IS IT JUST A VIRTUAL REALM? OR IS IT A NEW SPACE GIVING POSSIBILITIES FOR PRODUCTION OF NEW PLACES?

Cyberspace as an Aesthetic Phenomenon Serhat KUT1

ABSTRACT Due to recent developments at the area of communication and information technologies new possibilities are arising for production of space. Cyberspace is the key term argued currently regarding the production of the new space. The term cyberspace coming from two words cybernetics and space was first coined by William Gibson, a cyber punk novelist, in his book Neuromancer. This new realm providing space for real communication in virtual space, includes many new tools for the possibility of new space experience. The design problematic starts at this point. How does the physical space and cyberspace come together and within which possibilities they can co-exist. In another way, can the pattern of relationship of these two spaces (physical space and cyberspace) extract a new understanding of space? And in the context of this new understanding of space, can we develop a new point of view for the architectural design problematic. Aesthetic phenomenon can be explained through the means of experience, discovery, getting in to relation, production of sensation, rereading as text and hermeneutics. The authentic experience of a place, its multilayered and narrative structure and the pattern of relationships within this place accounts for the aesthetic phenomenon of space. The infinite layered structure of cyberspace, the patterns of relationships regardless of the geographic location, point out a new trans-aesthetic condition. But confronting this infinite layered structure can cyber space provide a new sense of place? The main goal of this article to discover the possibilities of a new space by overlapping physical space and cyberspace, and in this process of discovery, to understand the conditions one space dominating the other and to form a new understanding within a holistic point of view in the context of pattern of relationships between cyberspace and physical space to the aesthetic experience phenomena. Keywords: Space, Cyberspace, Aesthetic Experience, Actual, Virtual, Reality, Co-Existence, Sense of Place, Hermeneutics, Digital Culture. Introduction

Due to recent developments at the area of communication and information technologies new possibilities are arising for production of space. Cyberspace is the key phenomenon argued currently regarding the production of the new space. This new realm providing
1

PhD (stanbul Technical University Institute of Science and Technology Architectural Design Program - Ongoing), Research Assistant at stanbul Kltr University since 2004. E-mail: s.kut@iku.edu.tr

space for social interaction also includes many aspects for the possibility of new space experience. The following article will be searching to understand the authentic experience of space by means of existential phenomenology in order to reveal the dynamics of space turning in to a place and further discussions will be made for searching answers for the following questions: How does the physical space and cyberspace come together and within which possibilities they can co-exist. In another way, can the pattern of relationship of these two spaces (physical space and cyberspace) extract a new understanding of space? What is Cyberspace? The term cyber comes from the word Cybernetics stems from the Greek (kybernetes, steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder the same root as government). Cybernetics is a broad field of study, but the essential goal of cybernetics is to understand and define the functions and processes of systems.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic) Cybernetics was defined by Norbert Wiener, in his book of that title, as the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. Stafford Beer called it the science of effective organization and Gordon Pask extended it to include information flows "in all media" from stars to brains. It includes the study of feedback, black boxes and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations including self-organization. Its focus is how anything (digital, mechanical or biological) processes information, reacts to information, and changes or can be changed to better accomplish the first two tasks .(Kelly,1994) Louis Couffignal, one of the pioneers of cybernetics, characterizes cybernetics as "the art of ensuring the efficacy of action"(Couffignal, 1958) A recent definition has been proposed by Louis Kauffman, President of the American Society for Cybernetics such as, "Cybernetics is the study of systems and processes that interact with themselves and produce themselves from themselves" (CYBCON discussion group ,2007) The word "cyberspace" (from cybernetics and space) was coined by science fiction novelist William Gibson in his 1982 story "Burning Chrome" and his 1984 novel Neuromancer. The portion of Neuromancer cited in this respect is usually the following:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding, (Gibson,1982) Cyberspace started to become a synonym for the Internet, and later the World Wide Web, during the 1990s..While cyberspace should not be confused with the real Internet, the term is often used to refer to objects and identities that exist largely within the communication network itself, so that a web site, for example, might be metaphorically said to "exist in cyberspace." According to this interpretation, events taking place on the Internet are not therefore happening in the countries where the participants or the servers are physically located, but "in cyberspace".( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace) In the simplest understanding Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. The place between the phones.(Sterling, 1992)

