PUBLISHED IN:
CTHEORY
------------------------------------------------------------
Lev Manovich
The Aesthetics of Virtual Worlds: Report from Los Angeles [1]
West Holywood, Los Angeles, November 1995
Welcome to a Virtual World! Strap on your avatar! Don't have the
programming skills or time to build your own? No problem. We
provide a complete library of pre-assembled characters; one of them is
bound to fit you perfectly. Join the community of like-minded users
who agree that three-dimensional space is more sexy! Yes, there is
nothing more liberating than flying through a 3D scene, executing risky
maneuvers and going for the kill. Mountains and valleys can represent
files on a network, financial investments, the enemy troops, the body of
a virtual sex partner -- it does not really matter. Zoom! Roll! Pitch! Not
enough visual realism? For just an extra $9.95 a month you can update
your rendering speed to a blistering 490,000 polygons a second,
increasing the quality of the experience a staggering 27.4%! And, for
another $4.95 you will get a chance to try a new virtual world every
month, including a mall, a brothel, the Sistine Chapel, Paris during the
Revolution of 1789, and even the fully navigable human brain. A 3D
networked virtual world is waiting for you; all we need is your credit
card number.
This advertisement is likely to appear on your computer screen
quite soon, if it has not already. Ten years after William Gibson's
fictional description of cyberspace [2] and five years after the first
theoretical conferences on the subject [3], cyberspace is finally becoming a
reality. More than that, it promises to become a new standard in how
we interact with computers -- a new way to work, communicate and
play.
Virtual Worlds: History and Current Developments
(If such words as SIMNET, VRML, Quicktime VR and WorldChat are
familiar to you, skip to the next section.)
Although a few networked multi-user graphical virtual
environments were constructed already in the 1980s, they were
specialized projects involving custom hardware and designed for
particular groups of users. In Lucasfilm's Habitat, described by its
designers as a "many-player online virtual environment," few dozen
players used their home Commodore 64 computers to connect to a
central computer running a simulation of a two-dimensional animated
world. The players could interact with the objects in this world as well
as with each other's graphical representations (avatars). [4] Conceptually
similar to Habitat but much more upscale in its graphics was SIMNET
(Simulation Network) developed by DARPA (U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency). SIMNET was probably the first working
cyberspace -- the first collaborative THREE-DIMENSIONAL virtual
environment. It consisted of a number of individual simulators linked
by a high-speed network. Each simulator contained a copy of the same
world database and the virtual representations of all the other
simulators. In one of SIMNET's implementations, over two hundred
M-1 tank crews, located in Germany, Washington D.C., Fort Knox, and
other places around the world, were able to participate in the same
virtual battle. [5]
I remember attending a panel at a SIGGRAPH conference where a
programmer who worked for Atari in the early 1980s argued that the
military stole the idea of cyberspace from the games industry, modeling
SIMNET after already existing civilian multi-participant games. With
the end of the Cold War, the influences are running in the opposite
way. Many companies that yesterday supplied very expensive
simulators to the military are busy converting them into location-based
entertainment systems (LBE). In fact, one of the first such systems which
opened in Chicago in 1990 -- BattleTech Center from Virtual World
Entertainment, Inc. -- was directly modeled on SIMNET. [6] Like SIMNET,
BattleTech Center comprised a networked collection of futuristic cockpit
models with VR gear. For $7 each, a number of players could fight each
other in a simulated 3D environment. By 1995, Virtual World was
operating dozens of centers around the world that, also like SIMNET,
depended on proprietary software and hardware. [7]
In contrast to such custom built and expensive location-based
entertainment systems, the Internet provides a structure for 3D
cyberspace that can simultaneously accommodate millions of users,
which is inherently modifiable by them and which runs on practically
every computer. A number of researchers and companies are already
working to turn this possibility into reality.
