Spacious Places

“I believe that Augmented Reality will be the biggest technological revolution which happens in our lifetimes.”

Tim Sweeney

AFTER people and products, places represent the most obvious deployment scenario for narrative holography. Humanity has its existence in time and space, and the very word culture derives from a Latin word coll for a hill. We have linear lives in the temporal dimension, but our spatial lives are multi-dimensional, including life lived on land, in the air and under the water. Our homes are fundamental building blocks for the lived experience but so too are our neighborhoods, our cities and ultimately our nations. We are surrounded by space, but ever widening circles ripple outwards from us conferring that space with life, intimacy and belonging.

And just as people and products have their problems – human absence, product recall, sales returns – places have theirs too. For a start, many places are too far away. Places that we live in are too anonymous. Destinations that we visit are closed, or disappointing. Even Rome, the Eternal City, is just a heap of rubble in a certain slant of late afternoon sunlight. Remember, the Japanese opened an office in Paris to treat disillusioned tourists from their own homeland. Yes, we’ll always have Paris - but often not in way we have imagined it.

When you stop to think about space, it divides out into abstract emptiness, specific places, desirable destinations and comfortable locales. It is the wish fulfillment of every venue owner on the planet that guests come to treat their space like a home from home. Hospitality revolves around this dream state. Theaters, arenas, cinemas, shops, museums, airports, train-stations and all public spaces of gathering crave this. To be sought out, to be destined like a target – Santorini for the wedding, Venice for the honeymoon. But sadly, not everywhere is destined to become a destination – and even those that do, have some problems in the process.

Time is money in the old adage. But as very little time is left to be saved after automation does its thing, space is the new money. Space – empty space and all there is of it. The world’s atmosphere is simple empty space. Most every home, office, shop and building is made of space. Some of that space is storage and some of it consists of gear – but most of it is sheer empty space, pure spaciousness. After energy, money, raw materials, technology and ideas, space is the ultimate ingredient in a human life.

The lockdowns taught us how precious this space is, how basically our human lives are a sequence of movements in space from home to work to vacation. Destination spaces are places that defy cyberspace – we go there not because of but despite their virtual lives. We could visit Paris, Rome and Venice virtually but we physically port ourselves there to have the experience. Spaces encapsulate our human experiences and some spaces are timeless through accumulated human desire.

The spatial realm is the opposite of the metaverse, not an escape from the space you’re in but a return to the rich possibility of where you exactly happen to be now. Every place has its spatial realm potential, the empty space it houses ready to transform into richer presence. Imagine for a moment visiting the Circus Maximus in Rome – in reality just a completely empty space without even a suggestion of its former world renown as a charioteering Mecca – and seeing it come alive in all its once-living glory. That holographic experience could begin with a single chariot appearing in the now vacant stadium, a tiny glimpse of the centuries of history vanished into air.

Yes, places are spacious and every place carries with it a special history and a special futurity. Holograms are a portal in that past and that future. The spatial realm can recreate the full life of any given place, and not just in tourism terms but in sports, culture, retail, navigation, municipal and regional terms. Mere space becomes a real place and a true destination when its spatial potential has been fully uncovered and realized.

Human space is a fragile concept and over millennia certain places have been overcrowded while others have been abandoned. There is more than enough space to go round – it’s just not evenly distributed or experienced. That too is something the spatial realm may help with. The first space we should concern ourselves with is the home – that part of the planet we most often reside in. Home is a familiar space but that does not mean much. How can the spatial realm evolve our own homeliness?

Home is primarily a space of shelter. Secondarily it may be a place of entertainment and education, a storehouse. The smart home paradigm has struggled to lift off over recent years, and mostly it’s been focused on security, sustainability, convenience and other mundane features. Nice to have, surely – but we’re not necessarily dreamy. The spatial realm extends beyond the mere smartness. Efficiency may be a necessity, but it is hardly a vision. What if the empty space in and around your home were not merely performing chores but dreaming things up?

