 Teresa Wennberg in the VR-cube, Stockholm 
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So far only one art work has been created in, and solely for, the world´s first six-sided Virtual Reality environment in Stockholm, Sweden. That is Teresa Wennberg´s "The Parallel Dimension". Wennberg has worked with computors for more than 15 years in her career as an artist. That makes her one of the veterans in the realm of computer based art. She has established a close collaboration with the Royal Institution of Techno- logy in Stockholm and the project leader of the VR-cube, associate director Gert Svensson. by Annika Hansson, Art Orbit  |
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Virtual environments are nothing new but what makes the VR-cube in Stockholm special is the fact that it hosts six sides. That means that the visitor is completely surrounded by the virtual room. Therefore the experience turns out to be almost complete, explains Gert Svensson. The VR-cube in Stockholm is meant to chiefly serve scientific research projects and belongs to the Center for Parallel Computers at the Royal Institute of Technology. Here it is possible to visualize the scientist´s calculations - figures turn into volumes and forms. For example, calculations on the flow of air surrounding a plane can be adapted by the computer in order to emerge as three-dimensional volumes inside the VR-cube. Artwork is also produced in this way and for the VR-cube. The ingredients are of course artistic ambition coupled with advanced technical qualifications and extremely powerful computer facilities. 
Still from The Parallell Dimension, Teresa Wennberg (1998) Artist Teresa Wennberg has during her career mainly worked outside Sweden. She has been working as an artist at several different computer laboratories in Japan, USA and France. Since February 98 she has been back home in Stockholm again, working at the Center for Parallel Computers. Last autumn she could begin fully using the VR-cube, after the royal inauguration of it. Wennberg´s work with the VR-cube is unique in Sweden, where her experiences and aims as an artist have been linked with the expertise of technicians. This collaboration has not always gone smoothly but has been very fruitful for everybody involved, explains Teresa Wennberg and Gert Svensson. In the work "The Parallel Dimension" the visitor experiences a journey through a virtual body system. -I am interested in the confrontation of the self, the ego and the matter of fact that one almost gets lost from oneself in the work. I want to provoke people with the question dealing with where the self actually goes, Wennberg explains. -In The Parallel Dimension I have mainly engaged in developing textures and surfaces but also made a first venture on interactivity. As an artist Teresa Wennberg has had the chance to follow the development of the computer-based medium - from simple two-dimensional images to complicated three-dimensional animations. Her work in the VR-cube is a natural result of that, she says. 
Still from The Parallel Dimension, Teresa Wennberg (1998) But a project like "The Parallel Dimension" of course demands money. Lots of money. And it is this financing that is the big obstacle for artists who are working with the VR-medium. Moreover, they have to try to make space among the other more profitable tenants in VR-environments. In the VR-cube in Stockholm industrial companies will surely buy time and technical know-how, as well as the reseachers, according to Gert Svensson. The cost of the VR-cube itself is estimated at some 15 million Swedish crowns during a three-year period of time. Naturally the Royal Institute of Technology can itself also count on some profit. But is it solely the sum of money that will be important in deciding which artist will get access to the cube, one might wonder. And if so, what will happen to the demand for artistic quality? Gert Svensson admits that it in the near future there will be need for professional evaluation based on artistic quality as a method for selection. But the fact is that so far there has been a very limited group of artists that have enough experience from VR-environments, to be a possible choice for collaboration. However, Gert Svensson and Teresa Wennberg hope that the VR-cube will continue to host art works. And Wennberg has already been invited into a collaboration with a well-known brainresearcher and a mathematician.~ The VR-cube is no longer open to the public but any questions can be put forward to the Royal Institution of Technology in Stockholm www.pdc.kth.se. Teresa Wennberg will give lectures on her work on request. CLICK HERE to go to the article VIRTUAL WORKS |