Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being
Changing space implies an important fact that virtual reality is changing viewers’ usual sensibilities. However, the participants- or immersants will experience a whole new communication with a space that they have never seen before. Technology enables us to interact with cyber virtual world. In fact, the space does not change, but the nature has change through our visions.Char Davies, an international recognition for pioneering artworks that employ the technology of virtual reality. Davies developed his work as natural virtual worlds which enable the immersants to experience cyberspace with their body as in human-computer interaction. Again, the changing of one's usual sensibilities of space can prompt powerful emotional and psychological responses.
Davies and her team introduces Osmose (1994-95), an interactive virtual environment that users use a stereoscopic head mounted display, which goes along with three dimensional sound that gradually immerse the participants into another space with their breath and balance. Once the users are interacting with the space, breathing is used as a tool to control locations as up and down and body movement will control directions.
Osmose demonstrate an important aspect of Multimedia while it can lead immersants into a total new experience. Breathing can be considered as a relaxing tool that clam the users into another level. Not only that, Osmose consists many environments and spaces. For example, one of the environment- Leaf is a space designs like leaf, but once the users are immersed into the environment, it really collapse the sense of reality and virtual world.
Next, another fact of Osmose is that the audiences do not have options to change the environment since the environments are settled. The whole point is the experience for the users to interact in a total new space, and it is just like the experience of watching a movie in the theater, which the screen will be the total focus to the participants. The piece can depict as a world of stage instead of world of art. Finally, the responses and expressions from the users will be the experience through the piece.
In short, this article inspires us to look in a deeper depth of the theory of immersion. Especially, in the work of Osmose, it focuses mainly between user experience with the technology, such as three dimensional interface and use of breath. Because of that, viewers' participation is the central to the work, and they are the main characters in the narrative, which they are along in the space observing the environment.
