Will Overington <esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk> (05/17/91)
17th May 1991 Will Overington Department of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, Coventry Polytechnic, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, England. The Teleutopia of Virtual Reality Objects is steadily progressing. I have now written a program, which runs on a PC, which will take in the contents of a .vvv file containing commands as previously detailed and produce a view of the object after a horizontal rotation of any desired angle theta and a vertical rotation of any desired angle phi. At this stage the view is not a perspective view, but merely a filling of all specified polygonal shapes. It does mean, however, that an idea of the design contained in a .vvv file can be quickly perceived. The program is written in Turbo Pascal. ---- This is an extract from my sort of science fiction style book that I am writing. Here, Marco, from the year 1456, has passed through the time warp and is just over 540 years into his future. The Secretary of the Telesoftware Institute is showing Marco around the exhibits in the foyer of the Telesoftware Institute. "And here", said the Secretary, "is an exhibition of Teleutopian Art". Marco looked with fascination at the collection of items before him. She continued, "You will remember that, a teleutopia not being an organization, it was not possible to issue trading stamps for software sent in to a teleutopia." "Also, the mechanism of the way that teleutopias were formed, as informal groupings of software from interested people, meant that, in practice, there were no funds available to provide redemption merchandise for any such trading stamps anyway." "And, of course, it was more the adventure of getting a teleutopia going that attracted people, though with the hope that, in the longer term, something more enduring would result." "In that spirit of adventure there arose the concept of teleutopian art, that is items of art, inexpensive in the materials used in their manufacture, yet given, not as a trading stamp, but, in effect, as an item of thanks for the contribution of software to the teleutopia." "Some items of teleutopian art were made of ceramic and items of roughly the shape of large seals such as appeared on medieval documents, namely thick circular discs about four inches in diameter and an inch thick, were quite a popular design." "Many types of ornamentation, including lettering such as .eut and other file name extensions used in the knowledge bases of the teleutopias, were used, often in a raised format, giving a very three dimensional effect." "These became quite collectable, being a link between the arts and the sciences, and between the traditional and the futuristic, all together in each item of art." Marco looked at the designs, abstract designs, calligraphic designs, a medieval printing press and so on. Looking at one design, he asked "What please is that?" "A communications satellite", replied the Secretary, "You will learn much of them later." "And", said the Secretary, "this is only part of teleutopian art". "Some of it is electronic based, including some very nice virtual reality items, some of which are available as equivalent solid items, such as the seal-like items, and some of which are not, indeed could not be, made in solid form." ---- How do readers think that virtual reality might be used as an artistic medium? +-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+ Will Overington Department of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, Coventry Polytechnic, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, England. +-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+ On the matter of the design of utopias generally.... How about a non-profit HEALTHY DRAGON TRADING STAMP COMPANY which sells trading stamps to retailers in the usual way, and licenses printed coupons on breakfast cereal boxes and so on, but where the redemption merchandise is vouchers to pay for prescriptions, dental work, glasses &c.. How could virtual reality be used to exposit this idea and test whether this is a workable idea? +-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+-*-+ --