FREUD-LISSITZKY NAVIGATOR
Computer Game Prototype
http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~manovich/FLN
By Lev Manovich and Norman Klein

In the summer of 1928 Sigmund Freud meets with the avant-garde Russian
designer El Lissitzky and his wife who are spending some time in Vienna
after a stressful period working on the Soviet Pavilion at the
International Press Exhibition in Cologne. They talk about
psychoanalysis and modern architecture. Freud tells Lissitzky that in
1908 he visited Coney Island and went to a park called "Dreamland."
There he got the initial idea for the architectural realization of his
theory. Lissitzky gets very exited about this idea. They decide to
create an architectural construct based on Freud's model of the mind.
What shall it be? Lissitzky points out the parallels between Freud's
model of the consciousness/unconsciousness as articulated in
Interpretation of Dreams and Marx's model of base/superstructure (they
don't know that it also parallels Saussure's model of
signified/signifier). Freud still thinks of the "Dreamland" park, but
Lissitzky convinces him that rather than building a one of a kind museum
or park, they should design mass housing–a popular idea with the
avant-garde architects of the second half of the 1920s and something
which Lissitzky, who until now could not realize any of his big-scale
architectural projects, was eager to do. Freud's first impulse is to
have a house with three vertical levels corresponding to his typography
of id, ego and super-ego. He wants to put a second, smaller house inside
a garden, also with three levels corresponding to his first typography
of the Conscious, Preconscious and Unconscious, with staircases to allow
communication between them.

Lissitzky persuades Freud that the modern house should have only one
level with horizontal divisions, i.e. it should follow horizontal rather
than vertical development. They discuss how to implement the concepts of
condensation and displacement via mobile walls, an extension of
Lissitzky's design for the exhibition pavilion which he did in Dresden
in 1926.

Around the same time Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein happens to pass
through Vienna and he meets with Freud and Lissitzky. He tells them that
he is planning film "adaptation" of Marx's Capital. Eisenstein is having
difficulties with realizing his film project in Russia; however, there
is funding for the mass housing projects in Vienna. Eisenstein realizes
that he can try to test his ideas by "displacing" Capital into
Interpretation of Dreams. He convinces Freud and Lissitzky to commission
him to do a short film which presents a "walk through" through the model
of a house.

Eisenstein now faces a fundamental problem: how to reconcile his method
of montage with an essentially continuous experience of navigating
through a space? He keeps thinking about this problem when he gives a
lecture in the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Berlin in 1929. Later this
year he visits Bauhaus where he talks with Hungarian artist and Bauhaus
professor Moholy-Nagy to see if his students will build a model of the
house which Eisenstein can film (Moholy-Nagy is in charge of the Metal
Workshop). However, Moholy-Nagy is frustrated with art school politics
and he already made plans to go to Berlin to start his own advertising
agency.

While at Bauhaus Eisenstein happens to catch a lecture by a young
American engineer Edwin Link about his flight simulator design. The Link
Trainer is a simulation of a cockpit with all the controls, but, in
contrast to a modern simulator, it has no visuals. Eisenstein conceives
of adding a projected film to the simulator.

Link has connections in Hollywood; he arranges an invitation for
Eisenstein so they have an opportunity to work on this new project in
America. In Hollywood Eisenstein completes a twenty second film test.
After meeting Disney, Eisenstein, who was in love with Disney cartoons,
adds Mickey Mouse to the film. He send a print to Freud and a copy to
Lissitzky who is now in Cologne. Lissitzky soon has to return to Russia.
Sensing changing political climate there, he leaves his notes on the
Navigator in Germany.

As many of Eisenstein's other projects, the Freud-Lissitzky navigator
remains unrealized. There are notes in his archive dating to the late
1930s about constructing special movie theatres with moving platforms;
he wants to use his montage theories to script the movement of a
platform against other dimensions of a film. He also shoots a scene for
Alexander Nevsky where we see the battle through the POV of a character
who flies over the battle using the wings he constructed; but Stalin who
understands that Eisenstein is making a reference to Russian avant-garde
artist Tatlin's "Letatlin" (flying apparatus Tatlin has been developing
for years) orders this scene to be cut.

In 1961 at MIT Steve Russel writes the first computer game. He calls it
Spacewar.

In 1968 a French new wave filmmaker is working on a film about Mao's
China. He wants to present it as a happy utopia which finally left
alienation and exploitation behind. One part of the film is taking place
in the future when America attacks China. The filmmaker wants to film
using montage strategies of Eisenstein's October. While on the train
from Paris to Brussels, he reads in the paper that Russian tanks are
going through the streets of Prague. Completely pre-occupied by his
film, the filmmaker ignores the larger political context of Prague
events; he is exited about the opportunity to get some footage for the
film. He rushes back to Paris, grabs his hand-held film camera and takes
first train to Prague. There he indeed finds Russian tanks in big
numbers but there is a problem: the medieval streets of Prague look very
different from China countryside where the scene is supposed to take
place. The filmmaker pays the crews of two Russian tanks to drive to the
countryside for half a day where he films the tanks. Happy, he returns
to Paris where he finally realizes what actually took place in Prague.
His first thought is to destroy all his footage but his old Fluxus
friend convinces him to donate it to the audio-visual division of the
National Library. The librarians have difficulties deciding under which
category to file the footage; eventually they file it under "travel
films."

In the same year a Hungarian scholar of Russian avant-garde is working
on the first large exhibition of Russian avant-garde art in Stockholm.
While doing research in Germany he discovers Lissitzky and Freud notes
on the Navigator project. He publishes them in Hungary in a Hungarian
art history journal. During the 1980s a great deal of computer
development for American computer games was done in Hungary. One of the
computer programmers has a girlfriend who studies art history at the
University; she shows him the journal issue where the Lissitzky and
Freud notes were published. The programmer begins to work on a game
based upon these notes in his spare time. He completes a prototype in
1988 and there are plans to publish the game in the US, however,
following the events of 1989 they fall through. The programmer who
previously was happy to be paid a tenth of his US counterpart's salary
now starts asking for outrageous amounts of money. Through the
programmer's girlfriend the American game publishers steal the prototype
and give it to their in-house development team to develop further. She
and the programmer break up. Frustrated and heartbroken, the Hungarian
programmer moves to Berlin and takes up painting.

The US game designers run into difficulties. They say that the reward
system in the game is not clear. And what is the point of traveling
through Freud's model of the mind anyway? Having realized that what they
have is not a game but a "scripted space" (Norman Klein's term) they try
to talk to the Disney Imageneering to see if they would make a ride
based on the prototype. But Imageneering people do not believe in
unconscious and hence are not interested.

However, one of Disney designers wonders if they can incorporate some
elements from the prototype into the design of Euro Disney. He thinks
that European visitors would like the references to Dr. Freud and
Russian avant-garde. In Paris to work on the site, he spends some time
in the National Library looking through amateur French films to see how
French navigate through landscapes. Looking through the "travel films"
section, he comes across 1968 Prague footage and is struck by the
similarity between its camera's moves and the computer game prototype he
saw back in the States. Inspired, he goes to Caf