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Virtually Bearable: Jason Torchinsky visits the Transarchitectures Symposium

[ by Jason Torchinsky ]

Sensing that I was clamped between the elevator doors and attempting to join her, the woman sighed and pressed the "door open" button. Our common destination: the "Transarchitectures: Visions of Digital Communities" symposium at Getty Center in Los Angeles.

I was attending the symposium as the last-minute replacement of a Wired writer, which made me a great deal more interesting to those running the show. I gave my name at the check-in table, and was asked if there was "only one of me." I was pretty sure I was all the me's I brought. So they gave me a postcard and some stapled pages to explain exactly what this symposium was about. I found one clue on the website:

The term "transarchitecture" has been adopted as one possible way to begin thinking about the construction of hybrid --physical and virtual-- spaces. Conceptualization and design of digital spaces draws on numerous strands of thinking in the arts and sciences, yet transforms these ideas just as the digital manipulates the analog in new and important ways.

So, based on this, I had no idea whether this was going to be all bullshit or not.

The Getty's auditoriums are very refined and comfortable. The rows of seats are designed so that you don't need to stand up when someone wants to get by. Also, if you put your feet up on the back of the seat in front of you, one of the ushers will make you put them down. This is about the extent of what I learned from the introductory speeches.

Well, no, I also heard the word "cyberspace" bandied about a great deal, as well as "community" and "space." Oh, and the name of the keynote speaker, Bill Mitchell.

Bill Mitchell has more degrees than a thermometer and is, among other things, the Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. He has written several books about architecture and its relation to our digital age. On top of all this, he has a remarkably stereotypical pedantic-sounding British/Boston accent, one very similar to the professor in Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School.

Mitchell started by discussing how cities are defined by their network systems: Venice and its canals, London and its subways, Los Angeles by its highways, etc. He continued with a roundabout and remarkably detailed explanation of the types of human communication, dividing them up into synchronous and asynchronous categories. Synchronous communication refers to things that happen in real time, like talking face-to-face. Asynchronous communication is, of course, communication that does not happen in real time, like a letter, or email, or anything where the sender has to wait for a response. Semaphore flags may even fit into this category. Get it? It took the good doctor at least twenty minutes to explain.

Dr. Mitchell then postulated that the vast quantity of email was actually a hybrid form of communication, with asynchronous communication requesting synchronous. You know, like when you email a friend to meet for lunch. This would be a pretty radical idea, if only it had not been around for centuries. This idea isn't new, and, perhaps more importantly, it's not terribly interesting, either.

At this point in the lecture, I'm getting a bit restless, and starting to wonder what would happen if I start writing personal notes to the woman in the row in front of me.

What finally forced my attention back to the podium was a staggeringly detailed description of how to use a bookstore. To quote: "Physically entering the bookstore, literally taking a book off the shelf with your hand, and actually taking it from the store."

Thanks for clearing that up, Dr. Mitchell. The point of his lengthy description--the gist of which can be gathered from the name of the "Pic 'n' Pay" shoestore chain--was to compare this process with purchasing a book from Amazon.com.

Mitchell's groundbreaking point was the revelation that Amazon.com represents a new kind of "hybrid architectural space," one birthed as a result of our digital age: "Virtual front, real back." That is to say the front of the bookstore is actually a website, not a building. So they also have a real, physical warehouse to store all those copies of The Rules and Sailing for Dummies.

As Dr. Mitchell smugly espoused his "virtual front, real back" concept, it occurred to me that once again his point would have been more effective if it had been made 200 years ago. Isn't this new hybrid space the same thing as what a Sears & Roebuck catalog accomplished in 1850? (Although, granted, online front ends are perhaps faster and contain many more animated gifs.)

I suppose I really needn't go on, detailing his every point, but, because I had to sit though it, I'm tempted to make you hear it all, too.

The keynote speech finally ground to a halt, to a great deal of applause. As I received another dirty look for having my foot on a seatback, the next speaker was introduced.

Red Burns, the chair of Interactive communication at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, was notable for her interaction with the crowd. They turned on her. She lamented the superficial nature of most online chat, blaming it on the heavy participation by the "younger generation" (to which someone in the crowd yelped a dorky "hear hear"). Then, as she was discussing her disappointment with the lack of "community building" online, she brought up VRML chat areas.

Virtual Reality Modeling Language is what VRML means, as in "kind of crappy 3D rendered environments." Cumbersome and inefficient, they don't really add anything to the normal chatroom experience save for crude interminglings of little animated avatars.

Chair Burns said basically just that to the crowd, and boy, did they turn ugly, branding her as some sort of Luddite that rejected all technology past 1994.

What are these virtual communities that everyone was defending and for which the speakers were searching? Why is everyone sure they're not around? And why is that so terrible? To hear the speakers, you would think the single most important function of the Web is creating utopic communities. But other than complaining that they weren't here yet and hoping they'd get here soon, rarely did it ever get beyond that.

Ms. Burns disparaged the common interest groups that appear all over the net as being too specific, leaving observers feeling like outsiders. Of all the speakers and panelists discussing virtual communities, not one brought up the idea that just maybe these common interest groups are actually the sorts of communities the net is going to spawn. It's really the only kind that makes sense. The kind of electronic neighborhood that so many were loosely describing has no reason to exist; that type of community is based on a decidedly nonvirtual factor: location. Being virtual takes away physical constraints and lets people pursue their interests with impunity. Like it or not, the groups the net has fostered are of Doom players, Volkswagen owners, cat fanciers, and pedophiles. Insisting that online groups be otherwise is like trying to scult marble with udon noodles.

I normally have a pretty high tolerance for academic speculation, but what was going on was really just, as they say, mental masturbation. And not even very good masturbation at that. In the end, I had no idea what transarchitecture was or why it even mattered. And I don't think anyone there did, either. An example of the general attitude: Someone in the crowd told the panel that they felt it was a bit "obvious" to have this symposium at the Getty's lecture hall; it would have been better to have it at some warehouse. I suppose it is a bit obvious to have a symposium at a place where people can sit and hear other people speak. How painfully straightforward and workable. What a ninny.

An interesting postscript: for weeks afterward, representatives from the Getty would call almost every day to try to find out what I was going to write for Wired. It was like having an insecure friend who calls all the time for approval. It was creepy. But I promised them a glowing review.

So let's hear it for Transarchitecture!