garry@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Garry Beirne) (11/09/90)
ART AND VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS -- AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND STATUS REPORT
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The Banff Centre for the Arts is establishing an artistically defined
laboratory in conjunction with academic and industrial collaborators for
"virtual reality" research. The objective is to research and experiment with
virtual technologies as artistic media. Virtual technologies involve the use
of three-dimensional computer graphics and sound to create a computer-
generated virtual space within which the participant/occupant interacts and
mediates. The intention is to explore the cultural, social and philosophical
foundations for virtual reality, in a technically state-of-the-art context.
The project will involve, at its various stages, visual and electronic media
artists, writers, and composers from across Canada, the U.S.A., Europe and
Japan, working with programmers and researchers located at the Banff Centre
and at the University of Alberta. A public symposium will open the Fall, 1991
phase of the project; publications and public events will conclude this phase.
An international tour would possibly extend the project. An advisory
committee staffed with expert resource people will advise in the project's co-
ordination and technical progress.
1. Introduction
Can artists imagine uses for Virtual Reality systems whose
defining features retain a connection to a non-artificial
conception of nature? Whose use is capable of leading to a
critique of the world which produces them?
In recent years, new technologies for simulation have been developed which
pose extraordinary challenges to human creativity. This latest confluence of
computer science, art, and philosophy has come to be called Virtual Reality,
connoting computer-generated interactive environments utilizing three-
dimensional graphic scenes and soundscapes. This new type of co-mingling
between the human body/mind and technology can be considered the bio-
apparatus.
In the words of the recent conference on Cyberspace that took place in Texas,
virtual environments have gone from the speculative to the "in construction"
phase. As virtual environments enter this new quantum phase of development
there is compelling need to focus on their cultural cum artistic implications.
Laboratory demonstrations have made us familiar with the function, conferences
and trade shows have demonstrated that the equipment works, and systems are
now appearing for controlling telepresent operators in remote or dangerous
environments or for alternative methods of visualizing information; at the
next imaginative horizon lies the prospect of worlds of artistic expression
programmed in virtual reality. As yet there is no facility that allows
artistic experimentation and reflection to take place. Perhaps because this
horizon appears so close, the technology is easily over-sold and the hard
questions tend to be overlooked: What is it good for? How should it be
designed?
The issue of the contemporary bio-apparatus is complex. Its investigation
requires the co-ordination of technical, artistic and intellectual expertise.
The technology of Virtual Reality is still far too expensive to be purchased
by individuals; those research institutions which possess systems tend to work
in isolation from critical or artistic input. In any case, the tools are
still at such a primitive stage that it is best to speak of their status as
pre-artistic. Let us be specific here about the terms used -- when we speak
of artistic exploration, we mean more than the use of artistic skills to
design the visual look of a 3D space -- we refer to the determination of
deeper conceptual aspects. In turn, we think that these conceptual aspects
must inform the design of tools, which requires a deep dialogue between
thinkers, artists and technologists over sufficient time to influence design
criteria.
On a global scale, it is becoming widely recognized that collaboration between
industry, scientific research, artistic practice and intellectual reflection
are necessary to produce significant advances in what one European consortium
calls "Technoculture". (We have also noted the recent announcement by Japan's
MITI Q- Ministry for International Trade and Industry Q- to dedicate major
resources towards virtual reality research.) In developing our approach to
the subject, the Banff Centre convened a panel of leading researchers in the
field to thoroughly review the current state-of-the-art of virtual reality
technology and practice. We have also given serious attention to the modes of
inquiry necessary to address such a complex subject as "virtuality." An
interdisciplinary group of artists, philosophers, writers and technologists
will be selected for our project: the conceptual exchange, in a technical
environment where ideas can actually be implemented, is what will distinguish
our project, and will make it of capital importance on an international level.
2. The Nature of the Project
Twenty artists and writers, working in a variety of media, will be in
residence at The Banff Centre for ten weeks in the Fall of 1991,
from October 7 to December 14. They will work in:
electronic media: sound, computers, video
visual arts media: painting, sculpture, textiles, printmaking
writers: fiction, philosophy, criticism
The artists will come from all regions of Canada,the USA, Europe and several
Pacific Rim countries. They will be selected by invitation and by
application. The artists will not be commissioned as such, but will receive
basic expenses and a stipend to allow them to participate.
Several interactive virtual environment systems will be developed or obtained
during the 6 - 9 months in advance of the residency and made available to the
artists. The development of the tools occurs in phases, described in greater
detail below. The primary objective of the residency is to expose critical
artists to working examples of virtual technologies, and from this exposure,
to filter the broad range of possible environments down to a handful of rich,
distinct projects. These developments form the focus for the subsequent
production phases of the project.
With the opening in 1988 of its new Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building
facilities for media art and technology, The Banff Centre has sought to
develop a unique function as a bridge between, on the one hand, the arts and
culture sector and on the other, scientific research in new media. This
function depends on a wide network of contacts in both sectors. At an early
stage in the planning of the present project, panels of experts have been
convened to advise on technical issues. As well, we have sought the high-
level input in artistic planning stages of notable specialists in the transfer
and application of new imaging and sound technologies in the arts.
