Am I the only one that does not see how Second Life is at all relevant or interesting to architecture? Sure it lets people design objects in a 3d environment, but theres been lots of precedents which have not recieved the same attention from architects. I've read so many posts, news items, etc. about Second Life recently and I just don't see the point.
MMORPG's have been around for years and years. Second Life just allows more control over the environment by the user, although there are others that allow this as well. How can this "game" (more like waste of time + money) provide any insight into the future of architecture in any way? Our world (the real world) is much more complex than the dynamics and interactions which occur in second life.
For example, the news article on scale in second life, sure its interesting if you dont know anything about games. All games that utilize an above-the-head perspective camera have to adjust the scale of objects so that it appears truer to life. And to answer the question Quillian asks... "How do you then use Second Life as a tool to create prototypes for real projects?" I would respond back with a question, why would you use second life as a tool to create prototypes? there are so many more advanced tools, more interesting tools, that can do this. Why second life?
In a funny way this is like listening to people back in the 80's talk about CAD and the use of digital techniques in architecture. Yes you can argue the point either way, but social networking is here to stay and Second Life is doing it in 3D. That's why it is interesting. For all of us in the early 90's that thought VRML was the sh*t, Second Life has now taken on a role in our same "head space".
i don't know nuthin' bout nuthin', having participated in neither, but it seems like the editors/writers of wired have already moved past second life, declaring it dead, but are jazzed about twitter as a 'social networking' interface.
as a culturati wannabe, i proposed for the 1996 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (entitled The Possiblity of Non-Movement) a future in which what i called "cyberjunkies" would occupy run down motels along Route 66(that had been retrofitted with the internets) where they could be connected to an cyber-reality...
Here is the text from the entry(to be read as though watching a documentary...)
The Tragic Story of CJ and The Sunshine Motel....
The site is Albuquerque, New Mexico., a city bifurcated by historic Route 66. Route 66 at one time stretched uninterrupted nearly 2,000 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.
There are 49 motels located on Route 66 in Albuquerque.
the motel- a point located on a line that is Route 66. A constant located in a world of change. A new guest every night.
On the information highway a similar constant is found; the cyber motel, a place where information stops for a few moments and then moves on.
The role of many motels changed. No longer did they serve the vacationing family bound for Disneyland. Instead they became apartments for day laborers and transients. The most decrepit motels became homes for prostitutes and drug addicts.
With the proliferation of virtual reality, some excess can be expected. As moreof us enter the world of simulated stimulation, a tragic few will not return. These are the cyberjunkies and like any addict they have turnd their backs on all , but the drug that keeps them high.
While on his virtual high, the cyberjunkie has no use for the tangible world. The reality that is love, family and career is supplanted by the imaginary world. This imanginary world is where the cyberjunkie finds pleasure, power and danger. For the Cyberjunkie the imaginary becomes the only reality.
To accommodate the growing numbers of cyberjunkies, establishments such as The Sunshine Motel have sprung up. These, motels, usually painted in bright colors to disguise the dark goings on inside, are the equivalent the opium den. Here the Cyberjunkie wallows in filth, all the time feeling as though he is in heaven.
Atypical resident at the Sunshine Motel is CJ. CJ once had a thriving career as an architect and a beautiful family. He threw that all away after finding cyberspace. Clad in only a stained t shirt and boxer shorts, CJ sits happily on a stripped moldy matterss, oblivious to the world around him. The only thing CJ cares about is his "Temporal Manipulator". The Temporal Manipulator is like the heroin addicts syringe. The instrument that delivers the rush.
CJ seldom eats, but when he does it comes from the 24 hour Taqueria next door. Of course, CJ's habit is not cheap and to support it he often robs this same taquiera. The crime buys CJ more time in his artificial world.
Unfortuanately, for CJ and those like him, the future looks bleak. Nor cure for this addiction is on the horizon and the number of those afflicted continues to grow. At this rate, The Sunshine Motel will have no vacancies for years to come.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Steven, but didn't Wired et al declare Second Life "dead" as soon as corporations started moving in and using it as yet another venue for marketing themselves?