Most important among the attempts to spatialize the Net is
VRML (The Virtual Reality Modeling Language), conceived in the
spring of 1994. According to the document defining Version 1.0 (May 26,
1995), VRML is "a language for describing multi-participant interactive
simulations -- virtual worlds networked via the global Internet and
hyperlinked with the World Wide Web." [8] Using VRML, Internet users
can construct 3D scenes hyperlinked to other scenes and to regular Web
documents. In other words, 3D space becomes yet another media accessible
via the Web, along with text, sounds, and moving images. But eventually a
VRML universe may subsume the rest of the Web inside itself. So while
currently the Web is dominated by pages of text, with other media elements
(including VRML 3D scenes) linked to it, future users may experience it
as one gigantic 3D world which will contain all other media, including
text, inside itself. This is certainly the vision of VRML designers who
aim to "create a unified conceptualization of space spanning the entire
Internet, a spatial equivalent of WWW." [9] They see VRML as a natural
stage in the evolution of the Net from an abstract data network toward a
"'perceptualized' Internet where the data has been sensualized," [10] i.e.,
represented in three dimensions.
VRML 1.0 makes possible the creation of networked 3D worlds
but it does not allow for the interaction between their users. Another
direction in building cyberspace has been to add graphics to already
popular Internet systems for interaction, such as chat lines and MUDs.
Worlds Inc. which advertises itself as "a publisher of shared virtual
environments" [11] has created WorldChat, a 3D chat environment which
has been available on the Internet since April 1995. Users first choose
their avatars and then enter the virtual world (a space station) where
they can interact with other avatars. The company imagines "the
creation of 3-D worlds, such as sports bars, where people can come
together and talk about or watch sporting events online, or shopping
malls." [12] Another company, Ubique [13], created technology called
Virtual Places which also allows the users to see and communicate with
other users' avatars and even take tours of the Web together. [14]
Currently the most ambitious full-scale 3D virtual world on the
Internet is AlphaWorld, sponsored by Worlds Inc. At the time of this
writing, it featured 200,000 building, trees and other objects, created by
4,000 Internet users. The world includes a bar, a store which provides
prefabricated housing, and news kiosks which take you to other Web
pages. [15]
The movement toward spatialization of the Internet is not an accident.
It is part of a larger trend in cyberculture -- spatialization of ALL
representations and experiences. This trend manifests itself in a variety
of ways.
The designers of human-computer interfaces are moving from
2D toward 3D -- from flat desktops to rooms, cities, and other spatial
constructs. [16] Web designers also often use pictures of buildings, aerial
views of cities, and maps as front ends in their sites. Apple promotes
Quicktime VR, a software-only system which allows the user of any
personal computer to navigate a spatial environment and interact with
3D objects.
Another example is the emergence of a new field of scientific
visualization devoted to spatialization of data sets and their
relationships with the help of computer graphics. Like the designers of
human-computer interfaces, the scientists assume that spatialization of
data makes working with it more efficient, regardless of what this data
is.
Finally, in many computer games, from the original "Zork" to
the best-selling CD-ROM "Myst," narrative and time itself are equated
with the movement through space (i.e., going to new rooms or levels.)
In contrast to modern literature, theater, and cinema which are built
around the psychological tensions between characters, these computer
games return us to the ancient forms of narrative where the plot is
driven by the SPATIAL movement of the main hero, traveling through
distant lands to save the princess, to find the treasure, to defeat the
Dragon, and so on.
A similar spatialization of narrative has defined the field of
computer animation throughout its history. Numerous computer
animations are organized around a single, uninterrupted camera move
through a complex and extensive set. A camera flies over mountain
terrain, moves through a series of rooms, maneuvers past geometric
shapes, zooms out into open space, and so on. In contrast to ancient
myths and computer games, this journey has no goal, no purpose. It is
an ultimate "road movie" where the navigation through the space is
sufficient in itself.
Aesthetics of Virtual Worlds
The computerization of culture leads to the spatialization of all
information, narrative, and even time. Unless this overall trend is to
suddenly reverse, the spatialization of cyberspace is next. In the words of
the scientists from Sony's The Virtual Society Project, "It is our belief
that future online systems will be characterized by a high degree of
interaction, support for multi-media and most importantly the ability to
support shared 3D spaces. In our vision, users will not simply access
textual based chat forums, but will enter into 3D worlds where they will
be able to interact with the world and with other users in that world."
What will be the visual aesthetics of spatialized cyberspace? What
would these 3D worlds look like?
