VIRTUAL REALITY: : A Design Simulation Technique That Overpowers Design Content

VIRTUAL REALITY: A Design Simulation Technique That Overpowers Design Content

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Richard Helmick. M.F.A.. Universitv of Missouri. Columbia

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the possibility that experiences and ideas other than design content will become dominant as designers and educators incorporate virtual reality into their practices and curricula.

RESEARCH DESIGN

The essay synthesizes historical fact and authoritative opinion to yield a speculative answer to the question, Will design simulation in virtual reality tend to displace rather than communicate design content?

ANALYSIS

The essay imaginatively and logically connects the perceptual phenomenon of analogue takeover to the concepts of idealism, immediate environment, and quantum physics to

speculate on the strength of analogue takeover in virtual reality design simulations.

KEY FINDINGS

The essay surmises that analogue takeover will be more severe in virtual reality design simulations than it is in traditional perceptual simulations such as renderings. The severity of the problem will increase as virtual reality techniques improve, although when virtual reality is perceived as our immediate environment, the problem will abate.

CONCLUSIONS

Aware persons can consciously direct their attention toward design content and resist the effects of analogue takeover. Unaware persons will be seduced unwittingly by the medium while thinking they are responding to design content.

Virtual reality holds promise of being the most complete and accurate technique yet devised for communicating design intent. Even though virtual reality techniques are now rather primitive, its potential is captivating, especially because rapid advances in computer imaging technology of the last twenty years are expected to continue. Much research into potential uses of virtual reality in the design field has been conducted over the past twenty years (Rheingold, 1991). A notable example is the work by the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina (UNC), which uses virtual reality applications on problems that stimulate progress in science and technology. The UNC group has identified architectural design, mainly interiors, as one of those problems (Rheingold. 1991).

In spite of the primitive state of the technology, serious appli- cation of virtual reality in design has been attempted. At the Hines Veterans Administration Hospital Rehabilitation and Research Center in Illinois, researchers are using interactive

virtual reality environments as an aid in the design and evaluation of interiors for the elderly and the disabled (Trumble, Morris, & Crandall, 1992).

Although virtual reality is a promising design and evaluation tool, there are also dangers and pitfalls along the path toward fulfilling its promise. This essay conceptually investigates one of those pitfalls, analogue takeover.

Thesis Through a combination of historical facts and authoritative opinions this essay explores the question, Will design simulation in virtual reality tend to displace rather than communicate design content? First, operational definitions of key terms and phrases are provided, then a culturally embedded philosophi- cal notion called idealism and a perceptual phenomenon called analogue takeover are introduced. The relationship among these notions, science, popular culture, and virtual reality, provides insight to help answer the thesis question.

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Operational Explanations and Definitions Virtual Reality Virtual reality, as used in this essay, is restricted to computer graphic simulation techniques that seek to close the perceptual difference between the sensible world and a simulated world. Thomas Furness 111, a former virtual reality researcher for the air force and now a researcher at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in Seattle, believes strongly that verisi- militude in virtual reality can be achieved (Rheingold, 1991). To that end, Furness is researching the possibility of using a laser microscanner to paint realities directly on the retina at ex- tremely high resolutions (Rheingold, 1991).

Today, virtual reality experiences require a user to don visual, tactile, and kinetic sensing technology for input and output to a computer system.

The user's visual field is replaced by a computer-simulated environment in which items can be manipulated. The user can walk into and be surrounded by this world. Collision-detection sensors can create the sensation of bumping into objects, traveling up slopes, or moving across soft surfaces such as carpet. In Japan, some kitchen designers ask clients to don virtual reality paraphernalia to experience the virtual kitchen of their choice. At the Hines Hospital Rehabilitation Research and Development Center, researchers use virtual reality to develop barrier-free design for disabled and elderly people (Trumble et al., 1992).

The idea of virtual reality can be reduced to two concepts: immersion and navigation. Immersion refers to the illusion of being inside a computer-generated scene with as much verisi- militude as possible. Navigation refers to the illusion of movement the participant has while occupying the scene (Rheingold, 1991).

