My Persistent World

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GREG MORE Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT), Australia My persistent world

architectural design Abstract synthetic environments video games This article presents design thinking and practice in the shared space of architecture and video games. It virtual worlds argues the need for designers to think about the delivery of distributable architectures that do not replicate, construct or delay the experience of architecture as anything other than a screen event. The video game and virtual worlds offer new potentials to present space, to create architectures inhabited by globally distributed audiences. By discussing a series of design, art and educational projects, this article illustrates how these novel digital environments are precursors of emergent design ecologies where educational, cultural and commercial spheres align through new spatial interfaces.

This article presents design thinking and practice in the shared space of architecture and video games. It argues the need for designers to think about the delivery of distributable architectures that do not replicate, construct or delay the experience of architecture as anything other than a screen event. The video game and virtual worlds offer new potentials to present space; to create architectures inhabited by globally distributed audiences. By discussing a series of design, art and educational

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projects, this article illustrates how these novel digital environments are precursors of emergent design ecologies where educational, cultural and commercial spheres align through new spatial interfaces. I think the future of design lies within the meaningful development of digital environments, video-game spaces and virtual worlds. This is a generational thing. It follows a lifetime engaged in playing, making and modding video games for entertainment and in more recent years for research and commercial purposes. Video games and virtual worlds are full of design; however, it is design that usually mimics, fantasizes or slavishly recreates physical-world elements. I promote that design in these spaces needs to be a hybrid of architecture, the Internet and cinema, which will redefine notions of space through synaesthetic combinations of sound, image and interactivity. A reading of theoretical articles on video games and virtual worlds illustrate that prior to any investigation of the design ecologies of these spaces, one should be aware of the critical and philosophical positions that these technologies occupy. For example, Ruch (2009) questions whether an online virtual environment – although replete with spatial qualities – is actually a space or simply a service: arguing that the end user licensing agreements (EULA) define the true nature of these spaces. Or, for example, Lehdonvirta (2010) questions whether virtual worlds actually exist, and if we enter a dichotomy between real and virtual worlds it is impossible to reconcile that these spaces may actually be one thing, and no matter how mediated our experience is, it is a single experience. Since this article is intrinsically about virtual space it is ironic to present two readings stating that space may be just a service, and any use of the word ‘virtual’ becomes discursive when discussing these environments. This irony is presented, however, to frame a position that firstly, these spaces are in fact intrinsically defined by the service from which they originate. Secondly, any sepa- ration or discussion of the virtual unnecessarily confuses or de-synthesizes the potential for thinking about the ecologies that are formed between digital and physical realms: the synthetic environments of design upon which this article focuses. This article is not about virtual space per se, but the design of digital environments that are experienced via video-game and virtual-world technology, which allow innovative ways to combine physical and digital concepts through human and computer interaction.

Distributed architectures

The architectural potential of video-game environments has been considered over the last decade in terms of visualization (Richens and Trinder 1999), collaboration (Moloney 2002 Johns and

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1. Studio teaching team: Shaw 2006) and representation (Hoon and Kehoe 2003), and if we accept that representations of Greg More, Andrew Burrow, Ed Carter, space play a defining role in contemporary video-game environments (Aarseth 2000), there is an Louis Wong. SIAL, inherent role for architects and spatial designers in the future development of these environments. School of Architec- Video games and virtual worlds are incredibly tangible things: they have their own social, techno- ture & Design, RMIT University, Melbourne. logical and critical languages, which have advanced radically in the last decade. The design publication Space Time Play (Von Borries, Walz, Böttger 2007) presented the first comprehensive survey on the relationship between video games, architecture and urban design. Walz, one of the editors of Space Time Play, has deepened this inquired in his publication Toward a Ludic Architecture (Walz 2010) by presenting a framework for thinking about the connections between architecture, space and play. In this article we are interested in design availed by the technological framework of the video game. It is less about how architecture can learn from games or play, and more about design projects critically informed by the spaces presented in video games. Not every video game is relevant to this argument. When video games are discussed in the context of this article I am referring to the ones that are spatial in nature, the 3D video games of the last decade that allow the player to navigate a 3D presentation of space; Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar, 2009) or Half Life (Valve, 2009) are two salient examples. This restricted view of video games allows us to focus on a clear connection between architecture and video games: the act of delivering spatial experience. Video games and virtual worlds share the same underlining technology. They use similar tech- niques to present space but have evolved from different requirements. In general a video game is designed to be played and provides a user an experience in relationship to a storyline, simulation or game; whereas a virtual world presents a world where a user can take a role in shaping the world, to roam, buy and sell goods, literally live a digital life through an avatar. In this article there is little benefit in making a distinction between the two and in fact many contemporary video games are simultaneously virtual worlds and, equally, virtual worlds contain video-game attributes. Let us consider the space of the video game or virtual world not as representational of architecture, but presentational, a direct act of architecture experienced through image, sound and interactivity. No one can deny the memorable and spatial qualities of these interactive environments. These spaces do not need to be built to be legitimized. The projects presented in this article are not destined to be anything other than their outcomes: virtual worlds as educational contexts for design; video games as art installa- tions; and commissioned architectural and environment design work for a virtual-world exhibition.

