Page - 168 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

168 | Michael R. Heim www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 159–181 this is the importance of the architecture of virtual worlds. Knowing the built qualities of both real and virtual dwellings supports a dual dwelling process. Building and dwelling are related. Noticing shared aspects of real and virtual constructs provides handles for adjusting balance. Deliberate awareness can balance dual dimensions. the building of virtual worlds is based on pre-given structures of the primary or real world. real world architecture is buttressed by thousands of years of conscious evolution, of study and experiment with materials for habitation and for public gatherings. By contrast, a relatively new question is: What does a vir- tual world look like? this question came up frequently while i was teaching graduate students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, between 1996 and 2002. My two seminars “Virtual Worlds theory” and “Virtual Worlds De- sign” produced dozens of online 3-D worlds, many of them intended to push the boundaries. students hosted live events in custom-designed virtual envi- ronments. these worlds are illustrated in other publications, and the logs are available online.22 some experiments followed the guidebook A Virtual Realist Primer to Virtual World Design by the swedish scholar Mikael Jakobsson.23 But one question often posed was: What limits, if any, does architecture have in virtuality? Or, rephrased: Can we produce worlds that ignore reality, or is there something that transcends virtuality, some anchor that pins the virtual to the primary world? (Notice that the “primary” world prejudges the issue by ranking the virtual as derivative.) The question arose in the first worlds built because the majority of art students wanted to collaborate on building a world without gravity. they imagined spaces where avatars zoom from place to place, a world where there was enough gravity to land on floating platforms, but not a world where transportation was a heavy liftfig (see fig. 1). No traffic jams in Los Ange- les – imagine that if you can! While the Art Center experiments were sometimes wild yet sometimes suc- cessful as experiments, they did not address the K&L concerns about virtual- ity. Art Center students were simply enthralled with the opportunity to create innovative virtual environments for gaming and social gatherings. they stood on the cusp of creativity, with some of the first classes in Web design and com- puter animation in the nation. Our worlds were not fully immersive 3-D through headsets but on-screen faux 3-D in a medium known as “ActiveWorlds”. it was a time to unleash, not restrain, the creative impulse. there was no pause to ask, What bridges can we create for balancing virtual with real? What aspects of world building, of design architecture, can bridge virtual and real? there was 22 references and extensive logs are found at www.mheim.com. 23 e-book available online at http://www.mheim.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Virtual-realist- Primer.pdf