[-empyre-] thoughts on aesthetics

["Taylor Nuttall" <taylor@greenquarter.co.uk>]

Aesthetics of single user works / versus multi user works

So I am intrigued with a question of my own as to whether there are
different aesthetics associated with single user / multi user spaces.

Obviously interface elements play a part in this, but what about the
structures inherent in the space or narratives embedded into the coding etc.
I know Simon has already spoken in detail of his ideas relating to a multi
user experience and also there has been some discussion on non-Cartesian
mapping.

But how would our experience of say Beyond Manzanar change if we met other
avatars in the space?

Melinda has 2 versions of Empyrean, is it just the logic of the server
technologies or is something else being changed?

Is the process of looking different? Today we were talking about the lens as
a way of focussing / seeing differently or a window etc. My experience with
Adam,s performance that a multi-view shared experience seems to be bringing
other things into the equation than the framing function of the computer
screen / projection system.

Somewhere back in the discussions John Klima says:
?hyper-space (nD) is incredibly fascinating. however, i cant really "see"
the nth dimension, because i have nothing to use as a referent. on a 2d
screen (or in a painting) i can perceive 3d because i exist in 3d. however
if i had a 3d screen, i still won't perceive the 4th dimension because i
don't mentally exist in that 4th dimension. its the flatworld problem.
however, i certainly don't deny that nth dimensions exist, we can
conceptualize and even implement them mathematically, but as a homo-sapien,
it is only ever an inkling of that nth dimension. if i spin a hypercube i
get this "tingling sensation" but the nth-d never actually resolves. this
may be a limitation of my domain knowledge, my "cultural programming." but i
think it is rather the limitations of my human form.

in art, it all ultimately boils down to an individual viewer, existing in a
"this" world, coping with the thing in front of them. Spatial representation
can be metaphoric, coded, symbolic, or scientific ? we are all always
completely stuck with how the universe actually is.?

I think the conversation was around non-cartesian perspectives but I would
like to challenge what he means by an nth dimension.

Some of the qualities of the Memory Plains Returning performance certainly
seemed to have some have some nth dimensionism (is that a new word?), With
overlapping environment structures happening simultaneously on different
screens ? probably why the whole thing was a bit confusing to watch.
Certainly time structures seemed to get bent and this was not just lag, it
seemed to stem form some of the programming contained on the server.

For example I first logged in as taylor, then my system froze, I could not
relog in so chose taylor_ then again taylor_0, at one point in the world I
could see both my own avatar (3rd person view), but also the remnants of my
previous avatars from a different time zone, spooky.

Similarly at several points in the performance Adam?s screen and my own were
totally different ? not just a different perspective on the same world, but
overlapping spaces with all the same avatars in place, was this a glitch in
the system?

I will put the screen grabs up online.

Perhaps the nth dimension is the data space? I've experienced these glitches
with mobile phones and e-mail - somedays an e-mail flies form one computer
to another in seconds, other days it takes a couple of hours. Some times my
text messages randomly arrive at the recipients phone, on one occasion I got
repeat sends of the same message - over 30 times over a period of 8 hours.

There appears to be some warping of the data space going on.

Taylor