. All of the possible com-
binations of letters and words are enveloped in the zeros and ones of ASCII
code. You could say that entire language systems are numerically enveloped in
it. But what is processed inside the computer is code, not words. The words
appear on screen, in being read. Reading is the qualitative transformation of
alphabetical figures into figures of speech and thought. This is an analog
process. Outside its appearance, the digital is electronic nothingness, pure sys-
temic possibility. Its appearance from electronic limbo is one with its analog
 transformation. Now take digital sound: a misnomer. The sound is as analog as
ever, at least on the playback end, and usually at the recording end as well (the
exception being entirely synthesized music). It is only the coding of the sound
that is digital. The digital is sandwiched between an analog disappearance into
code, and an analog appearance out of code.
Take hypertext. All possible links in the system are programmat-
ically pre-arrayed in its architecture. This has led some critics to characterize it
not as liberating, but as downright totalitarian. While useful to draw attention
to the politics of the possible, calling hypertext totalitarian is inaccurate. What
it fails to appreciate is that the coding is not the whole story: that the digital
always circuits into the analog. The digital, a form of inactuality, must be actu-
alized. That is its openness. The freedom of hypertext, its potentialization, is in
the openness of its analog reception. The hypertext reader does something that
the copresence of alternative states in code cannot ever do: accumulate, in an
unprogrammed way, in a way that intensifies, creating resonances and interfer-
ence patterns. For the reader, the link just left overlaps with the next. They are
not extensively arrayed, beside and outside each other, as alternatives. Neither
are they enveloped in each other as coded possibilities. They are copresent in a
very different mode. The analog process of reading translates ASCII code into
figures of speech enveloping figures of thought, taken in its restrictive sense of
conscious reflection. The relation between signification and conscious reflec-
tion to sensation is reversible. Sensation (in this case predominantly visual)
envelops the envelopment of thought in signification, and conversely the
envelopment of thought in signification envelops sensation. There is no
thought that is not accompanied by a physical sensation of effort or agitation
(if only a knitting of the brows or quickening of heartbeat).8 The sensation
is that of thought arriving, situating itself—in virtual situation. Thought-
sensation—the only-felt thought of the event calling attention to itself—is a
BRIAN MASSUMI

germ of potential. Incipient action.9 Germinal tendency, a sprouting of the

tendency to tendency. The situational sprouts are integrations of sensations not
restricted to the visual. The visual envelops the tactile, and the tactile the aural,
and the prioproceptive the visual. Virtual situations are synaesthetic germs
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about to bloom into potential. They are multiple unities, so many virtual cen-
ters in impassive tension. Each virtual situation is a tensile field. In moving
from one link to the next, the reader moves from field to field, but since each
field involves the same virtual centers, in variation, the movement is a doppler-
ing, an accumulation of phasings in and out, crescendoing and tapering off.
The movement, in other words, is intensive: deformational. Self-varying. The
moments of the reading are copresent to each other in a lived topology of vir-
tual interpenetration which edges on the actual, appearing to experience where
the virtual twists into the germ of the actual.
The synaesthetic twist each reading puts on the deformational
process of digitally-assisted virtual phasing introduces the element of the new.
For in the actual play between the digital system of the possible and its virtual
analog, new thoughts may be thought, new feelings felt. These may translate
into veerings into and out of actual situations outside the reading. Full-fledged
potentialization. Digital processing doesn’t possibilize—the digital is already
exhaustively possibilistic. It can however potentialize, circuitously. The digital
may be virtualized, in the process of its analog appearing, and that virtualiza-
tion may be expressed in a potentialization. This is a scrambling of the order
followed in my earlier parables. The relations between actuality, possibility,
potential, and virtuality, it seems, are also reversible. In this case, it is the virtual
that can be said to envelop the expression of potential, rather than the expres-
sion of potential enveloping the virtual. The thinking of the digital might
begin with the way in which, in circuiting into the analog, the digital reorders
the modes of reality of the inactual in their relation to the actual; the way in
which it reorders modes of thought.
The crucial point is that the digital is virtualized and potential-
ized only in its integrative circuiting with the analog, in the way in which it is
integrated into the analog or integrates the analog into itself. This is the guid-
ing insight behind the bluster of the MIT Media Lab, and its director’s
phantasms of a ubiquitous interface seamlessly relaying impulses into and
out of the body: infinitely reversible analog-digital circuiting on a planetary
scale.1 0 The ultimate immersive environment. The more traditional immer-
 sive
environments that have become synonymous in the popular press with with
the “virtual reality” of digital technology will become truly virtual as opposed
to possibilistic, phantasmic as opposed to merely simulacral, only when mech-
anisms are found to effectively integrate other senses alongside vision, or
through vision (for example, by finding ways to pack other sensations—in par-
ticular tactile and proprioceptive—into visual sensation; by finding ways to
make felt the synaesthetic field in which the virtual center of vision partici-
pates, as one tensile attractor among others; by more intensively integrating
the analog). Neural nets, probabilistic creatures living off programmed ran-
domness, take a step in the direction of potential and the unpredictable while
remaining digital. But the ultimate “virtual reality” phantasm is the superses-
sion of neural nets with neuronal computers. But by then—if then ever actually
arrives—the processing will no longer be digital. Possibilization and probabi-
lization will have given way to synaptic indeterminacy: the unprogrammed
randomness of pure chance. And its functional/symbolic capture. Which, of
course, is an analog transformation. The “digital revolution” will be truly on the
way to potentialization and virtualization when it rebecomes analog, in
becoming-brain.
The path to the digital virtual is not through increasing clever-
ness in systems design or programming. Quite to the contrary, the digital will
only rejoin the virtual when it raises itself to the highest powers of brainy
vagueness.

3. DESCRIPTION OF A STRUGGLE

Potential can be thought of in terms of what chaos theory calls

“bifurcation points” or “critical points.” Criticality is when what are normally
mutually exclusive alternatives pack into the materiality of a system. The sys-
BRIAN MASSUMI

tem is no longer acting and outwardly reacting according to physical laws

unfolding in linear fashion. It is churning, running over its own possible states.
It has folded in on itself, becoming materially self-referential, animated not by
external relations of cause and effect but by an intensive interrelating of ver-
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sions of itself. The system is a knot of mutually implicated alternative transfor-
mations of itself in material resonance. Its possible futures are present, in the
system, in its matter. In effect: incipient effect (resonance and interference,
vibration and turbulence, unfoldable into an array, an order). Possibility has, in
effect, materialized. The matter of the system has entered a state where it does
not extrapolate into an abstract possibility, and instead effectively absorbs pos-
sibilities, en masse, into its animated matter.
It is serviceable but inaccurate to say that what will be the possi-
ble states of a system (as retrospectively arrayed) were actually copresent to
each other (prospectively) at the critical point of self-referential potential. The
alternate states are only present as felt. They were present not so much to each
other as in sensation. They were enveloped or infolded in sensation. It would
be stretching things to say that they were individually felt, even though, when
arrayed, they are sequentially thinkable. It was their superposition was felt—
vaguely, en masse, as the intensity of an impinging force. The vagueness was
the presence of something more than any pre-established array of possibility:
potential (systemic change, the new). Potential is an intensely felt, superposi-
tive vagueness of infolded transformations, known and new, impinging en
masse. The even-more-vague of the virtual, the in-itself of in-folded transfor-
mation, can be neither felt nor thought. In its in-itself it is impassive, insensi-
ble (void). It simply arrives, comes to. Its coming to, for its part, cannot but be
felt-thought. Shockingly. Singularly. The arrival of the virtual is the advent of
thought, its coming to being, as impingement: the force of thought.1 1 Being
felt. Thought-being. The forced entry of the virtual into actuality, as sensation,
force as thought.
Possibility concerns degrees of clearness and distinctness (sim-
plicity). Potential is a multiple-vague (complexity). The virtual is a singular
multiple-vague (complication, emphasizing the etymological meaning of
“plica,” fold).
The mass of transformations in potential can be seen to fall along
a continuum stretching from the possible to the virtual, from the clear and
simple to the impossibly vague. They also fall into a continuum of degrees of
 feltness. The overall intensity of the sensation is a complex of subintensities
that are not individually felt. Although they are differentiated in relation to
each other, they register in sensation only in their mutual envelopment. Like
Peirce’s Firstness, the sensation is the indivisible effect of a multiplicity
(a “manifoldness”) that imposes itself in the manner of a force (unrefus-
12
able impingement). “All the mind’s materials without exception are derived
from passive sensibility.”1 3 Potential is a First unfolding from pure arrival,
upon impact.
Imagine the transformations arrayed on a plane receding in all
directions from the actual conjuncture of criticality. The most forceful are
almost upon the situation, bunching up on it in a rush. The forcing frenzy set-
tles down as you look away from the critical point. The bunching flattens into
the tranquility of the plane. But then way off in the distance, the plane curls in
on all sides. It coils out of sight, into a ring of vagueness slanting down and
around back toward the critical point from underneath. At a point directly
beneath the bunch-up around the critical point, the edges of the plane meet
and swirl together. Now draw parallel lines through the flatness of the plane,
and watch them curling into a knot at the critical point, forming arabesques of
unimaginable complexity. Try to imagine the unimaginable arabesque beneath
the critical point, where the edges meet. Imagine it rejoining the knot of the
critical point from below, so that its vagueness is inestimably compounded by
an under-vagueness. Now make the lines tensile, like elastic bands. The calm-
ness of the plane is a mirage. It is actually where the lines are pulled most tautly
by the bunching and curling on either end. Suddenly, something gives. A ten-
sion line snaps at the critical point. There was a weak point in the tensile web
somewhere in the folds of the critical conjunction, and a line whips out and up.
Above the critical point, it intersects with a plane running parallel to the first.
This plane is composed of parallels and perpendiculars, and continues infi-
BRIAN MASSUMI

