Introduction

This scenario described by William Mitchell in, City of Bits illustrates the ever growing spatial condition that is transforming the visual process by which we orient ourselves in the world. A condition which, some would argue, has broad reaching implications for our built environment through the minimization of our material infrastructure in favor of the development of virtual infrastructure. It is diminishing the distinctions that have helped give our conception of the world definition. Outside and inside, near and far, here and there, these begin to lose their meaning in a world no longer defined in primarily visual-spatial terms. Real-time, in this new condition, is establishing a primacy over real-space. The now is becoming more important than the where. This amounts to a dematerialization of the visual-spatial horizon of our phenomenal world and an emergence of a new horizon. This is the horizon without distance, of instant arrival without journey, a horizon not spatially based but temporally based. Paul Virilio refers to this as the Third Horizon or the trans-apparent horizon. This horizon replaces the apparent horizon that has occupied our visual-spatial history and acted as a perceptual as well as conceptual threshold to our experience.

It is because of the primacy of vision in our Western culture that the developments of these new technologies are having such a profound effect. This ocularcentrism coincides with our philosophical conflation of Being with objects. As Frances Dyson states, "…of all the attributes of objects, visibility and extension are primary, thus vision and occupation of spaces are deeply implicated in the constitution of existence." ² Generally speaking, our visual input has, until recently, corresponded directly to our physical surroundings. Now a stereoscopic spatial condition has developed which calls into question the mitigating ability of our traditional visual based thinking. As the Mitchell example sited previously illustrates, the light that illuminates our vision has been split, between the direct light of the real world and the indirect light of the screen. ³ The usefulness of the horizon and thus the perspectival orientation that aids us in our recognition of the here and now has been all but diminished. The here can now be here and there simultaneously, with no apparent distance or duration between, a state of telepresence.

Through continued acceleration of communication and transportation technology distances and duration have diminished. In some cases they have all but disappeared, leaving only the instant. Air travel (especially in the case of the super-sonic) has conquered the expanse of the Atlantic and reduced France to a mere one and one-half hours across. Telecommunication in its many forms eliminates distance and duration completely, as in the example from William Mitchell sited previously. Thus, we are in a state of critical expanse, where any and all previous limit conditions on expansion have been eliminated (except for the speed of light). Duration has disappeared.

We have all experienced these changes, but do we understand their possible ramifications? All of this should cause us to ask, with our deeply rooted ocularcentrism, what are the ramifications for our built environment as the apparent horizon, and the distance and duration it implies, disappears? How will we orient ourselves in a world that privileges temporality over spatiality?

The Visual Horizon

Although the horizon line had its origins in the fifteenth century, allowing for the development of correct perspective representation, it did not really have a concrete representation in the experience of the real world until the eighteenth century, remaining an abstract mathematical concept. In the eighteenth century it had a re-discovery of sorts. The horizon line came to have a profound phenomenological as well as epistemological importance. Goethe documented this transformation on his voyage from Naples to Palermo. At sea he found it becomes possible to experience a previously abstract notion in a very real way. "In the line where sky and water meet, the mathematical horizon and the natural limits of sight become fused". ⁴

The horizon was the boundary of the known world. Everything that was beyond its boundary was new and unfamiliar, while everything contained by it was, by definition, familiar and known. Thus, it also came to be a metaphor for hope and the liberation for the European middle-class of the period. To travel beyond one's own visual limits (the horizon) was to escape the tyranny of their everyday existence. This conception of the world lead to the invention of such architectural spectacles as the Panorama, along with its offshoots such as the Diorama and the Stereopticon. These spectacles in many ways foreshadowed the condition of instantaneous telepresence that exists today.

Since the nineteenth century our position relative to the horizon has been changing to the point where today we find the relation all but disappeared. It has been a slow transition in which the perceptual boundary of the horizon has been eroding. Subsequently, changing the traditional relationship between the subject and the object, the viewer and the viewed. During the turn of the century this distinction became increasingly distorted in favor of transparency and the free-plan. These had the resulting effect of a condition not unlike the telepresence we are faced with today. However, the wall of the horizon could not be penetrated. They offered only a blurred distinction between the immediate inside and outside. The spatial parameters of distance still prevailed.

The horizon still divided opacity from transparency, the far from the near. Where architecture failed the transportation revolution (planes, trains and automobiles) succeeded. Ever increasing mobility would break down the visual barrier of distant space. The limit condition of the horizon would be replaced with the temporal limit condition of technological speed. Distance replaced by duration. This transportation revolution could be seen as culminating in the ability to reach escape velocity, breaking the hold of earth's gravity. For, gravity and the horizon are intimately linked. It is through the resistance of Earth's gravity that the horizon disappears. Virilio claims that beyond the gravitationally dependent space of the Earth there is no space, only time. The current information and telecommunication technologies in effect reach escape velocity.

