Learning from Luna Park

Above and top: scenes from Sydney’s Luna Park; photos by Toni Brown.

Review Michael Ostwald

Rules of architecture and space are shattered in cyberspace, as Michael Ostwald reveals in this comparison of real world theme parks from history and a new genre of theme parks online.

In 1994, Atlantic Quarterly published an article called ‘Rape in Cyberspace’. It described an incident which occurred in one of the multiple-user dimensions (MUDs) on the Internet. The author was not prepared for the reaction which followed his publication. From around the world, electronic mail flooded into his computer account; on public news groups, his article was dissected and torn apart. In essence he had described cruel trick played by a university student on people logged into the Internet spa called LambdaMOO. The student had written a short program that temporarily took over the personae of other people an forced them to conduct sexual acts.

Regular users of the much vaunted information superhighway will understand how such an act could have occurred but for those new to the Internet, such a description will not suffice. A MUD is a type of online world wherein people from all around the world may connect to each other with computer terminals, modems and phone lines. Once connected to the right electronic address, the user receives a description of an environment on the screen. Such a description could say: ‘You are standing in the middle of a large living room in a historic house. Paintings line the walls and an open fire burns in the north west corner of the room. Two doors exit the room, one to the east and one to the south.’ By typing the words ‘walk to the south’ the user would be greeted with a new textual description of a ‘corridor panelled in polished timber with candles mounted along the wall at regular intervals’. Through descriptions such as these, a spatial and architectural environment is evoked. However simple this description of a MUD appears, it does not include the MUD’s most important feature. By ‘looking’ at the living room, a new text will explain that it is currently populated by ‘SamIam, Rafael and Stellar Star’. These names are the titles chosen by three users of the Internet who have logged into the MOO from somewhere in the real world. By typing a command such as &ltspeak> followed by a sentence, the user’s typing will be seen on the screens of the others logged into the space. In this way the MUD acts like a text-based teleconference. It is the text itself which the university student took over; sending messages to the users describing various sexual acts undertaken by their personae.

Perhaps the culmination of the debate that followed the publishing of ‘Rape In Cyberspace’ was the point when a respected writer and programmer made a curious but compelling comparison between the MUDs and certain real world spaces. Notably he demanded: ‘Do we want Disneyland?’ Implicit in his argument was the idea that many people viewed the Internet (and particularly marginal areas like the MUDs) as similar to real-world theme parks. Given the recent interest in describing primitive cyberspace communities through metaphors derived from conventional urban space, it is particularly significant that the inhabitants of such spaces have, rightly or wrongly, chosen theme parks as models for understanding these electronic, or virtual spaces.

In 1993 Sierra Games published an advertisement for the Sierra Network (TSN). It read: “Welcome to the World’s First Cyberspace Theme Park for Adults Only”. TSN is one of the many nodes on the Internet which attempts to model itself spatially around real-world theme parks; but why? Habitat, an early precursor of TSN, gradually evolved into the Japanese FM Towns, with an estimated population in the millions. If FM Towns existed in the real world, it would be a theme park the size and population of Brisbane. Similarly, more than 170 MUDs exist on the Internet, each inhabited by thousands daily, most of these people identifying their electronic spaces as reminiscent of real-world theme parks.

What, then, are the characteristics of theme parks which have developed throughout history and which people believe are significant for cyberspace and architecture? What lessons can be learned from Luna Park?

In 1897, George Tilyou created Steeplechase Park on Coney Island, New York—long recognised as one of the world’s earliest theme parks. Tilyou had a vision of a new kind of space where all of the world would be on display. He recorded in his diary that “If Paris is France, Coney Island, between June and September, is the world”. His aim was reminiscent of the attempts made by various World Fairs to condense space by constructing replicas of historic forms of architecture. By bringing the best parts of the world together, it was thought that architecture would break down spatial barriers and create a place where people could enjoy themselves by being alternatively excited and scared by the rides and attractions.

Such was the success of the early theme parks that a few years later on Coney Island, Frederick Thompson opened Luna Park. Here the main concept built upon the ideas of spatial compression and excitement by allowing the visitors to temporarily play roles other than those they were used to. Rem Koolhaas records that Luna Park sought to turn visitors into travellers through outer space. The theme park was intended to be “not of this earth but part of the moon”. Upon entering, the visitor to Luna Park was “turned into” an astronaut entering “a conceptual airlock”. “Once on board the great airship, her huge wings rise and fall, the trip is really begun and the ship is soon 100 feet in the air.” In this theme park, the production of a fantasy setting where all things are possible is coupled with the idea that all visitors are treated as if they were astronauts. Upon reaching the simulated lunar environment, visitors were encouraged to enter the ‘Barrel of Love’ wherein they walked down a rotating pipe which forced them to fall against each other; thus, according to the park managers, breaking down the alienation of space travel experienced by the young men and women. The combination of spatial compression (from the earth to the moon), excitement (travel to strange and exotic lands), and role-playing (from being astronauts to being lovers) ensured the success of this Luna Park as well as its many progeny.