Which is interesting to me as a an example of how we are trying to define "authenticity" over on the New City Wishlist thread. It's like as soon as the very real specter of a corporate brand name moves in, authenticty dies.
one step beyond that even. the corporations moved in and TRIED to use it as a venue but found that there was no support for the critical mass (crowds) they needed to make their virtual marketing useful.
what they decided was that second life is a bunch of people working in their own little pockets but without adding up to anything bigger - like a community. even the marketers want to find places that people consider 'common ground'.
It matters for many reasons:
1-It is beginning to impact REAL life building design and construction and Urbanism.
2-It is important culturally and there is a resemblance of built environment, thus the questions for me is: are architects once again going to cede control over the built environment (virtual and otherwise) because it seems irrelevant? If we do my thought is that virus will continue to spread with the help of virtual McMansion propaganda.
Second Life is not dying because of its failures but because of its successes. It has proven that there is a market for 3D web worlds, but its proprietary system and archaic rules are killing it. There are already systems that are opening the virtual world(s).
To sum up: Second Life is but the first virtual world with an economy and community, it won't last forever and its success will eventually kill it as better systems rival it. IMHO the fact that they are dealing with a built environment puts it square at the door of design professionals, if we choose to ignore it we do it at our own peril virtually and otherwise.
If anyone is interested the following are some writings I have been doing on the subject.
GSD School Blog: musings on the virtual more musings on the virtual
My blog outside of archinect to write, among other topics, about virtual worlds and their potential impacts: Virtual Sustainability
Other threads: Second Life (I am still working on getting Archinect some community space in SL) Second Life!!!! (notice my initial reaction against the very idea of a Second Life).
And of course the Second Life Feature. Read the comments in the bottom Heather, LB, and I had what I think was an interesting exchange.
Steve Fuchs, I am not arguing against social networking, but comparatively, the 2d versions are much more popular than Second Life. Why? Second Life is clumsy, hard to navigate, frustrating for beginners.
You said it's like the people who hated on CAD in the 80s. I was a little kid then so I dont know, but maybe its people who went through that and then see CAD become so ubiquitous are the ones that are so quick to think something like second life is the next big thing.
I think more interesting social networking sites are using video, webcams, and voice to allow interaction, rather than some pointless virtual world that has no connection to reality.
So quillian, you are suggesting that architecture firms set up offices in virtual worlds and sell designs?
I think the biggest thing you are missing here is that the point of Second Life is to allow each user to have control. While most users arent architects, they still consider it fun to design their own home. Why must architects feel they have to take the fun away from that in a virtual world? Why do you think the Sims became the top selling game? Because it let people design their homes, create objects, etc. Take that away from the people and it's not fun anymore.
In the end, its a game.
The hotel example is merely a publicity stunt. .0001% of architecture is being directly influenced by this, and thats architecture without the capital A.
I agree, but without a radical change in the way most buildings ever get built, i think thats a reality we have to face, and is a much more interesting topic than second life imho.
the issues that i had in january are still the ones that bother me most:
what i think is missing, from what i've heard of second life, is entropy: any sense that things might age, degrade, weather, die, evolve. my project in tor's studio would be to figure out how to introduce some sort of plug-in to the system that would begin to age things, make them less bright, a little dirty, add some funk to the fauxburbs.
this is only one aspect of an even bigger issue. aging, weathering, etc feed into my desire for this new thing to be able to inform through sensations of some sort. cold/hot, soft/hard, smooth/textured are all missing. how bleak. but then new residential construction is often as sensationless...
Posted by: Steven Ward on Jan 13, 07 | 5:24 am
[/i]... though maybe instead of aging through the representation of weathering, the homes might age the way an image would hypothetically age: pixelates, loses resolution, colors fade. soon all the artists will be moving into the blurry homes, causing a wave of gentrification, until some blurry homes get erased to make way for high resolution homes ...[/i]
Posted by: Heather Ring on Jan 14, 07 | 10:53 am
yes! what if you could track "outside" pixels in the house?
or if the gutters fell off if you failed to clean them, they got clogged, overfilled, etc.?
what if your avatar had to rake leaves or mow the lawn?
people can design anything on a computer or in a virtual reality. doesnt mean its gonna stand up. so its all pretend isnt it. take the item in the news about Scaling Second Life etc...There's a mezzanine thats about as thick as a leaf of paper, so apparently you don't need beams, joists, decking, gravity etc.
vado, I would imagine that the mezzanie looks like that in order to save prims (primitive shapes), the building blocks of SL. You can only have so many prims in your land (to save server space). I am curious where you are going with that line of thought though...
