Mario Gerosa and Virtual Architecture (Milan)

But what about traveling in the virtual worlds today? During the 80s, it was a trend to refer to traveling in virtual reality like a physical voyage, where the use of a head-mounted display was inseparable from the trip itself. Today, it is more about eyesight than body experience: we stand in front of the monitor without moving. It is a non-linear trip, similar to an expedition through a Borges tale, 2.0. Nevertheless, there's lack of "tourist" guides and research engines among virtual worlds. Are virtual travels still an elite form of tourism and knowledge or will they, in their cheapness, become the mode of vacation for those who simply can't afford the real thing? Or are these just another bubble called Web 2.0? Conversations about the virtual tended to dominate conversations in the 90s amongst would-be philosophers or techno-gurus emerging wild-eyed from the HTML wilderness. Their influence has substantially waned and the conversation is now dominated, not by utopian visions of would-be net prophets, but by corporations developing new technologies for profit. How has our conversation about "the virtual" (a word even now out of currency) and the current state of internet and computer technologies changed?
Mission by Fabio Falzone, Jacopo Fontana
Second Life footage courtesy of Keystone Bouchard http://www.archsl.wordpress.com
Look at this mission also on Check-in Architecture website http://www.checkinarchitecture.com/mission/242 or on Google Earth http://www.checkinarchitecture.com/index/earth/mission/242.kml

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• cost
• Imaginary
• Internet
• low
• media
• Mobility
• network
• Reality
• tourism
• transportation
• Trip
• Virtual