Atomistic constructions

The design studios we1 direct at RMIT University, Melbourne, examine the synthetic spaces of virtual worlds and game-engine technology to advance novel concepts for architectural design. Initially

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we modified existing game titles or utilized independent game engines (Unity3D, Unreal Tournament, Garage games) to allow students to engage with the paradigm of immersive 3D digital space. However, it has been exploration of persistent virtual-world spaces that has produced the most profound sense of how these technologies avail new forms of design ecologies within a design- school context. Whether it is video games or virtual-world platforms, one realizes with experience that all platforms are obsolescent, either through design or circumstance. However, the processes and design artefacts do not suffer the same fate. In this way a notational concept of design bridges application silos, and over time the successful processes of design are always responsive to the current technological ecology at work. One consistent theme is the object-based nature of design within these spaces. Whereas we might separate different elements by layers in digital design space (think Autocad), in virtual worlds we need to consider every object as its own unique entity, even when part of the greater composition. Textures, 3D models, sounds, scripts, etc. are the building blocks for the designer to create atmosphere, to create space. At the core of designing in these spaces is an object-oriented model, the paradigm that matches the code base driving the software; matter is constructed by the atoms of logic. For example, with Linden Lab’s Second Life designers use a set of tools to create their virtual designs directly in the environment. These in-world tools are limited when compared to typical architectural software, but guarantee that all modelling is compatible with the environment. Objects created are called prims (short for primitives), and through a combination of prims designers can achieve more complicated spatial compositions. Second Life embraces the concept of atomistic construction (Ondrejka 2006) for user-generated content, where simple – easy to generate – objects can be used in combination to create complexity. The matter of these worlds is highly distributive: located server-side, all objects and spaces are streamed to the client only when required. Second Life is less sophisti- cated in its rendering of space when compared to other video-game technologies. This is because its technological service model is based on the efficient delivery of its distributive environments, allowing as many people as possible to access these spaces, with minimal computer specifications and across a series of operating Figure 1: View of design activity on RMIT Island. Credit: Louis systems. Wong, Greg More.

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In Second Life all design content is generated in-world and seamlessly shared with other people. Since 2007 we have been directing digital design studios in this environment as a design context for architecture and interior design students. We have maintained a persistent design space for the students so that they can create, exchange and even sell design. For better or worse, in Second Life, one needs to purchase and pay for the use of such a space. The service model Figure 2: Extracted Landscape: Design objects extracted from ties the user to annual fees and unfortunately this Second Life. Credit: Edmund Carter, Greg More. places a price on maintaining a space as a digital design archive. For this reason, and to archive projects, we have adopted approaches to document the design material through other mediums: machinima, imagery and, for exhibits, we extract the geometry from the island and re-render it external its original context, developing an evocative abstract landscape of projects created in-world. We have been considering the longitudinal approaches to thinking about video-game and virtual-world spaces within design contexts, exploring the meta concepts that sit above the technology platforms. One research project, entitled DMOD, is a vision of a shared real-time game-engine environment where the space is literally a portal to design content, allowing for studios to walk through a 3D digital space and view current textures, models, sounds files, the DNA of the environments. This project is developed with Vastpark, a new form of virtual- world platform that has its own spatial mark-up language, allowing for worlds to be easily assembled and recompiled from cloud-based asset libraries. With this project we are examining how Internet and 3D immersive environments combine to enhance design learning, by providing an innovative context that is of and about the Figure 3: The shared design space of DMOD. Credit: Greg More, artefacts of design and design process. Louis Wong.