nitely in all directions without noticeable bunching or knotting, only a distant

fade-out. If you looked down on the point at which the snapped line inter-
sected the second plane, you wouldn’t see a knot, but an infinitesimal hole
where its leading point cut into the webbing. The snapped tension line seems
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to come up into the plane at the cut, and run into one of the lines on the sec-
ond plane. Above, where you look down from, there is no third plane. Just
empty space.
Call the second plane, of perpendiculars and parallels, extension
(emphasizing the etymological sense of “ex-”: out-(of )-tension). Every point
of intersection between a perpendicular and a parallel is a situation. On the
second plane, each intersection is situated vis-à-vis the others in a manner
accessible to calculation and, where there is movement between situations, to
prediction of varying degrees of accuracy. The intersections are positioned,
enabling trajectories through them to be plotted.
The connection between the situated intersection and the too-
complex knot of potential is the actual. For ease of expression, the intersections
on the plane, and the plane itself, may be referred to as “the actual,” provided
that it is remembered that it is not the structure of the plane and its calculabil-
ity that qualify it as actual, but the relation between these and potential (and
what potential continues and envelops).
Now from any given point of actual intersection, run an x- and a
y-axis along the perpendiculars that form it. The set of all of the points at
which the x-axis is intersected by other lines comprises the present. The set of
all points at which the y-axis is intersected by other lines, to the left of the x-
axis, is the past. The y-intersections to the right of the x-axis are the future.
The x-axis is the dimension of actual copresence, of juxtaposition. The y-axis is
the dimension of actual succession. Now imagine that a snapped line on the
first plane leads to each and every actual intersection, past, present, and future.
Since potential has a connection to every situation at once, it is incalculable
and unplottable. It is transpositional. The connection between it and any
actual point is a nonlocalizable relation across the cut of the snap-line.
Go back to the first plane, and call it intension. The parallels
composing the plane of intension or intensity do not extend infinitely in a lin-
ear fashion. The plane has two topological limits, where it infinitely folds in on
itself. If the knotting at the critical point is potential, then the knot formed
beneath it by the curling under at the edges is the virtual. Call the free-floating
 view from above the second plane down onto a cut where a snapped line from
the first plane hits it, the perception of a possibility. Potential and virtuality are
connected. They form a continuum of intensity, potential at one tensile
extreme (the tumultuous breaking point), the virtual at the other (the impas-
sive, unsnappable, but no less knotted and tensile). Since the extremes knot
together, at the limit the potential and the virtual meld. Using either term to
designate the unity of the continuum would therefore not be misleading. But
for convenience, “potential” could be reserved for the end of the continuum
knotting up toward the cut into the actual, and “virtual” could be reserved for
the end knotting out-under.
The knot of potential impinges on the plane of the actual, cuts
forcefully into it, at a snap point. All its tension hits there and is released: a low-
ering of intensity, not to impassivity—which is a qualitative limit of intensity
rather than its diminution—but to repetition: the predictable, periodicity,
rhythm, habit, pattern, structure, law. The knot of the virtual is impassive in the
sense that it is in no way felt. It is not seen by the view from above, to which
only the cut and the plane of the actual is visible. The potential end of the con-
tinuum is felt—it snaps to experience. The virtual end is insensible, the limit of
sensibility. It is in reserve. Unseen and unfelt, it is at the limit a pure ideality,
even though its knotting in itself is not vague but infinitely fine-threaded. The
virtual limit is the unthought of thought, where felt-thought continues to
unfeeling. The potential end is sensation at its limit of felt intensity. If the cut-
connection of the potential to the plane of the actual is every-present and
transpositional, the continuation of potential in the virtual is a-positional as
well as a-temporal, at the limit. Eternal. The forever of transformation, in
itself, folding infinitely in, outside actual time and space: matter-energy.
Now consider that the fade-out of the plane of the actual is an
optical illusion. The foggy ring of vagueness on its horizon is in fact a many-
BRIAN MASSUMI

threaded cascade. Beyond the edge, the situation plummets—onto the ring of
vagueness below, and from there, from the edge of the plane of potential, into
the under-knot of the virtual. Unfeelable eddies of residual tension form at the
confluent edges of the planes of the actual and of potential. Certain residual-
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ized situational junctures backwash along the plane of potential toward the
snapping point, while others descend into the virtual, whose reserve is there-
fore also a residue. It is the “form” of the situations that virtualize and repoten-
tialize: the situations relieved of their situation, outside positioned and
plottable matter, where the future runs down, dissipating into the mists of
14
matter. Imagine each situation-form as a dissipated point of actual intersec-
tion swept up in the impassive turbulence of the eternity of matter in its ener-
getic state. Consider those run-down points—at the limit, at the confluent
edge, and underneath in the virtual—attractors or virtual centers. Some eddy
back through the tensile lines leading to the snapping point of potential, and
are tumultuously reintensified. Call these tendencies: regerminating situations
blooming forth from the virtual. Beyond the critical point in the other direc-
tion, toward what would be the past on the plane of the actual, there is another
confluent edging, eddying, and tendency. Now notice that at every actual point
in-between, on the upper plane, there is subtle leakage, like condensation.
Some of these run-down points join the tendency lines in the rush back to the
critical point, while others drip straight into the underknot. The drip lines and
cascades that rejoin the virtual reintensify in a different way. Since they do not
snap, they continue to knot. They fold so infinitely in on themselves and each
other that at the limit each contains all. At that processual limit, each moment
of infolding is present to all the others, as if the knotting were perpetually
repeating itself at infinite speed, so fast that the speed blurred stroboscopically
into an immobility of absolute motion.1 5 The tensile tranquility of the plane
of potential taken to its extreme. At that extreme, where movement stands still
in endless involution, each situation-form is refracted in all the others, as in a
virtual prism. Each is a monad, containing all of the others, all situation, a
whole world, from a certain angle of infolding, from a certain prismatic per-
spective. Now say that a monad can, for no apparent reason, rise, weightlessly,
to make a surprise reentry into the critical potential from underneath. When
that happens, it brings with it a whole-world-perspective, the unity of an
enveloped world, enveloping all, like no other. The vaporous rise and reentry of
a monad is contingency or singularity: pure unheralded, worlding chance. The
 irruption into potential of an attractor. The “energetic” attractor state of mat-
ter-at-the-edge and in the virtual underneath is “impassive” because it is not a
force even though it is in absolute motion. It is unfelt, in itself. It is only felt as
enveloped in an actual sensation. In dynamic terms, it does no work. Thus it
16
would be just as fair to call it nonenergetic (ideal).
It is simply beyond that duality (among others). It is zero-point
17
energy. It is a quantum of situation. At the quantum level, matter is impas-
sive and insensible, expressing no force and doing no work. It is extensively
active, and can be said with accuracy to exist only as captured by calculation,
extracted from its qualitative difference, from its pure arrival, and arrayed on
the plane of the arrived-at, the quantifiable; only as drawn out of itself, into
structure, snapped-to and actualized. In itself, it insists. The quantum is the in-
itself of force: the envelopment of structure in utter complication and infinitely
residual tensile reserve. For “envelopment” read “onto-topo-logical transfor-
mation.” For “structure” read “the functional distinguishability of situated
space (position) from plottable time (trajectory)”; or, “the geometry of instru-
mental reason.” For “residual tensile reserve” read “virtual reality”; or, the ideal-
ity of matter-energy (the zero-point energy of the quantum void).
Earlier it was said that the order of the plane of the actual—the
parallels and perpendiculars defining situated intersection points, and the axial
movement through sets of these—was perceptible only from above. But if a
view from above zoomed into an intersection point, it would see an endless
descent into the infinitesimal depths of a mathematical point. Any actual situ-
ation automatically resolves itself into a mathematical point, by virtue of the
infinite quantitative divisibility characteristic of time as distinguished from
space, and space as distinguished from time. Take the duration of the situation,
and cut it in half, and in half again, and so on. You end up with a temporal
point-void. Take the height, depth, and breadth of the situation and cut them
BRIAN MASSUMI

in half, and in half again, indefinitely. Look at the cuts. You get a trio of point-
cuts contracting into a single point. If you could look down on the repeatedly
calculated situation, it would be like peering into a bottomless cone plunging

