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Real Space-Virtual Space. Aesthetics, Architecture, and Immersive Environments
The ERC project AN-ICON “An-Iconology. History, The- ory, and Practices of Environmental Images”, in collaboration with Triennale Milano, presents the international conference “Real Space-Virtual Space. Aesthetics, Architecture, and Immersive Environments”, dedicated to the interaction between Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), theories and practices of architecture and urban studies.
Held between the University of Milan (Sala Napoleonica, 19 - 20 June) and Triennale Milano (20 - 21 June), the conference will bring together national and international architects, scholars and artists, alternating theoretical moments with VR experiences. The AN-ICON project is coordinated by Andrea Pinotti at the University of Milan and is dedicated to the environmentalisation of contemporary images through technologies such as Virtual or Augmented Reality.
Presentation
Inspired by Ugo La Pietra’s 1979 seminal exhibition “Spazio reale-spazio virtuale” [Real Space-Virtual Space] at Triennale Milano among with his experimentation with proto-immersive environments such as Immersioni (1967-70), the conference aims at investigating how Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) create an artificial space of their own in dialogue with the design and perception of the architectural and urban space, fostering productive contaminations and intertwining.
VR headsets create an environment that subverts the traditional status of the image, in a way denying itself. Indeed, the image presents itself as unframed, immediate and immersive, in a word: an an-icon. The spatial experience created by these media, as well as the iden- tity and performativity of the users, must be redefined and described anew.
VR and AR represent a tool for architects and planners to rethink design in unprecedented perspectives. These devices allow professionals, but also universities and academies, clients and citizens, to quasi-live the project, not only visualising it but inhabiting its space. In short, virtual realities change the way we represent and also our relationship with this representation. Jaron Lanier, one of the firsts pioneers of Virtual Reality, has called this technology “a shared dream”, emphasising VR’s dreamlike component. This characteristic leads to another field of application: virtual space has the potential to become a poietic collector of unrealised projects, a tool for the re-enactment of destroyed buildings or utopian cities that come to life through the environmental image.
Beyond the headset lies the real city. Here, the vector from the virtual to the real changes direction. Technologies such as augmented and mixed reality (MR) bring digital objects out of the urban fabric, both for practical and creative purposes, redefining, in the wake of Manovich, new poetics of augmented space. In conclusion, the hyphen that separates “real space” from “virtual space” must be understood here not as a hiatus, but as the expression of a continuum: a process of hybridization and fluidification toward a sort of transarchitecture, opening a threshold between reality and virtuality.
For more information contact an-icon@unimi.it
Held between the University of Milan (Sala Napoleonica, 19 - 20 June) and Triennale Milano (20 - 21 June), the conference will bring together national and international architects, scholars and artists, alternating theoretical moments with VR experiences. The AN-ICON project is coordinated by Andrea Pinotti at the University of Milan and is dedicated to the environmentalisation of contemporary images through technologies such as Virtual or Augmented Reality.
Presentation
Inspired by Ugo La Pietra’s 1979 seminal exhibition “Spazio reale-spazio virtuale” [Real Space-Virtual Space] at Triennale Milano among with his experimentation with proto-immersive environments such as Immersioni (1967-70), the conference aims at investigating how Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) create an artificial space of their own in dialogue with the design and perception of the architectural and urban space, fostering productive contaminations and intertwining.
VR headsets create an environment that subverts the traditional status of the image, in a way denying itself. Indeed, the image presents itself as unframed, immediate and immersive, in a word: an an-icon. The spatial experience created by these media, as well as the iden- tity and performativity of the users, must be redefined and described anew.
VR and AR represent a tool for architects and planners to rethink design in unprecedented perspectives. These devices allow professionals, but also universities and academies, clients and citizens, to quasi-live the project, not only visualising it but inhabiting its space. In short, virtual realities change the way we represent and also our relationship with this representation. Jaron Lanier, one of the firsts pioneers of Virtual Reality, has called this technology “a shared dream”, emphasising VR’s dreamlike component. This characteristic leads to another field of application: virtual space has the potential to become a poietic collector of unrealised projects, a tool for the re-enactment of destroyed buildings or utopian cities that come to life through the environmental image.
Beyond the headset lies the real city. Here, the vector from the virtual to the real changes direction. Technologies such as augmented and mixed reality (MR) bring digital objects out of the urban fabric, both for practical and creative purposes, redefining, in the wake of Manovich, new poetics of augmented space. In conclusion, the hyphen that separates “real space” from “virtual space” must be understood here not as a hiatus, but as the expression of a continuum: a process of hybridization and fluidification toward a sort of transarchitecture, opening a threshold between reality and virtuality.
For more information contact an-icon@unimi.it