Are you arguing for 'construction honesty' in SL? What about work like that done by LOL architects? If we are not imitating real life with all its idiosyncrasies than is not worth to think about it?
We can take two directions on this; either this is an opportunity to affect the built environment using new popular media, or this is a waste of time. Most people in this thread seem to think that it is the latter, but if for argument's sake we agreed that it is a good thing for architects to be involved in, my question then is:
Should the work designers do in Second Life pursue a 'digital vernacular' agenda (like LOL), try to imitate real life and educate on good design practices, or be a design and sales tool to showcase projects you already have on board?
Steven, I think thats one of the main points im trying to make. Sure, 2nd life is a "life simulator," but in the end its a game. It embraces the fun parts of life, i.e. sex + capitalism, and removes the tedious, day-to-day things which are required in the real world.
Vado, I agree. Any 3d modelling program has that limitation, you can design whatever you want without real world phenomena directly affecting anything you make. There are structural/engineering programs that can determine if it will stand up, but architects have yet to embrace that very much, rather leaving it to the engineers (such as Balmond) to figure out how to make it work.
Quillian, I just don't think Second Life reaches a broad enough audience to really educate people on good design practices, and there are much better ways to represent and "sell" designs.
I feel there are other outlets that are better at raising awareness about design. At the moment, most people would rather simply have a website to read (wiki, which i applaud your efforts to update), if they are really interested in the subject, rather than having to download software, create an avatar, figure out the controls, figure out how to find your shop/business/island.
Q, i don't really know where i'm going but if you are designing simply for second life cuz your first life sucks that's one thing. but don't think its real. prims or no prims.
second life, or something similar, might take off at some point; it might not, but as it stands second life is some seriously nerdy shit. it's going to have to get beyond that to make it in the mainstream. the graphics are not helping the cause.
You have to salute Linden Labs for making a good faith effort at making their software open source. I would imagine that it would in their best business interests to keep viewers, servers, etc, completely proprietary (they have yet to post a profit). Like Arpanet, give it some time.
Second Life is a user community with user created content.. i.e. youtube. the filmmakers of the world of course have noticed this phenomenon, yet they dont try to take control of it just because they are trained in making films. some may use it for shorts, etc. but it will never replace professional filmmaking.
in turn, second life allows users to design buildings. sure, as architects we notice this, but i don't see the point of trying to use it as a means to an end. Just because we are architects doesn't mean that we will be able to push principles of good design on people who, for the most part, are just building things they like for fun.
So, what can professional filmmakers learn from youtube? What can architects learn from Second life?
i'm waiting for that first client who leads me to a url and says 'i've already designed it in second life, i just need you to produce the construction drawings'.
second life - interesting how?
Am I the only one that does not see how Second Life is at all relevant or interesting to architecture? Sure it lets people design objects in a 3d environment, but theres been lots of precedents which have not recieved the same attention from architects. I've read so many posts, news items, etc. about Second Life recently and I just don't see the point.
MMORPG's have been around for years and years. Second Life just allows more control over the environment by the user, although there are others that allow this as well. How can this "game" (more like waste of time + money) provide any insight into the future of architecture in any way? Our world (the real world) is much more complex than the dynamics and interactions which occur in second life.
For example, the news article on scale in second life, sure its interesting if you dont know anything about games. All games that utilize an above-the-head perspective camera have to adjust the scale of objects so that it appears truer to life. And to answer the question Quillian asks... "How do you then use Second Life as a tool to create prototypes for real projects?" I would respond back with a question, why would you use second life as a tool to create prototypes? there are so many more advanced tools, more interesting tools, that can do this. Why second life?
relevant possibly - am I interested not really!