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endlessly into the infinitesimal. If you looked down at a number of situations,
whether in spatial juxtaposition or temporal succession, their point-cuts would
all converge, cones funneling into an ur-cone. The point of the ur-cone would
be a monad, any monad. The monad would be a virtual world, whatever world.
If it were possible to see the actual from potential, the actual
would be virtual: situations in and out of situations, perspectives within per-
spectives, galaxies of worlds. Monad(s). The actual is the virtuality of poten-
tial’s perspective on its own abyssal-monadic cut-in. The actual is the virtual
self-referentiality of potential. Fold over. Potential folding over on itself as it
folds out into actual structure and at the same time shines through its plane to
rejoin the virtual cosmos.
But it is not possible. There is no godlike eye in the sky, any more
than there exists a virtual sewer rat. No, vision is always ground-level, on the
plane of the actual, where potential cuts in. And it is always mixed, folded
synaesthetically into other senses. There is no such thing as vision from a dis-
tance. There are only degrees of an unfolding tactile-proprioceptive-visual
proximity. A view, says Bergson, is a virtual touch. The tactile, proprioceptive
and visual are extensions into and out of each other, separable only as limit-
states, infinitely tended to, never reached, of the same essentially synaesthetic
experience. The most distilled vision still carries traces of the tactile, through
its connection to a virtual center (run-down point or reimpassive—and
regerminable—synaesthetic attractor). The “senses” are multiple dimensions of
a singular proximity (being in the midst of things, being in situation), rather
than measures of spatial disjunction. Degrees of multidimensional contact,
rather than measures of distance.
Place yourself where you always are: at the cut-in. In situation.
Where the sub-cones meet the ur-cone. You are concerned. What, poised in
mid-abyss, will your next step be? As you pace the void, place the lens of your
concerning eye across the ur-cone, its edges coinciding with the circumference
of the cone. Feel-think it an experiential prism that refracts the senses, sepa-
rating them out from each other and into their respective components. Tactil-
 ity, proprioception, smell, and the others it disperses horizontally, so that they
quickly melt back together into a ring of proximate vagueness. The visual part
of the sensory spectrum it sharpens, projecting it upward into the distance, in
a rainbow of converging rays. Not an infinite distance. The rays from every sit-
uation effectively converge, forming a single cone mirroring the cone plunging
infinitesimally into the virtual. At the apex is a mirror: visual limit-state, where
refraction folds back, in reflection. Call that visual limit-state your mind’s eye:
a reflective retinal double of your lens. It reflects the reconvergent rays back
down on the situations, illuminating them in a flat white light. Forget the
upwardly projective refraction. Retain the retrojective downward beaming.
Now you see, you feel you think you really see, from a distance. And from that
little god’s-eye view, the plane of the actual looks, well, okay. Your concern
turns to discerning comfort as your eye sees patterns on the illuminated plane.
Structure. Parallel and perpendicular lines from situation to situation, in full
bloom, separate from and outside each other. Orders of juxtaposition and suc-
cession arrayed before your eye like so many flowered paths to choose from.
The void now seems pleasantly doable. Forget it ever was a void. Cleave to the
structure. Make it function. In moments of grandeur, you can even consider
the structure of the actual to be yours, as if it was your own mind’s eye that pro-
jected the order rather than retrojecting it. Yes, it was you, little idealist, who
“constructed” it. Or maybe your “culture.” Or maybe it wasn’t constructed at
all. Maybe you found it. Maybe you did reflect it, but accurately, not deforma-
tionally. Good work, you budding realist. Or maybe you’re less a realist than a
realizer. Maybe you “realized” all this, maybe it was you who brought it to
fruition. Your viewpoint after all is at the pinnacle. Maybe you are the tree the
acorn in the flower bed grew into. That’s progress. So go for it. Put your self in
the reflection of your eye and try idealism, realism, and progressivism on for
size. Oscillate between them as you please. Don’t take any one to an extreme.
BRIAN MASSUMI

Keep your perspective. Keep your equilibrium. Cleave to the golden, entropic
mean of common, habitual sense. Own it. Share it. Be it.
But every once in awhile, shed a tear for the void and the veer of
the snap to intensity—for the virtual and the potential you habitually only see-
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think to be, your own self-referential actuality. Fall with a tear back down the
cone. Imagine, synaesthetically, where that takes you. Plunge through sensa-
tion to the insensate. Think-feel that. Alone, in the cosmos. Impassive turbu-
lence. Continue still to suffer (the void of becoming). Monad it.
[End topological phantasm]

NOTES

This text is excerpted from the essay “Parables for the (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990),
Virtual,” forthcoming in Brian Massumi, The Critique 210–6.
of Pure Feeling. It is published here with the permis-
8. William James, “The Feeling of Effort,” Collected
sion of Harvard University Press.
Essays and Reviews (New York: Russell & Russell,
1. Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sen- 1969), 151–219.
sation (Paris: Editions de la Différence, 1981),
9. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy
chaps. 3, 15, 18.
Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Zone
2. See C. S. Peirce’s topological diagrammaticism, Books, 1988), 68–9.
The Essential Peirce, vol. 1, ed. Nathan Houser and
10. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York:
Christian Kloesel (Indianapolis: University of Indiana
Knopf, 1995).
Press, 1992), 2, 71–2, 246–68. See also Deleuze,
Francis Bacon, 65–71; and Gilles Deleuze and Félix 11. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 138–41.
Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi
12. C. S. Peirce, Selected Writings, ed. Philip P.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987),
Wiener (New York: Dover, 1958), 381–93.
91, 140–2, 510, 513.
13. James, “The Feeling of Effort,” 203.
3. Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, trans.
Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapo- 14. Brian Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” in
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 17–8, Deleuze: A Critical Reader, ed. Paul Patton (Oxford:
50–2; and Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, Blackwell, 1996), 217–39.
trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University
15. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 118;
Press, 1994), 320–1.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 267,
4. René Thom, interview, Le Monde, 22–23 January 381.
1995.
16. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 21,
5. Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 73–8. 132.

6. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philoso- 17. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
phy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill (London: Ark, 1983), 85–8.
(London: Verso, 1994), 37–8.

7. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark

Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin Boundas
Immersive technology represents both
the grail at the end of the history of cinema
and the beacon that draws creative energies
toward the culmination of computing. It
replaces the traditional ethos of comput-
ing—bodiless minds communicating via
keyboard and screen—with the notion that
the senses are primary causes of how and
what we know, think and imagine....In the
world of total immersion, authorship is no
longer the transmission of experience, but
rather the construction of utterly personal
experiences.
—Brenda Laurel
 The Desire to Be Wired

GARETH BRANWYN

WILL W E L I V E to see our brains wired to gadgets? How about today? Just

mention “neural interfacing” (being wired directly to a machine) on a computer

bulletin board or newsgroup related to the subject, and you might receive a
comment like the following:

I am interested in becoming a guinea pig (if you will) for any cyber-
punkish experiment from a true medicine/military/cyber/neuro
place. New limbs, sight/hearing improvements, bio-monitors, etc.
1
Or even things as simple as under the skin time pieces.

On-line conversants will often pour forth such cybernetic

dreams as computers driven by thoughts, implanted memory chips, bionic
limbs and, of course, the full-blown desire to have one’s brain patched directly
 into “cyberspace,” the globally-connected computer networks. The romantic
allure of the “cyborg” seems to captivate the fringes of digital culture.
Neural interfacing fantasies have mainly grown out of science
fiction, where “add-on” technologies turn people into powerful hybrids of flesh
and steel. Since so much of our contemporary mythology comes from sci-fi, an
inherent confusion between fantasy and reality is to be expected. This already
has happened in the field of virtual reality. Today’s crude systems in no way
reflect the media hype and “Cyberspace NOW” mentality of the impatient
computerized masses. Neuroscientists and engineers in the area of implant
technologies offer a similar tale of woe. Science fiction has fed us so many
images of technologically souped-up humans that the current work in neural
prosthesis (devices that supplement or replace neurological function) and
mind-driven computers seems almost retro by comparison.
Images of human-machine courtship are omnipresent in pop
culture. Albums by digital artists Brian Eno, Clock DVA, and Front Line
Assembly sport names like Nerve Net, Man Amplified, and Tactical Neural
Implant. A recent Time magazine article on the cyberpunk movement made a
number of dubious references to the near-future tech of brain implants, offer-
ing “instant fluency in a foreign language or arcane subject.” Role-playing
games based on bionic, post-apocalyptic sci-fi are gobbling up market share
once reserved for...

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

Computer network and hacker slang is filled with references to

“being wired” or “jacking in” (to a computer network), “wetware” (the brain),
and “meat” (the body). Science fiction films, from Robocop to the recent Japan-
ese cult film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, imprint our imaginations with images of the
new, increasingly adaptable human-cum-cyborg who can exfoliate one body
GARETH BRANWYN

and instantly construct another. One might even speculate a link between the
surprising popularity of modern primitivism (piercing, tattooing, body modifi-
cation) and the emerging techno mythology of “morphing” the human body to
the demands and opportunities of a post-human age. The human body is
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becoming a hack site, the mythology goes, a nexus where humanity and tech-
nology are forging new and powerful relationships.
Academic discourse is also rife with talk of cyborg bodies and the
need to rethink the postmodern relationship between humans and machines.
“There’s a rapt, mindless fascination with these disembodying or ability aug-
menting technologies,” says Allucquere Rosanne Stone, director of the
Advanced Communications Technology Lab at the University of Texas. “I
think of it as a kind of cyborg envy. . . . The desire to be wired is part of the
larger fantasy of disembodiment, the deep childlike desire to go beyond one’s
body. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly for the handicapped, it can
be very liberating. For others, who have the desire without the need, there can
be problems. Political power still exists inside the body and being out of one’s
2
body or extending one’s body through technology doesn’t change that.”
“People want the power without paying the attendant costs,” says
Don Ihde, professor of the Philosophy of Technology at SUNY, Stonybrook.
“It’s a Faustian bargain.”3
Is the desire to be wired a fantasy born of our relationship with
increasingly personalized and miniaturized technology? Will neural interfac-
ing be commonplace in a future we will live to see? If so, what biomedical and
bioengineering feats will be necessary? Most important, what function-restor-
ing neural prostheses are being researched that show promise for the disabled,
and may eventually lead to function-amplifying implants?

