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"If architecture is frozen music, then a videogame is liquid architecture." -- Steven Poole, Trigger Happy p.226.
I've always like the provacative connotation of this quote--that videogames were connected more firmly to the classic traditions that people were often willing to give it credit. The notion of "architecture as frozen music" is often attributed to Goethe so the idea has been around for a while. And Poole puts it into an entirely new light.
Now this particular quote takes on new meaning for me because I've recently been accepted into the Ph.D. program in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado at Denver. So, I'll be spending a lot more time thinking about the nature of architecutre and planning. And, of course, videogames!
I plan on working in the areas of leisure spaces, virtual places and model building. What connects a playground, Disneyland, an architectural model and a videogame? Well, that's one way of asking the question I'm working on solving.
The good new is, videogames look to factor pretty heavily into my research area. So, I'll be able to continue to work inside the field of ludology.
No matter what, it should be an interesting and challenging couple of years coming up. Consider this:
One of the professors in the department, who I have a lot of respect for, told me, "This architecture as frozen music is a stupid idea."
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Personally I find the metaphor overly romantic and naive, because it overlooks the increasing political and economic contexts of architecture. What would be the score that would capture the power dynamics of Bentham's Panopticon? What music expresses the sumpreme empirical purity (sterility) of Mies Van der Roe? (I'm thinking of some sort of droning, a mixture of a high-pitched feedback with a foghorn?) What song expresses a Wal-Mart surrounded by miles of subdivision? ('Squares' by the Beta Band? 'Ecobondage' by Merzbow?)
Architecture is a more interactive medium than music. The viewer changes the mood, atmosphere and spatiality by changing her relative position. The viewer is a spatial agent within architecture, exercising freedom of movement at any time, forward, backward sideways, up and down. Looking around, the viewer can recursively enjoy the architecture without jarring the process, moving at her own rate, using hindsight to enjoy every angle and vista.
I think the essence of the medium that is so offended by comparisons to other arts of the senses is that architecture transcends the eyes and ears. Good architecture does not create space merely by bisecting it will walls and connecting it with portals, it should cultivate a space from within the person inside. It is an acoustic space that is felt with the mind; transcending eyes, ears and muscles.
The closest answer to 'what is architecture?' is that it is too big an question to answer. Now we see the complexity of the soul of the interactive media; filmmakers did not have to ask what architecture was, just how to frame it. For some it is spatial metaphor, to others it is an extension of human behavior. It is a balancing act, a show of jubilance and piousness. It can be a monument to human achievement, or a solemn prayer to the divine. It can be a shit-stain on the face of god's good earth, or a giant erection raised toward the heavens. It is the measure of the competence of the architect or 'planner'. It is above all, entirely relative.
Here's another (incredibly indulgent) question to keep the ball rolling.
Could there be a Frank Gehry without video games?