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Post-video-game architectures

Simulation is a key aspect of the video game. Game theorist Frasca defines simulation as ‘the act of modeling a system A by a less complex system B, which retains some of A’s original behaviour’ (Frasca 1999). He uses this definition when presenting the difference between representation and simulation, where the former may illustrate a sequence of events, the latter allows one to manipu- late and interact directly with an event-space. Frasca’s theories promote the video game as a space for the emergence of behaviour from the simulation of complex systems. What if the simulation folds back into the architecture, and the design space is a resultant of the models of interaction? This is what I would term as post-video- game architecture (More 2007), spaces with markedly different parameter sets than those of physical materiality. This architecture would be determined primarily by simulating the player’s ability to affect space through interaction, it would be behavioural, and form a frame of resistance to map dynamically a space of possibility (Salen and Zimmerman 2003). Architecture becomes representational of simulation; promoting the hyper- possibilities of form, independent of the Figure 4: A Thousand Lines of Sight, Sectional render. material models of the real world. A Thousand Lines of Sight is a reflective art project that explores the concepts of interaction within game space. In this project I examine the relationship between architecture, landscape and the space of the video game, creating a series of genera- tive digital prints, 3D models, renders and a multiplayer game environment developed for an exhibition context. It presents an architecture realized for video-game environments – utilizing 3D real-time games-engine technology to provide the experience of being in and actively moving through space. This project promotes an architecture that is formally manipulated by the activity of the game space. By engaging trajectories, sightlines and boundary defences it generates an architectural memorializa- tion of the popular and aptly termed ‘First Person Shooter’ (FPS) video-game genre.

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Figure 5: A Thousand Lines of Sight, Line drawing. Figure 6: A Thousand Lines of Sight, Game environment.

Within the FPS genre there are many game types, however A Thousand Lines of Sight addresses ones that emphasizes territory-based conflict, where teams are required to navigate and dominate space to achieve the game objectives (‘Capture the Flag’ is one such game type). Spatial symmetry is a key charac- teristic of a generic landscape. It offers modelling efficiently and more importantly ensures spatial equality for each team. In A Thousand Lines of Sight two walls stand symmetrically either side of a border, with a connecting passage running beneath the contested no-man’s land. Fragments of Berlin’s historical border

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are re-enacted as a site of enquiry – a place of the oppositional and defensive gaze. Like the old tourist viewing towers of West Berlin the lust for the gaze motivates the viewer to ascend and see over the wall. A thousand view shafts are carved into a wall; each line of sight emanating from within and terminating in the surrounding landscape. An internal ramp flows up through the wall folding circulation into an interior peppered by sightlines. The solidity of the wall is dissolved by the multiplicity of sightlines. The resultant porous architecture has a reciprocal relationship between viewing and framing space. Two types of model are established in the creation of the lines of sight – the Persecutor and the Scatterer. The Persecutor is a wall of a thousand eyes starring at a single target in the territory below. These apertures are cross-haired in shape. In contrast the Scatterer spreads its interest across the landscape through a series of rectilinear holes, creating a relationship of one-to-many, in a generic, random and arbitrary manner compared to the many-to-one relationship of the Persecutor. Using a fuzzy-logic approach these archetypes dissolve and the resultant form is a fusion of the Persecutor and the Scatterer, in endless variations relative to the state of play. The architecture has been developed para- metrically allowing the serially deforming ramp to be reconfigured in shape and character. From this the lines of sight are distributed on three trajectories that travel up the ramp, replicating the FPS positions of crouching, standing and jumping. A solid-void model makes salient the effect of carving out the lines of sight and is archaeologically reminiscent of a fortress or bunker (Virilio 1994). In its static form, as if arrested by Medusa’s gaze, the resultant architecture provides a memorial to the interaction of the game-space.

