[-empyre-] Some immersive thoughts

["Angela Main" <angelamain@paradise.net.nz>]

Kia ora all

I've been enjoying the discussions on immersion by Tamiko and Jun-Ann and
have promised to drop in some thoughts.

I have been working with space first and have created many immersive
environments in the context of dance parties and club environments since
the 80's. In the mid nineties I started playing around with digital media
and creating matrices of inputs and projections. This included 3 D
animations, video and light. Laser is one of the most `3-D' of projection
apparatus available. The audience size ranged from 200 - 5000. Performance
elements were used as key ` attention' shifters. Often using scale and
height
to create an unusual relationship and `diminish' the audience.

To find a category to describe this work, it most closely resembles an idea
of a 4-D time based format. There is always a series of distinct stages
where the attention of the audience is taken on a `journey'. Where I like to
play is with the edges of intention/ attention - the  intention of the
myself and the artists working with the attention of the audience. Jun-Ann
mentioned that it is the concept which engages an audience. I agree to some
extent but this requires some intellectual and cultural parity and I can
only assume a consensus reality to a certain point with an audience.
Immersion in this sense is actually the embodiment of experience through
the senses and including the kinesthetic sense.

Most of the net inolvement in these past works  has been as a `passive'
medium
for feeding information in or out, however with the development of VRML and
netart
it becomes possible to parallel and exchange between these experiences of
reality.

My approach has a political context and can be compared to the
Happenings of the 60's and 70's - the key element is that the audience is
not
passive. In the work I am developing now, <of other spaces> there is the
idea of
bringing the audience through mixed realities in a social context.
>From MUD to installation. Once there at times they can move about freely and
at other times are
restricted to certain parts of the installation where they have the option
of participating online as well as in the flesh. The roles of observer,
observing and observed are in constant flux. I am very interested in
collective experience and perceptual shift. Benevolent power plays and
cognitive stimulus at times being very ambient and at others very intense.
Although this is a `live' space it functions as a matrix. Most of the visual
and aural material is compiled in the moment at at other times it is
scripted. It is as least as possible textless and more textual so that
cognition
is the mediator between the synthetic and organic. The `metaphorical or
poetic
logic' that Tamiko describes is also at play here.

The participants are part of the work and identity play is encouraged in
both realms,
via avatars and masquerade, so exploring ideas of cultural mask and other -
candy coated subversion.
Underlying it all is a question - who's reality is it anyway-

I was excited by Gregory Little's Manifesto for Avatars.

thanks

Angela Main



----- Original Message -----
From: "empyre-admin" <empyre-admin@imap.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
To: <empyre@imap.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2002 4:36 PM
Subject: [-empyre-] 3d online artists


> The Web 3d art show, which is the topic of this month's -empyre- forum,
has
> just opened in its new venue at the ICA in London. Its been a lively
> discussion so far with some interresting connections to last months
> discussion with Ollivier Dyens, where the subjects of language shaping
> thought, and the factors influencing immersion keep re surfacing.
>
> Over the next few weeks artists from the show will continue to post on the
> conceptual, technical and aesthetic concerns in their online 3d work.
> still to come are:
> Zvonimir Bakotin, Croatia: interactive 3D architecture of Merzbau
> Ricardo Barreto, Brazil: investigates the pluralistic Body
> Melinda Rackham: Australia: Empyrean multiuser VRML scapes
> John Klima, USA : realtime 3d java representaion of War in the Great Game
> Dimitar Karanikolov, Bulgaria: Archivibes internet community for virtual
> architecture
> Sofie Redele, Belguim: temporality and the nomadic condition,
> Patrick Keller /Fabric, Switzerland : experimental VRML architectual and
> avatar construction,
> Anthony Rowe /Squidsoup, UK: interactive underwater 3d sound space.
>
> -empyre-admin
> ----------------------
>
> Web3dart2002     http://www.web3dart.org/node.php3
> ICA,  London       http://www.ica.org.uk/
> Zvonimir Bakotin   http://www.merzbau.org
> Ricardo Barreto    http://www.satmundi.com/body/windowbody.html
> Melinda Rackham http://www.subtle.net/empyrean
> John Klima            http://www.cityarts.com/greatgame
> Patrick Keller        http://www.fabric.ch/knowscape/
> Sofie Redele          http://users.pandora.be/trans_it
> Dimitar Karanikolov  http://www.archivibes.net
> Anthony Rowe       http://www.altzero.com
>
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>
>