Analogue Takeover Analogue takeover refers to a traditional illustrator's ability to direct a viewer's attention to strictly graphic issues of compo- sition, balance, order, and skill at the expense of design content (Lee, 1991). This author has heard architects state that clients do not like buildings, they like renderings of buildings. Such statements, however tongue-in-cheek, refer to the unwitting tendency of viewers to substitute a love of drawing for design concepts. "Analogue takeover" means the tendency of any medium to direct one's attention away from intended content toward itself or toward unintended content or referents.

Idealism Idealism is an eighteenth-century metaphysical theory. There are as many strains of idealism in philosophy as there are strains of Protestantism in religion: Contrary to science, which

maintains that the only knowable reality is the objective world, idealism maintains that the only knowable reality is the mental world because no one has direct access to the objective world. Some idealists maintain that the sensible world does not exist in the absence of mind because the perception of the objective world is mediated through senses and mental faculties. George Berkeley was one of the foremost advo- cates of this position, and his thoughts are applied in this essay. Other idealists include G. W. F. Hegel, Authur Schopenhauer, lmmanuel Kant, and George Bergson.

Immediate Environment The immediate environment is the environment in which one lives most of the time. For us the immediate environment is a technological one. For our great-grandparents it was a natural one. For our great-grandchildren it may be a virtual one.

Idealism as a Description of Virtual Reality Idealism, as expounded by George Berkeley, holds that material objects consist solely of ideas, information, and percep- tions. That is, sensible items such as tables, chairs, and rocks cannot and do not exist separate from their observers or perceivers (Flew, 1984). Idealism derives its name from its assertion of the primacy of ideas over material objects. Ber- keley prophetically describes not only eighteenth-century idealism but twentieth-century virtual reality:

In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to h o w it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now. Suppose-what no one can deny possible-an intelligence, without the help of external bodies, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to believe the existence of Corporeal Substances, represented by his ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same thing? Of this there can be no question. Which one consider- ation were enough to make any reasonable person sus- pect the strength of whatever arguments he may think himself to have for the existence of bodies without the mind. (Berlin, 1963, p. 138)

Berkeley's eighteenth-century prose is beautiful but some- what difficult for twentieth-century minds to comprehend. Ba- sically, Berkeley sets up a hypothetical situation by asking the reader to imagine perceiving an illusionary world with the same vividness that one perceives the sensible world. Cer- tainly everyone has had dreams so convincing that they were mistaken for reality for the duration of the dream. No one

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For us the immediate environment is a technological one. For our Feat- grandparents it was a natural one. For our Feat-grandchildren it may be a

virtual one.

would argue that the world of the dream is not created by the mind. No one would argue that the objects in the world of the dream exist in the absence of the mind. Nevertheless, for the duration of the dream, the dreamer is convinced that the objects are real. Berkeley maintains that the reader has no more reason for believing the reality of objects in the sensible world than for believing the reality of objects in the dream world. That is, the reader's perception of the sensible world is mediated by the mind. The reader has no access to the sensible world except though the medium of mind and thus has no way of knowing if sensible objects of the waking world exist in the absence of the mind any more than the objects of the dream world exist in the absence of the mind.

The reader need not accept Berkeley's thesis to realize that he has described computer-generated virtual reality perfectly. That is, sensible objects in virtual reality do not exist, except as electrical impulses, unless perceived by the mind of an observer-participant just as sensible objects in our daily waking world do not exist, according to Berkeley, in the absence of an observer-participant's mind.

