Cyberspace as Reference Space

Takashi Yamaguchi

Today, the remarkable advances of electronic media technology are encroaching on the foundations of our existence. Every conventional framework for our perceptions---of the world, of ourselves in that world, and of our relations with others---is being dismantled. The world as we know it is being transformed with incredible energy, right before our eyes---and threatens to fall into chaos. As the world takes on new complexity with accelerating speed, new ways of perceiving the world and methods for reconstructing it are being demanded of us. The remarkable development of computer technology is enabling us to provide virtual models that do not rely on the systems or standards of reality.
The exchange of semantic information in cyberspace. The use of algorithms to generate form. The visualization of relational character. Such media technologies enable us to create a realm of rich possibilities outside the framework of the real world. These technologies look beyond the systems and standards of reality, toward new ways of reconstructing the world.
From programs of virtual reality a new world will take form. Our conventional methods of referring to the real world in order to perceive the world and orient ourselves within it, meanwhile, will grow increasingly challenged. This essentially means the potential to construct new kinds of space unrelated to real space or, in other words, the dismantling of space in its character as something that only exists in the real world.
In our cities and architecture, the meaning and information that have given form to the built environment are continually deposited and sedimented, producing strata of meaning and information within time. Real urban and architectural spaces have thus performed as vessels that hold, for referential access, the meaning and information that give them form. If we consider the terrific speed at which media technology is developing, we will see the importance of preparing a new memory domain in which to store, for referential access, information related to the generation of architectural space, for doing so will allow us to dismantle the real world and reconstruct a world of richer potential, and to escape the conceptual traps of reality.
Here, I will express the concept of spatial generation as a program. I would furthermore like to bring into consideration the idea of depositing that information in a domain other than the real world and to explore the potential in doing so. The act of storing and referring to information in such a domain, in support of the generation of space and form, will occur with great frequency, hereafter, in creating new architectural form in the real world, I believe.
Here, I have set forward two models for the generation and disintegration of a virtual spatial construction. This shows---through visualization of the distribution of intensity of disintegration---the manner in which genes carrying conflicting generative information destroy a virtual spatial construction. Here, the issue is not form, itself, but rather the program for generating form.
The diagrams depicted here give visualization to several possible processes for this. Although this may only appear a simple simulation model, there is still good reason for setting it forward. While the result obtained from these operations and random noise is simply an abstract concept, it will be seen as a useful action if we view this as a sample for modulating to a different context. After all, we can believe that the performance of this deconstructive modulation contains conditions for understanding real urban
architectural spatial construction. By returning these relationships to reality and revealing their differences, we can excavate and recreate meaning that is built into constructions concealed in the real world.
Clearly, we are in the middle of a process of cultural, social, economic, and political change. The consequences of even a small change in any of these elements are unfathomable, for such is the vast energy latent in the system as a whole. The system we live in, with its vast energy, has been set in motion. We have already fallen into the terrible abyss this system was destined to produce. Society will never again know times of gradual development. Architects will no longer be allowed to stop at simply proposing independent architectural concepts.
Design should describe not external form but rather the inner logic that produces it as a generative program. Design requires investigation of how it can be adapted to the environment and made to fit into the existing urban context. New design endeavor that employs such virtual programs potentially has great power to transform the chaotic figure of real urban architectural space. Form-generative programs that employ algorithms in spatial construction represent an extension, and conversion, of our capabilities from traditional methods that refer to reality to new methods that refer to a secondary reality produced by electronic technology.
When the volume of information racing through electronic media reaches the critical point and we obtain vast operational processing capability, a true cyberspace will be produced. When we can at last entrust information processing to cyberspace, our civilization will likely know a great leap in development. At such time, cyberspace will come to perform as a receptacle for generative information, and referential actions in cyberspace will provide substantial support to physical realization, the highest level operation. Meanwhile, the exchanges occurring between real space and cyberspace will enhance the efficacy of information stored and accumulated in cyberspace. This denotes a condition of cooperative exchange between real space and cyberspace. Hereafter, real urban and architectural space will be generated from a process of crossing real spatial construction with alien
genetic information that has been formed in cyberspace.
Whether such actions will lead real urban and architectural space into a realm of rich potential or simply deeper into chaos, I do not know. All I can say is that, no matter how we might question or renounce media technology, the times are moving in that direction. Surely, our mission must be to determine what we can do under these new circumstances. After all, no one can stop the times.