BIONIC HARDWARE

In her influential essay “A Cyborg Manifesto,” science historian

Donna Haraway suggests that the severely disabled are often the first to appre-
ciate the fruitful couplings of humans and machines.4 A brief conversation
with anyone who has a pacemaker, a new hip, a (good) hearing aid, an artificial
heart, or any one of a host of bionic devices will bear this out.
The neural prosthetic and interface technologies of today can be
broken down into three major areas: auditory and visual prosthesis, functional
neuromuscular stimulation (FNS), and prosthetic limb control via implanted
 neural interfaces. So far, the most successful implants have been in the realm of
hearing. Larry Orloff, a scientist who has suffered hearing loss since child-
hood, and is the editor of Contact, a newsletter for people with hearing
implants, reports that there are more than seven thousand people worldwide
outfitted with cochlear implants. These devices work through tiny electrodes
placed in the cochlea region of the inner ear to compensate for the lack of
cochlear hair cells, which transduce sound waves into bioelectrical impulses in
ears that function normally. Although current versions of these devices may
not match the fidelity of normal ears, they have proven very useful. Dr. Terry
Hambrecht, a chief researcher in neural prosthetics at the National Institutes
of Health, reports that implanted patients had “significantly higher scores on
tests of lip-reading and recognition of environmental sounds, as well as
5
increased intelligibility of some of the subjects’ speech.”
The hearing-implant patients and family members I interviewed
spoke of their desperation during their deaf years, and emphasized how much
they appreciated the technology that had changed their lives. John Anderson,
a forty-three-year-old implant recipient from Massachusetts offered his views
via electronic mail (he still has trouble communicating by phone): “The silence
of those three years when I was totally deaf is still deafening to me these many
years later. My life was in the hearing world and it was critical for me to be able
6
to hear like ‘everyone else.’ ” Orloff spoke movingly of hearing things like
crickets, birds, and church bells for the first time. He also points out that com-
puter networking was instrumental in his getting the implant: he first learned
of the technology on CompuServe.
An even more radical type of auditory prosthesis now under
development snakes hair-thin wires deep into the brain stem, linking it with
an external speech processor. But don’t expect to see it soon. Likewise, visual
prosthetics are still a long way from offering any major breakthroughs, though
GARETH BRANWYN

several promising directions are being explored. The goal of most of these
schemes is to implant electrodes into the visual cortex of the brain to stimulate
discernible patterns of phosphenes which can then be interpreted by the user.
Phosphenes are those tiny dots (the proverbial stars) that can be seen after rub-
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THE DESIRE TO BE WIRED

bing one’s eyes or getting beaned on the head. These phosphenes originate in
the brain and are responsive to electrocortical stimulation. Recently, Dr. Ham-
brecht and fellow researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
implanted a thirty-eight-electrode array into the visual cortex of a blind
woman’s brain. She was able to see simple light patterns and to make out crude
letters when the electrodes were stimulated.
Richard Alan Normann, professor of bioengineering at the Uni-
versity of Utah, has been developing similar “artificial eyes” that would use
denser phosphene arrays (one hundred electrodes). The long-range goal of his
research is the development of vision hardware that “will consist of a miniature
video camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses, signal processing electronics, a
transdermal connector to pass across the skin, and an array of. . . microelec-
7
trodes permanently implanted in the visual cortex.” The development
timetable for these systems is still long-term; advances have been slow. Often
years pass between experiments as researchers painstakingly assemble the
required miniature electronics.
Beyond sight and sound, functional neuromuscular stimulation
systems are in experimental use in cases where spinal cord damage or a stroke
has severed the link between the brain and the peripheral nervous system.
These systems usually combine implanted electrodes and an external battery-
powered microprocessor. The system is controlled by switches, either triggered
manually or through movement of some body part (an elbow or shoulder) that
is still operational. These types of systems are likely to be used clinically one
day to restore movement in legs, arms, and hands. Similar electrical stimula-
tion schemes to restore bladder control and respiratory functions are also in
experimental and even clinical use.
Some of the most compelling research in the area of neural inter-
facing is being done at Stanford University. A recent paper reports that “a
microelectrode array capable of recording from and stimulating peripheral
nerves at prolonged intervals after surgical implantation has been demon-
strated.”8 These tiny silicon-based arrays were implanted into the pero-
neal nerves of rats and remained operative for up to thirteen months. The
 ingeniously designed chip is placed in the pathway of the surgically severed
nerve. The regenerating nerve grows through a matrix of holes in the chip,
while the regenerating tissue surrounding it anchors the device in place.
Although this research is very preliminary and there are still many intimidat-
ing technical and biological hurdles (on-board signal processing, radio trans-
mutability, learning how to translate neuronal communications), the long-term
future of this technology is exciting. Within several decades, “active” versions
of these chips could provide a direct neural interface with prosthetic limbs, and
by extension, a direct human-computer interface.
While a composite image of all these technologies might hint at
the bionic humans of sci-fi, the practical limitations and technological obsta-
cles are sobering. Very few of these technologies are in approved clinical use,
and most of them will not be for a decade or two. One of the main things frus-
trating this research is finding (or developing) materials that are not toxic to
the host organism and that will not be degraded by that organism. The human
body has formidable defenses against invading hardware.
Besides the material and physical hurdles, this technology raises
tremendous ethical and social issues. Many critics say that neural implants are
impractical at best, if not downright irresponsible. These critics contend that
implants are bioengineering marvels looking for a justifiable use, rather than
appropriate technology for the disabled. Other naysayers argue that these
unproved prosthetic devices give experimental subjects unreasonable expecta-
tions of sight, sound, and independence. Scott Bally, assistant professor of
audiology at Gallaudet University, points out that auditory implants are very
controversial in the deaf community. “Many deaf people feel as though deaf-
ness is not a handicap. They are culturally deaf individuals who have success-
fully adapted themselves to being deaf and feel as though things like cochlear
implants would take them out of their deaf culture, a culture which provides a
GARETH BRANWYN

significant degree of support.”9

William Sauter, head of prosthetics at MacMillian Medical Cen-
ter in Toronto, also has reservations. “A patient must go into surgery again, and
I think most amputees don’t like to be opened up,” he observed in a 1 9 9 0
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THE DESIRE TO BE WIRED

article on the Stanford research.1 0 In thinking of a future populated by
machine-grafted humans, questions are raised as to how society as a whole will
relate to people walking around with plugs and wires sprouting out of their
heads. And who will decide which segments of the society become the wire-
heads? “People are just not ready for cyborgs,” says the implanted John Ander-
son.
And the moral issue of animal testing cannot be overlooked.
Society as a whole, and armchair “neuronauts” in particular, should be aware
that this research is totally dependent on the extensive use of laboratory ani-
mals. Legions of cats, monkeys, rats, rabbits, bullfrogs, and guinea pigs have
been poked, prodded, zapped, and stuffed full of experimental hardware in the
name of progress.

BASEMENT NEUROHACKERS

Perhaps more within the realm of science fiction than science

fact, “neurohackers” fancy themselves to be do-it-yourself brain tinkerers
who’ve decided to take matters into their own heads. “There is quite an under-
ground of neurohackers beaming just about every type of field imaginable into
their heads to stimulate certain neurological structures (usually the pleasure
centers),” a neurohacker wrote to me via email. Several of these basement
experimenters were willing to talk.
Meet Zorn. I got his name (which has been changed) from
another neurohacker who told me a wild tale about a device that Zorn had
recently built. “It’s got an electrode ring situated over the pleasure centers of
the brain. I know someone who tried it and he said it was like having a contin-
uous orgasm.” My God, you mean this guy’s invented the Orgasmatron? I
immediately called Zorn, but at the suggestion of the other hacker, I only
talked to him generally about basement brain tech.
Zorn’s a psychologist by trade and a weekend electronics hobby-
ist. He tells me about several sound and vision devices (brain toys) he’s built,
similar to those now commercially available. He seems entirely sane; he’s full of
 cautions. When I tell him about some of the other neurohacks I’ve heard
about, he expresses deep concern. “If these people are going to mess with
neuroelectric or neuromagnetic stimulation, they should build in more safety
devices. There’s a tremendous potential for harm: brain damage.” When I ask
him what he’s been doing recently, he becomes quiet. “Well, it’s something I’d
rather not talk about. It’s a device I built that could very easily be abused.”
(Hmmm . . . My mind flashes with perverse images of twitching orgasmo-
junkies permanently jacked into The Zorn Device.)
“Why would it be abused?” I ask.
“I really can’t say anything more about it. It would be a disaster if
it got out into the world.” Definitely an Orgasmatron . . . or perhaps just
another cybernetic wet dream.
David Cole of the nonprofit group AquaThought is another
independent researcher willing to explore the inside of his own cranium. Over
the years, he’s been working on several schemes to transfer EEG patterns from
one person’s brain to another. The patterns of recorded brainwaves from the
source subject are amplified many thousands of times and then transferred to a
target subject (in this case, Cole himself ). The first tests on this device, dubbed
the Montage Amplifier, were done using conventional EEG electrodes placed
on the scalp. The lab notes from one of the first sessions with the Amplifier
report that the target (Cole) experienced visual effects, including a “hot spot”
in the very location where the source subject’s eyes were being illuminated
with a flashlight. Cole experienced a general state of “nervousness, alarm, agi-
tation, and flushed face” during the procedure. The results of these initial
experiments made Cole skittish about attempting others using electrical stim-
ulation. He has since done several sessions using deep magnetic stimulation via
mounted solenoids built from conventional iron nails wrapped with twenty-
two-gauge wire. “The results are not as dramatic, but they are consistent
GARETH BRANWYN

enough to warrant more study,” he says.1 2

Part of the danger of monkeying with one’s brain, especially with
little or no knowledge of neuroscience, is that most individuals do not have

330
access to the sophisticated testing and feedback devices that are available to
legitimate researchers. Through devices like the Mindset, a “desktop EEG,”
Cole and other researchers hope to change that. “It is imperative that neuro-
science research is not limited to large organizations with big budgets,” insists
13
Cole. The further I got out on the fringes of neurohacking, the more noise
overcame signal. I heard rumors of brain-power amplification devices, wire-
heading (recreational shock therapy), and most disturbing of all, claims that
people are actually poking holes in their heads and directly stimulating their
brains. (Kids, don’t try this at home.)

J A C K I N G I N ? P L E A S E S TA N D B Y. . .

We know the future will be wired. Hardwiring of neural prosthe-

sis is already here and will continue to develop toward completely implantable
systems controlled by the user’s brain. Most researchers contend that these
advanced systems are at least ten to twenty years in the future. Whatever the
date, this technology will eventually become a common enabling option for
the disabled, and at that point, people will surely start talking about using sim-
ilar technologies for elective human augmentation.
But when that day comes, many questions will remain. Will peo-
ple really want to have their bodies opened and wired? How will they pay for
what will certainly be expensive procedures? And what about obsolescence?
Technology moves at light speed now. How fast will it move decades from
now? In that accelerated future, today’s hot neural interface could become
tomorrow’s neuro-trash. “Look, Jimmy’s still got the version 1.1 Cranium
Jack” (titter, titter). Even the most enthusiastic neuronauts will not want to
subject themselves to repeated brain surgery in the pursuit of the latest hard-
ware upgrade.
For the near future, the bulk of elective interface options will
continue to be softwired ones, mainly via the sophisticated neural transducers
we already have: our five senses. Likely directions include more immersive
three-dimensional environments, voice input/output, and a whole wardrobe of
 VR work and leisure suits. The most sci-fi-like interfaces of the next decade
will include EEG controlled/radio transmitted input devices.
Certainly the mythic desire for the bionic human, whether to
restore what was lost or to add on what is desired, will continue to drive much
of this inquiry. What direction such desires take is anyone’s guess. Don Idhe: “I
think a lot of this is conceptualist stuff, wishful thinking. These are fantasies
that may have nothing to do with what eventually gets developed and used.”
As Avital Ronell points out in The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia,
Electric Speech, the phone was originally intended as a prosthetic device for the
14
hard of hearing. Technology will always develop as society decides what it’s
to be used for, not necessarily what the designer or visionary had in mind.

