TeleZone [collaborative architecture experiment]

In a process of democratic self-organization and collaborative planning, an experimental lab situation for trend-setting urban structures and architectures is created at the Ars Electronica Center and on the TeleZone Website. A robot at the Ars Electronica Center acts as “interface” between real and virtual space. Representing the user, it arranges and sticks together the building blocks on the TeleZone site precisely in accordance with the respective planning input. The robot makes visible the efforts undertaken by a self-organizing community. The joint actions of the community are reflected both in the real and in the virtual world; in other words, the architectural structures created in the process are not only built in reality by the robot but are also shown in a VRML world on the Telezone Website. The community is provided with a framework of rules which mainly contain “basic physical conditions”. The open nature of the framework of rules complies with the target of self-organization inherent in the system, which is part of the experiment. The participants are asked regularly to decide on modifications of the rules by a democratic vote. The underlying concept of TeleZone motivates each user to interact with other participants in the project in order to expand his or her possibilities of discussion. The process of development from an empty space to a complex architectural structure reflects the degree of self-organization and activity of the participants in TeleZone