In answering this question I will try to abstract the aesthetic
features common to different virtual worlds already in existence:
computer games; CD-ROM titles; virtual sets in Hollywood films; VR
simulations; and, of course, virtual worlds on the Internet such as
VRML scenes, WorldChat, and Quicktime VR movies. I will also
consider the basic technologies and techniques used to construct virtual
spaces: 3D computer graphics; digitized video; compositing; point and
click metaphor. What follows are a few tentative propositions on the
visual aesthetics of virtual worlds.
1. Realism as Commodity
Digit in Latin means number. Digital media reduces everything to
numbers.
This basic property of digital media has a profound effect on the
nature of visual realism. In a digital representation, all dimensions that
affect the reality effect -- detail, tone, color, shape, movement -- are
quantified. As a consequence, the reality effect produced by the
representation can itself be related to a set of numbers.
For a 2D image, the crucial numbers are its spatial and color
resolution: the number of pixels and the number of colors per pixel. For
instance, a 640 x 480 image of an object contains more detail and
therefore produces a stronger reality effect than a 120 x 160 image of the
same object. For a 3D model, its level of detail, and consequently the
reality effect, is specified by 3D resolution: the number of points the
model is composed of.
Spatial, color, and 3D resolutions describe the realism of static
representations: scanned photographs; painted backgrounds; renderings
of 3D objects; and so on. Once the user begins to interact with a virtual
world, navigating through a 3D space or inspecting the objects in it,
other dimensions become crucial. One of them is temporal resolution.
The more frames a computer can generate in a second, the smoother
the resulting motion. Another is the speed of the system's response: if
the user clicks on an image of a door to open it or asks a virtual
character a question, a delay in response breaks the illusion. Yet another
can be called consistency: if moving objects do not cast shadows (because
the computer can't render them in real time) while the static
background has them, the inconsistency affects the reality effect.
All these dimensions are quantifiable. The number of colors in
an image, the temporal resolution the system is capable of and so on can
be specified in exact numbers.
Not surprisingly, the advertisements for graphics software and
hardware prominently display these numbers. Even more importantly,
those in the business of visual realism -- the producers of special effects,
military trainers, digital photographers, television designers -- now
have definite measures for what they are buying and selling. For
instance, the Federal Aviation Administration which creates the
standards for simulators to be used in pilot training specifies the
required realism in terms of 3D resolution. In 1991 it required that for
daylight, a simulator must be able to produce a minimum of 1000
surfaces or 4000 points. [17] Similarly, a description of the Compu-Scene
IV simulator from GE Aerospace states that a pilot can fly over a
geographically accurate 3D terrain that includes 6000 features per square
mile. [18]
The numbers which characterize digital realism simultaneously
reflect something else: the cost involved. More bandwidth, higher
resolution, faster processing result in a stronger reality effect -- and cost
more.
The bottom line: the reality effect of a digital representation can
now be measured in dollars. Realism has became a commodity. It can be
bought and sold like anything else.
This condition is likely to be explored by the designers of virtual
worlds. If today users are charged for the connection time, in the future
they can be charged for visual aesthetics and the quality of the overall
experience: spatial resolution; number of colors; complexity of
characters (both geometric and psychological); and so on. Since all these
dimensions are specified in software, it becomes possible to
automatically adjust the appearance of a virtual world on the fly,
boosting it up if a customer is willing to pay more.
In this way, the logic of pornography will be extended to the
culture at large. Peep shows and sex lines charge their customers by the
minute, putting a precise cost on each bit of pleasure. In virtual worlds,
all dimensions of reality will be quantified and priced separately.
Neal Stephenson's 1992 "Snow Crash" provides us with one
possible scenario of such a future. Entering the Metaverse, the
spatialized Net of the future, the hero sees "a liberal sprinkling of black-
and-white people -- persons who are accessing the Metaverse through
cheap public terminals, and who are rendered in jerky, grainy black and
white." [19] He also encounters couples who can't afford custom avatars
and have to buy off-the-shelf models, poorly rendered and capable of
just a few standard facial expressions -- virtual world equivalents of
Barbie dolls. [20]
This scenario is gradually becoming a reality. A number of online
stock photo services already provide their users with low resolution
photographs for a small cost, charging more for higher resolution
copies. A company called Viewpoint Datalabs International is selling
thousands of ready-to-use 3D geometric models widely used by
computer animators and designers. For most popular models you can
choose between different versions, with more detailed versions costing
more than less detailed ones. [21]
2. Romanticism, Adorno, and Photoshop Filters: From Creation to
Selection
Viewpoint Datalabs' models exemplify another characteristic of virtual
worlds: they are not created from scratch but assembled from ready-
made parts. Put differently, in digital culture creation has been replaced
by selection.