NOTES

1. Anonymous, email to author, 8 February 1993. Peripheral Nerve Recording and Stimulation,” IEEE
Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 39, no. 9
2. Allucquere Rosanne Stone, telephone interview
(September, 1992): 893–902.
with author, 7 April 1990.
9. Scott Balley, telephone interview with author, 14
3. Don Ihde, telephone telephone interview with
April 1993.
author, 14 April 1993.
10. Sarah Williams, “Tapping into Nerve Conversa-
4. Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in Simians,
tions” Science (May 1980): 555.
Cyborgs, and Woman (New York: Routledge 1991).
11 Anderson, email to author.
5. Terry F. Hambrecht, “Neural Prosthesis,” in Annual
Review of Biophysics and Bioengineering, ed. L. J. 12. David Cole, telephone interview with author, 2
Mullins (New York: Pergammon Press, 1979). April 1993.
GARETH BRANWYN

6. John Anderson, email to author, 27 April 1993. 13. Ibid.

7. Richard Alan Normann, telephone interview with 14. Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book: Technology,
author, 7 August 1993. Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (Lincoln NB: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1989).
8. Gregory T. A. Kovacs, C. W. Storment, and J. M.
Rosen, “Regeneration Microelectrode Array for

332
 Stelarc: The Evolutionary

Alchemy of Reason (AN EXCERPT)

BRIAN MASSUMI

“What is important is the body as an object, not a subject—not

being a particular someone but rather becoming something else.”

“Information is the prosthesis that props up the obsolete body.”

—Stelarc

BODY SUSPENSIONS EVENTS (1976–88)

Stelarc’s early body suspensions were careful, calculated, literally

antiseptic. They weren’t shamanistic or mystical or ecstatic. And they most
certainly weren’t masochistic. The pain wasn’t sought after or reveled in. It was
a soberly accepted byproduct of the project. The point was never to awe the
audience with the artist’s courage or hubris. Neither was it to treat the audi-
ence to a dramatic staging of symbolic suffering in order to shed light on or
heal some supposedly founding agony of the human subject.
Stelarc applies instrumental reason—careful, calculated, med-
ically-assisted procedure—to the body, taken as an object, in order to extend
intelligence into space, by means of a suspension. Now how does suspending
the body-object extend intelligence? And what is the something else the body
becomes, beyond its objectivity and subjectivity?
 above left: Rock Suspension, Tokyo

above right: Sculpture Space Suspension, UNAM, Mexico City

facing page: The Third Hand, Yokohama

To begin to answer these questions, it is necessary to clarify what

precisely is suspended. It is not simply the actual body of the artist. By target-
ing the body as object, Stelarc is targeting the generality of the body. The sus-
pended body is a sensible concept: the implications of the event are felt first,
before being thought out. The apparatus of suspension set up the body’s rela-
tion to itself as a problem, a compulsion, and construed that problem in terms
of force. The basic device employed was, after all, an interruption of the body’s
necessary relation to the grounding force of human action: gravity. The hooks
turned the skin into a counter-gravity machine.

THIRD ARM EVENTS (1981–94)

The operation in play in this project is about extension as

opposed to substitution, or what is commonly called prosthesis. The robotic
Third Arm attaches to the right flesh arm. It does not replace it. It is a “pros-
thesis” in the etymological sense of the word, “to put in addition to.” As an
addition, it belongs to an order of superposition. The tendency of Stelarc’s
events is toward superposition. The body is probed so that its inside is also an
BRIAN MASSUMI

exterior. The body inputs information into the computer in order to express
it or relay it as a force: the body places itself between information and
force. The left side of the body receives programmed gestures fed in from a
machine, which it then transduces into involuntary gestures: programmed and
336
The Third Hand, Yokohama
above: Microfilm Image of Inside of My Stomach

right: Stomach Sculpture

 339

STELARC: THE EVOLUTIONARY ALCHEMY OF REASON

Amplified Body/Enhanced Image

involuntary. The right side of the body relays muscular movement into
mechanical movement: organism and machine. Computer and robotic arm.
Sensation and purposive functioning.

AMPLIFIED BODY EVENTS (1970–94)

The body performs in a structured and interactive lighting

installation that flickers and flares in response to the electrical discharges of the
body. Light is treated not as an external illumination of the body but as a man-
ifestation of the body’s rhythms.

HOLLOW BODY EVENTS (1994)

In the Hollow Body Events, the interior of the stomach, colon,

and lungs are filmed with a miniature video camera. The probes disable the
default envelope of intensity by following the infolding of the skin into the
body, through the orifices. The extension into visibility of the body’s inside
reveals its sensitive-intensive, palpitating interiority to be an infolded—and
 Fractal Flesh Telepolis (Helsinki–Luxembourg)

unfoldable—exteriority that is as susceptible to transductive connection as any

sampling of body-substance. The body is hollow. There is nothing inside—
there is no inside as such for anything to be in, interiority being only a partic-
ular relationship of the exterior to itself.

F R A C TA L F L E S H - S P L I T B O D Y: V O LTA G E I N / V O LTA G E O U T ( 1 9 9 5 )

Here, the body was plugged into the World Wide Web via elec-
trodes connected to the body. The body and Third Arm were situated in Lux-
embourg, and people in seven cities around the world were invited to gather at
specially networked terminals where they could remotely control the body’s
gestures. Others were encouraged to log in through their regular Internet con-
BRIAN MASSUMI

nections. The audience is let into the loop. It becomes part of the performance.
The distance between the performer and the spectator is abolished. Sensation
has unfolded into a transindividual feedback loop of action-reaction, stimulus-
response. The performance potentializes a material interconnection of bodies.
340
EXTRA EAR (1997–98)

Having a Third Hand, the body will construct an extra ear. This will be
positioned on the side of the face beside the right ear. A balloon will
be inserted beneath the skin and gradually inflated for an estimated
four-to-six weeks until an adequate bubble of stretched skin is formed.
The balloon is then removed and a cartilage or plastic ear framework is
inserted in the excess bag of skin. A cosmetic or plastic surgeon will
then cut, nip, tuck, and sew the skin over the underlying ear structure.
The Extra Ear will retain feeling, but, of course, it will not be able to
hear. It is intended that this ear will speak. An implanted sound chip
will be actuated by a proximity sensor whenever another body gets
close enough. Ultimately, the aim will be for one ear to whisper sweet
nothings into the other ear. —STELARC
The technologies of VR, therefore, are post-medieval

surfaces where we merge with the aesthetic trompe l’oeil

of anamorphosis, go liquid and become spinning tops,

silver cones on glittering surfaces, a liquid array matrix.

This is a way of breaking through to the nonspace of

the third body: that virtual space where reality-function

dissolves into a perverted image, and where reflecting

surfaces are signs of that which never was. In the

anamorphic space of virtual reality, we become the

nonspace of the perverted image. —Arthur Kroker

 Seeing with your Eyes:

An Email Discussion between

Vivian Sobchack and John Beckmann

DECEMBER 1996–MARCH 1997

J O H N B E C K M A N N : In your 1 9 9 4 essay “The Scene of the

Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic Presence,” you

discuss how electronic representation “denies the human body
its fleshly presence and the world its dimensions” and how at
1
this particular moment in culture, “the lived-body is in crisis.”
Since that essay was written just prior to the explosion of the
Web, I was curious to know if you feel that the Web further
intensifies this crisis of the “lived-body,” if so how, and what can
we do about it?

V I V I A N S O B C H A C K : Given when “Scene of the Screen” was written and where

we are now, I find myself a bit uncomfortable with some of the overarching
assertions I made in that piece. I now think the issues of embodiment and
dimension need more specific interrogation. The explosion of the Web as a site
 for the fulfillment (or disappointment) of many and multiform desires cer-
tainly demonstrates this—that is, its diversity of function and actual use raise
questions about what kinds of fleshly presence or worldly dimension become
available through electronic transmission and digital representation. In terms
of embodiment, of course one immediately thinks of Web sex, which throws
the “lurker” into a flagrant interactive relationship at the level of desire, but
creates a body that must—and I pun here quite purposely—turn on itself. This,
in a way (like autism, like masturbation), leads to an intensified sense
of one’s body and an isolated sense of one’s self, a heightening of one’s
fleshly presence, not its denial. What is denied here is the desire and the body
of the other.
This, though, is only one form of embodiment. There are many
others, I’m sure. I just saw an advertisement on television promoting the child-
friendly “interface” of Fischer-Price toys and Compaq computers. We see a lit-
tle boy (no more than five years old) in front of a computer screen that seems
to show a Web site, but instead of a mouse, he is using a big plastic steering
wheel and what looks like a big plastic car phone to direct his travels through
the Net. It is, if you think about it, quite telling: what’s familiar here, what’s
user-friendly, is the heightened dramatization of the “cocooned” body, the kind
of body we first sensed (long before computing) in our cars, where we felt pro-
tected and unseen and snug—and, of course, in control. This is a body that is
not denied, but rather “nested.” Thus, there is a certain double cocooning or
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

nesting going on in that Fischer-Price-Compaq drama: comfy and snug

within one’s own home, one can get more comfy and snugger still—and all
while seeming to move outward into the world.
In “Scene,” I talk about the “crisis” of the lived-body as it fears
becoming merely a ghost in the machine. It’s been going on now for so long, it
doesn’t feel like a crisis anymore. The body’s “hysterical” attempts to reassert
itself as a physical capacity are by now normalized. Everybody (at least just
about everybody who has access to computing) belongs to a gym or has a per-
sonal trainer. What remains frightening is the kind of body that is reasserting
itself: rather than putting flesh on the ghost in the machine, it is transform-
344
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SEEING WITH YOUR EYES

ing—or, more aptly, morphing—the ghost into the machine. Informed and
guided by digital manipulation of an effortless and seamless kind, as a culture
we believe deep-down we can truly sculpt ourselves into immortality, erase the
labors of being and the very un-special effects of human mortality by reli-
giously (and I mean religiously) going to the gym or the cosmetic surgeon.
This is delusional.

