While moving forward on a new body of work in 2023 for Lightspace Modulator — my continuing intermedia art endeavor — I’ve also been taking some time for a look back at the history of the project and a review of some of the conceptual underpinnings of the process.
In July at a venue in downtown LA I gave a talk that described some of the background, historical references and motivation behind the development of the VS4 project. This discussion touched upon a range of topics — from Wagner and early 20th-century avant-garde art, to UX and design of the current revision of the software visual instrument.
“… we cease to live in the multidimensional world of reality … we have substituted for this … a secondhand world, a ghost-world, in which everyone lives a secondhand and derivative life. The Greeks had a name for this pallid simulacrum of real existence: they called it Hades, and this kingdom of shadows seems to be the ultimate destination of our mechanistic and mammonistic culture.” – Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics, 1952.
Every medium is a context for a message, with characteristics that shape any narrative it conveys. At the same time, every medium has its own contexts: historical, cultural, and technological. These two assertions could not be more relevant in the case of what we call virtual reality – and an understanding of the various aspects of these contexts is valuable when imagining and designing VR experiences.
This is a story from a long time ago. It has come up again and again in various contexts, but the message, the meaning, remains consistent; an essential concept that remains relevant to just about everything I do:
Years ago, in art school, one of my studio classes was a drawing workshop led by Professor Walker. Usually a session involved three or four hours of drawing in charcoal or pencil or ink, often with models. From time to time there was a lecture before we started working, and on one occasion we arrived in the studio to find an array of varied images tacked on the wall – ranging from student works to recognizable drawings by well-known masters. The professor announced that we’d be having a discussion before we started drawing that day, and the topic was a simple question: “Look at all these images … and I want you to tell me which ones are … art.”
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