E. H. Gombrich's concept of a representational schema and
Roland Barthes' "death of the author" helped to sway us from the
romantic ideal of the artist creating totally from scratch, pulling images
directly from his imagination. [22] As Barthes puts it, "The Text is a tissue
of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture." [23] Yet,
even though a modern artist may be only reproducing or, at best,
combining in new ways preexistenting texts and idioms, the actual
material process of art making supports the romantic ideal. An artist
operates like God creating the Universe -- he starts with an empty
canvas or a blank page. Gradually filling in the details, he brings a new
world into existence.
Such a process of art making, manual and painstakingly slow,
was appropriate for the age of pre-industrial artisan culture. In the
twentieth century, as the rest of the culture moved to mass production
and automation, literally becoming "culture industry," art continued to
insist on its artisan model. Only in the 1910s when some artists began to
assemble collages and montages from already existing cultural "parts,"
was art introduced to the industrial method of production.
In contrast, electronic art from its very beginning was based on a
new principle: modification of an already existing signal. The first
electronic instrument designed in 1920 by the legendary Russian
scientist and musician Leon Theremin contained a generator producing
a sine wave; the performer simply modified its frequency and
amplitude. [24] In the 1960s video artists began to build video synthesizers
based on the same principle. The artist was no longer a romantic genius
generating a new world purely out of his imagination; he became a
technician turning a knob here, pressing switch there -- an accessory to
the machine.
Substitute a simple sine wave by a more complex signal (sounds,
rhythms, melodies); add a whole bank of signal generators and you
have arrived at a modern music synthesizer, the first instrument which
embodies the logic of all new media: not creation but selection.
The first music synthesizers appeared in the 1950s, followed by
video synthesizers in the 1960s, followed by DVE (Digital Video Effects)
in the late 1970s -- the banks of effects used by video editors; followed by
computer software such as 1984 MacDraw that already come with a
repertoire of basic shapes. The process of art making has finally caught
up with modern times. It has become synchronized with the rest of
modern society where everything is assembled from ready-made parts;
from objects to people's identities. The modern subject proceeds
through life by selecting from numerous menus and catalogs of items --
be it assembling an outfit, decorating the apartment, choosing dishes
from a restaurant menu, choosing which interest groups to join. With
electronic and digital media, art making similarly entails choosing from
ready-made elements: textures and icons supplied by a paint program;
3D models which come with a 3D modeling program; melodies and
rhythms built into a music program.
While previously the great text of culture from which the artist
created his own unique "tissue of quotations" was bubbling and
shimmering somewhere below the consciousness, now it has become
externalized (and greatly reduced in the process) -- 2D objects, 3D
models, textures, transitions, effects which are available as soon as the
artist turns on the computer. The World Wide Web takes this process to
the next level: it encourages the creation of texts that completely consist
of pointers to other texts that are already on the Web. One does not
have to add any new content; it is enough to select from what already
exists.
This shift from creation to selection is particularly apparent in 3D
computer graphics -- the main technique for building virtual worlds.
The amount of labor involved in constructing three-dimensional
reality from scratch in a computer makes it hard to resist the temptation
to utilize pre-assembled, standardized objects, characters, and behaviors
readily provided by software manufacturers -- fractal landscapes,
checkerboard floors, complete characters and so on. [25] Every program
comes with libraries of ready-to-use models, effects or even complete
animations. For instance, a user of the Dynamation program (a part of
the popular Wavefront 3D software) can access complete pre-assembled
animations of moving hair, rain, a comet's tail or smoke, with a single
mouse click.