Permeation of Idealism into Contemporary Scientific and Popular Culture The relationship between the observer and the observed is the heart of quantum physics as well as of Berkeley's idealism. The 1927 Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory (so named because of the important contribution of Niels Bohr, who was from Copenhagen) holds that, at the quantum level, the nature of light (photons) can be waves or particles depending upon which characteristic an observer is looking for. What one is looking for is determined by how one mea- sures things. Measured one way, photons behave as though they were waves. Measured another way, they behave as though they were particles (Herbert, 1987). The implication is that reality at the quantum level is determined by the observer. Noted physicist John Wheeler illustrates the idea with the following thought experiment. Light coming to earth from a distant quasar is bent by an intervening galaxy. Some photons pass to the right of the galaxy and some pass to the left. The paths of the photons being bent in almost lenslike fashion by the intervening galaxy will intersect and eventually cross. Wheeler holds that if an observer placed a photon-sensitive phosphor screen at the intersection of the paths of photons, a wave interference pattern would be detected, meaning that photons are waves and passed on both sides of the galaxy at once. If the screen were placed beyond the photon path intersection, that is, after the photon paths have intersected, the observer would detect no interference pattern. The photons passed either to the right or to the left of the intervening galaxy and are particles. By implication, the observer chose or caused a particular reality to come into being, and this was

something that happened in the past because the photons striking the screen passed by the intervening galaxy a long time ago. Most of the universe is only half-real most of the time (Herbert, 1987). Wheeler implies that reality, at the subatomic level, is manifested by an observer. Such interpretations of the nature of reality by scientists perpetuate idealism in our culture. The main difference between the above implications of quantum theory and idealism is that idealism claims that observers are co-creators of reality above the quantum level because the sensible world does not exist in the absence of observers.

The popular TV show "Quantum Leap" is an imaginative extension of the implications inherent in quantum physics and idealism. The stories are based on the notion that one can create and recreate reality. The principal character is trans- ported back in time to intervene so as to right tragic and unfair personal and historical events. The creation of new realities for past events is an imaginative, even if unwitting, extension of Wheeler's thought experiment.

Analogue Takeover and Design Simulation in Virtual Reality In an unpublished paper,"The Implications of Drawing in Ar- chitectural Design," Ralph J. Lee (1991) developed the concept of analogue takeover. Basically, analogue takeover refers to the tendency of designers and viewers to become

Fiaure 1 Analogue Takeover The graphic message above is stronger than the coded message in the text although both messages are present. While this is an illustration of analogue takeover, the dominant and subordinate relationship between the two messages is intentional. Usually analogue takeover in design simulation is unintentional.

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Perhaps virtzlal reality should be called artzfcial idealism.

infatuated with graphic structural issues existing only in the drawing being created or viewed and not relevant to the design concept being communicated (see Figure 1).

Graphic structure refers to the compositional and perceptual elements of the medium. In short, one's attention is deflected away from design content toward more formal characteristics of the media.

Lee first distinguishes between two general types of drawing: perceptual and conceptual. A rendered, linear perspective drawing is a pure example of a perceptual drawing. A bubble diagram is a pure example of a conceptual drawing. Many types of architectural drawing exist between these two ex- tremes. Lee also characterizes perceptual drawings as po- lemic because their purpose is not simply to communicate design intent but also to communicate design advocacy. This type of drawing attempts both to explain the design concept and to influence its adoption.

Lee credits Geoffrey Broadbent with coining the phrase "analogue takeover," meaning that drawings are design analogues of actual buildings being represented, but the designer's attention tends to focus on graphical issues. Lee states that Christopher Alexander advises designers to cancel the effects of analogue takeover by using conceptual drawings such as bubble diagrams and Venn diagrams. Designers and other viewers feel dispassionately about such drawings and are not likely to be influenced by graphic issues of the medium. Be- cause it is true that analogue takeover increases the more strongly perceptual the medium, it follows that it will be particularly strong in virtual reality, which promises to be more strongly perceptual than any medium yet devised.

Because idealism will be experienced perceptually rather than conceptually in virtual reality, it becomes an inherent characteristic of the medium. As an inherent characteristic, idealism will become an integral part of the phenomenon of analogue takeover. Thus analogue takeover will become particularly strong when designers attempt to use virtual reality in design simulations.

Virtual Reality as Immediate Environment Jacques Ellul in his book The Technological System (1 980) suggests that the natural environment can no longer properly be thought of as our immediate environment. Urbanized soci- eties live in an artificial technological environment, not a natural one, and all problems are technological ones. For example, if an air conditioner fails during a hot summer day, what is an urbanite's response? Does one seek a shade tree? No. Does one seek a higher elevation? No. These solutions are available to a person who lives in a natura1,environment. An urbanite solves the cooling problem technologically by repairing the air

conditioner or by going into another air-conditioned architectural environment.

