Brilliant Architecture Pushes Boundaries of Virtual World Thinking

I have been so deeply impressed by the work of Jon Brouchard and wanted to share his latest thinking on reflexive architecture.

I’m often stunned by the sculptural quality of some of the SL builds, by houses that are so realistic you feel you can drink the cup of coffee on the living room table, or by recreations of a streetscape that allow you to instantly transport to New York, Paris, Italy – you name it.

But its always seemed to me that the point of virtual worlds is their ability to expand our concepts of objects, social environments, information, interaction, and art.

Jon has been working on his reflexive architecture project and gave us this video that shows a “building” that responds to the presence of avatars:

Jon’s latest thinking is the idea of architecture that is not only reflexive to the presence of avatars, but also reflexive to that presence over time. In his latest scripts and builds, the architecture:

By installing reflexive and responsive elements that leave a visual trace or indication of asynchronous presence, new visitors could get a better sense that the space isn’t always empty and actually see patterns and traces left behind by avatars who have visited before them.

Not only is this a way of helping managers and users sense the traffic and interests within a space, but it creates a deeper sense of connectedness in a grid that can often seem empty. I remember the experience myself of wandering the grid looking for dots I could interact with. Over time, I came to understand that there was a deeply social world within SL and that the communication tools were better suited to small interactions and larger planned ‘events’. Sitting around and waiting for people to chat with was in some ways a misuse of the technology, and over time an extensive friends list and deep one-on-one engagements with people bring you to that magic moment when you buy your first 512 plot so you have a place to chill and chat.

But Jon’s reflexive architecture reminds us that much like the real world, Second Life and other virtual spaces provide a truly visual representation of the way that social circles orbit, connect, and then aggregate every now and then in social spaces. It would be so intriguing to map out the movement of dots on a grid-wide basis – to see what the social patterns actually look like, and to think about whether those patterns are much like real life – we go out, go to work, shop, go to a club, but the rest of our time is spent with a few close friends or family before we orbit off into the social spaces again.

Wonderful work Jon!

Open source scripts available here.

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