If even professional designers rely on ready-made objects and
animations, the end users of virtual worlds, who usually don't have
graphic or programming skills, have no other choice. Not surprisingly,
Web chat lines operators and virtual world providers encourage users
to choose from the libraries of pictures, 3D objects, and avatars they
provide. Ubique's site features "Ubique Furniture Gallery" where one
can choose images from such categories as "office furniture,"
"computers and electronics," and "people icons." [26] VR-SIG from the
U.K. provides VRML Object Supermarket while Aereal delivers the
Virtual World Factory. The latter aims to make the creation of a custom
virtual world particularly simple: "Create your personal world, without
having to program! All you need to do is fill-in-the-blanks and out pops
your world." [27] Quite soon we will see a whole market for detailed
virtual sets, characters with programmable behaviors, and even
complete worlds (a bar with customers, a city square, a famous historical
episode, etc.) from which a user can put together his own "unique"
virtual world.
While a hundred years ago the user of a Kodak camera was asked
just to push a button, he still had the freedom to point the camera at
anything. Now, "you push the button, we do the rest" has become "you
push the button, we create your world."
3. Brecht as Hardware
Another aesthetic feature of virtual worlds lies in their peculiar
temporal dynamic: constant, repetitive shifts between an illusion and
its suspense. Virtual worlds keep reminding us about their artificiality,
incompleteness, and constructedness. They present us with a perfect
illusion only to reveal the underlying machinery next.
Web surfing provides a perfect example. A typical user may be
spending equal time looking at a page and waiting for the next page to
download. During waiting periods, the act of communication itself --
bits traveling through the network -- becomes the message. The user
keeps checking whether the connection is being made, glancing back
and forth between the animated icon and the status bar. Using Roman
Jakobson's model of communication functions, we can say that
communication comes to be dominated by contact, or phatic function --
it is centered around the physical channel and the very act of
connection between the addresser and the addressee. [28]
Jakobson writes about verbal communication between two
people who, in order to check whether the channel works, address each
other: "Do you hear me?," "Do you understand me?" But in Web
communication there is no human addresser, only a machine. So as the
user keeps checking whether the information is coming, he actually
addresses the machine itself. Or rather, the machine addresses the user.
The machine reveals itself, it reminds the user of its existence -- not
only because the user is forced to wait but also because he is forced to
witness how the message is being constructed over time. A page fills in
part by part, top to bottom; text comes before images; images arrive in
low resolution and are gradually refined. Finally, everything comes
together in a smooth sleek image -- the image which will be destroyed
with the next click.
Will this temporal dynamic ever be eliminated? Will spatialized
Net become a perfect Utopian city rather than remaining a gigantic
construction site?
An examination of already existing 3D virtual worlds points
toward a negative answer to this question. Consider the technique
called "distancing" or "level of detail," which for years has been used in
VR simulations and is now being adapted to 3D games and VRML
scenes. The idea is to render the models more crudely when the user is
moving through virtual space; when the user stops, detail gradually
fills in. Another variation of the same technique involves creating a
number of models of the same object, each with progressively less
detail. When the virtual camera is close to an object, a highly detailed
model is used; if the object is far away, a lesser detailed version is
substituted to save unnecessary computation.
A virtual world which incorporates these techniques has a fluid
ontology that is affected by the actions of the user. As the user navigates
through space the objects switch back and forth between pale blueprints
and fully fleshed out illusions. The immobility of a subject guarantees a
complete illusion; the slightest movement destroys it.
Navigating a Quicktime VR movie is characterized by a similar
dynamic. In contrast to the nineteenth century panorama that it closely
emulates, Quicktime VR continuously deconstructs its own illusion.
The moment you begin to pan through the scene, the image becomes
jagged. And, if you try to zoom into the image, all you get are oversized
pixels. The representational machine keeps hiding and revealing
itself.
Compare this dynamic to traditional cinema or realist theater
which aims at all costs to maintain the continuity of the illusion for the
duration of the performance. In contrast to such totalizing realism,
digital aesthetics have a surprising affinity to twentieth century leftist
avant-garde aesthetics. Bertold Brecht's strategy to reveal the conditions
of an illusion's production, echoed by countless other leftist artists,
became embedded in hardware and software themselves. Similarly,
Walter Benjamin's concept of "perception in the state of distraction" [29]
found a perfect realization. The periodic reappearance of the machinery,
the continuous presence of the communication channel in the message
prevent the subject from falling into the dream world of illusion for
very long, making him alternate between concentration and
detachment.