JB: Well, I guess I’m one of the last hold outs, as I don’t have a
personal trainer yet. But seriously, I agree with you that it seems
that we are led to believe that we can now reconfigure our bodies
as easily as touching up some pixels on an image in Photoshop.
To me the real question is, is it even possible now
to “move outward into the world,” or is that urge delusional in
itself? For example, previously we moved through space, now
space moves through us. Accelerated digital technologies in
many ways have surpassed reality, and thus our very bodies and
gene structures are becoming more and more transparent to our
human gaze.

VS: I love your making a distinction between us moving through space and
now space moving through us. I’ve just had an epiphanetic experience that
confirms this latter experience and it’s not all bad. After just having come back
from the Armand Hammer museum (here in Los Angeles) which is having a
show of René Magritte painting and sculpture, I started looking at (a descrip-
tion I will shortly put in suspension) a CD-Rom I bought called The Mystery
of Magritte. It’s quite wonderful in various ways, but what really startled me
since I don’t normally look at painting on CD was when I would magnify one
of the Magritte paintings to fill the screen. There was this really uncanny sense
of being in, inhabiting the space of the painting, or of the space of the painting
coming out to envelop me. That’s almost impossible to do walking in and inhab-
iting the physical space of the museum with the physical gravity of my body
keeping me outside the painting. Only intense focus allows me a way into the
 painting in the museum—and then it’s a space of attention, not exteriorized or
possibly homogenized as a space my body can occupy. The computer allows a
really extraordinary extroversion that is at one and the same time an introver-
sion. This, perhaps, is the transparency—or easy reversibility—of inside/out-
side of which you speak.
On the other hand, I do believe it’s possible that we can electron-
ically still move outward into the world. I haven’t had an intense experience of
it, but have spoken to a friend whose use of the Web truly extends his being—
in this instance to his home country of Hungary. He is truly excited by the fact
that he is able to connect to his home city and explore what’s going on and feel
connected. I remember him telling me with great pleasure and pride that when
he actually went back to visit this past summer, he felt more at home and
embedded in what was going on than a friend who had only been away for a
month and was “out of touch.” This was not merely a matter of “information”
(like getting a weather report from a city you’re going to visit), but an adding of
lived dimension that he experienced over distance as proximity.

JB: Yet this semblance of information as knowledge (quantita-

tive information or even phenomenological experience), repre-
sents an illusionary or dream-like position, because in a sense
this new “real-time” shift is a move toward a kind of virtual can-
nibalization of space, as information now devours itself as
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

quickly as it can be produced (i.e., the Web, whirling stock mar-

ket quotes, etc.). So in a very real way, we now float in a digital
ouroboros, as what seems to be real becomes a substitute for what
is truly real. And this is the issue, because the problem with dig-
ital technology is that we can not yet simulate soulfullness. So
these “lived dimensions” of which you speak are, sadly, already
instantaneously dead. They represent a vortex of “dead signs” that
circulate in a data cloud that is adrift on a membrane of hyper-
text links that is further disguised as an “architecture of infor-
mation.” So, I suggest, that it is now impossible, or close to
346
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SEEING WITH YOUR EYES

impossible, to move outward into the world of “real events.” Or,
by pushing this metaphor even further, I suggest that “real-time”
is an extension of “dream-time”—that is, a “dream-time” that
cannot possibly exist because there is no “real space” for it.

VS: I am sitting here smiling at the fact that I (as a near-luddite, definite skep-
tic, and someone who is usually outright hostile to the Web) am somehow in
the position of devil’s advocate. (In that regard I do want to get in my negative
say about the Web here somewhere, but you’ll have to remind me.) You say
what I would call our “lived dimension” or, as you would call it, “soulfullness,”
is dead (it used to be God, didn’t it?), and what remains is merely quantitative
information devouring itself and us along with it. In many ways I agree with
you. Certainly, a lot of people have bought into the illusion that if you some-
how have enough quantitative information, it will somehow magically take on
value and transform itself into qualitative understanding. But it is also true that
for each of us, to use a cliché, the buck stops here—here both at the interface
and in our real chairs (pace the hypothetical chairs of philosophers) where each
of us is embodied and situated, where we have to make choices and act, where
we (even those of us who need to get one) have a life. Given our personal and
social situations, whether we admit it or not, want to or not, we do take and,
often more importantly, leave that information and always already confer upon
it or deny it qualitative value. The problem here is that we too often forget this
inescapable fact; the solution (and it needs continual resolving) is to con-
sciously remember it and make it explicit and not just thoughtlessly act it out.
In sum, what provides us at least the possibility of an “out” from the self-can-
nibalizing “digital ouroboros” is that we ultimately feel the digital bites we take
of our own fleshy and mortal tails.
For me (and here I’m reminding myself of why I really hate the
Web), I feel that digital bite on my very mortality. I sit there in front of that
computer shell and feel like I’m the victim of a shell game, like I’m being
conned (or, maybe, “commed”). The Web is the one place where I am acutely
aware of being offered infinite space while being robbed of finite time. The
 interface doesn’t help—nor will, despite all techie protests, a “faster” modem.
No modem will ever be fast enough to overcome the digital version of
Zeno’s paradox.

JB: You’re referring to Zeno’s bisection paradox, right? If a per-

son must walk a mile, they must first walk half a mile, then they
must walk half of what remains, or one-fourth of a mile, so it is
never possible for their journey to come to an end.
What I call the digital ouroboros (remember the
alchemical symbol of the snake biting its own tail?), refers to a
condition whereby we’ve fallen into infinity. An infinity of dead
information and obese images. This is the vicious paradox of the
digital age, it is the height of masochism and hunger. Content
has now been replaced with metacontent, physical attributes
have been replaced with meta-attributes and so on. So we’re
really slipping quite quickly out of any kind of gravitational pull
and at the same time, and this is the point that I think is very
interesting, the world is seizing up on itself.
Forget all the hype about a new frontier, it’s far too
late for that kind of utopian spin. We’re out to colonize cyber-
space because there’s simply no place left for us to go. The space
program hasn’t quite worked out.
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

So indeed, it is a shell game. But it cannot be

stopped—there’s too much money at stake. Our “New World”
economy is absolutely dependent on it’s success, the digital
revolution I mean. And it is quite addictive, the Web—look
there’s even Web TV (silly idea)! I’m predicting an increase in
divorce rates.

VS: An infinity of dead information and obese information? Mostly, you’re

right. But luckily, we’re finite and it is in that fact—the materiality of the bod-
ies that sit at the computer and their phenomenological sense of having to
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SEEING WITH YOUR EYES

ultimately live and suffer in mortal time—that gravity reasserts itself. I don’t
believe in the new frontier crap, either. (Indeed, I’ve written an article titled
“Democratic Franchise and the Electronic Frontier” for a British journal called
Futures that definitely quashes those notions that cyberspace is somehow
2
inherently democratic.) And I agree with you that our insertion/immersion
in electronic culture can’t be stopped. But insofar as that culture will never be
entirely electronic, insofar as human bodies are involved ultimately, at the ter-
minal ends so to speak, there remains at least the possibility of gravity rather
than free fall, of responsibility rather than of seemingly consequence-less play,
of value rather than quantity. So it’s not a question of stopping anything here,
but rather one of foregrounding those aspects of human existence that are not
served or satisfied by the Web (or Web TV) and redressing the imbalances that
fascination with the novel always causes. That is, we need to pinpoint with
greater specificity what we get and what we lose engaging the Web, or playing
computer killing games, or getting to “know” people through email. (I’ve a
friend who just completed writing a book called e-mail trouble: love and addic-
tion @ the matrix that critiques in very moving and personal ways our easy
belief in the intimacy and community one finds so easily on line.)3 In sum, I
think we’re past the “blanket condemnation” we all practiced to varying
degrees as a counter to the utopian hype that’s attached to “new” media. Now,
we need to get really specific about the specificities of our engagements with
electronic culture and digital media. Quick Time is not email is not the Web is
not a CD is not a chat room and I don’t think they’re equivalent in terms of
what we might specifically gain or lose in engaging any of them. On the Web
(which I hate), for instance, I am always acutely aware of losing or wasting
time—my own mortal time. I find, however, that watching certain Quick
Time movies that do not attempt to approximate “real time” movies, I feel
immersed in a kind of timelessness, their hovering somewhere between still-
ness and movement and their miniaturosity (laugh: no such word, but it fits)
reminding me of Cornell ( Joseph) boxes. Anyway, I think we have to be care-
ful not to reduce everything to Doom (pun intended).
 JB: It’s not a question of condemnation, it has more to do with
realizing, or accepting the distortion inherent in any form of
medium at this point in time. From my point of view, it’s no
longer possible to examine value or content, it’s only possible to
examine the relative functions between signs and their referents.
What is the societal function of corporate CEOs
earning 150 times the average “Joe Blow” worker, basketball
players earning $3 million a year, teenagers committing suicide
at unprecedented rates, young girls suffering from anorexia
because they want to look like Kate Moss? Granted, these are
surely not just end of the millennium problems, but they will be
further compounded by immersion into the illusionary quagmire
of virtual images and desires.
So it’s not at all surprising that we feel that we have
no time, or that we’re more aware of our own mortality—it’s par-
tially because the former Cartesian coordinates of x, y, and z are
being shanghaied. It is a loss we all feel in some way.
Similarly, the superpostcapitalist condition (in
which the digital revolution now plays a very large role) is in
effect rewriting history. It is rewriting history from a vantage
point that has turned inside out—this is what concerns me, this
is what is specifically problematic. If the “information superhigh-
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

way” is potentially democratic, it is perhaps because it’s the only

thing that is. Though I don’t think it will last very long, because
the new prototype or metaphor being developed is the notion of
the Internet as a channel, meaning it is being seen as an exten-
sion of broadcast media, so again, you’ve got huge companies
(i.e.; Microsoft, GM’s Hughes Corporation, AT&T, Philips
Maganovox, Sony) salivating all over one another, in a kind of
feeding frenzy, over how to make use of the Web medium, so it
can be packaged, consumed, and quickly reduced to another
form of TV.
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SEEING WITH YOUR EYES

As with most things, the real work will be done at
the edges, this in and of itself is nothing new, but the possibilities
are there for artists, film makers, writers to create new condi-
tions. This was not the case when TV was first introduced, every-
one was effectively locked out from the get-go. And of course
one cannot participate with a television set, it’s one way.

