The Importance of an Archive
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The Importance of an Archive: Redefining Physical Spaces Through Digital Environments
An Introduction
Technology is making leaps and bounds, of course with Moore's Law this is to be expected. What isn't expected is that architecture will be able to keep up with technology as it advances so rapidly. Proof of this is the reluctance to enter the digital world and finally doing so twenty years after technology has already progressed enough that it cannot be denied, even by architects. Architecture is the slowest moving profession out of any industry, take your pick. Architecture has a bad history of losing even its most common technology. Supporting this fact is when the field lost the ability to use concrete for thirteen centuries until 1756.
Let's take it at face value that it is well known architecture is very well behind arguably every other field in existence in terms of rapid development. Luckily it is learning how to catch up quickly with the younger generations that are entering it. These generations with computer knowledge and digital technology being commonplace for ideas and daily interaction. This lifestyle is brought into architecture now and is breathing new life into it.
This new and long awaited development for architecture is exciting and promising for the future representations of what architecture can do, will do, and is soon to be constructed/seen in our cities soon. We have current architectural technology being updated for the field, even with much of its late start, current architecture students are closing this gap rapidly. Whether it is green architecture, new materials, experimental architecture only made possible through a computer 3D modeling program, or other exciting advancements. Architecture is now finally getting to a place where it can call itself current and not be afraid of the public laughing at how absurd it is that the new structure could even be called modern.
With the knowledge that we are finally able to grasp modern technology and modern ideas for the field of architecture, it is important to take a current look at a new direction of thought and the place it has within the field.
Chapter 1: The Importance of an Archive
Nothing is ever learned without being properly documented first. The term documentation also meaning archiving. History is recorded and the future generations that pass read this documentation, uncover the wealth of archived information and absorb all the knowledge presented in it that is possible over a certain length of time. A new resource that is currently not being documented and is one of the largest culture changing phenomenons of our time is games, more specifically video games. The nature in which products we are all consuming in our day to day lives are digital products. Our focus architecturally speaking has gone from looking out of our windows and looking through digital ones.
Our new digital window is of great importance to our daily lives. Numerous individuals have even created second or third lives or more to live, indulge in, and play out across the varying digital universes that now exist. These universes are having a large and significant impact on our day to day interactions, view, and feelings about how we live, operate, and function. More importantly all of these things take place in a digital realm as well, influencing how we perceive what is “real” to us in our “real lives.” Before the only indication you weren't living a “real life” was if you had a second life still in the real world but no one in your social circles knew about it. Now we have numerous social circles we can be a part of where everyone might know you or some might, or no one knows you at all. It is easily perceived that digital life has impact on physical life.
We have not acknowledged this however through documentation of our digital worlds. These is a significant lack of archived information showing our lives outside our physical ones. We have immeasurable amounts of information on what is leading us to act one way and act another because of our physical relationships to space, but there is still a lack of information documenting the digital relationships we have to space. More specifically the digital relationships we have with space in video games. The most current and best form of our representations of physical space in our newly constructed digital worlds.
Why is that? What should we document? Where can we find it; where do we look? What is the real value of documenting this, will it actually impact our physical lives or how is it doing this already (digital life impacting our physical lives)?
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