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When people say the words “Virtual world” people think of the digital world that mimics our own in many ways. However, artists are now creating installations which redefine what we think of a virtual world. In the works of Jeffery Shaw, we are confronted with a different type of virtual world, especially in one his pieces, called “The Legible City.”
In this work, the artist recreated the architecture of real maps and cities in a virtual world in which the viewer was able to navigate through cycling. However, instead of buildings and landmarks, these monuments are replaced with words or phrases that were recovered from documents recording historical events. According to Christiane Paul, this work creates a connection between our physical world and the virtual, which we see through the introduction of the cycling. We were always removed or distanced from navigating the virtual world physically. We walk around in a virtual world usually by using the arrow keys on keyboards. However in “The Legible City” the viewer can incorporate his entire body to interact with this virtual world.
This piece of art not only changes the way we connect to the virtual world, but how we think of the locations and places we have been. Shaw also turns the physical into conceptual data. In the virtual world of Shaw, we are given a new way to navigate the history of a place. Instead of reading it in a book, we now physically navigate it. Also the history of the city is no longer linear, we experience the history by what and in what order we desire. The viewer can make a decision consciously or spontaneously about how he or she wants to navigate the cities. It also make us think differently about the monuments and the architecture that surrounds us. Some buildings and architectures have more complex histories and stories than what we are able see when we look at them. In a sense we are also able to conceptualize the value and importance of a city as well as the aesthetic qualities.
According to the New York Times “Mimicking the real is generally not what interests artists. Altering perception is.” what are other forms of artwork that play with our perception virtually? Artist Bruce Truman’s “Spinning Spheres” introducesh the physical in a different light. In his project, he uses four projectors to show a ball that has been placed on a glass plate, which is spun quickly creating and blurring image in the viewer’s mind. Here with this project our physical world seems distorted and unrealistic mimicking some of the concepts we apply to the virtual world. This world is created through simple repetition.
The art of Shaw was created in the late eighties and the early nineties. Now we are more able to interact with the virtual world with the development of technologies like the kinect. In playing a video game, we can be transported to a virtual world were we physical control our data input with our physical movements. There are other developing technologies that will change our perception of the physical and virtual worlds, one such device includes the Aurasma. This application. was made as an Apple product; it ingrates virtual content into the real world.
Paul, Christiane. Digital Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibcef/light/html0/8251629.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/arts/06iht-rush.html?pagewanted=all
http://sophia.smith.edu/course/csc106/readings/Penny_interaction.pdf
http://www.itworld.com/software/203575/aurasma-bridges-physical-virtual-worlds-demo-fall-2011
http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php?record_id=83
http://www.virtualart.at/database/general/work/the-legible-city.html
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To define terms:
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The following is a response, or perhaps companion, piece to Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War.
I didn’t go- none of us did.
They thought we went, but we didn’t.
Here.
We were here.
They didn’t think so, so they screamed at us
and shot at us
and wanted us to die.
“Maluus zebr” they said about
each of us in turn.
But here it is, I still have it.
And this- see the dust
still caked into the fibers?
I shouldn’t have it, they have rules about trophies,
but this is from when we were bombed
out of bed-
well, I wasn’t in bed.
I couldn’t sleep, so I was bare and wet
in the cement shower house.
I knew I was going to die.
I sobbed under one of those
crummy metal sinks, waiting for the walls to cave in
on me or a mortar to drop into
my lap or my crazy heart to just explode.
But they didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t,
but maybe I still did. Die. I feel dead.
I’m not a man anymore.
Please don’t look like that.
I don’t mind.
I’m good at what I do.
I’m a killing machine.
I’m a god.
This is what they make of us, and they’re damn good at it.
I was in basic with this
scrawny, nerdy wimp from
Minnesota.
Ethan. Ethan Brown.
Most boring-ass name ever.
He’s a sniper now.
He could hit you right between the eyes-
equal distance from each-
from 2000 meters.
You wouldn’t hear a thing,
and then you’d be dead.
How about that scrawny nerd from Minnesota?
Babe, don’t cry.
Yes, I like your dress.
But you know I like green on you
so much better.
White, hell, I don’t know how to
keep anything white.
I would touch you,
but you look so beautiful.
My hands are dirty.
Yes, they are. Look at them.
LOOK AT THEM.
I’m not shouting.
Ok, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.
The dress is beautiful.
Then why are you crying?
…HIM?!
THEY KNEW?!
You didn’t write.
I wrote to you.
No.
No.
No.
…I remember.
I’m not sure than I can, either.
Not since.
Please don’t ask
me now.
I’m so tired.
Who knew that the dead slept?
I always imagined we would torment
the world of the living after nightfall.
Who knew that it was the other way around?
