Bending perception, blending real withvirtual News Archive News

THE word 8216;8216;virtual8217;8217; means 8216;8216;the same, but not really8217;8217;. A simulation, an adjunct to the real. The w...

Written by MICHAEL RUSH

January 15, 2006 12:00 AM IST

4 min read

THE word 8216;8216;virtual8217;8217; means 8216;8216;the same, but not really8217;8217;. A simulation, an adjunct to the real. The world has been irrevocably altering, along with the 8216;8216;reality8217;8217;. Soon, we may find it impossible to distinguish the virtual from the real. From Peter Jackson8217;s largely computer-based reimagining of the love story between the ape and the blonde to PlayStation8217;s latest interactive bloodbath, producers of entertainment are promulgating digital wizardry, and the public is falling for it. 8216;8216;Multi-player online role-playing games8217;8217; are challenging movies. The King Kong version was released the same day as the film.

But what happened to the good, old-fashioned goggles-and-joystick, immersive virtual reality of the 8217;90s? Although the gear was cumbersome and expensive, illusory full-body absorption into real and imagined worlds through computers, graphics and head devices had seemed irresistible. A 1993 show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, titled 8216;8216;Virtual Reality VR: An Emerging Medium,8217;8217; sought to jumpstart what was thought to be the next big thing. Why didn8217;t it take off?

John Ippolito, the show8217;s curator, said, 8216;8216;VR8217;s promise, to construct a ghostly realm where consciousness is freed of constraints of the flesh, became socially obsolete.8217;8217; But there was a bigger problem: while cellphones with all the whistles cost around 99, VR environments could cost about 1.5 million. Until now. Virtual reality is now available to artists for about 3,000. The software is available free from the Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign, where researchers under the direction of Hank Kaczmarski have created a portable VR set-up for artists. The open-source technology, known as Syzygy, is downloadable at http://www.isl.uiuc.edu. Others are accessible through the Indiana University8217;s 8216;8216;John-e-box8217;8217; system http://www.avl.iu.edu and at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria http://www.aec.at.

It8217;s no accident that the University of Illinois has been the force behind Canvas. In 1992, VR pioneers Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti and Carolina Cruz-Neira created the prototypical large-scale virtual environment, the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment CAVE. Whatever the thrills of Imax or 3-D movies, Cave8217;s effects are far greater. It8217;s like diving into an ocean in another galaxy. Your perceptions and sense of balance are challenged. With two projectors 1,000 each having polarising filters 300 each, an up-to-date desktop computer, three rear projection screens optional and the Syzygy programme, Canvas is open for business http://www.canvas.uiuc.edu for artists. Rose Marshack, a multimedia artist, calls Canvas 8216;8216;the missing link I8217;ve been waiting for.8217;8217; She and novelist Rick Powers, a one-time MacArthur fellow, are using it to create a 3-D 8216;8216;emotional travelogue8217;8217; through the 20th century.

Sandin has developed a portable virtuality system. With a short computer tower, two laptops, two PowerPoint projectors and a folding screen, he travels the world exhibiting his 8216;8216;tele-immersive8217;8217; artworks. All of Sandin8217;s projects involve multiple users. 8216;8216;EVL: Alive on the Grid8217;8217; is a series of virtual art-world experiences in which audiences can interact in shared virtual spaces. In 8216;8216;Looking for Water,8217;8217; participants emerge in an outer-space environment based on real-time satellite images. They experience themselves falling and landing on an archipelago whose lakes are fashioned from 3-D images.

The creation of a super photorealist world lies at the heart of most VR artworks to date, which is problematic for some artists8212;New York artist John Simon, for example, who creates his own software for non-immersive VRs. 8216;8216;Each of my artworks is a small world that evolves and changes8230;,8217;8217; he says.

Altering perception, and not mimicking the real is what generally interests artists. When Bruce Nauman, Michael Snow and Peter Campus turned to video technology in the 8217;60s, they did so to challenge viewers8217; expectations by providing an ambiguous experience rather than a familiar one. Nauman8217;s 8216;8216;Spinning Spheres8217;8217; from 1970, for example, is a large, four-screen projection. Its effects are dizzying. Experimental film artists, including Hollis Frampton and Joyce Wieland, shared a similar fascination with perception-bending.

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Kathleen Harleman, director, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, hopes that with Canvas, 8216;8216;artistic imaginations will match technological innovations8212;artists will not just use the technology, but free it.8217;8217;

For new-media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, who generated virtual worlds in her films Conceiving Ada 1997 and Teknolust 2002, 8216;8216;V.R. allows someone to enjoy a second life parallel to one8217;s former reality8217;8217;.

Washington Post

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