What if your kids’ homework were holographic? How memorable would abstract knowledge become then? What if home cinema were home holography? How entertaining would that be? And what if online shopping became more like in-store demonstration? Mere houses become our homes when human experiences are laid down in them in rich layers. The spatial realm can enrich the space throughout our homes whether that serves a functional or entertaining purpose. The old media of books, radio, television and the internet entered our homes and turned them into audiovisual theaters. The spatial realm evolves that to the next level – transforming pure emptiness into rich presence.

Whether we work from home or travel to work, our place of work is intimately connected to our bank balance and our mental health. The space people work in affects every part of their job output, from bodily wear and tear to camaraderie, teamwork and resilience. Global lockdowns threw millions of us into makeshift work environments, reinforcing this universal truth. The spatial realm of work doesn’t revolve around entertainment or education per se – but it certainly results in numerous performance indicators involving hard cash. The space around work is uniquely valuable.

Imagine a holographic work environment which could enable collaboration in real time across your footprint. Think about holographic episodes which could evolve meetings across multiple locations into highly innovative and decisive human encounters. The meeting – probably the last great sinkhole of human performance – transformed by holographic presence. An office space which was not just virtual but cyber-physical, mapping the realm of digital and data onto the world we live and move about in, our offices, our desks.

Workspace is not just a question of desktops but whole factory plants and industrial networks – the realm of IoT, the Internet of Things. Holograms are Things too. Holograms are Digital Twins of a special and extraordinary kind. Industrial settings for the spatial realm are never-ending – from development prototypes to whole plant processes. Today’s plant operation is increasingly synchronized with its national and international network – think of how holographic episodes could align performances. A hologram has the potential not just to be in two places at the same time, but limitless places simultaneously. Holograms also offer rich potential for designing factory plants and machinery in the first place – the spatial realm as the precursor of the built world to come.

When we consider the multifunctional use of spaces – think today’s mixed-use retail and residential spaces – holographic experience is ideal also for flexibility. Not only can holographic waymarking provide real-time navigation within and between our buildings – narrative holography can return the magic to the real retail space. Retail has been on the ropes for decades now contending with digital, and the most we have evolved is to blend both experiences as best we can. But what if we started to actually utilize the retail space itself? The only choice should not be between a shelf and a screen – the entire space surrounding products and consumers is alive with possibilities for exchange. People need a reason to be where your shop is, and not just a click and collect convenience. Homo sapiens is not just a click and collect species. It is a social species, craving communal experience and memorable events. This is why we go to theme parks and bring everyone with us.

The point here is not pointless spectacle – mere pop-up holograms on their own are transient and distracting. What we crave are thematic relevancies – episodic intervals that have something meaningful to share. A consumer window-shopping is not just an economic unit – they are a fully socialized, cultured being in search of a dramatized human experience to enjoy. Instead of just listing out features and benefits as retail displays currently do, holographic episodes can demonstrate the products in dramatic action across multiple deployment scenarios – and not just like flatscreen informercials either. Demonstrations where the consumer can actively participate and influence what happens. Demos where they can take part and ultimately self-create their own holographic content.

Retail has been automated but the epiphany of retail should not be the human-absent space without engagement. Again, we are not simply automatons. There is a case to be made for the twenty-four-seven convenience store without staff but that is all the store will remain – a place of last-minute recourse and need. Space has been largely evacuated by the human race in recent years, especially by young humans lost in the labyrinths of the digital metaverse. It’s time to regenerate the empty spaces that have become our shop outlets and invite the world to re-experience the bliss of live retail.