Virtuality and Cyberspace

Virtual Reality and Cyberspace are often used together as similar concepts but a broader discussion should be made to understand virtuality and its relationship with cyberspace. Virtual' has a similar meaning to ' quasi-' or 'pseudo-' (prefixes which themselves have quite different meanings), meaning something that is almost something else, particularly when used in the adverbial form. The term recently has been defined philosophically as, that which is not real, but may display the full qualities of the real. The origin of the term virtual reality is uncertain. The VR developer Jaron Lanier claims that he coined the term. A related term coined by Myron Krueger, "artificial reality", has been in use since the 1970s. The concept of virtual reality was popularized in mass media by movies such as Brainstorm and The Lawnmower Man and the VR research boom of the 1990s was motivated in part by the non-fiction book Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality)

According to Deleuze, Philosophy is the theory of multiplicities, each of which is composed of actual and virtual elements. Purely actual objects do not exist. Every actual surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images. This cloud is composed of a series of more or less extensive coexisting circuits, along which the virtual images are distributed, and around which they run. These virtuals vary in kind as well as in their degree of proximity from the actual particles by which they are both emitted and absorbed. They are called virtual in so far as their emission and absorption, creation and destruction, occur in a period of time shorter than the shortest continuous period imaginable; it is this very brevity that keeps them subject to a principle of uncertainty or indetermination.(Deleuze, 1977) As we understand from Deleuzes notes virtual always caries the potential turning in to actual and indeed what we call reality is the possibility of the virtual turning in to actual. The virtual place at Cyberspace turns into an actual place just when we start to experience it. Every virtual realm has a possibility of turning into an actual space when we dwell in cyberspace. Being, Space and Place In Building, Dwelling, Thinking Heidegger associates Being with dwelling (Heidegger, 1971). He discusses the notion of dwelling and contends that only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build (Bauen). Bauen, says Heidegger, relates to nearness and neighborliness and also implies "to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for". Bauen also relates to the Old High German word for building, baun, which means to dwell in the sense of remaining or staying in place. (Seamon, 2000). Furthermore Heidegger discusses the fourfold- and turning a location in to a place with the example of bridge. He argues the bridge as a being. A bridge is a thing turning a specific point of space to a location and this location turns to be a site. The bridge is an outcome of human dwelling and dwelling is the way of our being in the world- ,its a pure ontological issue. Heidegger tells that the bridge enables the space to gather the fourfold, the mortals, the earth, the sky and the divinities, it makes the space possible for the fourfold. As a result bridge is a thing giving space to fourfold. It turns a location in to a place, it is a product of our dwelling, our being-in-theworld-. Here we might say that we turn a geographic location in to a place by the means of dwelling and this is the way of our being in the world-.

Edward Relph argued place as a fundamental aspect of peoples' existence in the world. He says places are fusions of human and natural order and are the significant centers of our immediate experiences of the world" (Relph, 1970) Relph attempted to unravel and describe the essential experiential nature of place. Why and how, in other words, are places meaningful for people?(Seamon, 1996) Relphs most significant contribution over discussion of place was the notion of insideness. What turns a space to a place is feeling here rather than being there. Feeling inside rather than being outside. Seamon adds If a person feels inside a place, he or she is here rather than there, safe rather than threatened, enclosed rather than exposed, at ease rather than stressed. (Seamon, 1996) On the other hand, a person can be separate or alienated from place, and this mode of place experience is what Relph called outsideness. Here, people feel some sort of division between themselves and world. The crucial phenomenological point is that, through different degrees of insideness and outsideness, different places take on different identities. (Seamon, 1996) Relph classifies the modes of insideness and outsideness in seven various levels according to experiential involvement (Table 1) Aesthetic Experience and Space Aesthetic phenomenon can be explained through the means of experience, discovery, getting in to relation, production of sensation, rereading as text and hermeneutics. The authentic experience of a place, its multilayered and narrative structure and the pattern of relationships within this place accounts for the aesthetic phenomenon of space. Aesthetic experience is the phenomenon what turns a space in to a place. Relph argues places may be experienced authentically or inauthentically. An authentic sense of place, is "a direct and genuine experience of the entire complex of the identity of places--not mediated and distorted through a series of quite arbitrary social and intellectual fashions about how that experience should be, nor following stereotyped conventions" (Relph, 1976)

Table 1 (Relph, 1976)