VS: Why single out “this moment in time” relative to realizing and accepting
the distortion inherent in, to use your words, “any form of medium”? It was
never possible to examine value or content apart from the “relative functions
between signs and their referents”—except insofar as one was ignorant of signs
as signs and really thought the map was the territory. Indeed, one could argue
that it is the very scope of this electronic “empire of signs” that has brought
representation and simulation to the foreground, that has made everyone (not
just postmodern academics) aware of mediation and the relativity of sign func-
tions. The question, then, is not one about the refusal of this condition, but
about the relation between an endlessly relative continuum of deferred signifi-
cation (all that info out there is meaningless in its circulation) and the individ-
uals who, because they are situated materially and physically in a particular
time and space and culture, stop that circulation and make meaning by giving
value to some of the circulating signs and not to others. This ascription of
value and meaning does not undo relativity, but it also does not undo value or
meaning: what it asserts in the human situation is that values and meanings are
always contingent. This is Derridean “differance” lived by people whose actual
phenomenological choices always mark a “difference” as real because it has
both material consequences and meaning in their moment.
You’re right in being generally pessimistic, though. The “real
work,” as you call it, will be done at the edges and, yes, by artists and filmmak-
ers, and writers—and even critics and theorists. In general, though, the institu-
tionalization of this glut of information and stimulation (whether the info
superhighway or Web TV) and its reification as capital will reduce our capac-
ity to recognize our possibilities for choice and the ascription of value and
 obfuscate our responsibility for our actions and their consequences. But even
television, which you say locked out possibilities from the get-go, had its Ernie
Kovacs! He was able, even if only briefly, to make television dialogic rather
than unidirectional.
You have to know, by the way, how both funny and peculiar it is
to me that I am not the one here laying out all the negative stuff vis à vis elec-
tronic culture. You’ve co-opted my usual position and forced me to think (as
Fredric Jameson suggests it is necessary for us to do even when it seems impos-
sible) about the progressive possibilities, or at least to reassert human possibil-
ities. I guess I’m not so much defending the Net as defending the existential
conditions that allow for and indeed mandate choice and value as contingent,
multiple, and always really ambiguous, which then allows an opening (however
tiny) through which the progressive can emerge.

J B : Do you think it’s possible to still shock people by creating

works that connect “directly to the nervous system,” as Francis

Bacon would say, thereby triggering transcendental sensations,
recognitions of the virtual, (I’m using the Deleuzian notion of
the virtual here), of the sublime? Surely film presents the most
suitable medium for pulling this off.

VS: It seems to me that today it’s all but impossible to shock people—whether
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

through painting, sculpture, literature, or electronic works. Offend, disgust,

thrill, yes, but really shock, I think not. The reason? If, as Benjamin as well as
others suggest, one of the essential characteristics of modern life (and hence
modernity) that marked it off from what came before was the novelty and
increasing dominance of shock as a phenomenological experience, then
perhaps what we call postmodernity is such a familiarity with shock that
it has become “naturalized” and “normalized”—which, paradoxically, neutral-
izes its phenomenological effects. Shock takes on the banal quality of the
merely novel.

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SEEING WITH YOUR EYES

Given this, perhaps artists and, for that matter, all of us “regular”
people, might be most shocked by a lack of shock. Here’s a radical idea (and I
definitely don’t want to suggest a return to the “flower child” and “make love,
not shock” generation): maybe the big social and aesthetic problem is how to
refigure the disjunctive and discontinuous within a contingent unity and con-
tinuity—one that denies difference as abrupt, but nonetheless promotes differ-
entiation. Now that would be shocking!
It would also refigure our notions of the sublime. I’ve written a
piece called “The Passion of the Material: Prolegomenon to a Phenomenology
of Interobjectivity” that suggests the sublime is misunderstood as a transcen-
dental experience that, in olden days, bespoke the spiritual and, today, evokes
4
the virtual. This is continuing a tradition that sees the sublime experience as
metaphysical. I would argue just the opposite: that it is a transcendent experi-
ence of our own materiality, of experiencing being as not different but differ-
entiated in the world and in relation to others, of being as what Merleau-Ponty
calls a “fold” in the world’s matter and, hence, its mattering. This is not the
same sense in which we are presently cultivating “the body” as both a comple-
ment and countermeasure to the virtual—in the first instance fantasizing our-
selves as immortal cyborgs, in the second trying to do the equivalent of
“pinching ourselves” to see if we’re real. Rather, apprehending oneself as living
a material existence that is in excess of consciousness (and the unconscious) is
to apprehend “the difference that doesn’t make a difference”; it is to recognize
one’s being as nonoppositional, however differentiated; this is a transcendent
nontranscendental sublime, a sublime grounded in the materiality of our being
and not its virtuality. Maybe artists and writers and critics ought to look for
ways to tap into this formation of the sublime as a way to counter the normal-
ization of shock.

J B : Let’s talk about the cloning of the ewe in Scotland by Dr. Ian

Wilmut and company. Let’s talk about Dolly. Dolly the double is
world famous. The boundaries of science fiction have been
 crossed. President Clinton is scrambling to organize committees
to study the legal, moral and ethical consequences of cloning.
What’s your take on it ?

VS: Well, first of all, I do find it really funny that—of all animals—it is a sheep
that has been cloned. Metaphorically, isn’t that “meta”? After all, in our culture
we have been using the image of the sheep for a very long time to connote con-
formity, sameness. And now, as seems so apposite to the current moment,
we’ve taken the metaphor and realized it concretely.
Furthermore, is it so surprising that we’re currently fascinated by
cloning? After all, cloning is to time as fractal images are to space. That is,
where fractal imaging figures self-similarity across scale, cloning figures self-
similarity across time. Thus, it seems part of a cultural gestalt in which differ-
ence of both subjectivity and situation is—in each case—written out of the
picture. As such, culture and history disappear or are made meaningless. I’m
reminded here of Jorge Luis Borges’s wonderful story in Ficciones, “Pierre
Menard: Author of Don Quixote.”5 In it, a critic celebrates writer Pierre
Menard for his much more nuanced and significant writing of Don Quixote and
goes on to compare a passage from Cervantes with a passage from Menard.
They are word for word exactly the same. What Borges plays with here is the
very way that culture and history constitute difference and deny the existential
possibility of sameness. Our fascination with fractals and Dolly would do the
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

opposite; it’s yet again a fascination with, a longing for, transcendence from (or
in?) existence.
By the way, although I often trash him, Jean Baudrillard is fre-
quently prescient. He’s written a very good essay on cloning in The Trans-
parency of Evil called “The Hell of the Same.” He tells us: “Cloning is thus the
last stage in the history of the modeling of the body—the stage at which the
individual, having been reduced to his abstract and genetic formula, is destined
for serial propagation.” Citing Walter Benjamin on the work of art in the age
of mechanical reproduction and the consequent loss of “aura,” he suggests that
now human bodies “are conceived from the outset” as having no originality, but
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SEEING WITH YOUR EYES

rather “in terms of their limitless reproduction.”6
So, we’re back not only to Baudrillard and the postmodern, but
immersed in what already is a tired term: the posthuman.

JB: Oh no! I think the general concern with regard to the

cloning scenario is fear of replacement, rather than transcen-
dence. On the most paranoid fringe, people are fearful of the
development of a black market; a kind of off-shore body part
slave bazaar.
If I may add an ironic note, at a recent congres-
sional hearing on cloning, Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) urged against
any bans on cloning, “What nonsense—what utter nonsense—to
think that we can hold up our hands and say, Stop....Human
cloning will take place, and it will take place in my lifetime. I
don’t fear it at all. I welcome it.” Harkin is clearly not in the
majority with this position.
Speaking of black markets—I’d like to return to
your interest in science fiction for a moment. I’m curious, what
was your reaction to the film Strange Days. Did you find it a
believable scenario for the future? Were you entertained by it?

VS: What interests me most about Strange Days—and remember that I’m a
film scholar who has written not only on sci-fi cinema but also on technologi-
cally-mediated perception—is less the millennial moment it is supposedly rep-
resenting than the perceptual technology it envisions. Although I’ve only seen
the film once, what I found most engaging and what makes me want to go
back and look at it much more closely (if I can ever dig myself out from under)
are the convoluted and extremely complex relationships that occur between
perceivers and perceived. The imbrication of vision in the film makes a Moe-
bius strip of what is already quite complex in Blade Runner’s interrogation of
mediated vision: i.e., Roy Baty’s ironic gloss on photography and cinema as a
whole: “If you could only see what I’ve seen with your eyes.”
 NOTES

1. “The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic sion of the Material: Prologomena to a Phenomenol-
and Electronic ‘Presence’,” in Materials of Communi- ogy of Interobjectivity), in Ethik der Ästhetik, ed.
cation, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Christolph Wulf, Dietmar Kamper, and Hans Ulrich
Pfeiffer (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, Gumbrecht (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 195–
1994), 105. 205.