While virtual machinery itself already acts as an avant-garde
director, the designers of interactive media (games, CD-ROM titles,
interactive cinema, and interactive television programs) often
consciously attempt to structure the subject's temporal experience as a
series of periodic shifts. The subject is forced to oscillate between the
roles of viewer and user, shifting between perceiving and acting,
between following the story and actively participating in it. During one
segment the computer screen presents the viewer with an engaging
cinematic narrative. Suddenly the image freezes, menus and icons
appear and the viewer is forced to act: make choices; click; push buttons.
(Moscow media theorist Anataly Prokhorov describes this process as the
shift of the screen shifts from being transparent to being opaque -- from
a window into a fictional 3D universe to a solid surface, full of menus,
controls, text and icons. [30] Three-dimensional space becomes surface; a
photograph becomes a diagram; a character becomes an icon.)
Can Brecht and Hollywood be married? Is it possible to create a
new temporal aesthetic based on such cyclical shifts? So far, I can think
of only one successful example -- a military simulator, the only mature
form of interactive media. It perfectly blends perception and action,
cinematic realism and computer menus. The screen presents the subject
with an illusionistic virtual world while periodically demanding quick
actions: shooting at the enemy; changing the direction of a vehicle; and
so on. In this art form, the roles of a viewer and a actant are blended
perfectly -- but there is a price to pay. The narrative is organized around
a single and clearly defined goal: staying alive.
4. Riegl, Panofsky, and Computer Graphics: Regression in Virtual
Worlds
The last aesthetic principle of virtual worlds that I will address can be
summarized as follows: virtual spaces are not true spaces but collections
of separate objects. Or: there is no space in cyberspace.
To explore this thesis further we can borrow the categories
developed by art historians early in this century. The founders of
modern art history (Alois Riegl, Heinrich Wšlfflin, and Erwin
Panofsky) defined their field as the history of the representation of
space. Working within the paradigms of cyclic cultural development
and racial topology, they related the representation of space in art to the
spirit of entire epochs, civilizations, and races. In his 1901 "Die
SpŠtršmische Kunstindustrie," Riegl characterized humankind's
cultural development as the oscillation between two extreme poles, two
ways to understand space, which he called "haptic" and "optic." Haptic
perception isolates the object in the field as a discrete entity, while optic
perception unifies objects in a spatial continuum. Riegl's contemporary,
Heinrich Wšlfflin, similarly proposed that the temperament of a period
or a nation expresses itself in a particular mode of seeing and
representing space. Wšlfflin's "Principles of Art History" (1913) plotted
the differences between Renaissance and Baroque on five dimensions:
linear -- painterly; plane -- recession; closed form -- open form;
multiplicity -- unity; and clearness -- unclearness. Finally, another
founder of modern art history, Erwin Panofsky, contrasted the
"aggregate" space of the Greeks with the "systematic" space of the Italian
Renaissance in a famous essay "Perspective as a Symbolic Form" (1924-
1925). Panofsky established a parallel between the history of spatial
representation and the evolution of abstract thought. The former
moves from the space of individual objects in antiquity to the
representation of space as continuous and systematic in modernity; in
Panofsky's neologisms, from "aggregate" space to "systematic" space.
Correspondingly, the evolution of abstract thought progresses from
ancient philosophy's view of the physical universe as discontinuous to
the post-Renaissance understanding of space as infinite, ontologically
primal in relation to bodies, homogeneous, and isotropic -- in short, as
"systematic."
We don't have to believe in grand evolutionary schemes but we
can retain the categories themselves. What kind of space is a virtual
space? At first glance, 3D computer graphics, the main technology of
creating virtual spaces, exemplify Panofsky's concept of Renaissance
"systematic" space which exists prior to the objects. Indeed, the
Cartesian coordinate system is hardwired into computer graphics
software and often into the hardware itself. [31] When a designer launches
a modeling program, he is typically presented with an empty space
defined by a perspectival grid, the space that will be gradually filled by
the objects he will create. If the built-in message of a music synthesizer
is a sine wave, the built-in world of computer graphics is an empty
Renaissance space, the coordinate system itself.
