Into the Dark Forest
Into the Dark Forest
>> Spatial publishing as counter-platform
“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark forest,” writes Dante at the opening of his Inferno. Today, architecture finds itself suspended between immersive, networked, and mostly fragmented community-based environments and a mainstream platform dominated by manipulated news, platform capitalism, data extraction, AI colonization, and hard-line politics.
In this dark forest, we pause—resting and resisting. We read, research, and discuss to surface what we think matters and show it with care. Following Yancey Strickler, we understand the “Dark Forest” as both metaphor and method: semi-private, context-rich spaces where conversations can breathe, away from metrics and exposure.¹
This semester’s VR seminar treats XR as an investigative medium. We practice investigative spatial journalism and collectively build a counter-platform: a series of small, carefully curated VR environments that host discourse without feeding engagement machines. Architecture becomes inhabited media.
We experiment with new forms of placemaking and distribution that step outside mainstream platforms. As Joshua Citarella reminds us, “we need new platforms to tell new stories.” We read platforms as extractive infrastructures² and as engines of surveillance that turn experience into data.³ Our task is to imagine how we might move beyond them, toward subject-specific localities.
Methodologically, we use LiDAR scanning and live 3D point cloud captures (Record3D) of specific sites and voices as forensic evidence to construct a spatial reportage inside Unity. We reimagine Lev Manovich’s concept of spatial montage⁴, developed initially as a screen-based practice, and shift it toward the spatial domain. In this setting, the affordances of space are used to tell stories directly and immersively. The specific topics of spatial investigative journalism—ranging from global crises to local issues—will be defined and developed together with the group.
Can architecture prototype alternative public spaces of discussion? Could it create spaces of rest, protest, or opacity in opposition to the logics of exposure?
The seminar combines readings and round-table discussions, film viewings, Unity tutorials, field excursions for LiDAR scanning and real-time volumetric capture, and VR integration. Together, we build our counter-platform in Unity and utilize VR for publishing, allowing visitors to experience and engage with our reports in a spatial context. The seminar concludes with a public release: a discreet opening in public space through guided witness walks with headsets and (if we decide so together) an online publication.
No prior technical knowledge is required—only curiosity, engagement, and openness to discussion. Meetings will likely take place every second Monday (seminar dates to be finalized with the group).
Our first meeting will be on Monday, October 6th, at 10:00 a.m.
Yours,
Anna and Cenk
Input Literature
Ceccarelli, M. (2021). Internet’s dark forests: Subcultural memories and vernaculars of a layered imaginary. Journal of Visual Culture, 20(1), 65–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/14704129211006782
The Dark Forest Internet. (2022). In [Edited anthology]. Institute of Network Cultures. https://networkcultures.org
References
¹ Strickler, Y. (2019). The dark forest theory of the internet. https://www.ystrickler.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet/
² Citarella, J.. We Need New Platforms to Tell New Stories. https://joshuacitarella.substack.com/p/enter-the-dark-forest
³ Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform capitalism
⁴ Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power
⁵ Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT Press.
