UPI – Umwelt Programming Interface

A note on Real Estate - Game Engine Platforms are preparing the ground for new models of business collaboration 

Game engine platforms are transforming the internet as we know it. Complexity of emerging business models related to circular economies will soon become manageable and comprehensible.

Intro

In December 2020 Balenciaga fashion brand presented its FW21 collection in a game environment called ?Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow’[i]. The show was hosted on the Unreal[ii] platform by Epic Games and included a collaboration with e-car company Polestar[iii], too. Right after, a logic question was raised: “Will a shoppable version come next?”[iv] The answer is undoubtable: Yes!

Game engine platforms are thought here as a future conglomerate of (for instance) social gaming platforms, such as huya.com, real time game (development) platforms, Steam.com, AI planners[v] such as provided by Unity.com, or collective coding platforms like Github.com.

This way game engine platforms will become a medium (as did the ‘personal computer’[vi] as described by Steve Jobs in 1985 or the ‘internet’[vii] described by David Bowie in 1999) to run a circular economy, allowing to circulate free between idea, design process, materialization, marketing, monetization and (re)use of any imaginable product or process.

Soon we will subscribe to our kitchen equipment, customized car or house in a game like environment. We don’t need a glass ball to foresee this development on a midterm horizon. It‘s already a technological given, mock-up’s are online and pushed by the ongoing pandemic situation. 

The key to setup such an ‘in-game living together’ as a success story beyond a marketing tool, is to find an answer to one important question: Do we trust in The Matrix[viii]?

As of today the answer shall be yes. This owns to the possibility of establishing social collaboration that includes social digitalization and blockchain as key-elements. One recent example of such accomplishment is Creol[ix], a platform for ‘certification based on reputation’.

A)    Lessons learned from fashion industry

Let’s have a closer look at the recent history of fashion industry. When in March 1998 Helmut Lang went on to present his new collection online and on CD-ROM[x] instead of live on-runway, waves went high. Critics marked up the split between his beautiful minimalistic showrooms and his (than digitalized) collection. Seeing Helmut Lang as the artist[xi], which he as of today, with this ambivalent move he hit the point by trying to establish a merge between ‘analog’ and ‘digital’ under his brand. This fundamental shift keeps fashion industry struggling until today. One can say, today‘s discussions about online-shopping or in-app-purchases are still an equivalent of described ambivalence (digital vs analog).

A takeaway from this anecdote is, fashion industry has a basic instinct to keep up with socio-technological developments and Balenciaga’s approach here is a logic follow up. 

But one thing is still different. While in Helmut Lang’s era, the point of sale started to split into analog (brick&mortar) and digital (potential online), in Demna Gvasalia’s (Creative Director of Balenciaga) approach they actually start to merge in one medium – established on an online (gaming) platform. 

Gaming environments today (Epic‘s Unreal, Unity Tech., etc.) are setup to be potentially explored as an extended reality by users with different schedules, focus’, or target to create instead of to consume (example: minecraft.com).

This means, multiple user approaches are represented as paralleled on-platform perceptions and are driven by: ideas and design developments, manufacture and sales logistics, creations and explorations, and so on and so forth. It’s no coincidence that the ‘Afterworld’ represents a town-like environment and the story embarks into ‘the forest’. Such setup will be perceived, experienced and for sure challenged, as we describe in Immersive Umwelt[xii], especially in the age of circular economies. 

B)     How can Real Estate facilities decently fulfill new requirements and support an Immersive Umwelt throughout construction and operation? 

Real Estate facilities are soon to be re-viewed to keep constructors and operators up with the pace of ongoing developments. Of course, recent fast track evolution during the ongoing pandemic situation is giving us a glance of how brick&mortar retail is looking like, while we are ?Away‘, while we are online. We understand immediately, existing structures are not set sustainable to fit (already) changed circumstances. This situation was quickly dubbed as the ?New Normal‘, but it is to be understood as a live experiment in an already changed Umwelt with growing numbers of players left out in Game Over. With lock-down rules as: all (!) shops must be closed, even the two-sided discussion of suburban malls vs city center shops have vanished. 

In an Immersive Umwelt we will see the raise of new business models, supported by platform technology. Users will pay a share for the digital and physical environment when using a house/apartment, a Kaffeehaus or even any kind of autonomous transportation as a part of an integrated analog and digital infrastructure. 

Those environments will be still characterized as: private, public and/or with changing localization based on contractual settings. Because of Immersive Umwelt’s approach to holistic high grade of integration, this can’t anymore be realized by a single entity; Google, Amazon, you name it. It must be organized as re-defined infrastructure in a decentralized collective approach. All processes under such new circumstances need to be founded in collective business models and in collectively achieved facility design and operation modes. 

Historically we have seen site adaptations to new business models that had been materialized in known infrastructures for brands like Ford, FIAT, McDonalds, IKEA and Amazon. The future of currently appearing business models is defined by de-centralized and platform driven mobility, customization, and more and more circular material usage. Existing infrastructures are struggling massively to deal with the situation. Emerging logistic concepts which are based on robotics running already existing infrastructure can only be an intermediate step. Existing as well as new sites must be (re)defined and/or (re)designed. These processes must be based on understanding on how to get us ‘de-screened’ and embedded in circular and decentralized setups.

