1. CREATING WORLDS

Most creators and researchers of cyberspace environments agree that this environment is forcing a radical change in thinking about the design processes. We cannot talk only about designing the space, object, or systems in cyberspace; we need to talk about designing the process. Because the electronic environment is an interactive virtual environment, where each user can be a co-designer, the discipline of design in cyberspace should be redefined and re-evaluated, taking under consideration these new elements.

3.1. Designing the Process

The functioning of the mind space (from which Cyberspace derives) is based on continuous analysis of stimuli, filtering them, assigning, and classifying. It is a continuous process of creating an image of the world. The space is alive, evolving, revised, and changed during every second of its existence. Thought is in constant movement, as is living space.

Design, in the modern sense, should focus primarily on setting up the scenes for people’s life: a frame, pattern, and algorithm. The main task of the designer, as Janusz Krupinski points out, is to propose new patterns of behaviors, a new social model - 'perfect model.' [1]  Another Polish design theoretician, Andrzej Pawlowski, also believed that the main focus of artists’ work should be on the creation process, not on works and not on objects in the material sense. [2] This way of thinking about design is not new; it’s been present in the history of architecture for centuries, especially in urban planning, because of the specificity of the vast and complex organism which is society.

Study of the mechanisms and processes as alternative ways for design intensified with the development of cybernetics and computer technology. Seeding and culturing of architecture, fascination with algorithmic creative processes, fascination with evolution, and admiration for biological mechanisms of the body and its liquidity - these ways of thinking about design are clearly visible in modern architecture aesthetics. [3]
 
3.1.2. Genome. The processes of nature

Fascination with the machine has inspired mankind for centuries, but it was cybernetics, in the early twentieth century, that gave rise to doctrines that try to decipher the mechanisms of nature and the creation of devices that mimic them. Cybernetics is perceived as meta-science. Its primary objective is to define the essence of being through the understanding of the mechanisms of its operation. Cybernetics mostly explores knowledge of control systems.

Despite the development of cybernetics, the perfection of the mechanisms of nature still contrasts with the imperfection of man-made mechanisms. The problem is, according to Lem, that we are trying to imitate nature, but often in different ways than Nature works:

Because in IT we have devices for data processing, the devices that transform and convert the information entered (input information) into the information retrieved (output information), and the transducers can be quite different objects from cathode ray tubes, transmitters, converters and the molecular aggregates. But we always enter the information and get the information. In contrast, information in biology is placed on such media that are able to remake the information into something that is an organism, such as palm trees, elephants, or Aunt Frania. [4]

This medium is a genome. The genome is a kind of physicochemical encyclopedia operating in the liquid environment of the cells. This is, according to Lem, a radical novelty for engineers, which wants to possess knowledge about the technology of life. The code encrypted in the genome is like a "Construction Handbook," which reads itself and gradually builds itself according to the blueprints. ‘Some products are unsuccessful, but others, like a man have been running successfully for millennia,’ says Lem. “Handbook Genome” contains the entire alphabet of biological technology.

3.1.3. The code of cyberspace

Because the world was created in the process, the creators of virtual spaces feel that the cyberworld should be formed by the process as well. Therefore they propose to refer to the processes of nature, learn about them, and try to imitate them. The evolutionary process, they believe, is the most appropriate process and probably the best process for shaping the social environment.

Architecture can be planted, says Holtzman, it can learn behaviors (Artificial Life Evolution) - simple rules should create simple forms. Holtzman suggests that the computational side of the process should be given to the computers while the 'creative' side – making choices and decisions, in his opinion, should be the task of the creator. The architect should be responsible for the aesthetics of the emerging world. Lem would agree with that:

The programs will be created under the authority of other ‘programs - parents' and the man will only give commands. [5]

According to Holtzman, the complexity of Virtual worlds requires that the computer be programmed as a tool to create them. [6] The computer has to become a creative partner. A new era, says Holtzman, where the software is an art, is coming. Programming environments in cyberspace should not be built top-down but bottom-up, much as a plant grows from a seed.

