Re-engaging the physical within liminal landscapes.

Abstract

We live suspended between the digital and the physical, in a liminal space. The pioneers of digital landscapes we navigate realms unfettered by physical constraints, where stories can construct and reconstruct themselves at will, where time is not just static but can be reversed, where truth can be rewritten and history revised. Orientation increasingly turns to an expanding mirror world, the echo of Borges fiction, a 1:1 remaking of the world, where huge ships hide within the folds of fake signals, infrastructure is analysed through its digital twin and non-existent islands rise into being leading very real expeditions to search for them.

It can begin to paint a picture of an increasing retreat from reality into our imaginaries, with all the dystopian and problematic environmental consequences this could bring. Yet it also holds within it the potential to enhance and deepen our embodiment within the physical realm. AI and other evolving technologies offer the opportunity for us to sculpt this liminal realm to enhance our spatial embodiment, extending our understanding and engagement with the physical world and ourselves. Design of our architecture and cities must now engage critically with these landscapes, beginning to define our mode of engagement through the spaces we dare to imagine.

Postgraduate and Undergraduate students at XX began to explore this territory, teasing out implications and opportunities to unveil potential futures that deny boundaries. We asked how might design embrace these opportunities to construct our future cities and a sustainable future? Might we create architectures which blur the boundary of the physical and digital that enable entry into others worlds, to hear ultrasonic communication of bat’s, see magnetic fields alongside birds, to begin to see beyond our limited anthropocentric perception?