Yet computer generated worlds are actually much more "haptic"
and "aggregate" when "optic" and "systematic." The most commonly
used 3D computer graphics technique to create 3D worlds is polygonal
modeling. The virtual world created using this techique is a vacuum
filled with separate objects defined by rigid boundaries. A perspective
projection creates the illusion that these objects belong together but in
fact they have no connection to each other. What is missing is space in
the sense of space-environment or space-medium: the environment
between objects; an atmosphere which unites everything together; the
effects of objects on each other.
Another basic technique used in creating virtual worlds --
compositing (superimposing, keying)-- also leads to an "aggregate"
space. It involves superimposing animated characters, still images,
Quicktime movies, and other graphical elements over a separate
background. A typical scenario may involve an avatar animated in real
time in response to the user's commands. The avatar is superimposed
over a picture of a room. An avatar is controlled by the user; a picture of
a room is provided by a virtual world operator. Because the elements
come from different sources and are put together in real time, the result
is a series of 2D planes rather than a real 3D environment.
In summary, although computer generated virtual worlds are
usually rendered in linear perspective, they are really collections of
separate objects, unrelated to each other. In view of this, commonly
expressed arguments that 3D computer graphics send us back to
Renaissance perspectivalism and therefore, from the viewpoint of
twentieth century abstraction, should be considered regressive, turn out
to be ungrounded. If we are to apply the evolutionary paradigm of
Panofsky to the history of virtual computer space, it has not even
achieved its Renaissance yet. It is still on the level of Ancient Greece
which could not conceive of space as a totality.
And, if the World Wide Web and VRML 1.0 are any indications,
we are not moving any closer toward systematic space; instead, we are
embracing "aggregate" space as a new norm, both metaphorically and
literally. The "space" of the Web in principle can't be thought of as a
coherent totality: it is a collection of numerous files, hyperlinked but
without any overall "perspective" to unite them. The same holds for
actual 3D spaces on the Internet. A VRML file which describes a 3D
scene is a list of separate objects which may exist anywhere on the
Internet, each created by a different person or a different program. The
objects have no connection to each other. And, since any user can add
or delete objects, no one may even know the complete structure of the
scene.
The Web has already been compared to the American Wild West.
The spatialized Web as envisioned by VRML (itself a product of
California) even more closely reflects the treatment of space in
American culture: the lack of attention to space which is not
functionally used. The territories that exist between privately owned
houses and businesses are left to decay. The VRML universe simply
does not contain space as such -- only objects which belong to different
individuals.
And what is an object in a virtual world? Something which can
be acted upon: clicked; moved; opened -- in short, used. It is tempting to
interpret this as regression to the world view of an infant. A child does
not think of the universe as existing separately from himself -- it
appears as a collection of unrelated objects with which he can enter in
contact: touch; suck on; grab. Similarly, the user of a virtual world tries
to click on whatever is in front of him; if the objects do not respond, he
is disappointed. In the virtual universe, Descartes' maxim can be
rewritten as follows: "I can be clicked on, therefore I exist."
5. The Whole Picture
I have discussed different aesthetic features of 3D virtual worlds. But
what would a future full-blown virtual world feel like? What would be
its overall gestalt?
One example of a highly detailed virtual world, complete with
landscapes and human beings, is provided by Disney's 1995 "Toy Story,"
the first completely computer-animated feature length film.
Frighteningly sterile, this is the world in which the toys and the
humans look absolutely alike, the later appearing as macabre
automatons.
If you want to experience cyberspace of the future today, visit the
place where "Toy Story" was made -- Los Angeles. The city offers a
precise model for the virtual world. There is no center, no hint of any
kind of centralized organization, no traces of the hierarchy essential to
traditional cities. One drives to particular locations defined strictly by
their street addresses rather than by spatial landmarks. A trendy
restaurant or club can be found in the middle of nowhere, among the
miles of completely unremarkable buildings. The whole city feels like a
set of particular points suspended in a vacuum, similar to a bookmark
file of Web pages. You are immediately charged on arrival to any
worthwhile location, again like on the Web (mandatory valet parking).