The Third Horizon and Temporal Free Fall

The troubling state that the third horizon brings us is that of a temporal free fall. A state of constant movement, or falling, from one instant to the next, with no past or future, only the present. We float in a temporal dimension of instant action. The apparent horizon (or first horizon) allows us to glimpse our future, the destination of our journey. It allows for departure, path, and arrival. It is our grounding, the backdrop in front of which our lives take place. The third, trans-apparent horizon denies this possibility, thus implying the loss of real vision, and thus the real. Departure, path, and arrival become fused into a state of pure arrival by instant interaction. As the speed of transmission of this interaction increases the state of arrival becomes more and more limited, constantly moving toward a greater state of generality. For speed, as Virilio states, is the relation between phenomenon and thus, relativity. As it increases relativity decreases. One need only look to television broadcasting to see an illustration of this point.

This state of free fall has as a perspectival component, the real-time perspective of telecommunications. Prospective telepresence and shared tele-existence eliminate the line of the visible horizon in favor of the linelessness of a deep and imaginary horizon. The distinction between real and virtual, near and far, here and now disappear. It is a perspective where the old line of the horizon "curls itself" into the new, square horizon of the video screen causing appearances to be distorted. Supplanting conventional optics with that of optoelectronics, the distant becomes near. Our presence in the real world seems to contract while our new tele-presence in the virtual-world expands. Dyson alludes to this idea as well, "Even before the virtual landscape, the flat terrain of the screen has standardized an interface that, in its broadest sense, forges a relationship between the eye and how it sees - constructing a viewer that is 'screen based'." ⁶

"After the line of the visible horizon, the original skyline of the landscape of the world, the square horizon of the screen (third horizon of visibility) will emerge as a bug in the memory of the second horizon - the deep horizon of our memory of places responsible for our orientation in the world - causing confusion of near and far, of inside and outside, disorders in common perception that will gravely affect the way we think." ⁷ This condition, as has been stated already, will change the way in which we value the visual stimuli our ocular senses we take in. In our traditional environment outside and inside where continuous, they where the same place, existing in the same moment in time. However with the supplanting of the screen for the window, the scene "outside" no longer assures us of the same condition. The view may be rescaled, distant or near, may change from one moment to the next, it may even be replayed. ⁸ It is a transparent condition lacking the optical density of real-space, thus, calling into question the very nature of its spatial and visual integrity. Space implies certain possibilities, "immersion," habitation, "being-there," "phenomenal plentitude," "unmediated presence." Frances Dyson goes as far as to say that, "Without space there can be no concept of presence within an environment, nor, more importantly, can there be the possibility for authenticity that 'being-in-the-world' allows." Our vision thus becomes increasingly mediated and indirect. The direct relation of the subject and the object is evaporating. The image prevails over the very thing it is an image of.

What Will Come of Vision?

As stated in the beginning the association of vision with our concept of Being has significantly shaped the development of Western thinking. It has made sight the dominant sense and furnished an epistemology, which privileges visual knowledge over that of the other senses. It is the ground for our sense of objectivity, certainty and inspiration. What then will come of vision? How will this epistemology change?

Once the world in which we lived was defined by walls and horizons, the days by sunrises and sunsets. Now it is increasingly being defined temporally rather than spatially. What has become important is the present, the past and future disappearing with the horizon of real-space. Virilio speaks of a "catastrophic sense of incarceration" that is being brought by humanity being deprived of the horizon. Can we really live if there is no more here only now? Can we expect to be able to manage the split, not only between virtual and actual realities, but more to the point, between the apparent horizon and the trans-apparent horizon of the screen that suddenly opens a kind of temporal window for us to interact elsewhere at any moment? As William Mitchell describes, "Soon we will be able to create holes in space wherever and whenever we want them. Every place with a network connection will potentially have every other such place just outside the window." ⁹

Notes

1	Mitchell, William, City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 32.
2	Dyson, Frances, "'Space', 'Being', and other Fictions in the Domain of the Virtual", as published in, The Virtual Dimension, John Beckmann ed., Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998, pp. 33.
3	Virilio, Paul, Open Sky, Verso, London, 1997, p. 44.
4	Oettermann, Stephan, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, Zone Books, New York, 1997, p. 8.
5	Virilio, p. 3.
6	Dyson, p. 29.
7	Virilio, p 26.
8	Mitchell, p. 31.
9	Mitchell, p. 34.

Other Resources

1	Ruby, Andreas, "Architecture in the Age of its Virtual Disappearance: An Interview with Paul Virilio", as published in, The Virtual Dimension, John Beckmann ed., Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998, pp. 178-187.
2	Holl, Steven, "Locus Soulless", as published in, The End of Architecture: Documents and Manifestos, Peter Noever ed., Prestel-Verlag, Munich, 1992, pp. 35-45.