I’m tired.
I’m so tired.
Here, hold me.
What’s the boundary between “virtual” reality and actual reality? Virtual reality’s original meaning, according to Christiane Paul in Digital Art, is “a reality that fully immersed its users in a three-dimensional world generated by a computer and allowed them an interaction with the virtual objects that comprise the world” (p. 125). As technologies improve, the boundary between alternate realities can be faded and hard to discern. This phenomenon is effectively used in digital art and can bring an entirely unique experience to participants.
One piece of digital art that stood out to me was “Beyond Manzanar”, an interactive virtual reality installation created in 2000 by artists Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand. A video of this piece is shown here:
What attracted me to this piece is that it functions in a way similar to a video game platform: participants use a joystick to navigate in a virtual recreation of Manzanar, an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The installation is projected onto a wall and is life-sized, adding a touch of reality to it. The realistic size of this piece and its three-dimensional environment allows the participant to feel as though he or she is actually walking within the space created by the work and looking through the eyes of someone actually present in that alternate world.
The content of “Beyond Manzanar” is unique and interesting as well. Although the piece is titled “Beyond Manzanar”, on a larger scale it is referring to the ostracism people of a different race face in America when their native countries are on unfriendly terms with the United States. This piece uses both the Japanese American internment during World War II and the similar fate Iranian Americans faced during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980 as the basis for this message.
Iranian garden
As the participant moves around the internment camp within the interactive installation, he or she is able to move within two worlds. First, the participant starts out in the barren landscape of the internment camp, filled with military barracks. When the participant navigates his way into the barracks, images of family life and pictures reflecting cultural identity appear on the inner walls of the barracks. Approaching certain pictures may allow the participant to see additional, hidden images or landscapes. For example, in one of the barracks, when the participant walks toward a wedding photo of an Iranian man and a Caucasian woman, images of armed extremists in Iran suddenly appear. After backing away, the participant has the option of walking out of the barracks through an Iranian garden. Also, upon entering one of the other barracks, the participant suddenly finds himself looking out from the doorway of a traditional Japanese house into an elegant garden, and is able to walk through the Japanese garden. From the outside of another barracks, one can see images of Japanese Americans under internment by looking in through the windows.
Image of Japanese Americans' life in Manzanar
Thiel and Houshmand effectively juxtapose images in “Beyond Manzanar” to “[illustrate] a chasm of cultural identity, contrasting a dream world of cultural heritage with a reality of political injustice” (p. 130 in Digital Art, by Christiane Paul). The artists’ transformation of the barracks’ interiors into images and simulations of cultural identity—traditional gardens and pictures of family ancestral history—suggests that the Japanese Americans and Iranian Americans were treated unfairly based solely on their racial background: they were under internment for their heritage, not because they personally committed any crimes. Hence, Thiel and Houshmand use “Beyond Manzanar” to convey the emotional and psychological trauma persecuted and outcast peoples face. The fact that “Beyond Manzanar” is an interactive virtual reality art piece allows participants to experience firsthand what it feels like to be ostracized by the society one thought he belongs in. The three-dimensional nature of the piece makes the participant feel like he or she is actually present at the internment camp. The bare, desert-like environment, as well as the crude, plain barracks, gives the participant a feeling of depression and gloom, much like how the Japanese Americans and Iranian Americans must have felt when they were targeted by political injustice. The images within the barracks remind the participant of what the “American Dream” should look like, but upon leaving, the participant is once again exposed to the harsh camp environment. Each participant for this piece may visit different barracks and choose their own path, but regardless of what path he may choose, he will always end up with the same ending: watching from the point of view of a fighter jet swooping down upon the camp. This invokes a sense of horror within the participant because the internment camp he had just visited, containing barracks filled with cultural identity in the form of pictures and traditional gardens, is about to be destroyed by the fighter jet.
Point of view of a fighter jet over the camp
“Beyond Manzanar” instills the feelings of those who were unfairly treated due to their cultural background within the participants of the art piece. This reveals the uniqueness of interactive digital art in changing the way in which people experience art. Such a feat would not have been possible with more traditional forms of art that do not involve the use of digital media. The participants’ perception of an alternate reality of the “American Dream” within the alternate reality of the internment camp blurs the line between our physical existence and that of the virtual realm.
References:
Paul, Christiane. Digital Art, 2nd Edition
http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/index.html
http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/demos.html
Thiel, Tamiko. “Beyond Manzanar: Constructing Meaning in Interactive Virtual Reality”. http://www.mission-base.com/manzanar/articles/cosign/cosign.html
http://eyebeam.org/people/christiane-paul
http://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/japanese_internment/index.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/american+dream
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February 07, 2012 09:12 AM
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