This is a radical change in approach for the design process, which cedes some of the elements of the process to a device. The key to understanding this approach is the understanding of the code and the ability to control it, because the design process in virtual architecture is programming. An architect (cybertect, transarchitect) should possess a knowledge of programming to the same extent to which in the physical world he has a knowledge of construction, which allows him to use available resources - construction materials and building systems.

Artists, writers and musicians have to become also programmers in future. [7]

Code regulates behavior in cyberspace, just as architecture builds walls to enclose and divide space, inserts doors to allow entrance, and provides locks to reduce unwanted access. The architecture of code precisely constrains the shape and usage of cyberspace. [8] Design and control of the code gives the possibility of design and control of the process.

For citizens of cyberspace, computer code is the medium in which intentions are enacted and designs realized, and it is becoming the crucial focus of political contest. Who shall write the software that increasingly structures our daily lives? [9]

3.2. Creating images. The new symbolism of cyberspace

Controlling processes, programming cyberspace, is an essential element of its construction. Code regulates its behavior and ethics, but also plays an important role in the creation of symbol, which is the base of the interface – the face of cyberspace, part of the aesthetics of cyberspace. Image manipulation and the creation of new symbols are another layer of creativity for the cyber-architect. Creation of images is creation of cyberspace, where the territory and its representation are one and the same.

The human brain instinctively looks for order in a cacophony of information, for the design, the layout, the regularity. The task of architecture in cyberspace is, therefore, in addition to organization and control of the process, building the identity of the places where and within which a user creates his existential space.

3.2.1. Places

For primitive peoples, says Christian Norberg-Schulz, space referred to objects and places, and had emotional coloration. Greek philosophers made the space an object of reflection.

Today, architectural space, according to Norberg-Schulz, can be understood as the specific expression patterns or images of the environment, forming an integral part of the overall orientation of the man - "being in the world." The task of the architect is to create places that are part of the symbolic language of each existential space. Architectural space can thus be called a concretization of existential space.

Inhabiting, or occupying, places, is, as Heidegger noted, the main aspect of being. Spaces get their spirit (importance) from locations and not just from 'space.' Place means to 'be inside,' or inhabit, to participate. Man's relationship with the place and through the places with spaces consists precisely with inhabitation. Place is a fundamental concept of existential space. ’The concepts of closeness, centrality, and enclosure work together, creating a more concrete concept of being.’ [10]

A human’s primary intent is to inhabit. Only when a person determines what is inside and what is outside can he say that he really "lives," says Norberg-Schulz. Thanks to this relationship, man’s experiences and memories are localized and the interior space becomes an expression of person’s "inside."

Places in the Cyberspace of the net are software constructions. Each piece of software creates environments for interaction that can be entered. Inhabitation gains the new, more conceptual meaning of connection, belonging, fusion of the nervous system to the network. Cyber-buildings and rooms are part of a citizen of cyberspace; a citizen of cyberspace becomes a part of his cyber home.

Rooms and buildings will henceforth be seen as sites where bits meet the body - where digital information is translated into visual, auditory, tactile, or otherwise perceptible form, and conversely where bodily actions are sensed and converted into digital information. [11]

Creating 'places' is creating the identity of cyberspatial environments. Only creation of a place, living it allows us to build it, says Norberg-Schulz. 'Only when we are able to live, we can build.'

3.3. New design methods. Creating the Worlds

Creativity involves discovering configurations, connections, and relationships. This process is based on the combinatorial activity, setting things in new perspective. Poincaré described the essence of creativity:

Creativity precisely means to not construct unnecessary combinations, but to build useful entities, which constitute a minority. Create - is to distinguish, to choose. [12]

‘The artist,’ says Czeslaw Milosz, ‘differs from other people in that he can stop and then reverse stages of human cognition. He learns how to enclose stages of the perception/cognition in the outside work that others could contemplate.’

Artists and architects have always been creating worlds by creating images that contain these worlds.

Architectural design in cyberspace means design of the process, controlling code, creating aesthetics with the image, creating symbols, and finally producing cyberspatial 'places' to allow it to reside (inhabit).

