#char davies

[southcciity]

Osmose (1995) by Char Davies via immersence

[davidrussellschilling]

Immersive Virtual Reality Causes & Consequences

Immersive Virtual Reality Causes & Consequences

C O N T E N T S:

KEY TOPICS

This experiment closely resembles an immersive virtual reality environment involving a manipulation task, in which the lags are caused by position sensing and rendering delays as described in Section 2.1.(More…)

POSSIBLY USEFUL

When asking how physical and virtual acts compare, particularly in terms of their consequences for the people involved, the obvious place to…

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[davidrussellschilling]

Immersive Virtual Reality Causes & Consequences

Immersive Virtual Reality Causes & Consequences

C O N T E N T S: KEY TOPICS This experiment closely resembles an immersive virtual reality environment involving a manipulation task, in which the lags are caused by position sensing and rendering delays as described in Section 2.1.(More…) POSSIBLY USEFUL When asking how physical and virtual acts compare, particularly in terms of their consequences for the people involved, the obvious place to…

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[posthumanwanderings]

Ephémère (1998) - Char Davies - 16 min.

(from article ‘An Intense Dose of Virtual Reality’) “Once again, Char Davies is leaving people speechless. Visitors to ‘Ephémère,’ Davies's new work of virtual-reality art, exit the installation unable to communicate, as if they had been in another world. Which, in a way, they were. ‘People were being quite emotionally overcome,’ Davies said in a telephone interview a few days after the work's June 26 premiere at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, ‘but I don't really have anybody's response because none of them could talk.’ As further evidence of Davies's power to create a computer-generated environment that is as intensely involving as it is aesthetically effective, visitors are reporting that their 15 minutes in ‘Ephémère’ seem to pass in two or three, even though they must wear a clunky headset to be plunged into the simulated 3-D cosmos.

Davies, who is based in Montreal, is among the few artists working in virtual reality, a medium usually found in theme parks and game arcades, where paying customers can help defray the hefty development costs and low-tech museum executives don't have to sweat over complex equipment. At its best, VR is an immersive experience that momentarily replaces one's surroundings and can give a heightened sense of consciousness; conversely, it can feel like a gimmick that will never transcend its inherent artificiality.

Feminist and queer-or estranged-politics in digital environments use this meeting of a collectivity of media (by definition multimedia) to shock us, as a means of social critique and commentary, and to engage us in conversation. Using the mainstream media's tools against itself, feminist Virtual Realty artists Charlotte Davies and Brenda Laurel and Rachel Strickland incorporate everyday sensations and make them strange and new through startling juxtapositions that affect us on the level of sensation. This is a synaesthesia so tactile that it stings the eyes, ears and mind simultaneously. Situated knowledges like these are Donna Haraway's call for a feminist ‘embodied objectivity’ (189) that allows for a ‘particular and specific embodiment’ with a physically grounded perspective providing truer insights (190). To this end, Laurel and Strickland and Davies all set out to create exploratory environments that alter the way we inhabit our physical bodies.”

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[posthumanwanderings]

[posthumanwanderings]

Osmose (1995) - Char Davies - 16 min. 

“Real-time video capture of immersive environment ‘Osmose’, during a fly-through performance at the Musée d’art contemporain, Montréal, August 1995.“

[autumnharrison-blog]

From Char Davies' essay "Changing Space: Virtual Realities as an Arena of Embodied Being," on her virtual reality installation Osmose:

"...we have observed a pattern of behavior among participants during immersion. After becoming accustomed to the interface of breath and balance, most people intent on 'doing,' traveling around to see as much as possible in what appears to be an extension of everyday goal-oriented, action-based behavior. After ten minutes or so, however, most undergo a change: their facial expressions and body gestures loosen, and instead of rushing, they slow down, mesmerized by their own perceptions within space. In this final phase, attention seems to be directed toward the unusual sensations of floating and seeing through things in what becomes a kind of slow-motion perceptual 'free-fall.'"

Of her entire essay, the effects of Davies' virtual immersive environment on its participants interests me the most. The effects described above are considered by Davies to be "psychically innovating," a la Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, as well as demonstrating "perceptual expansion" as termed by Arthur Deikman's "Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience." These terms set off a light bulb in my head, creating a pathway to another class I'm taking with Bryan Reynolds entitled "Transversal Performance," which focuses on discussing how theatre and other events in life cause what he calls "transversal movements." In my opinion, psychic innovation, perceptual expansion, and transversal movement may all be used interchangeably; each term refers to a change occurring in an individual that deviates from previous, circumscribed ways of thinking and can be achieved by entering an alternative space (whether physical, psychological, emotional, etc.).

Reynolds' concept of transversal movement applies in an even deeper way than just corresponding vocabulary -- the effects of Davies' installation on her participants can be explained by Reynolds' theories. He explains the process of undergoing transversal movement through the three consecutive states of "becomings," "comings-to-be," and finally "goings." Becomings is basically what occurs when an individual makes a conscious choice to adopt ideas/characteristics that are different from or outside their normal scope of the world. In Osmose, the "pattern of behavior" observed in the participants begins with their willing and active desire to explore and in a way become their new virtual environment, or their becomings. Then a change occurs and the participants find themselves relaxing and beginning to relinquish their control over what happens in their environment -- this is the comings-to-be stage in which the participants find themselves changing (becoming) in ways they did not anticipate (because the experience has become more than just an "everyday goal-oriented" task).

Finally, the participants enter "free-fall," suggesting they have surrendered to the new environment and are now just along for the ride among its strange and new sensations. This is the final stage of goings -- so many new, perception-changing things are happening that the participants can no longer control the change or stop it from happening. They have now undergone transversal movement (or psychic innovation/perceptual expansion).

While the focus of Osmose is on the individual experience, Reynolds applies his transversal theory to the theatre to encourage the potential of movements on a broader scale. That said, I would be amazed to see what they could accomplish if they teamed up and combined Davies' virtual reality innovations with Reynolds' theatre of consciousness.

[canonsofexclusion]

Simulations and Simulacra

Simulations, Shanken describes, are copies whereas simulacra are reproductions where distinctions between original and copy become murky and the simulacra has the same level of primacy and authenticity as the original. 

Artists: Myron Krueger, Char Davies, and Jeffrey Shaw

Image by Jeffrey Shaw "Legible City, Responsive Environment" 1988-91