Geography without geology

The Meta Island Beta project explores the idea of geography without geology: simulating geological forms generated by non-geological

Figure 7: A Thousand Lines of Sight, 3D plaster print.

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data. With this project I was inspired by the reoccurring theme of the island within video-game and virtual-world spaces: the closed space of the island – both as a symbol and providing a naturally bounded environment. For example, the environments of the Grand Theft Auto series, the landscapes of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft or Second Life’s archipelagoes all use the island as the geological metaphor for the overall limits of the gaming environments – spaces ultimately located in the flatness of an infinite ocean. However, these islands are not based on known geological processes, but their appearances are sculpted to provide a stage, backdrop or context for the relevant game play where the meta-concepts of game play and virtual inhabitation inform the silhouette, undulation and edge of the land form. Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is worth considering in more detail: not the latest title in the Grand Theft Auto series; however, the most rewarding when considering how the geographies of video-game space are shaped. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas presents a vast geographical environment including city spaces, roads, waterways and mountains. All aspects of this environment are derived from the geography of California (now called San Andreas), with urban areas mimicking the cities of Los Angeles (renamed Los Santos), San Francisco (San Fierro) and Las Vegas (Las Venturas). Like their real counterparts, Los Santos and San Feirro touch the sea and Las Venturas is surrounded by desert. However San Andreas viewed from above reveals not a map of California, but a series of interconnected islands contained within an overall square footprint. In turn, San Andreas and the State of California are isomorphic in relationship, sharing a type of mapping where the structure of features is retained though applied to a different shape. Here the features are the cultural landmarks of California – the Hollywood Sign (now Vinewood), the Golden Gate Bridge, etc. remapped onto a new geography. San Andreas is geography without geology. The landscape has been manipulated to direct the player through the narrative of the video game. This hyper-geography provides a backdrop to the game storyline with the erosion of the landscape designed to segment the game space. The geography relaxes to accommodate the footprint of the city and also relaxes to define waterways, so much so that some rivers flow from ocean to ocean. Scale is preserved at the street level, yet traversing from city centre to city edge, or taking a journey across a mountain range appears condensed in duration. All is intensified to the point that the periphery Figure 8: Meta Island Beta, Installation.

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Figure 9: Meta Island Beta, Landscape sculpture (left), video-game environment (right).

runs close to the centre and the exterior folds into an interior. This is the Baudrillarian hyperspace, where the map becomes the territory (Baudrillard 1983). In response to the spatial conditions of these game-space types the Meta Island Beta connects a physical gallery space and an imagined digital landform located on the horizon of a virtual ocean. Meta Island Beta presents the island as a space prior to identity; based on Wu Cheng’en’s 1590s tale ‘Journey to the West’ (commonly known as ‘Monkey’). The project exists as a landscape sculptural element with embedded electronics that senses the light levels of the gallery space, and drives the shape of an island within the video-game environment. This digital island is constituted of 1024 individually addressable modular cells, which are constantly reconfiguring and reforming themselves in response to the light levels of the gallery. Every five minutes a new beta island is created through a series of formative meta-processes. Firstly, initial formation – the island is given a mathematical distribution (Gaussian) with a series of peaks informed by the information transmitted from the light sensors. Secondly, erosion – the island form is eroded utilizing an algorithm to simulate hydraulic and atmospheric erosion. Finally, vegeta- tion – the erosion process redistributes simulated soil deposits, and where soil is of sufficient depth and above the water line, peach trees (Monkey King gained immortality from the Peaches of Heaven) are planted onto the surface. The small-scaled sculptural element is a 3D plaster printed form based on a series of Gaussian distributions and elements of nodes, peaks and a void – similar to an egg in shape – within its surface. Fibre-optic threads pierce the surface allowing light to emanate from within the form, with others taking light directly to the sensors.

