I-CHASS|WED 7/30 Part II

(I was swamped last week so blogging I-Chass had to take a back seat - apologies! Here are the last days of that memorable July 27 - Aug 3 2008 week!) 

Wednesday afternoon was going to be very art-driven... I knew this from the program and was looking forward to it!

We split in two groups to experience the CAVE. Alan Craig was our tour guide. The space had an ImmersaDesk and an interesting looking treadmill that was sometimes used in conjunction with the environments. We were given glasses and one lucky guy got the wand. He first maneuvered our exploration ? but in the end we all tried it!

We first navigated Crayonland, an environment that looked like a 3D depiction of a flat world drawn with crude crayon - I know it sounds an oxymoron "a 3D depiction of a flat world" - but this is what we were told and it was exactly how it felt!

 You can read more about this world created by Dave Pape  here.

The author describes it as anti-photorealistic.

The world created for Crayoland is a 200' x 200' field, filled with trees, flowers, and other bucolic elements, the smallest of which like rocks and flower can be picked up. The environment is aurally very sophisticated considering it was first presented in 1998 - with several positional sounds such as the quack of the ducks as you approach the lake.

What is so historically important about Crayoland is that is was one of the first applications to implement navigation through virtual space by pointing the wand in the direction one wants to move, and pressing the joystick forward in the "y" direction. 

Caption: Crayoland (source: http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/projects/crayoland/ )

We saw many other environments. In two of them  - snowboarding and an exotic Asian environment with minor elevations but where you could fly around - I felt so dizzy I had to turn on the wand to someone else. of the 4 experiencing the environments only one did not experience motion sickness - at least apparently - Kudos James!). Craig of course was fine - but how many hours did he spend there?

Craig made two interesting comments about our dizziness:

- that from all the CAVE tours he had facilitated he had noticed that once one person says she feels dizzy then everyone feels dizziness to.

- that the scholars that claim that tracking is really secondary to embodiment must have never been in the CAVE (or I guess, a CUBE or a similar environment).

I decided to focus on Crayonland because on one hand it is striking how a 10 year old environment can still be so compelling but also because I thought it connects well to our next tour of the afternoon: the Krannert art museum.

Damon Baker is the Art, Design, and Technology Associate Curator at the Museum. Specifically, he curates the intermedia gallery. As the name implies, this gallery hosts exhibitions by artists whose work fall between traditional disciplines.

What struck me the most is that the gallery didn?t just display the work. They actually engage with the artists they exhibit and become involved in the creation process. Using Baker's own words " since advances in technology, particularly that in computer technology, in recent years have re-arranged the boundaries between so many disciplines we of course reflect this by strongly embracing art that could not be produced without making use of these new opportunities."

Baker then showed us CANVAS, a custom built CAVE that was developed in collaboration between the museum and the Beckman Institute.

The work that Baker showed us in CANVAS - Children of Arcadia - took  my breath away... I must say I have since then been researching the authors, Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking, who had an imminent exhibition in Beijing.

Caption: Children of Arcadia, by Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking (Photo source: http://childrenofarcadia.com/ )

I hope I am accurate when I say that the environment makes use of the idea of machinima - using the 3D of game environments (in fact Skwarek and used blitz 3D)- but rather than simple sequences or movies there is a complex interaction between the stockmarket (literally, the engine tracks the performance of the stock market in real time and reflects it in shaping the environment - as grim or peaceful depending on that performance. More info on this work here. Skwarek and I interacted a bit through email (that is a wonderful thing about blogging!) - he asked me to mention other folks that should also be credited for Children of Arcadia - Damon Baker of course, as well as programmer  Arthur Peters.

Skwarek's work has been exhibited in Providence, Rhode Island at RISD. He is a Brooklyn artist, whose network of curators is based in New York, Chicago, Beijing, and Champaign (through Damon Baker). Hocking teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago's digital media program among other schools.

In 2007, the Krannert Art Museum:

- was one of the hosts for Intersculpt an international biennial exhibition of digital sculpture, along with two other locations in France

- exhibited work in architectural lighting design coming (material scientists in John Roger's laboratory, UIUC,)

- exhibited Ben Smith's networked multiuser virtual world, which can be played as a virtual musical instrument by multiple players. Smith is a phd student in music at UIUC (cultural computing lab at the siebel center for CS).

Thanks to Alan and Damon for the great tours!!!