3.3.1. Defamiliarization

Designing cyberspace, however, is closely associated with the process of its (cyberspace) discovery, which in this case is not only related to the development of technology, but also to exploring the potential of the mind itself, the process of exploring the human psyche, forms of perception, reactions, and behaviors. So the question remains: how to design effectively without letting the designer’s own limitations impose limits that are a direct threat to innovation, because the scope of our construction is directly related to the limitations of our approach. How to get to the truth about cyberspace?

We are at the very beginning of understanding the opportunities that new cyberworlds have to offer. We tend to treat new media in the old way, imagining  the future in a linear way, which is based on exaggeration and multiplication or ‘improvement’ of what is already existing. This comes from the inability to overcome the barriers of imagination. Lem described this process very cleverly by saying that Stone Age Man imagined his future full of great and beautiful flint, and the man of the nineteenth century saw the future as mighty full of great balloons.

An example of linear thinking in cyberspace may be striving for the perfect simulation. Opponents of this method advocate the use of completely different approaches. One of them may be the concept of 'defamiliarization’ first proposed by the Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky. Shklovsky was investigating the problems of direct perception in the arts. The concept of 'defamiliarization' (‘ostranenie’) is an artistic technique that forces the viewer to see ordinary things and situations differently, an unusual way, so as to challenge the perception of familiar. This concept became the basis for the tactics of twentieth century art movements such as Dada, postmodernism, and also science fiction.

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. [13]

Defamiliarization allows for the conscious exploration of viewed things and observed processes by slowing down the process of perception. It allows understanding the artistic processes that are involved in the formation of a phenomenon. This is a high stage of comprehending the essence of the phenomenon.

According to these rules, computers should be used rather as 'abstract machines' that are exploring new design strategies. The relationship with the spaces of the mind may suggest some ways of exploration. For example, the psychological experiment proposed by Stanislaw Lem in 'Solaris': What happens if we encounter something beyond our comprehension?

3.4. Function and forms of cyberarchitecture

The essence of creation processes is not the output work, the object, but the process of creating, understanding, nurturing awareness:

We detest implementation of projects, what matters and is really important is to understand, not to produce. And understand means how much someone has experienced awakening, how much unreality one can see in every phenomenon. [14]

The architectural form in cyberspace is a form that is open for a process; it was liberated from its concreteness. Virtual Architecture, like language, recognizes itself not in unambiguity, but in the complexity of the symbols and metaphors. Ambiguity opens it to interpretation, to creating a vision. The symbolism of this architecture opens up to a metaphor for interpretation, and invites the contribution of the user.



Why do we need an architect in cyberspatial environment? Architects are familiar with the principles of spatial organization; they are aware of the relationship between the organization and operation of space, they understand the design process and processes of implementation of projects, and they are able to transpose the basic material into a functional element of the environment.

However, should not the redefinition of architecture reach much deeper than we think? It should not only redefine the form, but also the function. Then, if we are about to profoundly redefine architecture, will it continue to be architecture?

No matter what the answer to these questions, it is certain that electronic virtual learning environments in a sense take part in the process of raising awareness about ourselves, about undiscovered spaces of our consciousness; it is part of the process of our evolution.

e virtual worlds, and architecture of these worlds.

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[1] Krupiński J., Wzornictwo/Design, Kraków 1998, p. 15

[2] Krupiński J., op. cit.

[3] Fascination with biological forms can be seen also in the Art Nouveau era, but Secessions’ creators did not show any interest in mechanisms, did not reach deep into the secrets of biological life.

[4] Lem S., Tajemnica Chińskiego Pokoju, Universitas, Kraków 1996, p. 101

[5] Lem S., op. cit.

[6] Holtzman S., Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace, Touchstone, 1998, p. 77

[7] Holtzman S, op. cit. p. 79

[8] Kerckhove D., The Architecture of Intelligence (The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture), Birkhäuser Basel, 2001, (p. 29, Mitchell)

[9] Mitchell W., City of Bits, MIT Press, Boston 1996

[10] Norberg – Schulz C., Bycie, przestrzeń i architektura, Murator, Warszawa, 2000, p. 20

[11] Mitchell W., op. cit.

[12] Szmidt B., Ład przestrzeni, PIW, Warszawa 1981, p. 114

[13] Viktor Shklovsky

[14] Krupiński J., op. cit.

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