The strategy to execute such a complex setup would be in a social collaboration established through communication which is rooted in the mindset of an Immersive Umwelt. This can be explained by the an example of a bi-directional relation between site and non-site introduced in works of art of Robert Smithson[xiii], such as A NONSITE (Franklin, New Jersey)[xiv]. 

C)     Umwelt Programming Interfaces (UPI’s)  

An Immersive Umwelt will finally overcome the limitations of simply housing humans (meaning excluding humans from their environment) to (re)embed humans into the surrounding Umwelt. 

Basically, visual programming will become the supporting tool to visually organize the complexity of our occupation of planet earth, that would use a medium of (what we call today) a game engine platform and its connectors: UPI’s. UPI’s will extend the sphere of Application Programming Interfaces (API’s[xv]) by connecting human, environment and data in an Immersive Umwelt. Data is thought here as knowledge (preferably in its elaboration as wisdom) beyond information.

Because of today’s complexity and decentralization, a feedback-loop between humans and their (daily but long-term) impact on surrounding forests and oceans, restaurants and co-working spaces, delivery vehicles and logistic facilities, but even more on their co-inhabitants - other humans and animals, is not yet established. Recent app-developments are up to bringing your personal environmental footprint to your attention; for example in Deutsche Bank app[xvi]. Such developments are signs there is a need to bridge the gap. So far, it’s just an analysis is provided, but there is no link to run corrective action as needed.

All components of our Umwelt need to be checked once again in order to establish UPI’s between those components in order to maintain human existence with respect to its Umwelt – summarized as Immersive Umwelt.

In Immersive Umwelt the complex of ‘embedding’ goes beyond terms of design-and-built, growing, coding, re-using etc. It‘s not about ‘data and smartness’, ‘materials and surfaces’, ‘eco friendly and sustainable’,’roofs and windows‘, ‘far or near’ neither ?API‘s or sensors‘. 

Immersive Umwelt is meant to operate Umwelt Programming Interfaces (UPI’s) as connectors to manage our wish and belief in a circular living standard. Such connectors enable constant loop-back of any component into its point of origin. At the same time they establish transparency of such processes to avoid apocalyptic scenarios as in The Matrix. 

As mentioned already, Blockchain is a core technology to achieve this. That way the rule of living-together will be embedded in set-ups to be used to execute decentralized social collaboration. That way, laws (and their observance) will be implemented into the operation itself. Therefore, a collective elaboration of those operational setups is essential. To reach this goal, we put the following up for discussion:

1.     Collective Art is a creativity-driven basic mindset to run a society. We have introduced this approach in ‘Immersive Umwelt – A Thousand Plateaus’[xvii].

2.     Game Engine Platforms are already technologically established and need to be further developed to become tools to link complex visual programming with physical environments by using UPI’s in Immersive Umwelt. 

3.     Visual programming is used more and more in fields of design, manufacturing, coding, and data processing to make inherent complexity accessible, processable, controllable, transparent, and understandable. 

We see those three complexes as crystallization points to establish (site) setup’s embedded in a future proof circular economy. This knowledge needs to be taken beyond today’s digital gates to create an Immersive Umwelt in a post-digital age[xviii].  

Michael Beckert

Disclaimer: The author doesn’t hold any shares in, or isn’t receiving any benefits, from any of the mentioned brands, authors, hosts and/or companies.

[i] https://videogame.balenciaga.com

[ii] The most powerful real-time 3D creation platform - Unreal Engine

[iii] Maximilian Missoni (Polestar) on the future of electric mobility · Scandinavian MIND (spotify.com)

  https://www.polestar.com/us/news/predict-the-future-polestar-balenciaga/

[iv] Balenciaga Released Its Latest Collection Through an Original Video Game (morningbrew.com)

[v] https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/index.html

[vi] https://youtu.be/NT6oUsn3ANA

[vii] https://youtu.be/FiK7s_0tGsg

[viii] Matrix (1999) - IMDb

[ix] Carbon Offsetting | Creol | Kings Cross

[x] Helmut Lang Was the First to Show His Collection Online in 1998 – WWD

[xi] Helmut Lang Talks Fashion, Art and Devastation – WWD

[xii] Immersive Umwelt — A Thousand Plateaus | by Michael Beckert | Medium

[xiii] https://aaep1600.osu.edu/book/13_Smithson.php

[xiv] https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/nonsite-franklin-new-jersey

[xv] What is an API? (Application Programming Interface) | MuleSoft

[xvi] https://dig.watch/updates/deutsche-bank-develops-carbon-consumption-app

[xvii] Immersive Umwelt — A Thousand Plateaus | by Michael Beckert | Medium

[xviii] https://www.wirtschaftsphilosoph.com/2019/03/30/how-the-q-economy-will-change-our-world-for-the-better/