Collaboration with industry and with other research efforts is an essential
part of the strategy. As hardware is in a rapid state of development and
improvement, we do not wish to commit to any particular standard or type of
machine; therefore, we have approached several corporations for assistance in
obtaining high-performance computers as donations for a fixed term. We have
also sought a research partner, and have been lucky to find at The University
of Alberta the only Canadian academic facility already actively conducting
research in this area. Professor Mark Green's Edmonton laboratory includes
computer facilities, technical support and graduate students ready to work on
components of the research and development.
3. Statement of Creative Intent
The following text was written by the project's principal artist-directors,
Catherine Richards and Nell Tenhaaf:
This project is about the bio-apparatus: a site of complicity between body,
mind and apparatus. Artists, writers and thinkers are being invited to Banff
for a ten-week residency to address this complex issue. As 'virtuality' can
be seen as an extreme instance of the bio-apparatus, the residency will
explore virtual environment technology and its implications.
Some related issues are:
- the fictions of science and the science of fiction
- virtuality as the site for postmodern debates on representation
- the idea of machines as essentially social assemblages: virtuality tools
as an expression of social discourses already in place
- the tool as a political site for the shifts in mediascape and its
definition: the military, the American 'world culture' and its media,
the drug cowboys, medicine
- the technical and scientific relations between mind/body, user/use,
knower/known, transforming through technologies
- artists' definitions of machines: futurism, bachelor machines
- the nature of the apparatus itself, the way it works with the body: probe,
interaction, prosthesis
- external and internal representations of the gendered body
- man-machine interaction, cyborgs, boundary degeneration
4. Documentation and Publication
The Fall 1991 Residency at The Banff Centre will open with a public symposium.
The purpose of the symposium is twofold: to outline a wide range of
philosophical and artistic approaches to the theme of "bio-apparatus" and
"virtuality", and allow for a public component (lectures, presentations,
discussions, etc.). It will consist of at least 5 speakers and discussions
that are spread over the first several weeks of the residency.
The texts of these speakers, combined with ongoing verbal and textual
documentation, will be compiled over the course of the residency. Visual
documentation will include live video footage, photographs and recordings of
real and prototype virtual reality sessions. A book publication of this
material is proposed as part of the budget; in addition discussions are
underway with the Canadian Journal for Social and Political Thought to produce
a special-issue publication of the print materials. Publication aspects will
be the responsibility of The Centre's Walter Phillips Gallery, which has
extensive experience in this kind of publishing. The publication will carry
the important ideas developed in the Banff Centre residency to a broader
audience.
Banff Centre staff will produce a video-document of the residency, which will
be available on normal video formats.
5. Collaboration with University of Alberta
The research and development portions of the Art and Virtual Environments
project will occur simultaneously in Edmonton, at the University of Alberta,
and in Banff, at The Banff Centre for the Arts.
Professor Mark Green established the Interactive Computer Graphics Laboratory
at the University of Edmonton 6.5 years ago. In that time he has been widely
recognized as an important figure in computer-human interaction research. For
the past 15 months Dr. Green's group have been working with a headmounted
display and 3D glove input device, both essential tools for virtual reality
research. They have published a number of papers on their work.
It is with the users' cognitive model of the environments in which they work,
and the techniques at their disposal to affect their environments that are of
primary interest to the computer-human interface researchers involved with
this project.
The Banff Centre is providing a high-level application that will incorporate
and evaluate the techniques that Professor Green is currently exploring.
The technological development will be split between Banff and Edmonton roughly
as follows:
Edmonton
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The low-level drivers, interaction techniques and graphics routines will be
developed by the members of Professor Green"s group, and put into the form of
a programmer"s toolkit.
Banff
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The actor-based utilities, behavioural modeling, and tool building (for the
artist) will take place in Banff.
Banff & Edmonton
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The development of communication tools to allow the synchronization of virtual
reality systems in different locations. The goal is to develop the ability
for two participants in different geographical locations to communicate via a
single virtual environment.
A high-speed telecommunications link between Banff and Edmonton is being
pursued to facilitate this joint research and development.
An interesting and potentially valuable side-effect of this working method may
be the development of a virtual environment facility for interacting with a
collaborator at great geographic distance. It should be possible for virtual
environment occupants in Banff and Edmonton to communicate with each other
through the virtual environments.
6. Industrial Collaborators
Alias, a Toronto-based computer graphics company, is our principal industrial
collaborator. Through Dr. Martin Tuori, we are approaching manufacturers of
high-performance computer hardware; companies identified so far are Silicon
Graphics, Inc., and IBM Canada. Alias will also donate substantial software
to the project, and negotiations are in progress for a software training and
support contract.
Support is being sought from several other companies, including Apple, Alberta
Government Telephone, Ithica Software, and Commodore Business Machines.
7. Information
At The Banff Centre, contact:
Program Co-ordinator or Garry Beirne
Media Arts Head Computer Media
The Banff Centre for the Arts Media Arts
Box 1020
Banff, Alberta (403) 762-6641
T0L 0C0
garry@cpsc.UCalgary.CA
(403) 762-6651
At The University of Alberta, contact:
Dr. Mark Green
Professor of Computer Science
(403) 492-4584
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Garry Beirne
Head, Computer Media
Media Arts
The Banff Centre for the Arts
Banff, Alberta
T0L 0C0
garry@cpsc.UCalgary.CA