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2. National Portrait From a technical point of view the video-game environment is custom built using the programming Gallery, Canberra, language Python and the Panda3D game engine, with sensing achieved through light senses, fibre designed by architects Johnson Pilton Walker. optics and an embedded Arduino electronic board in the centre of the sculpture. The streaming data from the light levels – of values from 1 to 1024 – trigger a sequence of computational events. The island 3. The Doppelgänger Exhibition was curated is a slow computing device that takes sensor information and translates over time these initial conditions by Gillian Raymond. into more complicated spatial outcomes. During a day around 288 beta islands are generated, ready for Website: http://www. portrait.gov.au/exhibit/ digital occupation, each unique and derived from a combination of physical and digital processes. doppelganger/. Singularity and its doppelgänger

One of the most obvious design approaches to the spatial qualities of virtual environments is to mimic our built environments. This offers little in regards to advancing a relatively new design medium beyond technique. But inevitably one needs to extend, contextualize or relate projects to existing physical contexts as rich counterpoints to pure digital experience. This juxtaposition presents a fasci- nating series of potentials to consider site, situation and thresholds between physical and digital environments, and how one designs the suspension of disbelief for an interactive audience. I was recently involved in the design and delivery of a large virtual-world project for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia. As part of the digital online strategy of the institution, this project extended the physical spaces of the gallery to allow a national and international audience the opportunity to have a portrait gallery experience independent of how remote they are to physically being in Canberra. However, the exhibition did not replicate any of the eight gallery spaces, presenting a designed space developed in conjunction with the exhibiting artists and the curator as an abstracted extension of the physical building.2 The exhibition, ‘Doppelgänger’,3 focuses on the how we present ourselves in the virtual domain. Based on the idea of the digital doubling of ourselves, ‘Doppelgänger’ presents a unique take of this issue by commissioning an international collection of artists who primarily work within the realm of virtual worlds. Artists from China, Italy, the United States of America and Australia presented commissioned works in the Second Life platform. The desire of the curator was for these works to challenge both our understanding of representations of what portraiture is. For example iGods by Gaz Babeli literally duplicates your avatar’s appearance into seven posing gods within a Greek temple setting. Autoscopia by Nash, Clemens and Dodds performs a deep Internet search of your name and generates an in-world audio-visual sculpture based on the results, and also builds new publicly available web page based on information found about your name on the Internet – your true digital identity. The design of Portrait Island – the space of the exhibition designed via Linden Lab’s Second Life platform – addresses Australia’s capital city designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, a

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city whose monuments (parliament, national library, etc.) sit as objects within the manufactured landscape. Conceptually the design flips or inverts this relationship by treating the landscape of the digital environment as a monument, allowing the exhibition spaces and artworks to read as experi- ential landscapes that respond – by contrast or assimilation – to a monumental land form. To achieve a monumental land form the island was designed as a singular inclined plane – that is cut and formed – to create a series of differing exhibition environments. Eating away the monolithic form are a series of cuts and divisions that break up the singular statement and allow for densification, layering and vertically to be worked into the design. Into this the architectural elements integrate to provide a Figure 10: Overview of Portrait Island. structuring and sequencing of space aligned to the curatorial direction. The design reflects a varied approach to spatial ecologies with the resultant exhibition spaces ranging from traditional exhibition types of black or white walled spaces, to a series of open-ended environmental features: plateaus, niches, ruins and sunken spaces. The slope is a gradient: a space that moves through a range of possibilities. This gradient also informs the island textures, soundscape and naturally the orientation and movement throughout the island. This digital exhibition space was actually inhabited by the artists for the three months prior to the opening of the exhibition. The commissioned works were designed in situ, and evolved over this three-month period. In that time the curator and I worked to alter, shift and massage the island to accommodate the range of works on display, and deal with works ranging in scale Figure 11: Portrait Island landform.

