Artificial Adventure, Recreation & Leisure Environments

What's New?

• Ice climbing can offer a cool challenge
  (Richard Moore, 28 November, 2004, Sunday Herald)
  Ice climbing is another of the fringe adventure activities that is becoming more accessible.  The Ice Factor (Britain) is the biggest indoor ice climbing wall (800 m²) in the world. In its first year, 20,000 people came to use the climbing walls, and another 4,000 to climb the ice wall.  There are few activities or exercises that can prepare you for ice-climbing.  It is physically exhausting and mentally baffling – but likewise there are few activities that can match the sense of accomplishment - you are, after all, scaling a vertical sheet of frozen water.

• Green is good for you: The mental restoration we get from nature has implications for how we design artificial environments
  (Rebecca Clay, 34(2), 2001, American Psychological Association Monitor)

• Behavioral & Social Factors in Environmental Design

• Penrith Whitewater Stadium
  (Sydney 2000 Olympics site)

Why go artificial?

• Dwindling natural resources

• Minimizes mass impact on natural resources

• Convenience / accessibility

• Novelty

• Capacity to create & repeat specific qualities of experience

• Moldability & scalability

Introduction to Artificial Adventure Environments

The first artificial environments were the first shelters made by our homo ancestors, roughly 4 million years ago.  However, it was arguably not until the 20th century that human consciousness shifted massively indoors and large cultures of society lived almost exclusively in artificial environments.

Around the turn of the last century, not one of the futurists predicting our prospective lives, mentioned anything remotely connected with the computer.
- John Scully, former CEO Apple

Indeed, very few futurists at the turn of the 20th century predicted computers or that our lives would become almost entirely dominated by artificial environments.

As a result, people's interest in adventure and outdoor recreation and leisure has also turned to the artificial, coupled with the increasing challenges of finding natural environments in which to recreate and adventure. 

Thus, around the turn of the 21st century we see a new proliferation of artificial adventure environments underway, as we rapidly consume nature at one end and spit out a constructed environment at the other end. 

A major point in the timeline of artificial adventure environments is the creation of Project Adventure in 1972, the organisation which professionalized and popularized ropes challenge courses and games for building trust and teamwork.  Other examples of artificial adventure and recreation environments include:

• Playgrounds (Sherri Arnold)

• Indoor game and sport environments (e.g., gymnasiums)

• Indoor and outdoor climbing walls

• Water theme parks & constructed whitewater systems

• Artificial snow and skiing

Examples of Artificial Environments

• OceanDome, Miyazaki, Japan (world's largest indoor ocean)

  • In the south of Japan can be found the world's largest indoor ocean (located a couple of hundred metres from the natural ocean!). Artificial waves roll in and the plastic sand squeaks under your toes. 

  • Check out this bird's eye view of SeaGaia Resort. 

  • Read this interesting account of an OceanDome experience

  • Another about Japan's wacky indoor beach.

Trends & Predictions

With regard to the future of adventure programming, one of Priest and Gass' (1997) predictions was that "artificial adventure environments will dominate" and that "to some extent this is already the case".  They went on to explain:

In North America, group initiative tasks and ropes or challenge courses have all but replaced the classic outdoor pursuits with corporate clientele. A proliferation of course builders has created the Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT) to standardize construction and safety for thousands of American courses in use today. These numbers are expected to grow exponentially in the future, with similar patterns of growth and standardization now being seen in Australia, Canada, Britain and the rest of Europe. Shrinking natural outdoor settings, coupled with the cost and danger of transporting clients (the most dangerous part of most programs) will necessitate that alternatives be found. Some alternatives might include the already popular: climbing walls, ski slopes, kayak roll tanks, and whitewater canoe chutes. Others have yet to be invented.

Researchers on Artificial Adventure Environments

• Colin Beard, Sheffield Hallam University

• Aram Attarian, North Carolina State University