2. “Democratic Franchise and Electronic Frontier,” 5. Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of Don
Futures 27 (1995): 725–34. Quixote,” in Ficciones, trans. Anthony Bonner (New
York: Grove Press, 1962), 45–55.
3. S. Paige Baty, e-mail trouble: love and addiction @
the matrix (Austin: University of Texas Press, forth- 6. Jean Baudrillard, “The Hell of the Same,” in The
coming). Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena,
trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 1993), 118.
4. “Die Materie und ihre Passion: Prolegomenazu
einer Phänomenologie der Interobjektivtät” (The Pas-
VIVIAN SOBCHACK AND JOHN BECKMANN

356
 CONTRIBUTORS

STAN ALLEN is an architect who practices in Jantar Mantar.

New York City and teaches at the Columbia GARETH BRANWYN is a contributing editor
University Graduate School of Architecture, to Wired and co-author of The Happy Mutant
Planning and Preservation. A monograph of Handbook and Jamming the Media: A Citizen’s
his work, Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects Guide. He has written widely about the Inter-
for the City, will be published by Princeton net and is currently writing a book on ama-
Architectural Press in 1998. teur/subversive media.
P E T E R A N D E R S is a practicing architect and BEN VAN BERKEL and C A R O L I N E B O S
principal of Anders Associates, a firm specializ- established an architectural practice in Amster-
ing in physical and simulated information dam in 1988. Among the many projects they
space. He has been a visiting professor at the have realized is the Erasmus Bridge in Rotter-
University of Michigan School of Architecture dam. They teach and lecture widely on theoret-
and Special Lecturer at the School of Architec- ical aspects of architecture.
ture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
BERNARD CACHE is an independent archi-
He is currently writing a book on spatializing
tect and furniture designer living in Paris. He is
cyberspace environments.
currently under contract with the French gov-
ASYMPTOTE was formed in New York in ernment to explore software elaborations of his
1987 by Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Cou- ideas and is preparing a series of furniture pro-
ture. The studio’s work includes building totypes for production. He is the author of
designs, urban planning, installations, objects, Earth Moves (1995).
and computer-generated architecture. Asymp-
CHAR DAVIES is an artist and Director of
tote’s projects examine the position of architec-
Visual Research at Softimage in Montreal. Her
tural production within a broad range of
work has been exhibited at the Musee d’art
cultural practices, and its work has been fea-
contemporain in Montreal and at the Ricco/
tured in many publications and has been widely
Maresca Gallery in New York. Her work has
exhibited.
been the subject of articles in publications
ERICA BAUM is an artist living and working including Wired, Metropolis, and Art in America.
in New York City. Her photographs explore the
MANUEL DE LANDA is the author of War in
transformation of ordinary facts in an absurdist
the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991) and A
archaeology of the everyday. She is represented
Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997).
by the New York gallery D’Amelio Terras.
His philosophical essays have appeared in many
J O H N B E C K M A N N is a practicing architect journals, and he lectures extensively in the
and designer, and is the founder of the interdis- United States and Europe on nonlinear dynam-
ciplinary design firm Axis Mundi in New York. ics, theories of self-organization, artificial intel-
His architectural and design projects have been ligence, and artificial life.
published in The New York Times, Progressive
FRANCES DYSON is a media artist and theo-
Architecture, Casa Vogue, and other international
rist who specializes in sound. Her audio art-
design journals. He is currently developing
work has been aired internationally, and she has
another book with the photographer Barry
exhibited media installation works in North
Perlus on the eighteenth-century astronomical
America, Australia, and Japan.
observatories in India colloquially known as the
 MICHAEL HEIM directs a Tai Chi group and Carnegie Mellon University Mobile Robot
teaches Internet and new media design at the Laboratory, birthplace of mobile robots deriv-
Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, ing three-dimensional spatial awareness from
California. His writing and lecturing center cameras, sonar, and other sensors. His books,
around the human body in its relation to the Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human
computer. He is the author of Electric Language: Intelligence (1988), and the forthcoming
A Philosophical Study of Word Processing Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind,
(1987), The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality consider the future prospects for humans,
(1993), and and Virtual Realism (1998). robots, and intelligence.
KNOWBOTIC R E S E A R C H is a Cologne S T E P H E N P E R R E L L A is an architect and
based media art and research group founded by editor/designer of Newsline and Columbia Doc-
Yvonne Wilhelm, Alexander Tuchacek, and uments at the Columbia University Graduate
Christian Huebler. In partnership with the School of Architecture Planning and Preserva-
Academy for Media Arts, Knowbotic Research tion. He is also president of HyperSurface Sys-
has founded Mem_brane, a laboratory for tems, Inc. an Internet technology design firm
media strategies. created to explore broader architectural inter-
faces. He recently guest-edited an issue of
B R I A N M A S S U M I is the author of A User’s
Architectural Design titled Hypersurface Architec-
Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Devia-
ture (1998). He has taught architecture at var-
tions from Deleuze and Guattari (1992) and
ious universities in the U.S. and has lectured
(with Kenneth Dean) First and Last Emperors:
internationally.
The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot
(1992). He is the editor of The Politics of F L O R I A N R Ö E T Z E R is a theorist and art
Everyday Fear (1993), and co-editor of the critic who lives in Munich. He is the author of
University of Minnesota Press book series several books on electronic art and the digital
“Theory Out of Bounds.” His translations from era. He prepared five special issues of the cul-
the French include Gilles Deleuze and Felix tural journal Kunstforum and was editor of the
Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1987). communications magazine Tumult. Currently,
he is editor of the electronic journal Telepolis.
WILLIAM J . M I T C H E L L is Professor of
Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences and A N D R E A S R U B Y is a widely published archi-
Dean of the School of Architecture and Plan- tectural critic, theorist, and curator based in
ning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- Cologne, Germany. He lectures regularly in
ogy. He teaches courses and conducts research Europe and North America. He is currently
in design theory, computer applications in preparing a book on the Viennese architects
architecture and urban design, and imaging and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
image synthesis. His most recent book, City of
VIVIAN SOBCHACK is Associate Dean and
Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn (1995),
Professor of Film Studies at the University of
examines architecture and urbanism in the con-
California, Los Angeles School of Theater,
text of the digital telecommunications revolu-
Film and Television. She was the first woman
CONTRIBUTORS

tion and the growing domination of software

elected president of the Society for Cinema
over materialized form.
Studies and is currently a Trustee of the Amer-
HANS MORAVEC built his first robot at age ican Film Institute. Her articles and reviews
ten. Since 1980, he has been Director of the have appeared in journals such as Artforum and

358
 359
Film Quarterly. She is editor of the anthology is a New York based pho-

CONTRIBUTORS
ARNE SVENSON
The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television and tographer whose work has been exhibited inter-
the Modern Event (1996) and author of nationally. His first book, Prisoners, was
numerous books. She is currently at work on a published in 1997. He is represented by the
volume of her essays, Carnal Thoughts: Bodies, Julie Saul Gallery in New York
Texts, Scenes and Screens (forthcoming).
M A R K C . T A Y L O R is Cluett Professor of
MICHAEL SPEAKS is a critic and lecturer in Humanities and director of the Center for
New York City. He has taught in the architec- Technology in the Arts and Humanities at
ture departments at the Harvard University Williams College. He also serves as director of
Graduate School of Design, the Parsons School the Critical Issues Forum at the Guggenheim
of Design, and the Columbia University Grad- Museum in New York. He is the author of
uate School of Architecture, Planning and numerous books, including Disfiguring Art,
Preservation. Architecture, Religion (1992), Nots (1993),
and Hiding (1997).
CLAUDIA SPRINGER is a Professor in the
English Department and Film Studies Pro- M A T T H E W A A R O N T A Y L O R is Visiting
gram at Rhode Island College, and is the Associate Professor of English at Kinjo Gakuin
author of Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the University. He is working on a series of essays
Postindustrial Age (1996). relating artificial life to fiction.
LARS SPUYBROEK is an architect and one PAUL VIRILIO is the Director of the Ecole
of the founders of NOX, a design office with a Speciale d’Architecture, and an editor of Esprit,
multidisciplinary approach to architecture and Cause Commune and Critiques. He is a found-
design. He lectures extensively in the Nether- ing member of CIRPES, the Center for Inter-
lands and abroad, and has taught at numerous disciplinary Research in Peace Studies and
universities. Military Strategy. His many books include
Pure War (1985), War and Cinema: The Logis-
S T A H L S T E N S L I E is a media artist and
tics of Perception (1989), Bunker Archaeology
media researcher working on the development
(Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), The Art
of different interface technologies within the
of the Motor (1995), and Open Sky (1997).
fields of art, media, and network research. He
lectures frequently and his work has been MARGARET W E R T H E I M is an Australian
exhibited internationally. He is presently work- science writer now living in New York City. She
ing on cognition- and perception-manipulation has written extensively about science and tech-
projects. nology for magazines, television, and radio. She
is the author of Pythagoras’ Trousers: God, Physics
S T E L A R C is an Australian-based performance
and the Gender Wars (1995) and is currently
artist whose work explores and extends the con-
working on her next book, The Pearly Gates of
cept of the body and its relationship with tech-
Cyberspace (1998). Her articles have appeared
nology through human-machine interfaces
in many magazines and newspapers, including
incorporating the Internet and the Web, sound,
the New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, World
music, video, and computers. He has performed
Art, and Metropolis.
extensively in international art events. Stelarc’s
artwork is represented by The Sherman Gal-
leries in Sydney, Australia.