As technology started to immerse itself into mainstream culture and everyday life, art did not escape its influence. The transformation meant electronic media with more information, video and interactive pieces. Since the 1970s, this form of digital art has become increasingly popular as artists create virtual realities in cyberspace. Although the works are not created with the personalization of a brush stroke, the added touch of digital gives pieces more viewers and an ability to capture the modern world. Artists, such as Graham Nicholls, Chico MacMurtrie and Ken Rinaldo accomplish this and other forms of specialty art in various ways. Their work, especially, are contemporary, informative, moving and interactive, which adds an added layer of meaning to their pieces that might not have otherwise been there without technology.
Graham Nicholls, an artist from London, is known for the relatively new content his work covers, such as hypnosis and psi abilities. The artist, who was born in 1975, says he has had several out-of-body experiences which color his work with an interesting twist of sci-fi and psychopathology (London College of Spirituality). His defining work, “The Living Image,” was a groundbreaking showing of technoetic art when it showed at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in London in 2004. The piece features an urban setting that shows silhouettes of viewers in its confines. Each individual creates his or her own experience in the virtual reality. One story describes “The Living Image” like this:
“The places visited on the screen are all inspired by the makers’ personal connections with the area. You could find yourself in Smithfields Market or under the Westway, but be warned, none of these passageways are filled with sweetness and light.
“It is a bit noir,” admits Graham.
Video sequences and sound recorded at the real-life locations help to achieve a blurring of what is real and what is computer-generated.
There is the feeling of being confronted with a larger-than-life computer game, however the aim of this VR world is a little loftier” (Lewis).
The space lends itself to interesting symbolism to setting and the rush of life too. While people pass through the urban London world daily with little notice of what is around them, users of “The Living Image” find themselves wanting to explore the setting, stop to listen to sounds or touch their surroundings that they experience every day outside of the virtual world. The sense of immersion is experienced tenfold if the user uses this desire for detail to engage with “The Living Image” beyond the surface, which trigger more interactive aspects such as video and text. The piece was designed to take people into a “psychological state akin to meditation or trance” (Graham), which it duly accomplishes through immersion in a virtual space.
In a completely different virtual space, Chico MacMurtrie accomplishes the same interactive art. An artist from New Mexico, specializes in robotic works where the piece reacts to a user’s movements, much like Graham’s piece “The Living Image.” In MacMurtrie’s “The Forest of Telescoping Totem Poles,” he creates a virtual forest with physical inflatable totem poles. The size of the poles is triggered by users motions upon entering the exhibit. MacMurtrie calls the interaction shapes immerging from the inner body:
“Upon entering the installation, the visitors' movements though the Forest trigger the artery to push air into the Totems, causing them to tumesce with a pulsing rhythm. As the Totems rise, they reveal a plethora of rich imagery consisting of a collage of the human condition, merged with the organic shapes that come from plant life and the inner body.
Once the visitor is in the Forest among the Totem Poles and becomes involved in their dance of upward growth, the entire floor is activated by the strong pulsing of the artery. The Totems continue to climb and push towards the ceiling, struggling to reveal their hidden forms. perhaps their destinies, ultimately reaching beyond the ceiling” (MacMurtrie).
The shapes that come from the experience closely resemble human and plant life, adding a curious symbolism in the work’s content through connecting humans with the natural world.
Similarly, Ken Rinaldo creates bio-art to further show the connection between nature, technology and humankind. Rinaldo, an American artist and educator, focuses on ecological issues and interspecies communication in attempt to unveil group consciousness and interspecies interactions. “Autopoiesis 2000,” an artificial life installation is one of Rinaldo’s many pieces that implement his ideas and trademark specialties.
“Autopoiseis 2000” is a robotic series of 15 sculptures and musical that behave based on the participant’s communications. The sculptures’ motions are triggered by infared sensors that bring arms of the work within inches of the user. The effects are randomized and often follow a “follow the leader” type motion (Rinaldo).
Each of these artists break away from the traditional mouse-click interactivity that comes with many forms of digital and electronic art. Instead, they focus on immersion and use body and motion to determine space and reaction. This new form of interactivity creates a deeper connection between the art and message with its viewer.
In one analysis of the medium, Char Davies puts the connection between body and space in an essay titled “Osmose: Notes on being in immersive virtual space”:
“Our culture's privileging of mind over matter has led to devaluation of the body, as well as of women and various "others". Historically this world-view has contributed to the plundering of non-human beings and their habitats as objects for human use: the negative implications of this stance are becoming ever more apparent as evidence of worldwide environmental degradation increases. As "unspoiled" unmediated Nature recedes from our lives through urbanisation of exploding human populations and habitat destruction, there is evidence that while the biological consequences for many species (including ourselves) are devastating, the effects may be psychologically damaging as well. This premise, known as the Biophilia Hypothesis, suggests that the increasing loss of access to Nature—as a source of our human spirituality—may prove to be at the root of our collective psyche's deepest wounds (Wilson 1993).
As a culture, we are on the cusp of a new technological paradigm: the emergence of cyberspace. As a means of global communication it will alter our world significantly. We must however be wary: as a realm ruled by mind, cyberspace is the epitome of Cartesian desire, in that it enables us to create worlds where we have total control, where the presence of aging mortal flesh and animal-others is absent, where there is, to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, no "dirt". Popular and media-hyped expectations of "virtual reality" seem to reflect a longing to transcend the limitations of our physical surroundings and, indeed, its long-term effect may be to seduce us to turn away en masse from our bodies and Nature, enchanted and distracted while we continue wasting the resources that sustain us and erasing the futures of countless other-beings on the Earth” (Davies, Osmose).
This creates an interesting change in thought for many participants: By changing space, by leaving the space of one's visual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating. … For we do not change place, we change our nature” (Bachelard, The Poetics of Space).
Citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_art
http://www.grahamnicholls.com/
http://www.thelivingimage.org/big.html
http://amorphicrobotworks.org/works/index.htm
http://kenrinaldo.com/
http://www.immersence.com/publications/char/1998-CD-Digital_Creativity.html
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