(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
Culture is an intangible entity that manifests in the built environment. It develops over a long history of social interaction and is crucial in the shaping of space and identity. Our very notion of identity is in many ways virtual, linked with external factors and perceptual encounters that transcend physical space. In fact, subjectivity arises from an interaction with a virtual space- the mirror. Psychologists and philosophers like Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Schilder had theorized about subjectivity as it relates to perception and an unnamed notion of the virtuality of experience but they were working in a context that hadn’t yet seen the likes of digital lives and the Metaverse. This paper considers these theories and reinterprets them, creating an application for the contemporary ‘Cultural Revolution’ that has produced new social stratospheres developing around virtual spaces. It will draw upon understandings of perception and the sensorial to provide a reading on the ‘virtual.’ It will examine the involvement of these spaces, both physical and digital, in shaping identity and subjectivity. And it will examine how culture extends itself into the virtual space providing a way to expose societal values through the examination of these spaces. It draws from the work of contemporary philosophers like Elizabeth Grosz who analyzes these theories in relation to architecture. The paper also references current movements in the production of digital assets and the Metaverse to speculate the impact of new digital spaces and design methodologies on architecture and culture. Ultimately it will enforce the belief that the digital virtual realities of today are really no different than the lineage of spaces that strove to do this throughout history. It will assert that these each provide an extension of culture that reflects society using different mediums.
Tatjana Crossley is an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is co-founder of architectural and research practice ArchiTAG. The practice tackles issues of the experience of space, architecture’s impact and influence in the development of subjectivity, and the production of space that challenges societal histories of discrimination. She and her partner at ArchiTAG explore technological aspects of design in order to propose new modes of perceiving and fabricating our environments. Tatjana completed her PhD at the Architectural Association, Master’s at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (MArch II) and Bachelor’s at Rice University (BArch). She has worked in practice, for S.O.M. San Francisco, and academia, previously teaching at the Architectural Association in London and now at CUHK. Tatjana’s research focuses on the sensorial and psychology of immersive environments and virtual realities. She has been examining the development of the body image in relation to how the subject perceives space, themselves within it, and the “other”, using theories from psychology, philosophy, biology, technological sciences, art and architectural history.