There you discover the trendy inhabitants (actors, singers, models,
producers) who look like some new race, a result of successful
mutation: unbelievably beautiful skin and faces; fixed smiles; and
bodies whose perfect shapes surely can't be the result of human
evolution. They probably come from the Viewpoint catalog of 3D
models. These are not people but avatars: beautifully rendered with no
polygons spared; shaped to the latest fashion; their faces switching
between a limited number of expressions. Given the potential
importance of any communicative contact, subtlety is not tolerated:
avatars are designed to release stimuli the moment you notice them,
before you have time to click to the next scene.
The best place to experience the whole gestalt is in one of the
outdoor cafes on Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood. The avatars sip
cappuccino amidst the illusion of 3D space. The space is clearly the
result of a quick compositing job: billboards and airbrushed cafe interior
in the foreground against a detailed matte painting of Los Angeles with
the perspective exaggerated by haze. The avatars strike poses, waiting for
their agents (yes, just like in cyberspace) to bring valuable information.
Older customers look even more computer generated, their faces
bearing traces of extensive face-lifts. You can enjoy the scene while
feeding the parking meter every twenty minutes.
A virtual world is waiting for you; all we need is your credit card
number.
NOTES
1. Some of the ideas in this essay were presented by me at ISEA '95, Montreal,
September 1995.
2. William Gibson, NEUROMANCER (New York: Ace Books, 1984).
3. Michael Benedict, ed., CYBERSPACE: FIRST STEPS (Cambridge, Mass.: The
MIT Press, 1991).
4. Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's
Habitat," in CYBERSPACE: FIRST STEPS, ed. Michael Benedict (Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), 273-302.
5. Howard Rheingold, VIRTUAL REALITY (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1991), 360-361.
6. See Tony Reveaux, "Virtual Reality Gets Real," NEW MEDIA (January
1993): 39.
7. Virtual World Entertainment, Inc., Press Release, SIGGRAPH '95, Los
Angeles, August 7-1, 1995.
8. Gavin Bell, Anthony Parisi and Mark Pesce, "The Virtual Reality Modeling
Language. Version 1.0 Specfication," May 26, 1995. A WWW document.
9. Mark Pesce, Peter Kennard and Anthony Parisi, "Cyberspace." A WWW
document.
10. Bell, Parisi and Pesce.
11. http://www.worlds.net/info/aboutus.html
12. Richard Karpinski, "Chat Comes to the Web," INTERACTIVE AGE (July 3,
1995): 6.
13. http://www.ubique.com
14. In September of 1995, Ubique was purchased by America Online -- a
significant development since America Online is already the most graphically
oriented among the commercial networks based in the U.S.
15. http://www.worlds.net/alphaworld/
16. For instance, Silicon Graphics developed a 3D file system which was
showcased in the movie "Jurassic Park." The interface of Sony's MagicLink
personal communicator is a picture of a room while Apple's E-World greets
its users with a drawing of a city.
17. Barbara Robertson, "Those Amasing Flying Machines," COMPUTER
GRAPHICS WORLD (May 1992): 69.
18. Ibid.
19. Neal Stephenson, SNOW CRASH (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 43.
20. Ibid., 37.
21. http://www.viewpoint.com
22. E.H. Gombrich, ART AND ILLUSION (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1960); Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in IMAGE, MUSIC,
TEXT, ed. Stephen Heath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
23. Barthes, 142.
24. Bulat Galeyev, SOVIET FAUST. LEV THEREMIN -- PIONNEER OF
ELECTRONIC ART (in Russian) (Kazan, 1995), 19.
25. For a more detailed analysis of realism in 3D computer graphics, see Lev
Manovich, "Assembling Reality: Myths of Computer Graphics,"
AFTERIMAGE 20, no. 2 (September 1992): 12-14.
26. http://www.ubique.com/places/gallery.html
27. http://www.virtpark.com/factinfo.html
28. See Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in
STYLE IN LANGAUGE, ed. Thomas Sebeok (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press, 1960).
29. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction," in ILLUMINATIONS, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York:
Schochen Books, 1969).
30. Private communication, September 1995, St. Petersburg.
31. See Lev Manovich, "Mapping Space: Perspective, Radar and Computer
Graphics," in SIGGRAPH '93 VISUAL PROCEEDINGS, ed. Simon Penny
(New York: ACM, 1993).