Media Temple in the Desert of the Real

Danielle Willems | 602

Joseph Depre & Michael Willhoit

Metadata is a conceptual at center for the storage of the Metaverse, a parallel digital universe of human creation. It is a Cathedral creating a bridge between the tangible and the immaterial, the real and the hyper-real, The Simulation. The datacenter is the sole material reality of the virtual simulation. This makes the structure housing the datacenter a sacred space which requires being fortified against hostile environments and intents. As the Metaverse becomes more ubiquitous in our daily lives entire populations will abandon reality for their subjective realities manifested online. The vacuum of space found in the absence of daily interpersonal interaction will create a literal desert of the real. People will need to be lured away from the simulation through sensual experience. Metadata response to the sociological condition through programmatic intervention. Media Spectacle and the promise of luxury sensual experience are deployed as modalities of seduction. The thermal baths house in the cavernous sublevels of Metadata are heated through a thermal exchange with the data servers creating cyclical economy of carbon reduction through sensual experience. Water becomes the conduit crating a fluid exchange of energy providing sensual and hyper-sensual experience by both cooling the Metaverse servers and heating the baths. The site is located in Queens, New York along the eastern bank of the East River. The water of this coastal site is subject to tidal fluctuation integral to offsetting the carbon-footprint of the project. The site itself is design to respond to sea level rise as it sits within the coastal flood plain.