The urbanite is so embedded in the technological environment that it seems necessary to study it as if it were a natural system. A good portion of the person's time is spent learning how to manipulate the technological environment so as to survive. Such a person need spend no time understanding and manipulating nature. Nature serves, not as environment, but as a source of raw material and space to develop and maintain the technological environment (Ellul, 1980). For urbanized people, nature is simply a strip mine.

Ellul's idea can be extended to include a supratechnological environment: virtual reality. Randal Walser, head of a cyberspace project at Autodesk, Inc., suggests that virtual reality will create a new universe. "People will enter cyberspace (virtual reality) to work, to play, to exercise, to be entertained. They will enter it when they wake up in the morn- ing and will have no reason to leave it until the end of the day" (Stewart, 1991, p. 39). At this point, it might be said that one's immediate environment is a virtual one. Our current technological environment then ceases to function as our immediate environment and becomes merely the support system for our virtual environment. The technical environment disappears in much the same way that our natural environment already has. We have created an immediate environment that exists only as information until an observer perceives it as a reality in much the same way physicists describe the natural world at the quantum level and idealists describe the natural world above the quantum level. Perhaps virtual reality should be called artificial idealism.

In his book The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes (1980) dis- cusses culture as a substitute for nature, which is useful to reinforce the fact that our immediate environment has changed from nature to technics.

Unlike our grandparents, we live in a world that we ourselves made. Until about fifty years ago, images of Nature were the keys to feeling in art. Nature-its cycles of growth and decay, its responses to wind, weather, light, and the passage of the seasons, its ceaseless renewal, its infinite complexity of form and behavior on every level, from the molecule to the galaxy-provided the governing metaphors within which almost every relationship of the Self to the Other could be described and examined. The sense of a natural order, always in some way correcting the preten- sions of the Self, gave mode and measure to pre-mod- ern art. If this sense has now become dimmed, it is partly because for most people Nature has been replaced by the culture of congestion: of cities and mass

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Virtual reality is prone to analogue takeover because of

its highly perceptual nature.

As an inherent characteristic of virtual reality, idealism strengthens analogue

VIRTUAL REALITY

I 4 I v

VIRTUAL REALITY AS I IMMEDIATE ENVIORNMENT

I ANALOGUETAKEOVER IDEALISM

" reality, idealism, quantum theory, popular culture, analogue takeover, and

I I I I I

Idealism is embedded in science. Idealism is embedded in popular culture.

POPULAR CULTURE (Quantum Leap-TV series, Back to the Future-film

series, Star Trek-TV and film series)

SCIENCE (Quantum physics)

Virtual reality will become integrated with life.

f Figure2

Relationshim amona virtual +

I I immediate environment

media. We are crammed like battery hens with stimuli, and what seems significant is not the quality or meaning of the messages, but their excess. Overload has changed our art. Especially in the last thirty years, capitalism plus electronics have given us a new habitat, our forest of media. (Hughes, 1980, p. 324)

Hughes goes on to suggest that art has assimilated the per- vasiveness and vividness of mass media. Artists and mass media designers from the turn of the century forward seem to have realized the truth of Jacques Ellul's writing in 1980 that technology, not nature, forms our immediate environment. The next step in this emerging continuum is the development of virtual reality as immediate environment.

Relationships among Virtual Reality, Idealism? Quantum Theory, Popular Culture, Analogue Takeover, and Immediate Environment First, an earlier discussion established that idealism verbally describes the essential characteristics of virtual reality. The converse is also true. Virtual reality is a visual demonstration of the essential perceptual characteristics of idealism. Sec-

ond, idealism and implications of quantum theory have com- monalities. Thus science gives idealism a degree of credibil- ity. Third, idealism and implications of quantum theory have permeated popular culture. Thus aspects of idealism have become embedded in our collective psyche. Fourth, analogue takeover in virtual reality includes the perceptual sense of popularized idealism. Thus analogue takeover will be particularly strong in virtual reality. Fifth, virtual reality is the logi- cal replacement of technology as our immediate environment (see Figure 2).