Yup, seems like a massive waste of time. I gave up playing games in college, just no time.
Ironically, I do know two people (women) that met people via online playing. God only knows how many hours they spent playing, though.
they should find a different name for this...call it electronic agora, soft city, electric dreams, or something...just not second life.
In a funny way this is like listening to people back in the 80's talk about CAD and the use of digital techniques in architecture. Yes you can argue the point either way, but social networking is here to stay and Second Life is doing it in 3D. That's why it is interesting. For all of us in the early 90's that thought VRML was the sh*t, Second Life has now taken on a role in our same "head space".
Now if we could only mashup Second Life, Crysis, and Google Earth, then I think we'd be moving on to Arch 3.0 :)
i don't know nuthin' bout nuthin', having participated in neither, but it seems like the editors/writers of wired have already moved past second life, declaring it dead, but are jazzed about twitter as a 'social networking' interface.
Well to clarify, Second Life isn't even listed in the list of social networking websites. Second Life is obviously interesting because of money being combined with [url=http://www.aecbytes.com/buildingthefuture/2007/SecondLife.html]virtual architecture. The social fallout is a byproduct.
Sorry... these are interesting links and I didn't want to mess 'em up.
Well to clarify, Second Life isn't even listed in the list of social networking websites. Second Life is obviously interesting because of money being combined with virtual architecture. The social fallout is a byproduct.
as a culturati wannabe, i proposed for the 1996 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (entitled The Possiblity of Non-Movement) a future in which what i called "cyberjunkies" would occupy run down motels along Route 66(that had been retrofitted with the internets) where they could be connected to an cyber-reality...
Here is the text from the entry(to be read as though watching a documentary...)
The Tragic Story of CJ and The Sunshine Motel....
The site is Albuquerque, New Mexico., a city bifurcated by historic Route 66. Route 66 at one time stretched uninterrupted nearly 2,000 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.
There are 49 motels located on Route 66 in Albuquerque.
the motel- a point located on a line that is Route 66. A constant located in a world of change. A new guest every night.
On the information highway a similar constant is found; the cyber motel, a place where information stops for a few moments and then moves on.
The role of many motels changed. No longer did they serve the vacationing family bound for Disneyland. Instead they became apartments for day laborers and transients. The most decrepit motels became homes for prostitutes and drug addicts.
With the proliferation of virtual reality, some excess can be expected. As moreof us enter the world of simulated stimulation, a tragic few will not return. These are the cyberjunkies and like any addict they have turnd their backs on all , but the drug that keeps them high.
While on his virtual high, the cyberjunkie has no use for the tangible world. The reality that is love, family and career is supplanted by the imaginary world. This imanginary world is where the cyberjunkie finds pleasure, power and danger. For the Cyberjunkie the imaginary becomes the only reality.
To accommodate the growing numbers of cyberjunkies, establishments such as The Sunshine Motel have sprung up. These, motels, usually painted in bright colors to disguise the dark goings on inside, are the equivalent the opium den. Here the Cyberjunkie wallows in filth, all the time feeling as though he is in heaven.
Atypical resident at the Sunshine Motel is CJ. CJ once had a thriving career as an architect and a beautiful family. He threw that all away after finding cyberspace. Clad in only a stained t shirt and boxer shorts, CJ sits happily on a stripped moldy matterss, oblivious to the world around him. The only thing CJ cares about is his "Temporal Manipulator". The Temporal Manipulator is like the heroin addicts syringe. The instrument that delivers the rush.
CJ seldom eats, but when he does it comes from the 24 hour Taqueria next door. Of course, CJ's habit is not cheap and to support it he often robs this same taquiera. The crime buys CJ more time in his artificial world.
Unfortuanately, for CJ and those like him, the future looks bleak. Nor cure for this addiction is on the horizon and the number of those afflicted continues to grow. At this rate, The Sunshine Motel will have no vacancies for years to come.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Steven, but didn't Wired et al declare Second Life "dead" as soon as corporations started moving in and using it as yet another venue for marketing themselves?