Holographic innovation also, of course, allows the retail to appear in your home – bridging the gap between digital and physical in a completely memorable way. It’s one thing swiping flatscreen images of products on your smartphone – it’s altogether different to call each product into your living environment in the real world. Imagine what it would be like if you could insert a piece of furniture into your living room and experience its presence already before you’ve even purchased it. Imagine if you could know the exact size, shape, color and texture of a product before you normally would. Now imagine the competitive difference between a product you could do this with and a product you couldn’t. This is retail way beyond reviews and test scores – the next customer is actually experiencing the thing themselves in a profound new way first of all. They’re not hearing about it or projecting themselves into other people’s opinions of it – they are having their own direct engagement and forming their own opinion. Holographic narrative has the potential to redeem the retail space on its own – to offer a unique and uniquely memorable instore experience to a visitor – and it can also enliven and dramatize the home space uniquely. Again, the trick here is not the mere hologram on its own. The holograph is not the innovation. The newness lies in narrative sequences of holographs that create the kinetic interconnectedness and relationship with clients.

So, for example, an IKEA store instead of being an assault course of navigating to your exact location could become a theme park of vital touchpoints – each sharing a singular holographic episode revolving around assembly, installation, repair, recycling – the hero’s journey all products undergo from design to rebirth.

“Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.”

Rebecca Solnit

Our homes, our places of work and our shops represent ever-widening ripples out from our private lives – the space we experience ourselves and share life with others. Meanwhile, other spaces including sporting venues, cultural destinations and travel targets represent big-ripple locations for our most memorable life events. Each of these successive spaces has its drawbacks and limitations – from declining footfall to overcrowding. There’s a sliding scale of problems – from too many people as a nice one to too few of them as a terrible one. The arts are always in jeopardy, at least the high arts. But the sporting world depends far more than we think on the continuing prosperity of the same arts world. How many sports arenas could afford the regular games unless the dark nights were packed out with bands, concerts and performances? The answer is none at all.

Mass tourism is a fact of life in the twenty-first century and even if it remains vulnerable to global events it continues to grow exponentially. Obviously, the problem with mass tourism is sustainability. Sporting, artistic and cultural space including arenas, museums, galleries, concert halls and whole neighborhoods are memorable holographic experiences waiting to happen. If you like, they are pure spaces waiting to blossom. The spatial realm is an evolution of these wider human spaces where people are not merely living or shopping but craving magical moments and intense performances. The kind of performance that we experienced in the 2022 World Cup soccer final between Argentina and France – with drama an understatement.

These places are spacious in a special way. We seek them out with the clear expectation of extraordinariness. This in fact is where holograms have already been deployed, just not strategically. Tactical deployment of holography in communal spaces like these has already served to intensify and differentiate all kinds of shows. Abba, anyone? When you move beyond spicing up the singular event with holography, when you consider the entire use of holographic experience at a special venue, then you are entering the spatial realm proper. We are no longer talking about events but whole environments.

Cinema is a mass medium often seen in its death throes. An evolution of the primitive nickelodeon, cinema emerged in France, America and elsewhere at the end of the nineteenth century as a natural extension of photography. For many years it lacked a narrative structure and consisted of single reel spectacles. A couple kissing. A train rushing towards the screen. It wasn’t until THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY of 1907 that we had the first narrative feature per se. Now, over a century later, narrative holography may yet save cinema itself.

The cinema is a space we have largely abandoned as our home screens and personal devices took over. But imagine the place itself reinvigorated and reinvented through the holographic medium. A true wraparound experience, not to be had anywhere else in essence. The spatial realm is already next of kin to cinema, and indeed cinema itself has toyed with holography already. The proliferation of smart glasses in the future may well enable the optical illusion of film to become multi-dimensional, a truly visceral feeling of being inside the film. Computer-generated imagery would give way to spatial reality – the experience of complete immersion.

And unlike the metaverse, you are still in the real world. The holographic content you are experiencing is serving to save a real-world location and a real-world industry. Just as the talkies brought the power of radio to cinema, the holograms could bring the power of reality to it. Streaming and home screens continue to thrive – but now the ultimate draw to going to the movies returns.

Museums and galleries are yet another category of place that could see transformational impact through the spatial realm. Not only could visitors ‘go’ to your museum or gallery comfortably at home, they could also engage with and experience your physical space in completely new ways. Think of the power of Van Gogh, holographed. Think of the famous works of art we flock to in our millions opened up to a whole new experience. Digital displays of artworks are already common, but spatial artwork is something else entirely.

