Abstract

Keywords: photography, re/construction, construct, perception, Second Life, reality, virtual reality, cultural context, re/presentation, appropriation, metaverse, virtual architecture, depiction, perpectivism, Ottoman miniatures, experience.

Photography is a powerful 2D representation tool to document 3D volumes like architecture. It is possible to manipulate photos with 2D tools like Photoshop in order to suggest new 3D re/formations and re/interpret architecture. One can alternatively use 2D textures as mappings to create realistic 3D model renderings. This project is a combination of these two approaches: photographing architecture, turning the resulting photos into transparent PNGs and then mapping these photos onto 3D volumes in order to create a ‘new’ architecture from an ‘existing’ architecture…

One of the advantages of using photographs to create architecture is that your photo pool can easily be composed of visuals from various cultures and you may end up using an amalgam of visuals from, say, two supposedly ‘opposite’ cultures. This possibility reminds the peaceful collaboration of musicians from different cultures to create a unique music. In addition, this act can also be taken as a migration of media through appropriation of photography for 3D volume creation and re/presentation. At this point, we are talking about a double representation, since photography is a representation tool already and it gains another representational dimension when it is re-mapped onto 3D volumes for the construction of an alternative reality.

This paper concentrates on using a representation tool (photography) to construct a 3D space (architecture) within a virtual 3D environment (Second Life). During the process; the concepts of perception, reality, cultural context, re/presentation and appropriation will be examined.

• Murat Germen Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey

Full text (PDF)  p.  378-386