The Unnatural Museum

The thesis began with the question: How can we conceive of truly imaginative environments in the realm of games, CG, and movies when the vast majority of digital assets are derived from familiar, real-world objects? Just in our time here at SCI-Arc (the last 2 years) assets used in designing digital environments have exploded…if you can think of any object, there’s a digital version out there to download. These digital assets often originate from the real physical world: a banana, a stone, a chair, a tree, or even a person. They are typically scanned or 3d modeled to simulate the real world. However, these digital assets are entirely different from their physical counterparts—they lack the tangible feel, taste, and smell of real materials.

The true value of digital assets lies in their visual appearance and the emotions they evoke, rather than in their ability to replicate the full sensory experience or functional attributes of real-world objects. In the digital realm, an asset's impact is defined by its shape, color, and texture, which become its defining characteristics. The emotional response and aesthetic value derived from the asset's visual presence are more significant than its physical origins or utility, emphasizing that the authenticity of digital assets is rooted in how they look and the feelings they inspire.

In response to this understanding of digital assets, this thesis explores ways to create new objects and environments through recombinations of found and collected digital assets.

The assets are reclassified based on their visual traits. We scoured through hundreds of assets and categorized them based on their qualities: Inflated, Translucent, Bumpy, Ornate, Branching, Fuzzy, Wired Grids, Stacked, and Primitive. These categories are not exhaustive or definitive; rather, they serve as a conceptual framework, responding to the practice of viewing digital assets as shapes and forms independent of their real-world functions.

Building on this approach, we explored the potential of these digital assets by combining elements from different categories to create new, hybrid objects. This process involves selecting features based on their visual characteristics and experimenting with their integration, resulting in unique forms that challenge traditional notions of object identity. Some of these hybrid objects are brought into the physical world through 3D printing, establishing a tangible link between the digital and physical realms. By doing so, this thesis blurs the boundaries between what is real and imagined, further investigating the evolving relationship between materiality and digital representation. This process questions the boundaries of imagining and constructing new virtual environments with assets we already know from reality. This thesis tests different ways of reconfiguring the real into new unimagined objects and spaces.

By deliberately setting aside the functional fixedness that typically guides perception, these assets are re-examined purely from a shape perspective. This approach allows the assets to be seen not as representations of real-world objects, but as visual forms with their own inherent characteristics.

Finally, these digital assets are visualized within a architectural space – we call this the Unnatural Museum that is neither purely physical nor purely virtual but exists as a recursive simulation between a physical and digital representation of the museum. The museum is intended to exist virtually, but has allowed us to transcend the virtual into the physical....This perspective is different from conventional augmented reality technologies or a physical building project. It is more aligned with how people perceive space in their intuition. This dynamic environment challenges conventional perceptions of space and materiality, offering a new way to experience and interact with digital artifacts.

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Yibo Yuan