The Representation of Architecture and its Porosity using Computer Games: the exploitation of a disjunct relationship between the experience of virtual and real time.

Summary:
The premise of this research is born out of the concept of “Porosity” and its development into “Real-Time Porosity”. My work will be linked to this larger project and as such seeks to develop an understanding of concepts that gain from and give to the development of “Real-Time Porosity”, but with a particular focus aimed at investigating the relationship between virtual and real time.

This research will begin by interrogating the definitions of “virtual” and “real”, by extending Panofsky’s analysis of space to an analysis of time and by applying Zavoleas’ “comparative evaluation” in formulating a concept of “relative reality”. In this way the initial meaning of “virtual”, that is to encapsulate anything that is temporarily simulated, will be challenged by potentially more appropriate terms including, however not limited to, digital, cyber, synthetic, apparent and imaginary.

This work will establish an understanding of the relationship between virtual-time and real-time. Assuming that this relationship is one of disjunction, this research aims to explore the ways in which we may exploit such a disjunct relationship for analysis and assessment. This work will investigate the implications of using computer game engines as platforms for simulation, with a significant interest towards how we experience time and how we have the capacity to change the nature of that experience within virtual environments. This research will adopt Giedion’s understanding of constancy and change in order to elaborate on notions of dynamic, constant and static time, within computer games and in regards to architectural experience. This research will likewise use Galia Hanoch-Roe’s analysis, of musical space and architectural time, to explore concepts of linear and non-linear passages of time and their significance to architectural representation.

This study will explore the relationship between subjective and objective perceptions of time within environments driven by computer game engines. This research will propose advantages and disadvantages attached to such a method of simplification and its usefulness for comparing information. A project will be established that links virtual-time events to real-time events, in both their disjunction and their correspondence. Its aim will be to explore concepts of melding a multitude of peoples’ distributed experiences into an observable event; such that it can be used for analysis and implementation in real-time, and, by consequence, for the development of “Real-Time Porosity”. The study will be critically analysed in terms of its restrictions and limitations inherent from its use of a computer game engine as a medium.

A key part of this research will be exploring and developing an appropriate way of representing temporal experiences in architectural space. The non-static form of such representation will use Albert Mayr’s many notations of time, together with variables from Richard Goodwin’s “Porosity Index”. Additionally this research will explore other variables such as the rest and activity of bodies, history of experience in nominated space and location in time to generate new forms of representing architecture and its Porosity.

This representational study of architecture and its Porosity will bring about questions of recording and storing information. This research will aim to address the ethical and conceptual problems associated with such archiving as well as directly test methods of archiving information collected through the use of computer games.

All these areas will combine into a substantial and significant body of research that will aim to steer the Real-Time Porosity project to consider the dynamic nature of the experience of time and how it may be exploited in order to deliver a thorough representation of architecture.