Post-Referential Space: A New Paradigm for Exhibition and Experience
Towards a Generative Ontology of Space
In recent decades, contemporary art has progressively dismantled the long-standing assumptions of fixity and localization that, for centuries, structured the relationship between the artwork and its spatial context. The exhibited object, once anchored to a specific site, has yielded to installational, environmental, and immaterial dispositifs that redefine the perceptual framework of the visitor. Within this shift, the notion of site-specificity has undergone a profound reconfiguration: no longer a physical tether between work and place, but the production of experiential conditions in which the site itself emerges as the outcome of a process.
It is within this framework that tools such as Google Genie 3, a world model capable of generating interactive three-dimensional environments from simple textual input, assert themselves not as mere technological upgrades, but as points of conceptual rupture. The operation is not the simulation of an existing context; what Genie 3 produces is an ontologically autonomous space, non-derivative, capable of establishing a perceptual and relational continuum without geographic coordinates, without the constraints of physical presence, and without the necessity of any supporting materiality.
We enjoyed imagining this condition as one that could offer possibilities for a radical alternative to the logic of the physical event. The exhibition experience, liberated from the logistical constraints of co-presence, becomes a generative act, capable of happening anywhere, at any time, repeatable yet always unique in its specific configuration. The viewer is no longer a body moving through a predefined space, but an active agent who inhabits and co-constructs a space in flux, dissolving traditional boundaries between artwork, context, and reception.
From this perspective, Genie 3 emerges as an environmental construction device that operates simultaneously on perceptual, cognitive, and curatorial levels, reshaping not only the modes of engagement, but the very ontology of the exhibition space itself.
From Mimesis to Environmental Generativity
The operational logic of Google Genie 3 unfolds in a dimension that transcends representation to enter the realm of construction: it is not about recreating an existing environment nor digitally transposing a physical context, but about establishing an entirely synthetic perceptual domain, coherent in its own internal rules and navigable as an autonomous experiential space. In this sense, the classical concept of mimesis, historically tied to the reproduction of the real, gives way to an environmental generativity that produces reality itself as a field of experience.
The technical aspect, the generation of three-dimensional environments at 720p and 24 fps, should be read as a parameter of phenomenic density: a sufficient level of resolution and temporal continuity to trigger the perception of presence, entirely independent from any reference to the physical world. Here, quality is synonymous with the internal coherence of the generated sensory system, capable of sustaining an experience in which the subject can orient and interact.
What emerges is a radical inversion of site-specificity: it is no longer the work that takes root in a pre-existing space, but the space that arises as a direct consequence of the work and of the generative instructions that constitute it. In this shift, the very concept of exhibition design loses its static character and becomes a process of dynamic instantiation, with the computational model acting as a real-time architect of the experienceable reality.
This transformation extends beyond the productive sphere into the perceptual and curatorial: the physical stability of place, which in exhibition tradition functioned as both frame and limit, is replaced by a variable, adaptive, and potentially infinite topology, in which every interaction can alter the very configuration of space. The work does not “occupy” the site; it makes the site happen, and, in happening, continuously redefines its structure and parameters of engagement.
Exhibition Without Place: A Radical Alternative to the Physical Event
Within the traditional exhibition model, the show is bound to a physical site, a linear temporal sequence, and the necessity of bodily co-presence between artwork and viewer. This paradigm, deeply embedded in museological and curatorial practices, defines the experience as an encounter between a body and a predetermined context, within a delimited timeframe. Google Genie 3 functions as a device that dismantles these coordinates, dissolving the connection between event and localization, between engagement and physical presence.
Three primary lines of rupture emerge:
Mobile Topology – The exhibition environment generated by Genie 3 is not fixed to a predefined floorplan or spatial sequence. It can shift in real time, responding to internal parameters (generative scripts, algorithmic constraints) or external ones (user behavior, contextual data). The result is a processual spatial configuration, perpetually incomplete, where the “path” is not given but continuously negotiated between system and participant.
Absence of Logistical Constraint – Access to the work no longer requires physical displacement toward a singular, defined location: the event can “take place” anywhere, and potentially in multiple sites and instances simultaneously. Crucially, this is not a mere duplication, as in documentation or livestream broadcasts, but an autonomous re-generation of the event, where each instance maintains its own phenomenological identity.
