Participants' essays / Katri Palomäki /

Dreamscape - a Chritical Study of Virtual Spaces

Abstract
This article is a chritical study of virtual worlds, their present state and possibilities in the future. The introduction discusses Dreamscapes case and tries to find reasons why it fails as an virtual environment. Next chapter, "Labyrinth, abstraction and environment" is searching possible solutions and tools to change virtual worlds to appear more interesting. Third chapter "A New World" gives an example of imaginary world-order, a possible structure.

Introduction
How to find freedom in Dreamscape - if the question could be aswered, I woud probably visit the world more often. Maby the way of criticism could make my thoughs of freedom the claerest.

I find a world distressing, probably mostly because of its labyrinth-structure. You are told a few option of directions to go, few gestures you can use to make your body behave on sertain way. Most of the events happening have a pattern, a hierarchy, among which they are arranged. Tight cause-consequense structures allow not too many options to choose from your way of acting. The world, as it is in present state, is mostly intended to act as a discussion forum, which function it serves well. On the other hand, if you are interested of experiencing also other things you feel easily tied up.

What I mean by this other things starts from very basic things, which are not as individuals indispensable, but while all of them are missing in a same time I find my feeling of the space rather veird. Startingpoint for criticism is of course that if the world is intended to work with same rules as "real world". As Dreamscapes case I understand thats mostly the case. Then, I feel, the world is rather shallow when we have couple of pictures of houses and trees to make an environment for avatars. If it is really meaning to create a picture or a mirror of a real world it shouldn't be lacking all those incredients which create rythm and tension in our world. That is night and day, shadow and light, soundscapes from terrible noise to complete silence, contrasts between characters of spaces from tranguility to man made chaos of today, from open landscapes to narrow blockstructure, from dirt to steril clinicism. One thing not to forget is that space we are living in,even nature, is more or less culture bounded, history bounded, which makes it interesting and dynamic. While ripping parts from here and there and combining them anew randomly in nonhistorical context there is danger to end up with just pile of loose and empty meanings.

In the end everybody has their own interpretation of space. There may be many ways of experiencing even the same space due to the background and state of mind of a person. In visual artforms the way to capture a certain athmosphere in space could be done by using framing, editing or other manipulation of picture like using unusual colours, symbols, strange perspectives or mixing 2D and 3D material. It is easier to create the right athmospheres and tell a story by guiding person through ready thought picturematerial, to decide on behalf what to see and how. How could this aspect then be treated in virtual world without having the world experiencer feeling guided from above?

Now this is very personal subjective view of Dreamscape. For many others the abovementioned labyrint-structure would suit just fine. In my case this labyrinth just happens to be one of the worst nightmares of my childhood.

Lack of unexpectedness creates a big problem. "Echora-The Haven of Visions from Europe" talks about Gap Design, design of functional lacks which I find very interesting. The way Dreamscape is constructed is shallow presentation of boring simplified diagrammic environment with no surprises. What if there was points with no prescheduled action wich could lead to unseen places. What if you could actually get lost. And what if something mysterious would happen unexpectedly. The difficulty with Dreamscape lies in a fact that there is this small labyrinth shaped unity,aimed to mirror the real world, but being capable to express only an empty shell. Costructed with all these prethought functions with no gap inside, very tight structure it feels it isn't possibly to experiemce any privacy what so ever and then, outside that-is nothing. I feel that is a shape of prison. There is no way out of the catacomb, no possibility to leave.

Labyrinth, abstraction and environment
Labyrinth in itself is a great way of building a narrative world. It is just the forevergoing repetition which blurs the outcomes. It would be possible to unite labyrinths of different scales together, which is actually the way real world is built up. You can think of universe as a huge labyrinth with limited possibilities to move at least for human beings at a moment. Then we have billions of labyrinths in different scales inside out, and again smaller and smaller overlapping labyrinths for different sizes of communities as far as we reach the level of atoms. A great deal of the rythm and tension of our built environment is created by bringing together different scales. In virtual world there is possibilities to do anything. You could for example exaggerate these differences of scales to reach really extraordinery things. And still all I see is total elimination of all scaledifferences at the moment.

An abstract way of costructing the world would be much more forgiving than the way of imitation. Total exclusion of realworld agents would cause noninteresting results, but referring more to our dreamwolds and utilising inconsciousness for example could make interesting wolds. Surrealism as startingpoint could for example make possible individual experiences and bringing the environment more as a part of actual drama.

"The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat" talkes about user configuration of the world itself. This aspect is worth developing, because that's good way of adding randomness and freshness in worlds. It takes time, like all good things take before they mature. Concept of time demanded could though vary considerably between real and virtual worlds.

In !Echora-The Haven of Visions from Europe" the third groups work as a part of exercise "Environment, agent, action" was fascinating to me. Action is Spectacle, all participator action becomes various natural forces in the avatar world landscape. That is a lovely way of blending avatars experiences of the world as a bigger whole with eachother and their environment, This way an environment could have an active role in virtual world.

Back to the exercise-how to find freedom in Dreamscape. I cannot change the world myself. But if I dared to create a door or couple of them to get out and find a new state of being as an avatar coming down as a rain or blow like a wind I would be happy!

A New World
World of contrasts and changes, taking no predetermined format, having no predetermined laws or physical conditions familiar to us. No restrictions of moving, no distances on time as we know them. The whole new setting, the "world order", dynamic and changing the way user experiences it.

In this new world the air as an breathing substance is useless. It is replaced by thicker matter, penetrable and semitransparent, slatelike substance with ability to reflect issues, which partisipants want to bring from the real world. The substance memorises the forms, sounds and colours piercing through it along the time. Traces fade and vanish in time but until vanishingpoint the data is existing and accessible, working as a coneection point to the person to whom they belong.

This universal slatelike matter has uneven consistency causing from time to time densities appearig and formulating random beautiful shapes of many colours and soundscapes. These densities are capable to remember and mediate experiences of participants wishes. Between the matter there are voids full of light and silence, the "memory free zone". Quantities and complexity of these zones vary and together they formulate a sort of labyrinth.

The fird universal matter is solid substance, which can take many forms and composition according to participants memory. It works as an scaffolding on which participans can lay fragments of memories of the real world. They will be constructed further, formulated and demolishad by participants along the time. Old things get new meanings, and new history is developed.

This is the universal structure on wich everything can be constructed. The structure in multiple and concentric having great hierarchy of different scales insideout, penetrated in each other. There is vast emptiness surruonded by groups of multiple labyrinths, which are further surrounded by larger labyrinths e.t.c.

Conclusion
Forces of nature and animals of our world are indispensable part of our well-being and can not be excluded from virtual worlds - they are part of our memory, used to be much bigger part some time backward in our history. So our common memory of the world as it used to be, including our selves, will be "preserved" in electronic format, while the real one is bit by bit demolished. I just wonder who will remain to enjoy the new virtual worlds? Us? The machines? I also wonder if the contents of these new worlds will be just an extension of our already existing problems. After getting our physical word to the edge of devastation because of our neverending selfishness, it is hardly convincing to belive we could create a paradice of the next one.

References

Echora - The Haven of Visions from Europe, Mika Tuomola, 2. Narrativity and Communication 22.9.00 Sweden

The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat, Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, Electric Communities