Graduate student of Video and new media, Academy of Fine Art, University of Ljubljana

This collaborative project uses 3D virtual reality created using VRML in order to convey the image of an architectural bureau, i.e. the company that doesn’t have to address the mass public in the sale like manner, but it has to nevertheless imply the mastery of communicative media. This leaves the designers a certain degree of elbowroom to experiment, in our case we concentrated on the problem of the architectural values and relations in the virtual space as a semiotic space.

In the digital space there are four partly transparent layers, like layers in prints, which are not positioned on one plane but parallel on different planes, so that the perspective view of the camera creates different digital prints as the user moves through the virtual space. In addition, certain viewpoints are predetermined in order to organize the units of the interactive digital print, whereby the last viewpoint explores another possibility of the digital perspective image, the animation as the trajectory through the semiotic space.

In our last year’s project (an artistic project, as opposed to the current designer project, whereby we have to assert that this difference doesn’t essentially concern the problem of the engineering the mode of communication, which is required while using the so called new media) VideoSpace we’ve seen that a limited territory is soon transformed into an object, if one zooms out, for instance. In the site for the company Arhitekta the virtual object is deliberately set too close to the camera in order to flatten its appearance into a video image. In our case, the zoom out functions as the change of the predefined viewpoint.

Another layer of the project is the company corporate identity sign, which is transformed into a 3D object that appears material, tactile as opposed to the mutually flattening black and white transparent layers. The coloured lighting enhances the impression of the three-dimensionality and adds the colour and the nuances to the otherwise rudimentary black and white.

Lastly, the VRML frame is, in one possible view of the internet site, merely a part of a frameset, which combines the dimensional internet with a menu and a flat black plane, which visually interacts with the perspective view.