Which is interesting to me as a an example of how we are trying to define "authenticity" over on the New City Wishlist thread. It's like as soon as the very real specter of a corporate brand name moves in, authenticty dies.
one step beyond that even. the corporations moved in and TRIED to use it as a venue but found that there was no support for the critical mass (crowds) they needed to make their virtual marketing useful.
what they decided was that second life is a bunch of people working in their own little pockets but without adding up to anything bigger - like a community. even the marketers want to find places that people consider 'common ground'.
Steve Fuchs, well put...
It matters for many reasons:
1-It is beginning to impact REAL life building design and construction and Urbanism.
2-It is important culturally and there is a resemblance of built environment, thus the questions for me is: are architects once again going to cede control over the built environment (virtual and otherwise) because it seems irrelevant? If we do my thought is that virus will continue to spread with the help of virtual McMansion propaganda.
Second Life is not dying because of its failures but because of its successes. It has proven that there is a market for 3D web worlds, but its proprietary system and archaic rules are killing it. There are already systems that are opening the virtual world(s).
To sum up: Second Life is but the first virtual world with an economy and community, it won't last forever and its success will eventually kill it as better systems rival it. IMHO the fact that they are dealing with a built environment puts it square at the door of design professionals, if we choose to ignore it we do it at our own peril virtually and otherwise.
If anyone is interested the following are some writings I have been doing on the subject.
GSD School Blog:
musings on the virtual
more musings on the virtual
My blog outside of archinect to write, among other topics, about virtual worlds and their potential impacts:
Virtual Sustainability
Other threads:
Second Life (I am still working on getting Archinect some community space in SL)
Second Life!!!! (notice my initial reaction against the very idea of a Second Life).
And of course the Second Life Feature. Read the comments in the bottom Heather, LB, and I had what I think was an interesting exchange.
are there codes in 2nd life...because the 2nd life headquarters of American Apparel does not have a handrail extension.
Steve Fuchs, I am not arguing against social networking, but comparatively, the 2d versions are much more popular than Second Life. Why? Second Life is clumsy, hard to navigate, frustrating for beginners.
You said it's like the people who hated on CAD in the 80s. I was a little kid then so I dont know, but maybe its people who went through that and then see CAD become so ubiquitous are the ones that are so quick to think something like second life is the next big thing.
I think more interesting social networking sites are using video, webcams, and voice to allow interaction, rather than some pointless virtual world that has no connection to reality.
So quillian, you are suggesting that architecture firms set up offices in virtual worlds and sell designs?
I think the biggest thing you are missing here is that the point of Second Life is to allow each user to have control. While most users arent architects, they still consider it fun to design their own home. Why must architects feel they have to take the fun away from that in a virtual world? Why do you think the Sims became the top selling game? Because it let people design their homes, create objects, etc. Take that away from the people and it's not fun anymore.
In the end, its a game.
The hotel example is merely a publicity stunt. .0001% of architecture is being directly influenced by this, and thats architecture without the capital A.
I'm not suggesting anything, I am just discussing the issue. Like in real life some people want to build their own house other people buy them.
However I will say this, I think the distinction of architecture vs. Architecture is what has our built environment in the condition it is today.
I agree, but without a radical change in the way most buildings ever get built, i think thats a reality we have to face, and is a much more interesting topic than second life imho.
the issues that i had in january are still the ones that bother me most:
what i think is missing, from what i've heard of second life, is entropy: any sense that things might age, degrade, weather, die, evolve. my project in tor's studio would be to figure out how to introduce some sort of plug-in to the system that would begin to age things, make them less bright, a little dirty, add some funk to the fauxburbs.
this is only one aspect of an even bigger issue. aging, weathering, etc feed into my desire for this new thing to be able to inform through sensations of some sort. cold/hot, soft/hard, smooth/textured are all missing. how bleak. but then new residential construction is often as sensationless...
