How Spectacular is Wii?

Nintendo Wii is a contemporary spectacle in the realm of video game industry. Why? its simple, the invention of the wifi controller revolutionizes the way in which video games are traditionally played. We no longer sit passively on our couch with both hands on a controller to play the game, instead, we have the freedom to act like how the role players in the game will act, you are part of the game, you literally acting as the player that you are playing. It is considered a great spectacle because the interactions between the player and the games is "live"; when you swing controller on your right hand, the tennis player in the game does a right swing. Your movement is replicated by the role player which you control in the game.

Wii blurs the boundary between the players of the game (us) and the roles in which we play in the game, thus making the game more engaging. Great spectacles often engages the audience and the performers as one, making the audience feel they are all part of a great performance on stage.

To create a spectacular architecture relies on breaking the boundary/interface between the inhabitants and the event, how to engage the inhabitants with their surrounding environments, so they too become the participants of the events taking place within architecture. The notion of event (sometimes known as program) goes back to Archigram's imaginary cities, Tschumi's Manhattan transcript, and Koolhaas' Delirius New York. Together, they form the fundamental basis in which we understood architecture as an event generator, not only as an habitat to be inhabited. The difference between the generator and habitat is that there is uncertainty lie within the generator. It is this uncertainty which creates the spectacle unpredictably spectacular.....

cont'd