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A Project Describtion

I treat Wittgenstein's propositions more like axioms. When I negate the axiom, 'We make ourselves a picture of the world' and say, 'We make ourselves a world from a picture' then I create the whole of Constructivism.* Heinz von Foerster

Sylvia Eckermann: n o w h e r e - ein welt raum spiel

n o w h e r e is a gamemod, a modification of the Egoshooter Unreal, in which the player can move freely in any direction in virtual, three-dimensional space. Architecture, sounds, spoken text and pictures support the immersive effect of this medium. The choice of free flight through space and time as a metaphor reflects the world of thought of the group of artists and architects that came together in the Gläserne Kette [The Crystal Chain] correspondence [initiated by Bruno Taut in December 1919] to share ideas.

Mere depiction was not the aim of our work, neither the transfer of the two-dimensionality of the sketches, designs and drawings into the third dimension, but rather the enticement of the viewer into a "dream world" of utopian ideas and their simulation. Thus in n o w h e r e Wenzel Hablik's outer-space painting Sternenhimmel [1909] appears as a dense, sometimes concave, sometimes convex cosmos of worlds moving in an unknown system with satellites, suns, conglomerations of stars, flying machines and airborne colonies.Some of these celestial bodies are taken from text fragments from Paul Scheerbart's Glasarchitektur [Glass Architecture], a work by the man of letters who died in 1915 and who very much influenced the proponents of the Gläserne Kette: "Paradise beetles, lightfish, orchids, shells, pearls, diamonds and so on—all of this together is the most magnificent on the surface of the earth—and this is all to be found in glass architecture. It is the highest—a pinnacle of culture." [Glasarchitektur, 1914]

A planet cluster beams the visitors, as navigating cosmonauts, into the contemporary architecture shining in many colors quoted by us. "Happiness without glass—how dumb is that!", "What would construction be without reinforced concrete? "These sentences formulated by Paul Scheerbart penetrate the consciously fragmented architectural extracts that appear like dazzling spots and fade away again.

As in all parts of the work n o w h e r e one will also be able to discover a crystal here, in whose faceting the cosmos is reflected in its entirety. This crystal functions as a transition like a wormhole—as a link up to the starting point. Crystal, an important form to which not only our protagonists related, penetrated by light, unifying outside and inside, simultaneously form and spirit, an inorganic material growing similarly to a biological organism, is penetrable in n o w h e r e—a relationship of reciprocal transmissions and penetrations of form just as of meaning. And—as if one were inside a multi-faceted macrocosmos—the polygons that delineate the inside become an immersive kaleidoscope.

A particular crystalline form is assigned to Wenzel Hablik, Bruno Taut, Wassili Luckhardt, Hermann Finsterlin, Hans Scharoun and other proponents. Like a chain, link after link lines up on invisible threads. They seem to be enclosed in this form that appeared so important to them—like the insect caught up in resin that has become stone. Where they twinkle like inclusions in the light of the stars there are other links and invisible portals.

One enters a prismatic lucent cylinder in which mountain panoramas revolve through fog. This place is dedicated to Alpine Architektur [1917-1918] by Bruno Taut, the spokesman of the Gläserne Kette group of artists and architects. His drafts become real in the mountain chains—crystal cavities adorn the crevasses, chrysocolla, amethyst and bismuth tower upwards like futuristic buildings competing with the mountain tops. Here too, the previously mentioned crystal again leads back to the cosmos.

The area dedicated to Wassili Luckhardt does not tell of the vastness of the starry sky but of the stronghold of fortress construction. His designs for buildings of worship [around 1920] are external views of crystalline-formed glass architecture that are interpreted as a possible interior view in the virtual architecture n o w h e r e.

The sparkle around Wenzel Hablik's crystal is the transition to his Schöpferische Kräfte [Creative Powers]—a series of etchings [1912] that tell of the becoming and being of crystal, of birth, becoming and death. The cosmonaut—the visitor—in n o w h e r e will be able to discover this and much more as he flies on his freely chosen path through the cosmos of the Gläserne Kette.

Come and see Utopia and start out from n o w h e r e !

*Translated from: Heinz von Foerster, in: Teil der Welt, "Zweiter Akt: 'Ich bin Teil der Welt'", page 115, 2002

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