Posted by: Steven Ward on Jan 13, 07 | 5:24 am
[/i]... though maybe instead of aging through the representation of weathering, the homes might age the way an image would hypothetically age: pixelates, loses resolution, colors fade. soon all the artists will be moving into the blurry homes, causing a wave of gentrification, until some blurry homes get erased to make way for high resolution homes ...[/i]
Posted by: Heather Ring on Jan 14, 07 | 10:53 am
yes! what if you could track "outside" pixels in the house?
or if the gutters fell off if you failed to clean them, they got clogged, overfilled, etc.?
what if your avatar had to rake leaves or mow the lawn?
Posted by: Steven Ward on Jan 14, 07 | 11:32 am
people can design anything on a computer or in a virtual reality. doesnt mean its gonna stand up. so its all pretend isnt it. take the item in the news about Scaling Second Life etc...There's a mezzanine thats about as thick as a leaf of paper, so apparently you don't need beams, joists, decking, gravity etc.
vado, I would imagine that the mezzanie looks like that in order to save prims (primitive shapes), the building blocks of SL. You can only have so many prims in your land (to save server space). I am curious where you are going with that line of thought though...
Are you arguing for 'construction honesty' in SL? What about work like that done by LOL architects? If we are not imitating real life with all its idiosyncrasies than is not worth to think about it?
We can take two directions on this; either this is an opportunity to affect the built environment using new popular media, or this is a waste of time. Most people in this thread seem to think that it is the latter, but if for argument's sake we agreed that it is a good thing for architects to be involved in, my question then is:
Should the work designers do in Second Life pursue a 'digital vernacular' agenda (like LOL), try to imitate real life and educate on good design practices, or be a design and sales tool to showcase projects you already have on board?
Steven, I think thats one of the main points im trying to make. Sure, 2nd life is a "life simulator," but in the end its a game. It embraces the fun parts of life, i.e. sex + capitalism, and removes the tedious, day-to-day things which are required in the real world.
Vado, I agree. Any 3d modelling program has that limitation, you can design whatever you want without real world phenomena directly affecting anything you make. There are structural/engineering programs that can determine if it will stand up, but architects have yet to embrace that very much, rather leaving it to the engineers (such as Balmond) to figure out how to make it work.
Quillian, I just don't think Second Life reaches a broad enough audience to really educate people on good design practices, and there are much better ways to represent and "sell" designs.
I feel there are other outlets that are better at raising awareness about design. At the moment, most people would rather simply have a website to read (wiki, which i applaud your efforts to update), if they are really interested in the subject, rather than having to download software, create an avatar, figure out the controls, figure out how to find your shop/business/island.
Q, i don't really know where i'm going but if you are designing simply for second life cuz your first life sucks that's one thing. but don't think its real. prims or no prims.
my first life doesn't suck... too much ;)
but seriously, i dont think anyone designs in SL because their life sucks. With the costs of doing anything in there I would say the opposite.
second life, or something similar, might take off at some point; it might not, but as it stands second life is some seriously nerdy shit. it's going to have to get beyond that to make it in the mainstream. the graphics are not helping the cause.
You have to salute Linden Labs for making a good faith effort at making their software open source. I would imagine that it would in their best business interests to keep viewers, servers, etc, completely proprietary (they have yet to post a profit). Like Arpanet, give it some time.
(sorry) And Quilian, Steve, and Steven are right on in this discussion.
yeah, honestly the graphics blow.
Second Life is a user community with user created content.. i.e. youtube. the filmmakers of the world of course have noticed this phenomenon, yet they dont try to take control of it just because they are trained in making films. some may use it for shorts, etc. but it will never replace professional filmmaking.
in turn, second life allows users to design buildings. sure, as architects we notice this, but i don't see the point of trying to use it as a means to an end. Just because we are architects doesn't mean that we will be able to push principles of good design on people who, for the most part, are just building things they like for fun.
So, what can professional filmmakers learn from youtube? What can architects learn from Second life?
i'm waiting for that first client who leads me to a url and says 'i've already designed it in second life, i just need you to produce the construction drawings'.
it'll happen sooner rather than later.
you cant get a virtual blow job
i can't even get a real one...:(
In the news:
A Virtual Gallery for Princeton University
Uh Qulian, that link to Princeton just takes one back to this thread...
sorry
the Princeton U. virtual gallery
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