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Figure 12: Portrait Island forum space.

from a few metres wide to 30 metres cubed. The initial design developed was altered, refined and evolved during this phase. One of the advantages of digital persistent spaces is their ability to allow people to truly share and develop a singular space even if in different locations and time zones. Ironically in this project some of the resulting artworks that emerged were very architectural in scale and appearance. For example, the minimal aesthetics and ‘light’ approach I had designed were juxta- posed by an artist placing a Greek temple on the island (Gazira Babeli’s iGods). Where Portrait Island does quote the physical space of the National Portrait Gallery it is through soundscapes, graphical elements and abstracted details from the building and landscape. In some ways this quotes the more transmittable elements of the architecture – the iconography, texturing, spatial sounds and an echoing of the spatial composition of space: for example, the private subter- ranean storage and archive spaces of the National Portrait Gallery become a series of underground passages and spaces that lie beneath the water of Portrait Island.

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Coda

This article presents a series of projects and approaches to considering design within video-game and virtual-world environments. As a designer the ability to work across mediums, and allow for exchange of language, symbols and temporal conditions hints at a notational and meta approach to design ideas; designing within the metaphorical and topological space before a descent into geometry. The telos of these spaces is their ability to be distributed, and inherently a lightness of design that reflects this transmissibility reinforces a notational approach to design, when the motif and character can shift between mediums – across technological platforms – without loss of clarity.

References

Aarseth, E. (2000), ‘Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games’ CyberText Yearbook 2000, Eds. Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa, Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, Jyvaskyla, Finland, pp. 152–71. Baudrillard, J. (1983), Simulations (trans. P. Foss, P. Patton and P. Beitchman), New York: Semiotext(e), p. 3. Von Borries, F., Walz, S., Böttger, M. (eds) (2007), Space Time Play, Basel: Birkhäuser. Frasca, G. (1999), ‘Ludology meets Narratology: Similitude and differences between (video) games and narrative’, http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm. Accessed 22 June 2010. Hoon, M., and Kehoe, M. (2003), ‘Enhancing Architectural Communication with Gaming Engines’, in Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design In Architecture, Indianapolis, IN, USA, pp. 349–355. Johns, R. and Shaw, J. (2006), ‘Real-time immersive design collaboration: conceptualising, proto- typing and experiencing design ideas’, Journal of Design Research (JDR), 5: 2. Lehdonvirta, V. (2010), ‘Virtual Worlds Don’t Exist: Questioning the Dichotomous Approach in MMO Studies’, The International Journal of Computer Game Research, 10: 1 (April), http://gamestudies.org/. Accessed 22 June 2010. Moloney, J. (2002), ‘String CVE Collaborative Virtual Environment software developed from a game engine’, in Proceedings of the 20th eCAADe Conference, Poland, pp. 522–25. More, G. (2007), ‘Lines of Sight: Architecture and the Videogame Model’, in E. Abruzzo, E. Ellingsen and J.D. Solomon (eds), 306090 Volume 11, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 161–65.

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Ondrejka, C. (2006), ‘Escaping the Gilded Cage: User-Created Content and Building the Metaverse’, in J.M. Balkin and B.S. Noveck (eds), The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds, New York: New York University Press, p. 165. Richens, P. and Trinder, M. (1999), ‘Design participation through the internet: A case study’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 3: 4. Ruch, A., (2009), ‘World of Warcraft: Service or Space?’, in The International Journal of Computer Game Research, 9: 2 (November), http://gamestudies.org/. Accessed 22 June 2010. Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2003), Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 67. Virilio, P. (1994), Bunker Archeology, New York, Princeton Architectural Press. Walz, S. P. (2010), Toward a Ludic Architecture: The Space of Play and Games, Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press.

Suggested citation

More, G. (2011), ‘My persistent world’, Design Ecologies 1: 1, pp. 57–71, doi: 10.1386/des.1.1.57_1

Contributor details

Greg More is a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, within RMIT’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), School of Architecture + Design. More is interested in the synthetic spaces of contemporary culture where exchange between material and digital economies transform the relationship between the subject and architecture. In recent years More has been researching, developing and teaching video-game technology for design and artistic purposes. His design work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art New York, selected for OneDotZero and Resfest international film festivals, and featured in a range of international architecture and design biennale and publications. Greg More is also the founder of OOM Creative – a digital environments design consultancy – specializing in information visualization and digital environment design. http://www.oomcreative.com E-mail: [email protected]

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