Materialiazing Virtuality

Is virtuality immaterial?

PAs we build ever-larger cities and surround ourselves with artificially constructed landscapes, humans also created a vast virtual space via the internet, telecommunication, and virtual or augmented reality. This space seems to us intangible, immaterial and somehow magical, but it is possible to explore it freely. AT&T’s Long Lines Building makes the connection between the virtual and the material visible and has also acquired symbolic significance through Edward Snowden’s revelations. This place can be visited virtually and can be captured through screenshots to create a 3D model with photogrammetry. This model is re-materialized through 3D printing, rebuilding a place that was never visited in the physical world. How will such processes change with further developed technology? Future societies could re-create what they consider to be monuments of earlier times. Perhaps they will use these processes to rebuild what then only exists in the virtual.

But how will such processes change with further developed technology?