Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 9 Number 1, April 2008
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McRobert, Laurie. Char Davies's Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality. Toronto: Universityof Toronto Press 2007. 13 B/W plates / 17 color plates / 2 Figures; ISBN-10: 080209094X; ISBN-13: 978-0802090942; Cloth: $50.00; £32.00
Reviewed by
Diatrope Institute
Over the years, a mystique has surrounded the work of internationally renowned Canadian artist Char Davies. This aura, and her reputation in general, is an outgrowth of her award winning digital installations Osmose (1995) and Ephémère (1998), two projects that demonstrate her ability to counterpose philosophical ideas with interactive art projects. Laurie McRobert’s well-researched book, Char Davies's Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality, is the first in-depth study of Davies accomplishments and superbly introduces her creative contributions. Carefully written and comprehensive in scope, this monograph will undoubtedly remain the key resource on this artist for a long time. McRobert’s study supports the claim of Oliver Grau, who characterizes Davies’ Osmose as a signpost in the history of the media and compared her innovative work in virtual reality with the films of the Lumière brothers and the early panoramas.
Overall, McRobert argues that an individual’s perspective typically changes after immersion in Davies artworks. The author also proposes that an experience of this caliber can evoke what she calls an essential spatiality, innate feelings of space and time that differ from relativistic notions of space and time. This, in McRobert’s view, provides a way for an immersant to access a genre of consciousness usually unavailable to us except in dreams, through drug ingestion, and during meditative states. Therefore, she continues, being immersed in a virtual 3D spatiality allows us to grasp and understand, as never before, the power of the unconscious. Her conclusion is that Davies’ immersive virtual art takes us deep into our DNA [sic] and provides us with an innate sense of an archaic/eternal space/time.
Osmose, one of the projects studied, is an immersive, interactive, virtual environment with 3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound, a stereoscopic head-mounted display and real-time motion tracking based on breathing and balance. It provides a space for exploring the perceptual interplay between self and world, i.e., a place for facilitating awareness of one’s own self as consciousness embodied in enveloping space. The other project Ephémère, is similarly grounded in ‘nature’ as metaphor and also includes archetypal images of root, rock, and stream, etc., that recur throughout. The major difference between the two is that Ephémère extends the iconographic repertoire to include body organs, blood vessels and bones. McRobert also tells us Ephémère suggests a symbolic correspondence between the chthonic presences (pertaining to gods and spirits of the underworld) and the interior body and the subterranean earth.
Both pieces were conceived with the idea that a body vest is the best apparatus for allowing the participant to interact with the artwork. The body vest is set up to measure bodily responses, which in turn allows immersants to control their journeys within the artwork itself. Roberts tells us that Davies experience of scuba diving was her inspiration in creating this novel interface between the viewer and the computer. She chose the vest to achieve sensory feedback, rather than a joystick or hand-held game controller because this has the effect of the immersive virtual art plunging people into a reverie or dream state in a matter of minutes. The head-mounted devise (HMD) is the vehicle that interfaces with the computer and the immersant, processing the optics, sound and kinesthetics that constitute her virtual realms. (It is my impression that the HMD and the vest are attached and function as a unit.) It is important to note that Davies likes the low resolution quality of the HMD because it softens the images and immersants let go of their of their habitual reliance on sharp vision. In addition, she believes that the HMD allows a solitary participant to experience sensations of full-body immersion in an all-encompassing space. Wearing the HMD, in Davies view, is a minor inconvenience in light of how it allows the immersant to access a larger spatiality. [It would seem likely that there is a small transmission delay accompanying the low resolution. This shortcoming would be noticeable at first, but the immersant would forget about it. Indeed, the combination of low resolution and transmission delay may actually be the basis for the dream-like quality. In other words, if the equipment was full resolution, it should seem like reality. The lower resolution (and delay) are reminiscent of dream experience and are likely to be evoking this quality.]
In my view, the strongest sections of the book are those that acquaint the reader with Davies history and her working procedures. Trained as a painter, Davies began to experiment with 3D virtual space of computer technology in the 1980s. She was among the founders and a director at Softimage, one of the world’s leading developers of 3D animation software, (eventually purchased by Microsoft). Later, in the 1990s, Davies founded her own company and began her PhD on the philosophical underpinnings of her own art practice. (Her degree was granted by Plymouth University in 2005). It was not completely clear to me if the intellectual underpinnings of her work came about with Davies return to academia, but ideas are now a part of her work’s complexity and she conceptually infuses her work with philosophical ideas.
Given this background, it is not surprising that philosophical ideas are a key component of Char Davies's Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality. In my view, some of these sections work better than others. When the author integrates information from the artist’s working journals, the discussion allows us to almost see through the artist’s eyes. Although these revealing discussions touch upon abstract ideas, they made me appreciate how deeply (and carefully) Davies engages with her ideas. The use of images and mappings enhance these sections and helped show the interplay between Davies life experience, creative aspirations, and work ethic. For example, I was not surprised to learn that one influence on Davies soft-edged images, light, and transparency is the art of J.M. W. Turner’s work (1775-1851), particularly his later light, time, and space pieces that are much more abstract. As it turns out, her scuba driving experiences, love of nature, and extreme myopia have informed her translucent art as well. Davies’ eyes are very nearsighted, so she sees a soft, semi-transparent world, when her vision is uncorrected through prescription lenses. She claims that due to this, she actually feels the space she sees as blurry. McRobert does not say this explicitly and, of course, space itself cannot be blurry, only the objects within it. Viewing the world myopically inspires Davies to create layers upon layers of translucent objects floating through space.