Conclusions The above discussion leads this author to conclude that analogue takeover will overpower design content when designers attempt to simulate design intent in virtual reality. The effects of analogue takeover will be exaggerated because analogue takeover strengthens as design simulations become increas- ingly perceptual and less conceptual. Virtual reality is the epitome of perceptual simulation.

The ultimate goal of virtual reality is perceptual closure between reality and virtual reality. Complete perceptual closure

W

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If virtual reality becomes integrated with life, as Lanier states, will the societal role of the designer change?

will embody the experience of idealism. Idealism will always exist in the background of virtual reality design simulations and come to the foreground when someone studies or experiences the simulations. Participants will come to realize that their own bodies are reality simulators. They will realize that they do not experience natural reality directly. It will be appar- ent to them that there could be a discrepancy between what they perceive and what is real. This is especially likely because idealism is ingrained in our scientific and popular culture. Jaron Lanier, a major developer of virtual reality, ex- pressed this idea when he stated that “the border between what’s really out there and our internal experience of it is very fuzzy” (Bard, 1991, p. 9). Design content in such a medium will very likely be overpowered by analogue takeover strength- ened by the virtual embodiment of idealism.

If virtual reality were perceived as our immediate environment, however, the effects of analogue takeover would diminish because immediate environments do not generally draw attention to themselves unless they become violent or unusual. The natural environment draws little attention to itself except during extreme events such as earthquakes, storms, and tempera- ture shifts. The technological environment does not draw attention to itself except during accidents and breakdowns. Pre- sumably, if virtual reality were to be perceived as the immediate environment, it would not draw attention to itself either. Analogue takeover would, therefore, diminish because the immediate environment is not perceived as a medium. Design content could again become the center of attention in virtual reality design simulations.

According to Jaron Lanier, it will take at least 100 years for the illusions of virtual reality to rival our sense of the objective world (Porter, 1992). This essay has maintained that analogue takeover in virtual reality design simulations will increase in strength as techniques of virtual reality improve. If Lanier is right that virtual reality techniques will continue to improve over the next 100 years or longer, the problem of analogue takeover will plague designers and clients for the foreseeable future.

When Lanier runs his predictions out 1,000 years, he sees a complete integration of virtual reality with life (Porter, 1992). At this point virtual reality will function as our immediate environment, in Ellul’s sense, and analogue takeover in design simulations will cease to be a problem because immediate environments do not draw attention to themselves as long as they operate benignly.

Implications for Educators and Researchers Educators of the future need to take special pains to alert students to the phenomenon of analogue takeover as students attempt to design in virtual reality. The problem of analogue

takeover in virtual reality design simulations is particularly in- sidious because it operates even if designers are unaware of it. Analogue takeover could easily dupe designers, design students, and design clients into thinking they are dealing with design issues when, in fact, they are dealing with media issues

As virtual reality equipment becomes available, researchers might design scientific experiments to prove or disprove aspects of the theoretical thesis presented here. For example, could one test the strength of analogue takeover in the current state of virtual reality development and interpolate the findings to a more highly developed state of virtual reality development? Could one test the strength of analogue takeover in current photo-realistic computer animation and interpolate the findings to virtual reality?

Of course, there are many more questions to be asked when dealing with virtual reality and interior design than can be en- compassed by analogue takeover. If virtual reality becomes integrated with life, as Lanier states, will the societal role of the designer change? If people work in virtual environments, will interior designers create those environments? Will the design of physical environments become less important than such design is today?

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Ellul, J. (1980). The technological system. New York: Continuum. Flew, A. (1984). A dictionary ofphilosophy. New York: St. Martin’s

Herbert, N. (1987). Quantum reality. Garden City: Anchor Press/

Hughes, R. (1980). The shock of the new. New York: Knopf. Lee, R. J. (1 991, January). The implications of drawing in architec-

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VIRTUAL REALITY: : A Design Simulation Technique That Overpowers Design Content