Virtually Retro: Exploring Superstudio’s Immersive, Erotically Limitless Wonderland—From 1971

Welcome one and all to “Barnum Jr.’s Magnificent and Fabulous City”

Would you believe that in 1966, three years prior to the prototype virtual reality system and fourteen years before the earliest commercially available headsets, a group of avant-garde architects envisioned what could best be described as a multi-sensory, fully haptic potentially arousing VR experience?

Superstudio merged biting social commentary, wildly out-of-the-box thinking, outright satire, and speculative technologies. Its founders, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia and Adolfo Natalini—with Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro, Roberto Magris, and Alessandro Poli subsequently joining the collective—produced some of the most original architectural proposals the world has ever seen.

Step right up, step right up!

One of which was their 1971 Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas project, which Frassinelli described as intending to “Evoke twelve visions of ideal cities. The supreme achievement of twenty thousand years of civilization, blood, sweat, and tears; the final haven of Man in possession of Truth, free from contradiction, equivocation, and indecision; totally and forever replete with his OWN PERFECTION.”

A series of mockingly utopian, really dystopian metropolises ranging from a “New York Of Brains,” a cube comprising hundreds of thousands of networked, disembodied human minds, to the “City Of The Book,” where the weighty tomes dictate its citizens’ lives, they must wear around their necks.

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Then there’s “Barnum Jr.’s Magnificent and Fabulous City” an eerily prescient—as well, if you look at the right way, a surprisingly-optimistic and sexually liberating take on what would eventually become virtual reality.

You won’t believe your eyes!

“Barnum Jr.’s Magnificent and Fabulous City” was intended to be a mobile, temporary structure: a vast, two-mile-wide quasi-circus tent, half of which contained a one-fourth-scale model city featuring, among other attractions, various replicated international landmarks.

Unlike wholly electronic, virtual reality systems—which, until the development of 1968’s The Sword of Damocles, were purely hypothetical—guests to Superstudio’s miniature, immersive amusement park began by donning a sort of sensory feedback bodysuit linked to an appropriately scaled, fully interactive miniature version of themselves.

Readers might recognize this as a type of telepresence; the feeling of being somewhere or someone else, particularly when virtually linked to a different body type or a gendered robot body.  

The spectacular, the unbelievable

While never intended to be actually realized, “Barnum Jr.’s Magnificent and Fabulous City” remains an exciting concept published long before VR arcade machines became available in the early 90s.

Interestingly, its use of telepresence-operated miniatures may not be as outdated as you may think.  Contemporary virtual reality systems certainly have their advantages, notably that it isn’t necessary to construct a slew of hyper-realistically detailed small-scale environments as you can just program whatever you want to experience.

But if there’s a universal desire that every human shares, it’s for novelty. Although VR might be easier and cheaper than recreating an over-fifty-year-old, less-than-serious immersive experience, an analog version still might draw in a surprising number of people looking for something completely new, and, most importantly, sexually new.

Prepare to be amazed, astonished, and astounded

As we reported last year, it could eventually be possible to combine eroticised, reduced scale dolls with intricately engineered robotics, a set of equally miniaturized stereoscopic cameras, and a generous amount of probably AI-assisted programming and—lo and behold—we’d have something quite close to a modern day version of “Barnum Jr.’s Magnificent and Fabulous City.”

Differing from the original, our new, state-of-the-art installation could be where visitors can change as little or as much about themselves as they’d like, trying on various body types, different gender expressions, or unique, imaginatively sexualized forms.  

We could even see elaborately constructed, quasi-clockwork, steampunk-inspired avatars, with synthetic manufacturers offering all the pleasures of their full-size products—only at a vastly reduced scale.

Superstudio’s “Barnum Jr.’s Magnificent and Fabulous City” may be a warning from the past, but looking back, there’s no reason why we can’t be just as inspired to create something fun and sexy, and where past, present, or future dreams can come true.

Image Sources: Depositphotos