A further New York theme park, Dreamland, opened within a few years of Coney Island’s Luna Park. Instead of having just one dominant environment, Dreamland featured replica sections of various historical events such that time as well as space could be folded and twisted. Dreamland’s most famous attraction was, curiously, the office building. In this attraction, visitors were encouraged to enter a multi-storey building and to take the places on the sixth floor. Once in place, the building was set alight beneath them. With fire as the impetus, the visitors were able to act out the roles of stranded and terrified office workers while waiting to be rescued by carefully trained firemen. In modern theme parks, the idea of participation and playing is still central to the definition of the space. By acting as an astronaut, a warrior, a mountain climber or a criminal in stocks, an exchange of identities takes place. By participating in the spatial experience of the theme park, the visitor is accepting and even welcoming the idea that they are becoming part fictional and mediated existence. This loss of identity encourages the visitors to break away from their real personae so that may experience fear and excitement in an environment which is ultimately safe. Elizabeth Wilson described Disneyland as “a kind of infantile paradise cleansed of all adult emotions or concerns”. This cleansing is part of the overwriting of identity; everyone in theme park has taken on a temporary identity which is defined not by themselves but by the theme park.

Sierra’s gaming and education network is centred about a graphical user environment and the passage of information throughout the nets. TSN uses a system of on-screen text and graphics to spatially simulate a theme park. Reminiscent of the Mosaic interface, Apple’s eWorld and sections of the World Wide Web, TSN provides a relatively close simulation of the real-world theme park.

The centrepiece of TSN is the “cyberspace theme park”, ‘ImagiNation’. Pictorially, ImagiNation is displayed as a form of fantasy “town with a map of services and attractions”. Like Disneyland and other real-world theme parks, it is modelled around a combination of themed locations and a supporting or parasitic community, often a representation of Mainstreet USA. Navigation around the community of ImagiNation is by way of icons and text. Flat cartoon images act as icons which may also be used to navigate through TSN.

As with any theme park, TSN is centred on the idea of personal illusion—it aims to produce an environment where nothing is what it seems. The visitor to TSN could equally stumble across a “world-class chess master masquerading as a novice” or a celebrity in disguise attempting to relax in cyberspace. TSN presents the newcomer with a special feature called the FaceMaker. This device allows the visitor to choose how they will be graphically displayed to others entering the virtual space. An identikit-type feature provides the visitor with a choice of hair styles, noses, eyes, mouths or skin colours from on-screen graphics. Vince Geraci, a journalist with an interest in TSN, relates that on his first night at TSN he was approached by an icon depicting an attractive female figure, who asked: “Do I know you?”. She introduced herself as Sue M. from San José. She then murmured: “Haven’t seen you here before. How’s your night going?”. Interactions such as these are complex to dissect as it is uncertain if this exchange is a legitimate inquiry from a real person or a stock character greeting newcomers in the manner of Mickey Mouse and Goofy at the gates of Disneyland. The FaceMaker not only allows the visitor to present a false persona, it also mentally prepares the visitor for understanding that any other persona met in the theme park should be assumed to be false. Like the early real-world theme parks, where space was simulated and people played many diverse roles, the Internet encourages similar, widespread, folding of space and identity.

Curiously, the end result of this extreme freedom from physical identity is to encourage widespread cross-dressing. Geraci in one of his articles on TSN confesses to being guilty of repeated cross-dressing. In mock chagrin, he admits he had become almost addicted to the idea of changing personae to suit any situation. He confides in his readers that one night he entered TSN’s LarryLand (an adults-only environment) intent on a fast game of poker in the Vegas-style casino. However he was turned away as the tables were full and no partners were available. Geraci returned to the FaceMaker and proceeded to create himself a female persona. His criteria was explicit: “Long blonde hair, slim, buxom, full lips, perky nose, sophisticated jewellery accessories and good taste in fashion. She should be smart but funny, and clever but vulnerable.” Clearly choosing his persona to perfection, Geraci, now Lola, was allowed to play poker and soon became the centre of much unwanted attention at the casino. Countless offers of the sort normally yelled from car windows by drunken youths follow Lola’s dramatic arrival and Geraci records how he beat a hasty retreat. Later, while thinking over the incident, he noted what he had learnt; the excitement, the fear, and of course how shocked was by the way he had been treated by his friends.

Geraci, like the people inhabiting LambdaMOO, had considered the space a kind of theme park; an area free from the constraints of architecture and identity. Yet in the Internet, the degree of control is slightly less obvious than in real-world theme parks. Yet regardless of whether of not these fringe areas of the Internet really do simulate real-world theme parks their inhabitants perceive them that way. The lessons learnt in Luna Park are important for those entering or studying cyberspace. Architectural and spatial rules are broken, torn and folded to compress space. Simultaneously, identity becomes fluid and the twin emotions of fear and excitement rule.

Michael Ostwald is a lecturer in architecture at the University of Newcastle.