Bridg­ing Worlds for En­hanced En­gage­ment

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Variable Reality – Inter-formalities in Digital/Analogue Arts

• Bridg­ing Worlds for En­hanced En­gage­ment

• Dew Harrison

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Variable Reality – Inter-formalities in Digital/Analogue Arts

  The vir­tual worlds of the new cen­tury are the play­grounds for artists to ex­plore space and time, the dig­i­tal ob­jects cre­ated here are ex­pe­ri­enced by avatar, with­out the full range of sen­sory per­cep­tions we use when con­fronting the real world. To ex­pe­ri­ence the vir­tual as a re­al­ity we need sen­sors con­nected to our phys­i­cal bod­ies or to solid ob­jects to sim­u­late real-world sen­sa­tions. In order to fur­ther en­gage view­ers as par­tic­i­pants in their work, con­tem­po­rary artists are ex­plor­ing ways of syn­the­siz­ing the ma­te­r­ial phys­i­cal real world with that of the vir­tual. This pre­sen­ta­tion will ex­plore one of the pro­jects cur­rently un­der­way at CADRE, Uni­ver­sity of Wolver­hamp­ton that ex­am­ple ways of pre­sent­ing the vir­tual as an al­ter­na­tive real. Shift-Life, is a vir­tual world of Dar­win­ian fan­tasy sweet-like crea­tures pro­jected into a sand-pit box which re­spond to the phys­i­cal ac­tions of vis­i­tors caus­ing real-time up­heavals in their en­vi­ron­ment. Through di­rectly pour­ing liq­uids, ham­mer­ing and ad­just­ing lights, when in­ter­act­ing with this hands-on in­stal­la­tion, the real world en­croaches upon the vir­tual caus­ing a life-and-death strug­gle to an ar­ti­fi­cial life form. This pro­ject was di­rectly in­flu­enced by ear­lier works con­cern­ing Mar­cel Duchamp’s Large Glass, where crea­ture-like be­hav­iors were given to Duchampian ob­jects to am­plify their fa­mil­ial re­la­tions.

Category:

• Panel