The philosophical underpinnings also remind us that this kind of complex and difficult art is complicated. McRobert’s discussion of the philosophical and scientific interface is quite detailed and goes far in explaining the complexity that sets Davies apart. The ideas of Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Northrup Frye, are among those discussed. In terms of Heidegger, for instance, McRobert argues that immersion in Davies’ virtual art ‘unconceals’ and points out that Davies and Heidegger part ways in their views about technology. The author also looks at Davies’ work in relation to that of Margaret Wertheim’s history of space, Michael Heim’s metaphysical views, and Marcos Novak’s ‘liquid architecture’ are among the topics covered. Equal attention is given to neuroscientific studies related to emotion and vision (e.g., Semir Zeki, António Damasio and Candace Beebe Pert).
The book also explains that the complicated nature of Davies work requires a cooperative creative process. Engineers who work in consultation with the artist program intricate digital algorithmic foundations. These are neither straightforward nor pre-defined. Although algorithmically produced, the work is deliberately programmed to highlight transparency, diffusion of edges and the blurring of lines. What is new about Davies art in particular is that, among other things, it explores techniques based on transparency and non-linear dynamics that break through what she sees as an iron-clad conceptual obsession with Euclidean geometry, and hence through our mathematically rigid conceptions of space/time. McRobert speaks often of Davies attitude toward technology and stresses that it is in stark contrast to many who work with art and technology today. Some in the field see nature as an outmoded metaphor and believe humans are recreating themselves in a more elevated form through silicon and genetic engineering. Davies, by contrast, sees this view as a testosterone dream.
Given the art’s complexity and philosophical foundations, I wasn’t quite sure that I followed how Davies’ technological work brings us closer to nature, although a great deal of time was spent on explaining that her work subverts the disconnection that some believe technology creates with nature. What is clear is that nature plays an important conceptual role in Davies work, although her work does not try to present exact replications of nature. Her artistic depictions are intended to describe dichotomies (self/world, interior/exterior, inside/outside) typically explored by philosophers. In essence, the projects were conceived as a relational art, and this is one reason the artist adopted the term “immersive virtual reality,” rather than virtual reality. This characterization is intended to convey that the work complements human sensory and cognitive capabilities, allowing a human to be viscerally interactive in it. Another way in which the work intends to “connect us” is through its stress on sensation.
After reading the book I thought about the mythology that has grown around Davies’ work. Partially this has come about as people who have not experienced the work personally speak of it in the same laudatory terms. Listening to discussions about projects they do not know personally has led me to wonder if the air of mystery that surrounds the work has come about because it is not easily accessible. Has this allowed it to take on a life that is perhaps more “real” than the actual pieces? It was with these thoughts in mind that I also began the McRobert’s book. Given my meandering thoughts, I was glad that McRobert included some of her own experiences with the project in the study, and some critical commentary of it as well. For example, I was surprised to read McRobert’s description of her first experience with Osmose. After signing forms releasing the art museum of any responsibility should she have a bad reaction, she was outfitted in the HMD and told inhaling would cause her to ascend and exhaling would bring her down. After an initial disorientation, when she needed the technician’s help to guide her, she got her bearings. Then her response was that she had finally seen the heaven she believed in as a child. “At first I believed I had undergone a disembodied spiritual experience, but some months later I was to agree with the artist that it had been what she intended it to be: an embodied experience with the senses fully engaged with this artificially-produced, three-dimensional space.” (p. 23). Given that the sessions are restricted to fifteen minutes, I must admit some level of amazement that she was able to move from disorientation to the sublime so quickly. By contrast, some who have reviewed Davies work do not speak of comparable experiences. For example, McRobert conveys that David Liss, in the Montreal Gazette pointed out that, to him, the complex technology speaks more of technological mediation than proximity to nature, adding that a quiet stroll through the woods would accomplish such ends more and to a greater effect. What McRobert failed to clearly explain was the exact nature of his experience. Did he reach this conclusion because he failed to have a profound experience with the art?
The ambiguity in this kind of critical response reminded me that one of the drawbacks inherent in this kind of virtual reality work is its inaccessibility. Even when it is exhibited, it is necessary to schedule a session. Both the scheduling limitations and the need to travel to a showing make it difficult to have a first-person experience of Davies work and thus most of us are unable to judge its success through personal experience. This kind of book helps to some degree in educating us about the work, and there is a great deal of information at Davies’ website <http://www.immersence.com> as well. Laurie McRobert, too, has also put together a website that is a fine resource, with links to data mentioned in the book that could not be included and visuals as well; see http://www.mcrobert.org. All in all, while Char Davies's Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality cannot provide an actual experience of Char Davies work, it does fulfill its intention of educating the reader to how virtual reality differs from traditional artistic media. It also convincingly examines the potential of immersive virtual art for expanding our imaginative horizons.
In summary, Davies work is intended to provide viewers with a sense of being in a profound and fluid relationship with the virtual realms she creates so that the immersant will re-enter the real world with a greater sensitivity to “being-in-the-world.” She also hopes her work will remind her audience that we are slowly destroying nature and thus compel a greater appreciation of actual nature. With goals that are more in tune with Eastern philosophies, like Buddhism, than the Western monotheisms, it is not surprising to find she feels some connectedness with nature. More thought provoking is what it means that the nature she depicts is quite different from “real” nature. In time, if the projects become more accessible to a larger audience, perhaps more of us will know.