MODES OF INSIDENESS & OUTSIDENESS 1. EXISTENTIAL INSIDENESS A situation involving a feeling of attachment and at-homeness. Place is "experienced without deliberate and self-conscious reflection yet is full with significances." One feels this is the place where he or she belongs. The deepest kind of place experience and the one toward which we probably all yearn. 2. EXISTENTIAL OUTSIDENESS A situation where the person feels separate from or out of place. Place may feel alienating, unreal, unpleasant, or oppressive. Homelessness or homesickness would be examples. Often, today, the physical and designed environments contribute to this kind of experience unintentionally--the sprawl of suburban environments, the dissolution of urban downtowns, the decline of rural communities. 3. OBJECTIVE OUTSIDENESS A situation involving a deliberate dispassionate attitude of separation from place. Place is a thing to be studied and manipulated as an object apart from the experiencer. A scientific approach to place and environment. Ironically, the approach to place often taken by planners, designers, and policy makers. 4. INCIDENTAL OUTSIDENESS A situation in which place is the background or mere setting for activities--for example, the landscapes and places one drives through as he or she is on the way to somewhere else. 5. BEHAVIORAL INSIDENESS A situation involving the deliberate attending to the appearance of place. Place is seen as a set of objects, views, or activities. For example, the experience we all pass through when becoming familiar with a new place--figuring out what is where and how the various landmarks, paths, and so forth all fit together to make one complete place. 6. EMPATHETIC INSIDENESS A situation in which the person, as outsider, tries to be open to place and understand it more deeply. This kind of experience requires interest, empathy, and heartfelt concern. Empathetic insideness is an important aspect of approaching a place phenomenologically. 7. VICARIOUS INSIDENESS A situation of deeply-felt secondhand involvement with place. One is transported to place through imagination--through paintings, novels, music, films, or other creative media. One thinks, for example, of Monet's paintings of his beloved garden Giverny or of Thomas Hardy's novels describing 19th-century rural England.

The interrelationship between object and the subject, perception and thinking, called as dialectical relationship by Goethe (Seamon, 1999), the dynamic process which is explained as the reciprocally replacing of the contrary concepts which forming the whole as subject turning to be the object and the object turning to be subject, understood as aesthetic experience.(Aydnl, 2002) The tension of feeling between insideness and outsideness, the dynamism of the dialectal process of aesthetic experience, the gathering and dissembling of contrary concepts, the production of sensation (Deleuze) the openness of a space to be discovered, the intentionality of the space getting in to relationship with the subject defines the high potential of a space turning in to a place.

Through the means of this understanding Cyberspace will be discussed in terms of aesthetic experience in following lines. Cyberspace as a PLACE What happens at cyberspace? How do we turn a location into a place at cyberspace? How do we dwell in cyberspace? Is cyberspace just a virtual realm or does it give possibilities for production of new places? As told formerly virtual always caries the potential turning in to actual and indeed what we call reality is the possibility of the virtual turning in to actual. The virtual realm that cyberspace provides us has the possibility turning in to an actual place within in the notion of aesthetic experience. As one starts to experience the cyberspace (this experience might be as simple as talking on the phone, or reading news on the World Wide Web, or might be a dynamic, complex, dialectic experience) the production of sensation (Deleuze) or Authentic experience (Heidegger) occurs between the subject and the object. This experience might lead the subject to a feeling of insideness or outsideness due to the infinite possibilities of the cyberspace. Referring Relphs study, regarding this feeling of insideness or outsideness we might conclude that cyberspace has the potential of turning in to a place. Your personal homepage on the internet your Facebook profile page, or the virtual realm you have created at second life (www.secondlife.com) has the potential to turn in to a place where you feel inside. This is your place in Cyberspace.

Image 1 A Facebook profile page. www.facebook.com

Image 2 In secondlife you can have an experience of cyberspace through the avatar you created (the virtual representer of the body at cyberspace) at virtual 3d realms created by others or you can design your own world. One can feel highly insideness of outsideness in any space at secondlife. www.secondlife.com

Placelessness and Cyberspace Although cyberspace provides many possibilities of authentic experience of space and a new place for our existential beings, the current conditions of cyberspace and methods of interacting with cyberspace might cause one to fall in to a deep Existential Outsideness (Relph, 1976, See Table 1) leading to placelessness. One of the initial problematics of the current situation is the dualistic world we have. Cyberspace vs. Physical Space. The more someone experiences the cyberspace the less he or she interacts with the physical space. The more one feels inside the cyberspace the more he becomes outside the physical space.