Asynchronous Temporality – In a physical exhibition, the experience is determined by a closed temporal window (opening/closing) and the simultaneous co-presence of visitors. Genie 3 subverts this regime: each access generates a unique “exhibition-instant,” irreproducible and independent from others, inscribed not in a linear chronology but within a multiplicity of parallel temporalities. The exhibition becomes a continuous event with no singular beginning or end, a flow in which engagement is not dictated by a calendar but by the activation of the process itself.
Within this framework, the very notion of audience is redefined as a constellation of distributed presences, each living an exclusive and unrepeatable experience, while nonetheless sharing the same generative matrix.
Perception and the Construction of Reality Within the Generated Environment
The effectiveness of an environment generated by Google Genie 3 lies in the phenomenological coherence through which it structures itself as a field of experience. In other words, what guarantees the sensation of “being there” is not fidelity to an external physical referent, but the internal stability of the spatial, luminous, sonic, and interactive relationships produced by the algorithm. This shift is decisive: perception becomes rooted in the autonomous consistency of the phenomenal field itself.
Here, the model operates as an apparatus of reality in the sense proposed by Merleau-Ponty, wherein perception is always situated, embodied, and constructed through a horizon of relations in which subject and space co-define one another. Genie 3 renders such a horizon operational: it activates an ambient, making it function as a lived context, capable of triggering the same mechanisms of orientation, exploration, and interaction that we would deploy within a physical environment.
Within this framework, the user is not merely a viewer, but a cognitive agent, engaged in an ongoing negotiation with the internal logic of the environment. Every movement, every perceptual or exploratory decision contributes to the situational construction of space, which is at once aesthetic (defined by sensible and formal qualities), perceptual (guided by parameters of accessibility and navigability), and cognitive (structured as a system of possibilities and constraints).
This dynamic recalls Paul Virilio’s analyses of speed and the compression of space-time: the experience becomes a real-time event, generated and dissolved in the instant, without material sedimentation. Yet unlike the logic of the image-velocity, where perception is destabilized by acceleration, here perception is anchored within an environment that, while virtual, maintains sufficient internal consistency to sustain complex processes of spatial memory and meaning-construction.
What emerges is an unprecedented form of post-referential reality: a place that exists not because it points to something else, but because it functions in itself as a matrix of experience.
Towards an Algorithmic and Adaptive Curatorship
When the configuration of a space is no longer the result of a physical arrangement of objects, but the outcome of a real-time generative process, the curatorial role undergoes a radical transformation. In the context of Google Genie 3, as a possible tool for artistic enactment, the curatorial act no longer consists in placing works within a context, but in defining the grammar that governs the generation of the space itself: a system of rules, constraints, and variables functioning as spatial enunciations.
In this scenario, the prompt, the linguistic or parametric input that initiates the generation, assumes the same weight as a traditional curatorial project, yet with a fundamental difference: it becomes an open device, subject to mutation based on user interaction, real-time data, and predefined aesthetic objectives. Curatorship, in such a living system, becomes adaptive: capable of recalibrating environmental conditions according to the behavior and perceptual profile of the viewer.
The result is an exhibition experience in which each visit may give rise to a different space, while still maintaining an overarching coherence defined by the curatorial framework. Genie 3, in this light, would amplify the scope of such an experience by integrating sensory construction, temporal modulation, and topological variability within a single self-organizing system.
The curator, once a mediator between artwork and audience, becomes a designer of conditions: operating on the level of potential rather than the given, and setting up scenarios that are never identical to themselves. The work is not exhibited, but brought into existence through a process that, with each activation, redefines the relationships between space, image, and body.
Ultimately, the algorithmic curatorship enabled by Genie 3, even within the bounds of a speculative artistic experiment, would mark a shift toward a generative logic, where the temporality of the work is no longer framed by the opening and closing of a show, but unfolds in the continuous, instantaneous, and potentially infinite time of computational elaboration.
fakewhale
Founded in 2021, Fakewhale advocates the digital art market's evolution. Viewing NFT technology as a container for art, and leveraging the expansive scope of digital culture, Fakewhale strives to shape a new ecosystem in which art and technology become the starting point, rather than the final destination.
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