Panel Statement
Panel: Hybrid Spatial Experiences
Locative media use our coordinates in space as keys into our information, ostensibly to bring that information to us where we need it. Augmented Reality ostensibly augments the reality we are in by overlaying this information on our perceptual field, the better to serve us. But do these technologies really serve to connect us to the places we find ourselves in, or, to the contrary, do they serve to further remove us from them? This paper will discuss the promises and problems of our ever-changing relation to space, mediated and otherwise, and will propose various responses and strategies for addressing them.
- Professor Marcos Novak directs the transLAB at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is researcher, artist, theorist, and transarchitect. In 2008, “Transmitting Architecture”, the title of his seminal 1995 essay, became the theme of the XXIII World Congress of the UIA (Union Internationale Des Architectes), the largest architectural organization in the world. His projects, theoretical essays, and interviews have been translated into over twenty languages and have appeared in over 70 countries, and he lectures, teaches, and exhibits worldwide. Drawing upon architecture, music, and computation, and introducing numerous additional influences from art, science, and technology, his work intentionally defies categorization. He is universally recognized as the pioneer of architecture in cyberspace, of the critical consideration of virtual space as architectural and urban place, and of the use of generative computational composition in architecture and design. He is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is affiliated with CNSI (the California NanoSystems Institute), MAT (Media Art and Technology), and Art. He named and was instrumental in the design of the UCSB AlloSphere (the three-story high sphere for the creation of immersive virtual environments, the largest such facility in the world) and created its inaugural project, the AlloBrain@AlloSphere, using fMRI scans of his own brain. He is currently working on a new Allotopes project for the AlloSphere. In 2004, he was honored to become a Fellow of the World Technology Network. translab.mat.ucsb.edu