Virtual Architecture and SpaceTimeCraft
Research project on the aesthetic experience of movement specific to virtual spatiotemporal environments.
Procedurally generated navigable toroidal-Möbius manifold. Videogame prototype screenshot (2023)Long-term research project investigating forms of architecture aesthetics and navigable experience specific to digital media, culminating in the upcoming doctoral dissertation at Aalto ARTS titled SpaceTimeCraft, expected in 2025.
The project explores the aesthetic experience of movement specific to physically inconstructible virtual environments. This is the experience in interactive spatiotemporal environments which are impossible to construct or come across in physical reality, but are only experienceable through immersive digital media such as VR and videogames. This theme is explored through cross-disciplinary research parallel to applied prototyping exploring the case study of procedurally generated low-dimensional non-Euclidean virtual environments. The aim of the project is to provide a unifying framework for understanding, analyzing, and developing virtual navigable experience, with a view towards enabling the design of novel forms of experience that can help expand what we currently conceive as experienceable by the human sensory apparatus.
The project follows an integrative methodology, and spans multiple research approaches including:
- exploratory gamemaking and VR development;
- hardware prototyping;
- media archeology of the evolution of digital design software, VR technologies, and videogames;
- original publications in the context of architecture, artistic research, and game studies; as well as
- development and teaching of original courses in gamemaking and VR development.
The project was initiated following the development of project Anywhere at ETH Zurich in 2014. It was developed further through interdisciplinary research and publishing, as well as through extensive teaching of original curricula on experimental game and VR development, including the Virtual Spaces Master Studio at TU Graz (2016-2017), as well as multiple shorter workshops. Aspects of this research have been informed through studies in computer music and spatial audio at the renowned Institute of Electronic Music of KU Graz conducted between 2018 and 2019. In late 2019, this was formalized into a doctoral research project at Aalto University, School of Arts, within the context of the Experience Design project funded by the Research Council of Finland, titled: SpaceTimeCraft: Integrative Research through Design into the Experience of Virtual Navigation, with its defense expected in 2025.
See below for a list of related publications and presentations.
