Screen Scenery: Transposing Aesthetic Principles from Real to Electronic Environments

Abstract

The link between material arrangements, time, and people’s practices is complex. It has long been a concern for architects, landscape architects, and artists. Now, it has become a concern for the designers of virtual spaces in electronic media. However, there are substantial differences. The design of material arrangements in real spaces draws on the laws, patterns, and aesthetic principles of the real world with all its physical and cultural characteristics. “Material” arrangements in virtual space do not have to face many of these constraints. Yet, in order to be intelligible, virtual worlds have to exhibit at least some familiar features. An ethnographic study of people’s interactions with and in the real and virtual spaces of a media art exhibition in Germany has shed some light on possible principles for the design of electronic spaces. We combine this study with an analysis of empirical studies, and theoretical considerations of architectural design and its relation to use with a view to informing the design of electronic, “inhabitable information spaces”.