Building Multi-layered Worlds Using Architectural, Spatial, Object, Material, and Other Data

GEMINI Laboratory has released a demo version of “AltField by GEMINI Laboratory (“AltField”),” a digital data library. This demo version is available on its website.

Gemini Laboratory is a collaborative project that aims to connect the physical and virtual worlds, serving as a hub for data and people. The AltField digital data library is intended for use in creating new digital worlds and aesthetics. It contains diverse materials and information pertaining to those materials.

It seeks to become a platform that creates unique fusions of the physical and virtual domains.

The global web demo version, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world, contains virtual worlds with five themes: “SHAPE SHIFTING SPACE COLONY,” “INFINITE SANCTUARY,” “ARCHEOLOGY OF FUTURE PASTS,” “MULTIWORLD RAVE PARTY,” and “AUGMENTED NATURE.”

Data such as stored materials, their textures, and their sounds, along with digital data such as related contextual data, can be freely viewed by users, shared on social media. Users also can join the open discussions on Discord.

In the future, there are plans to add new functions for storing and collecting data in the library, performing simulations, remixing, and outputting the results.

The Five Virtual Worlds That Can Be Accessed with AltField

SHAPE SHIFTING SPACE COLONY

A living colony that changes its shape autonomously while traveling through space, growing and differentiating.
The multilayered plates autonomously fold, weave, and overlap, creating the colony’s structure by recognizing other plates and the surrounding environment.
Diverse spaces that serve as living quarters are nurtured and grown within the colony. When they become too large to fit into one colony, they separate with some of the plates and give birth to a new colony.
Along with the inhabitants of the colony, the colony itself travels through space, calmly and steadily across generations.

INFINITE SANCTUARY

A meditative space within a bubble, drifting in the sea. The walls of the bubble change colors depending on the light and shadows that enter the water like soap bubbles, changing the inside scenery as well. The interior of the space is also divided by the subdivision of bubbles, and is furnished with organic and warm materials. The space is designed for people to spend quiet moments of relaxation and peace of mind, as it to drift around in an endless sea.

ARCHEOLOGY OF FUTURE PASTS

The container system connects the variations of hypotheses that archaeology has to offer, starting with the collected artifacts. The humidity and light-controlled containers protect and analyze the artifacts they contain. The exterior is covered with an opaque material that allows for an amorphous view inside. The container convey the look and feel of the object within, without having to be opened up. The myriad containers form an large-scale integrated curated space while maintaining two axes of time and possibility.

MULTIWORLD RAVE PARTY

Music is organically embodied in the space itself, emerging in a space that was originally empty. Then suddenly, a building appears alongside the emerging sound. The building changes its shape in response to the frequency of the music using cymatics materials. As the participants of the festival dress up as their individual avatars, the excitement of the entire audience reflect onto the buildings as a heat-map-like appearance, making the festival and the architecture become one.

AUGMENTED NATURE

The space is covered with cotton wool-like mycelium. It rises from the soil where it grows like a tree, and as it grows, it flies like a spore in search of new vegetation. An ecosystem is maintained within the space, continuing to take root and maintain its inner nature even in the harshest environments for living organisms – highlands, polar regions, deserts, and outer space. As the soil itself is mobile, one can grow crops and conduct research in whatever environment is outside of it.

In AltField’s future, there are plans for the creation of digital data and the prototyping development of additional functions through integration with collaborative creation partners and users and cooperation with diverse players. New ideas and content will be created using more sophisticated digital technologies and stored in the AltField digital data library. It is hoped that this will enable them to provide new value to society and that the platform will lead to new initiatives aimed at solving social problems.