MAT200A 03W		MARVIN JASPER INTERACTIVE SPACE
artmuseum Linda Candy, "Interaction in Art and Technology" Crossing:eJournal of Art and Technology		Reference: MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY, Randall Packer Chapter 12, Responsive Environments, Myron Krueger Chapter 27, A Room with a View, Daniel Sandin, Thomas Defanti (Other related Randall Packer published articles of note are "Utopianism, Technology, and the Avant-Guard: The Artist Shaping the Social Condition" and "Net Art as Theater of the Senses") Definition: The ability of the user to manipulate and effect his/her experience of media directly and to communicate with others through media. 1. Introduction and Background To be an innovator in multimedia art you have to know the history that has preceded it. To be an artist in multimedia requires an understanding of art history, its evolution and roots in science, technology, art and culture. We build and innovate on the knowledge of the past. This is the basis for Randall Packer's book. The subject of interactive space, it's evolution and context is delineated by beginning with the pioneer work of Myron Krueger's Responsive Environments in the 70's and evolving that context in the 90's by Randall Sandin's application of more current technologies in the CAVE(Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) . In 2003, the rapidly changing technology with 3D displays, advanced tracking, faster and more economical computer processing has enhanced and permitted even greater creative expression in the media form of interactive space. Contemporary interactive art installations, or art systems, have been categorized as static, dynamic-passive, dynamic-interactive, and dynamic-interactive (varying). These efforts in interactive multimedia art in creating virtual proximity brought forth global communications in video conferencing, networked virtual worlds, internet live on line chat rooms, telemedicine, etc. All of which have had impact on personal, business, entertainment enviroments, with their attendent social, economic, and cultural effects. We are on a journey from interactive space to teleimmersion to transposed reality(TR) to Micheal Heim's Expo-Virtuality (EVR) to whatever the creative intellect can imagine.
Steve Wilson, " Information Arts"		As Stephen Wilson expresses it, this change in science and technology is effectively shaping our contemporary culture and social structure, modifying our environment, and potentially changing our genetic self. A new postmodernism consciousness is being formed by artists who are not only consumers of the new technology but are the participants in scientific and technological development. Myron Krueger, PhD from the University of Wisconsin with his 1974 doctoral dissertation defined human-machine interaction as an art form, later published in as a book "Artificial Reality II", exemplifies the scientist-artist shaping our contemporary culture and environment through artistic expression. A more recent (1/23/02) Myron Krueger interview published in CTHEORY.NET is given in the referenced notation.
Myron Krueger, "Artificial Reality II" (Addison-Wesley, 1991) "Krueger Live"		2. Myron Krueger, Artist - Creator of New Aesthetic Medium With the advent of TV in the 60's and 70's saw development of electronics/ video/holographics in art with such artists using these new technology tools as Jordan Belson, John Whitney, Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, et al. Krueger was among the first of these artists to use computer technologies as a principal component in interactive art. He pioneered a new aesthetic median based on real-time man-machine interaction in the context of physical environment. He defines the Responsive Environment as intelligent, real-time, computer-mediated space where the computer responds to or preceives gestures of the audience by interpreting their actions. As a contemporary of John Cage, Krueger was influenced by the indeterminacy and audience participation of his compositions. Key to Krueger's work, is that the computer-established interactive environment creates a context, an artificial realty, between the viewer and his environment. Interplay between the viewer's real physical environment and the virtual is achieved to form a new relationship.The input-output relationship may be arbitrary and variable. It is the composition of the relationships between action and response that is important. As Krueger puts it, the response is the median of expression. Since the participant is an active contributor in the artistic expression, Krueger has designed his installations for the lay public to provide an initimacy and affirmation with the technology. As he points out, it is important for that the contemporary public to embrace the tools that define it's culture. All of Krueger's art installations explore the relationship between the participant and the environment. His work is projected on an 8'x10' screen, with a sensor system to track the participants gestures, and a computer system to provide presentation and response. A chronological listing of his work with comments are (Note that over time he incorporates later technologies to further explore and express his aesthetic medium of response): - 1969 Glow Flow - phorescent tubes, pressure-sensitive floor pads, kinematic sculpture, artist lessons learned-delays, education/orientation,etc. - 1970 Metaplay - graphic drawn by artist at remote location superimposed on screen; both viewer and artist could respond to screen; electric wand used to track user's hand to create their graphic input; pleasure of original discovery underlying theme in all Krueger's work. Digital 'white board" now being produced based on this interaction. - 1971 Psychic Place - position on floor sensed by pressure switches in floor was basis for interaction; electronic sound created by position; floor used as keyboard, piano keyboard dance by Tom Hanks in "Big". Followon art with more recent technology participant used as mouse. - 1973 Maze - participant navigates a projected maze; sense of detachment enhanced by display feedback, lack of any other sensation, focused on interaction; lessons learned - participant education; dehumanizing...whimsy. - 1975 Videoplace - premise for this installation was that the act of communications creates a place where all participants share the same real-time moment. New interpretation of remote touching; today use of haptics and internet touching. Videoplace was used as basis and replicated in numbers of artist installations. - 1993 Small Planet - is an unencumbered virtual reality installation with two interconnected stations. The Small Planet environment reduces the Earth to a scale that can be circumnavigated very quickly. Participants, in both stations, stand in front of a large projection screen depicting a realistic 3-D terrain. The projection screen is the portal into that world. Participants can move through that terrain and control their altitude By their arm and body movement. Participants from both stations are represented in the same virtual world and can interact with each other. It uses Videoplace systems, two supercomputers, ethernet connection, and digital projectors.
