|
The six-sided Virtual Reality environment at the Royal Instiute of Technology is the first of its kind in the world, in surrounding the visitor completely. The so called VR-cube will chiefly serve Swedish scientists in various research projects. But three works of art have recently been shown here, during the very last weeks of Stockholm as the Cultural Capital of Europe ´98. Swedish Teresa Wennberg invites the audience on a journey inside a system resembling the inside of the human body. Maurice Benayoun from France, awarded the Prix Ars Electronica ´98, takes the visitors on a safari-tour in a landscape devastated by war. Bino, Cool and Cybeard, also from Sweden, guide the group through a colourful Egyptian world. Provided with 3D-goggles and a remote control, Art Orbit is heading for a trip into the virtual world.
by Annika Hansson, Art Orbit  |
|
We tiptoe into the VR-cube, wearing big gray slippers. The floor is sensitive to scratches as it is part of the six surfaces of projection. My colleague and me are putting on our 3D-goggles and feel somewhat ridiculous. However, now we are finally going to experience Virtual Reality, from head to toe. By means of projections on the floor, ceiling and walls, the artist Teresa Wennberg lets us glide into her work, The Parallel Dimension. It´s a journey through a virtual body including different spheres - different parts of the body. We are presented with an illusion which is so insistent that it becomes it very hard to defend one´s own mind. We are travelling through an environment which resembles the inner part of the body, similar to the Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson´s magnified images of veins, ducts and other bodily windings. At the same time it looks like a strange landscape of outer space where it´s tricky to find out whether the spherical forms we encounter are blood cells, planets or other craft. Although we are all standing up it feels as though we are almost weightless, floating through organic tunnels which open and close, and expose different spaces. 
TERESA WENNBERG The Parallel Dimension We stop - by means of the remote control of course - in front of a blood-red form. As a monstrous dried peach is floating close to my nose, or maybe more like a basketball frozen while bouncing. At this moment I would really like to touch it´s smooth surface, feel the form of it. I fumble after it but it´s all in vain. Illusion, air, unreality. Then we let the peach-planet crash into our heads. No pain, no weight. Instead, the peel opens up and sucks us into another world. Like magic boxes there is one form after another, one space after another, opening up. And this seems to never end. When we step out of the VR-cube I realise that that giddy feeling in my stomach is due to the imaginary transport of my body - not due to emotions or intellectual challenges. This strange feeling of a break in time and space is the result of being completely surrounded by the VR-milieu, rather than the content of the actual work. I ask myself if this is due to the space theme, the blood cell planets, the winding ducts, the never-ending spaces. Maybe this theme is precisly what to expect from the VR environment. Maybe this design, this form, is just what the VR cube tempts the artist to create. Wennberg´s work is an achievement in a medium which is entirely novel for most artists, not to mention audiences. But The Parallel Dimension convinces me - from the point of view of both visual and intellectual content - that this work needs much of improvements. Otherwise it will become very hard for anyone to vindicate that the VR-cube should contain art at all. The next VR-work is Maurice Benayoun´s and Jean-Baptiste Barriére´s World Skin. Goggles and slippers again. I breath a sigh of relief. Here is something that actually awakens my interest, a work of art that engages me on other terms than solely the effect of VR. Inside the VR-cube eight people are gathered and everybody is provided with a camera, like a group of tourists. Benayoun who is present wants us to be able to watch each other inside the cube, that we should be a group of people aware of each others presence. I grab the remote control and drive´ us through muddy fields, ruins and right through the bodies of people, dead or alive - soldiers and civilians, men, women and children. The sky is gray. My fellow tourists take snap shots and the flashes destroy what we confront - annihilate the land, people and buildings. The consequences of it all are blank white surfaces - big wounds in the landscape. And as soon as an area is destroyed, whiped out by the flashes, an intense sound emerges. It is the cries of the people who has been wiped out, destroyed by our cameras. 
MAURICE BENAYOUN & JEAN-BAPTISTE BARRIÉRE World Skin After some time spent at the battle ground I feel an urge to press the stop button. To stop, to rest, to catch my breath and become to my normal self again, in familiar time and space. Maybe it´s due to the war theme, maybe it´s the journey through destroyed landscapes, the detailed authentic images from the Second World War and Bosnia. However, Benayoun and Barriére have created both a design, a formula and a content which make an indelible impression on me. World Skin subjects the tourist group to a cruel distorting mirror. The work is revolving around the ever-so-urgent pair of notions of destitution and wealth, life and death, war and peace, distance and closeness. And here there is also a camera, a tool loaded with associations including documentary versus fiction, the slice of reality versus the selected composition, as well as marking the boundary between the spectator and the one being looked up on. Just outside the VR-cube our snapshots are being printed out, one after another. Here we can pick up the images depicting what we destroyed/photographed on the battle fields. World Skin has been awarded the well-earned prestigious Prix Ars Electronica ´98. The last work shown in the VR-cube in this row is Giza Virtual Nights. In the small leaflet handed out to visitors, it is described as a virtual excavation. Well, the impression is not that of an archaeological excavation - but it´s fun. I would hardly designate it to the realm of art but it´s definitely good fun. Once again we have that feeling of being a group of tourists. Bino is in charge of the remote control and guides us in a pedagogical manner through the temples. We are looking to the right, looking to the left, we understand the environment to be Egyptian, we pass three mummies which are life size body scans of the three creators of Giza Virtual Nights. It´s a colourful environments which resembles that of a computer game very much. We slide into the different rooms and ducts of the Pyramids which inevitably resemble large London clubs. Soon we have to let the next group in so Bino flies us home, high above the Nile. A bit dizzy we exit the cube, as if after a night out at the fun-fair. 
