Day one at Acadia 2014 found us in the 2D world. Day Two in reality. Day Three was to be somewhere in-between those. It found us dealing with Temporal and Data Agency. Temporal dealing with time and Data with evaluation. A mixing of the two worlds was at play. We weren’t here nor there. Somewhere in a digital version of Alice and Wonderland. Interaction, movement and perception were mixing seamlessly. Our understanding of reality has been expanded through the digital. Our viewing of the world and our society has been exploited. Subsequently, our social understanding of its impact and influence is coming to fruition, and an area of focus emerges.

Tools such as Google Earth, robotic arms, smart phones and countless others have forced us into a purgatory of realms all vying for our attention. We live in a three-dimensional world, we build three-dimensional objects, we think in three-dimensions, yet all our tools until recently have dealt in the 2D. How many times have we sat in front of the computer and just wanted to grab the objects in the screen? Teng Teng (Inspire: Integrated Spatial Gesture Based Direct 3D Modeling and Display) echoed this question in his recent thesis project during one of Day 3's panels: combining physical gestures with coordinated feedback to facilitate schematic design generation (or as he translated for everyone, his hope was to turn everyone into Tony Stark from Iron Man). 

[Teng Teng's presentation]

Your mouse is deleted, instead you turn the object by hand as you would on a cup on the table. A line? You draw it with your finger. Extrude, just pull that line up again. Cut the shape? Use two fingers as a wire-cutter. The system showed how we could design as we see the world, we could hold it, we could spin it. The middle man in the process, the computer, no longer a hindrance. It stepped out of the way and let you do what you always wished in the manner that you always thought. 

The gap from your mind, to translation, to reality is being shortened and in some cases erased – this theme was presented as a key element of the day. That gap, once seen as a means to an end, is being questioned and advanced. User interface directly controls how one uses the program, or views the world. With today's advancements in technology, it can allow us to get closer than we ever could have imagined. To blur the line between user and digital world.

Guvenc Ozel (Interface Activated Design Agency: Case for an Architectural Singularity through Robotically Actuated Motion, Sense-Based Interaction and Computational Inference) spoke of combining the information processed through our environment, then translating and reapplying it back to the environment. Google Glasses and smartphones being key topics of focus. Google Glass is not about rewriting what we see, but adding layers, options and information to the world. Guvenc's interest in social interaction, how we react to these worlds coming together and how we can bleed them together seamlessly, was a key thread through his work and a key element throughout the day. His project titled (PROJECT SOURCE CODE) was a hack at the recent Venice Biennale. 

[Guvenc Ozel]

With the help of various architects, the project created a hidden exhibition inside of Koolhaas' – viewing the exhibition through a smartphone, visitors discovered hidden images and objects. What you would see, and what your phone would see would not coincide, forcing you to decide which reality you desired to be a part of. 

The issue of duality and choice was of utmost importance throughout the day. How does one decide what is right or wrong when it came to perception? Were your eyes lying? We now go back and forth between these two worlds, the Virtual and the Real. We have become numb to the line of separation. Historically, architects have had control of the built environment, but now, with this ease of access and open control, where do architects fit in? How will our role develop?

“… is this architecture? what is architecture? Well, architecture is what is done in the name of Architecture…” - Neil Leach