REPRESENTATION OF ARCHITECTURAL SPACE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION
JAN SŁYK
Virtual space built of voxels, the components of which we program, is more that the environment of computer games. Digital representation, about which Mitchell was already writing in the 1990s, though from the perspective of photography, today has become an essential factor in architecture, providing, for the first time in history, an effective transmission device. It may have moved it to the privileged group of one-stage art forms, in which the effect is accessible immediately, at the moment of the creative act. The new method opened up new possibilities. On the one hand, it provided the ground for trials, on the other – an alternative environment of architectural creation. Architectural space is represented today through a digital medium, thus achieving features enumerated by Manovich. Its numerical structure, modularity and automaticity result directly from the binary form of the data. Perception is no longer a function of exploration. Momentary states change dynamically, depending on the parameters of the surrounding environment and the wishes of the user, in other words, as a result of interaction. Shaping a changing environment requires the use of programming tools. It is no longer the creating of target states, but the rules of their variability. The boundaries between real, virtual and information reality are blurred due to free translation, immediate remote transfer, and the delivery to the senses of signals created by imperceptible, digitally controlled, portable devices. The merging of the digital representation of the computer model, its projection, actual materials, digital production and sensors, communication devices, and computer-controlled mechanisms, makes it possible to talk about a continuous spatial information environment that creates the medium of contemporary architecture.
Keywords: voxel, representation, geometry, perception, virtual reality, perspective