EVL CAVE/CAVERN Papers		3. Daniel Sandin, Media Artist / Thomas Defanti, Engineer - The CAVE, Enhanced Interactive Space Daniel Sandin, a former associate of Myron Krueger's, built on, and advanced, Krueger's artificial reality enviroment to extend to more than one user. The premise of their work was that more tha one user will have to react to the same environment if VR is to be an effective tool. The achievement of Sandin and Defanti was the CAVE( Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) facility designed and constructed in 1971 at the Electronic Visualization Lab.(EVL), University of Chicago. It utilized relatively expensive off-the-shelf technology to achieve it's artistic premise. The CAVE is a virtual reality system where the display is a 10ft.-cubed room that is rear projected with stereoscopic images, creating the illusion that 3D objects appear to coexist with the user in the room. The user wears liquid crystal shutter glasses to resolve the stereoscopic images, and holds a wand for 3D interaction with the virtual environment. An electromagnetic tracking system attached to the glasses and the wand allows the CAVE to determine the location and orientation of the users head and and hand at any given moment.This information is used by a high-speed computer to drive the CAVE to render imagery from the viewers point of view. Speakers are mounted in the CAVE to provide enviromrental sounds from the virtual environment and audio from remote particpants. Some more than 300 CAVE and CAVE-like devices have been employed around the world in research facilities, universities, museums and industrial design centers. In 1994, EVL developed the less expensive ImmersaDesk, a smaller, software-compatible, drafting-table-format version of the CAVE that has been deployed to locations, nationally and internationally. These systems achieved enhanced the interactive space of Krueger's installations and EVL achieved the goal of collaborative virtual reality. EVL went beyond this to achieve the next step of teleimmersion by netting a number of institutions in the CAVERN (CAVE Research Network). The participating CAVERN institutions are equipped with CAVE, ImmersaDesk VR systems, and high-performance computing resources, including high-speed networks. In this created CAVERN teleimmersive environment, the remote collaborators meet beyond the CAVE walls of Room with a View to be teleimmersed within the user target application environment to share the details of the virtual target world. The user application developments and their offshoots have been proliferating provided by the number CAVERN installations and being enhanced by improvements in the requisite technologies and international networking infrastructure.
Autostereoscopic 3D LCD Display Micropulse Radar		To support the further development of CAVE teleimmersive applications there needs to be improvements in display devices, tracking systems, increased CAVE throughput, increased bandwidth in the next generation internet, cost reduction and increased speed in computation, space reduction, etc. before teleimmersion can become a reality for lay public use as the today's internet. A good up-to-date summary of current tracking technologies is given in the article "Noncontact Gesture Sensing and Responsive Environments" published in the New Music Box given in the referenced notation. Recent development of a very low-cost(<$20/unit) micropulse tracking radar will be of interest in installations. Sharp's recent development and startup production of their Autostereoscopic 3D LCD Display will further enhance interactive art systems. Since our existing technologies are improving exponentially and with the introduction of new technologies the reality of lay public use and cultural impact should not be to far in the distant future. It is not until then, will we begin to observe the social, cultural, environmental, and biological impact of Stephen Wilson's assessment of the scientist-artist shaping our future through artistic expression.
Rosalind Krauss, paraphrased/Marv Jasper William Easum, "Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burger" Tom Stoppard, Arcadia Thomas McEvilley, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" John Cage, Merce Cunningham		Quotations - "We embark out of the warmth of our secure cave with its blanketed comfort of ideologies and metanarratives into the blinding and disorienting light of pluralism and relativistic knowledge to seek a new harmony. Only through the observation of the evolution of the human experience, the impact of technological changes its cultural, social, political, and environmental effects, and its expression in art, we can observe our transition to the future... The scientist-artist is our interpreter of the new vocabulary and our navigator who looks into the light of this postmodern world and reflects it so we might learn about ourselves." - Nothing in our past prepared us for the present. We live in a time unlike any other time that any living person has known. Change itself has changed, thereby changing the rules by which we live.Simple learning to do old chores faster or to be able to adapt old forms to more complex situations no longer produce the desired effects. - The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open 5 or 6 times since we got on our hind legs. It is the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. - Content is a complex demanding event without which no artwork could transpire. It demands our attention since without our awareness of these distinctions and levels, we do not really know what has happened already in art, and what is happening now for the first time. - Content in art sharing the same time and space do not have to relate. They can be differentƒ but by concurrently occupying the same time and space form a relationship through their occupancy