BINO, COOL & CYBEARD Giza Virtual Nights All the three works are very special experiences and impressing technical demonstrations of what is possible to create in a VR-environment when utter most technical skill is coupled with artistic intentions. Theres no doubt about that. But World Skin is the only work that I appreciate as being an exciting piece of art. The uneven standards between the work isn´t surprising but a matter of course. In Sweden the very art form itself is at a point where a serious evaluation of the category has not even begun. Benayoun and Barrière will definitely provide exciting developments of VR-art on the international scene. Here in Sweden I look forward to the next Swedish contribution to the VR-cube. Want better, want more.~ CLICK HERE to go to the article ART IN THE VR-CUBE Teresa Wennberg respons to the article "virtual works" is published due to the notion of Internet as surpassing the daily press and monthly "paper"publications in question of time and current interest. Here Art Orbit closes the issue of Teresa Wennbergs work but warmly welcomes further debates on art criticism on the Internet and other related topics. Annika Hansson chief editor "In response to the article "Virtual works" by Annika Hansson in ArtOrbit I would like to add a few remarks. When there is something one doesn't understand one easily reacts with anger or criticism. To cathegorically state that a work needs "improvement both visually and intellectually" with no further explanation is too easy. It echoes shallow subjectivity and lack of serious effort. This is particularly serious when a text is accesible for ever on the Internet. Who is saying this? and in comparison to what? Is the critic a competent and knowledgeable person in regards to what has been produced in the narrow world of Virtual Reality? On what does the person base her viewpoint - with what criteria is the person judging this? Is the work compared to similar works which have been produced under similar conditions? The simple fact that they are shown together in a VR-cube is obviously not sufficient criteria. A person visiting a Virtual Reality environment for the first time is of course up for a strong experience. The sense of identity is put at stake as the visitor enters a very credible yet illusory world. Depending on the strength of the ego, some even feel"ridiculous" or "giddy". Others will stop for a moment and try to resolve how this amazing illusion can be possible. In Hanssons' text, nothing is mentioned about how these images - or actually forms - are made. How do they appear? How can they create this sensation of "reality"? If she should make a comparison to anything at all, wouldn't it be more apt to talk about a flow of information? Is it of importance whether the work shown is a wargame, an Egyptian world or a virtual body? Of course you can mention the context of the piece but this is of a minor interest here. To stop at that shows that Hansson has understood nothing of this new technique or of the artists' efforts to master it. The Parallel Dimension , which I presented in the VR-cube should be seen as a "work in progress" - an ongoing process, not an artistic statement. It has more the quality of describing the discoveries made than that of a finite piece. To produce anything at all in Virtual Reality is a very complex procedure. I will not go into details here about "texture maps", color rendering, animation problems, room concepts, interactive limitations, programming matters and other obstacles one must deal with in this "young" technique. I just want the reader to understand that there are heaps of complications hidden under the immediate surface. The truth is that we are encountering a completely new form of (visual) experience that cannot be compared to anything that we have hitherto relied on, visually or intellectually. It is a separate reality, in many ways more compatible with a fluid dreamstate than with our conscious perceptions. And herein lies the truly interesting matter. Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari and other philosophers, mainly French, are presently helping the middleclass in its confrontation with the perishable nature of our existance and the difficulty in keeping the old 1900-century concept of "identity", in a world which increasingly bases its communication on deputies: machines and avatars. With the help of various cryptic texts, a metaphilosophy is being imposed on contemporary art, using the concept of images and information (time) flowing through media as its essential principle. Hanssons' VR-visit could have been an excellent occasion for an analysis of how these three works are dealing with the virtual flow of realtime activity. But, unfortunately, it is apparent that Hansson entered the VR-cube with the attitude of a child trying a new computer game. Having "good fun" or being offered the possibility to press a button ("take a photograph") obviously satisfied her expectations and no further investigations were made. This is a pity considering that the VR-cube is an exceptional phenomenon, offering an immense range of experiences to be had and more adequate references to be made. Teresa Wennberg" |