Note: If you see this text you use a browser which does not support usual Web-standards. Therefore the design of Media Art Net will not display correctly. Contents are nevertheless provided. For greatest possible comfort and full functionality you should use one of the recommended browsers.

Themesicon: navigation pathOverview of Media Articon: navigation pathImmersion
 
Osmose (Davies, Charlotte), 1995
 
 
 

icon: previous page

evolutionary image processes the definition of a selection procedure, are creative tools now in the hands of artists. The effects, in terms of the theories of image, art and the media, are unforeseeable. I shall now examine the ways in which contemporary artists are trying to develop immersive strategies in the digital sphere; strategies that strongly relate to the ever-changing interface with the machine, the technique of telepresence, and the development or design of software, for example, to facilitate interaction or evolutionary image processes based on genetic algorithms. My contention is that these elements in combination demonstrate a further development of the principle of immersion using state-of-the-art visualization technology.

The ‹natural interface›: «Osmose»

Many virtual environments reduce the observer to a seemingly disembodied entity within a Cartesian space with a fairly clear view of a space that is frequently quite empty. Although Charlotte Davies' virtual environment «Osmose» has only been shown a few

 

times in the USA and Europe,[25] more than any other contemporary work it has been the subject of international media art debate. Only a few thousand visitors have actually had the opportunity to experience the installation, but many times that number of art lovers has avidly followed the debate on aesthetics, phenomenology and reception of virtual art that has centered on this particular work. Moreover, the level at which «Osmose» cultivates the user-interface—a central parameter of virtual art—is unparalleled. «Osmose» is an immersive interactive environment where the user experiences 3-D computer graphics and interactive sound synaesthetically wearing an HMD.[26] It is a technically advanced and visually impressive simulation of a series of complex natural and textual spaces: a mineral–vegetable, intangible sphere. Nothing here recalls the grainy, jittery polygonal images of virtual art's early years: in the data space created by the Canadian Charlotte Davies, phosphorescing points of light glimmer in soft focus in the dark.

Her objective to develop a natural, intuitive

icon: next page