Metaverse

If flaneurism today is an act of scrolling, then what is the city we are scrolling through? The ‘scroll through’ city is experienced in virtual sites - review boards, image sharing platforms, fictional simulacra in Hollywood films. For better or for worse we are entering an age where images and media representations of people, cities and territories are more powerful in defining what they are than the people, cities and territories themselves. The ‘flattened’ nature of the current internet, navigated through hyperlinks compresses the notion of ‘journey’ into a split-second click. Without transitional spaces in between destinations, thresholds become pixel-thin and our experience of information becomes all about adjacencies. How might architects rethink the navigation of information by reorganizing it spatially? As our reality becomes more virtual, augmented, mixed and extended (V, A, M, X), how will the convergence of space and data change the way we perceive ourselves, our social networks, and our environments?

The Metaverse - coined by futurist writer Neal Stephenson - refers to a communal and spatial virtual territory; a successor to the internet. Framed through an investigation of ‘digital adjacencies’, in this Technology Seminar, students created ‘Metaverse Worlds’; fantastical real-time 3D environments that exist both as playable spaces and cinematic experiences.