Re: [-empyre-] The 3D thread

[Patrick Lichty <voyd@voyd.com>]

What an amazing thread, and I'm truly sorry that I've been tied up and not 
able to engage more deeply.

Regarding techne, I hope that the issues here are well defined in regards 
to the requirements of hardware, software and infrastructural support, then 
the funding to implement projects.  I think that much of this has been 
aptly covered, and I don't wish to rehash.

Funding is always problematic, and doubly so in this time of dwindling 
support (private and public, at least in the US) for the arts in general, 
with the dominant politics being that art 'should' be a market-driven 
commodity, just like everything else, which I completely disagree 
with.  WHile I hope (and eventually understand the necessity of) funding 
for projects like Intelligent Agent and the Net Art Initiative, I have 
chosen to in effect work full time totally unpaid, luckily being subsidized 
by a professional spouse (although this has not always been the case, 
having gotten decent awards in the past).  I find this totally 
unacceptable, but on the other hand, I find the lack of support for the 
arts in the First World (in many genres, such as our own) even more so, and 
the greater of the two evils.  Eventually, projects need funding, but I do 
not wish to have that funding be a part-time, minimum wage job at the 
hardware store.

ANother conundrum has been the idea os sculptural aspects of screen-based 
art, or in a way, the issues of creating another form of 3D based virtual 
art.  Klima and I have discussed this rather extensively, and representing 
these genres in the gallery are a challenge on so many fronts, from HCI to 
tech support to structural points.  It's really quite amazing how daunting 
the task of getting a piece off the screen, into the gallery, and 
connecting with the audience (to key in with Roya) is.

In addition, Christiane and I have had many conversations in regards to the 
problem of having screen-based art in the gallery at all?  Of course, 
Klima's works address the sculptural, so he has made the gallery a primary 
focus of his work.  But this is not the case with so much work I see, and 
for these individuals, projections, while deepening the sense of 'aura', to 
me are an analogy for having a 4-meter high monitor, and little else.  The 
fascinating thing to me is that somehow the gallery is the logical 
destination for new media, and I can understand the logic to this in regard 
to the need to reach certain audiences, but perhaps the gallery is 
anachronistic to much of the work , and shouldn't be seen there in the 
first place with regards to intent representation, etc..  In some cases, I 
fervently believe that artists wish to get their art into the gallery for 
very traditionalist reasons, which in some cases defeats the potential of 
new media.

In regards to 3D as a genre itself, I have personally found this to be 
another challenge.  In my experiments, none of which are public, my 
problems have been with immersion and HCI.  To me, even in the CAVE, where 
one issue is resolved, there appears to be few really salient solutions to 
Human-Computer Interfacing at this time.  Endless computer companies have 
tried creating 3D mice, pucks, wands, gloves, etc, with varying levels of 
success, but I have either found these solutions either expensive, hard to 
support, or just not very elegant.  THis is not always due to the hardware, 
as software is as much a part for the HCI solution.  I'm not a naysayer, 
but I've found much of this extremely thorny.


Sorry for the disparate nature of some of these thoughts, as I'm running in 
many directions this morning.  My only hope is that some of  my thoughts 
here are useful

--patrick