S Korean dies after games session A South Korean man has died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks. The 28-year-old man collapsed after playing the game Starcraft at an internet cafe in the city of Taegu, according to South Korean authorities. The man had not slept properly, and had eaten very little during his marathon session, said police.
IMAGE 3 ww.weblogcartoons.com/category/technology/(facebook IMAGE 4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

Kisho Kurokawa in his book Philosophy of Symbiosis discusses the problematics of the 21th century through the thought he borrowed from the nature Symbiosis (Kurokawa, 1991). In his exact words The world is moving toward a new order for the twenty-first century. In this book I discuss this paradigm shift to the evolving new world order from several perspectives: the shift from Eurocentricism to the symbiosis of diverse cultures, from Logoscentrism and dualism toward pluralism, toward a symbiosis of plurality of values; from anthropocentrism to ecology, the symbiosis of diverse species; a shift from industrial society to information society; a shift from universalism to an age of the symbiosis of diverse elements; a shift from the age of the machine to the age of the life principle.

One of the key principles Kurokawa was mentioning was the need to shift of paradigms from Dualism to Pluralism. The question is: How can these two worlds the cyberspace and physical space shift from dualism to pluralism and get into a symbiotic relationship? Overlapping the two spaces might be answer. We experience the world through our bodies. Here body is not used only for the physical part of our beings. With a holistic point of view the body here includes both our minds and physical presence as philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues in his book Phenomenology of Perception( Merleau-Ponty,1962). Merleau-Ponty discusses the concept of the body-subject as an alternative to the Cartesian "cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially, as opposed to the Cartesian idea that the world is merely an extension of our own minds. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually 'engaged'. The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory functions. In this point of view it can be told that cyberspace and physical space could be overlapped if only cyberspace could be experienced existentially through our bodies. With currently used technologies we usually experience the cyberspace through our computers and its surroundings like mouse, keyboard, and the screen. With this limited interface one can not experience the cyberspace as a whole as he experiences the physical space. Due to recent development of new technologies and increasing mobility with everyday growing wireless networks new possibilities arise to develop new methods of interaction with cyberspace. Some cybernetic upgrades for human body or new cyberspace interfaces developed allowing body interaction and various examples as 3d holograms that can be interacted through our bodies can develop new possibilities of space experience. In the movie Minority Report the main computer that the detectives were using with a seethrough touch screen can be an example of body-interacted cyberspace. The gloves used to interact with the computer are a kind of simple cybernetic human body upgrade which provides a better interaction.

Image 5 Minority Report (the movie, 2002)

Nintendos latest game console Wii also provides a new interface controlled by body movements for interaction with Cyberspace.

Image 6 www.nintendo.com The FogScreen projection screen, produces a thin curtain of dry fog that serves as a translucent projection screen, displaying images that literally float in the air. You can walk right through a FogScreen projection screen without getting wet. And yet with the interactive fog screen one can interact with the image flying through the fog. It might be a computer game, an interactive map or a hi-fi system in a living room, an information wall at a metro station and anything only limited with the imagination. All these new technologies and future developments will be providing us

possibilities to develop symbiotic places of cyber and physical space.

Image 7 Several images of fogscreen. www.fogscreen.com Conclusion As a phenomenon that takes more place each day in our daily life, cyberspace provides new possibilities for aesthetic experience with the tension of feeling between insideness and

outsideness, the dynamism of the dialectal process of aesthetic experience, the gathering and dissembling of contrary concepts, the production of sensation (Deleuze) and the openness of cyberspace to be discovered. Within this context Cyberspace has the potential to turn to a place of where existentially human beings continue their dwelling as part of their being-in-the world. However as mentioned before there is a dualistic situation between cyberspace and the physical space. Symbiosis might be a key concept in order to combine these to spaces. Referring to Merleau-Ponty s works Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving

thing are intricately intertwined and mutually 'engaged' and if there are some possibilities created for experiencing the cyberspace with our bodies then there might be chance for us to perceive the two spaces at the same and at that point it can be told that the two spaces are overlapped on each other. In a conclusion, within all this aspects, our understanding of place, space and the new space thats born from the symbiotic relationship of the two spaces, has shifted in recent years with the development of new technologies. This new place should be discussed by designers, planners, urban designers, etc. in order to create a holsitic point of view through the design process in the context of existential experience and the notions of place and placelessness. References
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