Think about the prehistoric implement fully restored through holography and enacted as a human accessory. Think about a ruined piece of architecture restored through holographs. The skeletal cages of dinosaurs, whales and mammoths fully restored through holograms. Experiencing the real-world condition of objects of all descriptions, trips to the museum become unforgettable. Works of art are no longer framed by their own limits but extend into the surrounding space to share their hidden patterns and inner dynamics with spectators. Missing limbs are restored to ancient statuary. Classical stonework is restored to its original color and finish. The spatial realm takes existing cultural objects and augments them to unique effect as narrative episodes.

In fact, narrative holography makes a kind of time travel possible, exploring the future as well as the past of our cherished places. This can apply to whole neighborhoods and districts as well as museums and galleries. Explore, for instance, the greatest games and performances that were ever delivered at an arena. Relive the great sporting and musical moments that arenas hold in memory – just as immersive holograms.

Space is never empty, just waiting for us to catch up. Most of the time we are thoroughly unaware of its existence, but its spatial potential is always present. Our lives themselves are composed of a sequence of places – from home and school to workplace and vacation destination. Each of these places has a fundamental role in our chronology. The spatial realm can encapsulate and memorialize that. When we visit a specific place, we want the time available to us to reveal all that it is capable of showing. Imagine a world-class institution such as the Louvre capable of narrating itself to each visitor as a series of episodic holographs. Without the need to navigate through endless crowds, the museum comes to the self. Imagine the sports replay which can be called up at will, not on a public screen but on a personal phone. Imagine being able to explore the magic of Van Gogh’s brushwork through entering a holographic experience.

The famous English science fiction series DOCTOR WHO involves a time machine – the Tardis – which is much larger on the inside than the outside. This is like spatial reality. Places are actually larger and richer than they seem. Your venue is a Tardis waiting to travel in time. Whatever the nature of your chosen place – a living space, a workspace, a school, a factory, a museum, a gallery, a cinema, an arena, a whole city – it can be dramatized in all its spatial reality using holography.

Gertrude Stein was famous for saying “There is no there there” about the disappearance of her childhood home. Human culture is a succession of places, each of them in the process of losing its momentary presence. Even the Eternal City of Rome is a layering of ruins. And yet the spatial reality that surrounds all these places remains. Whether places are thriving or in decline makes no difference – each has its own realm. The beauty of holographic transformation lies in restoring the full presence of any place to itself and its visitors.

As the spatial realm evolves and people are enabled to create their own holographic episodes, places will never be the same. Our relationship to location will deepen. The places we visit – the shops, the galleries, the arenas – will become extensions of our memories and visions. Holographic habitats within those places will encode these memories and visions, the way photograph albums once recorded our biographies. Transactional places such as shops will become more experiential. Two-dimensional places like work zones will be more personal, more intimate, more reciprocal as humanized spaces.

Building on people and products, holographic places will round out the spatial realm, creating a storyworld. This storyworld will become an expansive new medium not just for commerce but education and life itself. It will enable us to encounter the full backstory and future vision of any specific place. Cities themselves will be revealed as the palimpsests they are. Places of cultural interest or significance will be narrated holographically. You will not only encounter the presence of a place, but its past and its future at will. Spatial reality encompasses the complete philosophy of place, whereby there is always a “there there”.

The great arenas of the world are perhaps the central loci for holographic realization. In ancient cities such as Constantinople, the Hippodrome was the centre of Byzantine political as well as social life. Sports and music events will not only appear elsewhere – holographically rendered in the homes of fans and spectators – but attendance at the physical venues themselves will be transformed. The entire space around a game or a concert can be deployed to narrative effect, enabling presence to become fully informed and fully entertained. As the great mass media of the past – especially television and the internet – changed the nature of perception, the spatial realm will reward human attention with meaningful narrative rather than advertisement. The internet reduced our human radius exponentially in recent decades as we withdrew into a digital cocoon. Now the spatial realm will release us from that cocoon, allowing us to re-emerge and re-engage our physical presence.