An Attention Economy Theme Park

Abstract

Planetary scale computation is evolving the way we digitize the physical urban space. The following research aims to provide an architectural response to the accelerating digitization of our physical world and societal life processes of economy and communications. It acknowledges the legitimate bias in the perceptual value of territories favored by the new Attention Economy of the Metaverse and Blockchain-based Virtual Environments. It proposes the analogy of a theme park derived from the distorted collective vision of today’s reality, of a reduced collection of favored attraction locations. The research provides first a review of contemporary studies related to the operation of the Attention Economy in the Metaverse, Web3 platforms, and Gamified Virtual Environments, as well as studies on recent architectural expressions or typologies of these spaces. A series of methodologies are described next to convey the impact of recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the creation of digital personas and worldmaking for this type of economy. The methodologies comprise a three-stage workflow based on data mining and curation, processing through AI-aided generative methods, and implementation with game engine environments, ultimately discussed regarding simulation and creative agency.