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By Franz Fischnaller - January 2001
We are at a particularly revolutionary moment in history. Digital media is influencing the arts and shaping the way of culture. It is giving form to new artistic languages, revolutionising composition, the treatment of images, the concept of 'perspective' and the perception of space. The act of creation and the production processes of the author are suffering radical changes. Possibilities to experience the intangible are increasing. The invisible takes form.
There is a revolution in the relationship between 'art' and the artist, as well as the mode of perception and the fruition of the visitor in relation to a digital piece. This means new forms of perceiving, of communicating, of informing, of reacting, of sharing, of distraction, of thinking, of projecting, and of creating.
Franz Fischnaller expounds on this virtual revolution. He compares Virtual Reality's origins with those of the Cinematography Industry and contemplates whether it too will become an established technology.
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Countries with a rich cultural heritage, such as those in the Mediterranean are amongst the more fortunate when it comes to consideration of achievements in the fields of architecture, art, science, and literature. There are enormous possibilities for marketing, commercialisation and income generation from the organisation and management of these historic resources with the aid of the new technology.
F.A.B.R.I.CATORS [1], an interdisciplinary group concerned with the integration of technology, communication, art and design, strongly believe that the integration of the existing cultural patrimony with digital arts and new technological systems can produce an intense marriage. This integration could create an interesting, evolutionary and above all productive blending that could give rise to a new tendency in the fields of art, science, culture, and the economy.
There are some countries which have succeeded in organising and managing their cultural patrimony, based on tradition and some innovation; and some cities which have resolved many economic and social issues by making their cultural heritage a source of income and one of constant growth in many ways. The Italian cities, for example, rich in cultural patrimony, continue to manage these treasures almost exclusively under the traditional umbrella of tourism, failing to take advantage of the many possibilities that the new technologies could provide in managing a 'new' type of tourism, based on the existing cultural patrimony. The reasons and factors are various. However one of the main causes that the system has not been able to, or does not want to grasp or understand adequately are the capacities and potentialities of the digital media, and how through this technological tool it could recuperate its dynamism in the arts. In general terms it could be observed that there is not enough projection toward the present or the future and not enough renovation in the use and approach of the information.
It would appear that in general the Italian approach is not able to manage this amount of potential treasure in an up to date way by exploiting the potential the new technology can provide in the field of education, information, culture and the arts. Likewise, in the potential creation of new tendencies and new market, of production and of commercialisation. As far as we know, in practical terms, there is no concrete and continuous specific plan of action in the field of art, museum management, cultural heritage, nor in the use of digital media. There is no continuity of plans and therefore there is difficulty in maintaining a concrete program with clear objectives and results. Even when a plan of action exists in theory, it is far from being a practical solution and even if there are excellent ideas, they rarely become a real praxis with clear objectives and results.
Despite the general situation, there are labs, organisations, individuals, societies, groups, movements, and events that are working in a positive direction, and it is most important to integrate these resources in order to create a concrete tendency.
Some of the Italian municipalities are making decisions and organising events, which generate new situations. The office of High Technology for official entities of Tuscany is one of the municipalities working in this direction. The eventsit has organised include 'Virtuality and Interactivity' [2], an International exhibition of Multimedia Art and applied research from Mediartech (Digital Renaissance). It is a yearly international multimedia show dedicated to cultural heritage, the arts, and the performing arts.
Franz Fischnaller, the curator of this show says: "It is within my objectives to bring the new media into the awareness of the common individual as well as the professional. Education, information, culture and art are the main priorities of 'Virtuality and Interactivity' thus an important goal is to extend the knowledge of the new media in different skill levels of society, from students to professionals, to people who are simply fascinated by what is taking place.....Similarly, our goals are to stimulate interest, to increase awareness of this new reality, to stimulate the field of cultural patrimony, to use and integrate high technology, to contribute to the evolutionary process of the media and culture, to establish a dynamic interaction within the public, and to inform on what is taking place in the areas of research, development, production, and application of digital media."
Virtual Reality (VR) and the digital media are influencing diverse disciplines. We can see more active application and development in the fields of medicine, industry, architecture, and science however much less is observed in the fields of arts, culture and the cinema. Why? Many factors are currently stopping VR from becoming a real entertainment or EDU entertainment technology, like the art form of the cinema.
These factors will have to be taken into consideration:
In most countries you will find a vast number of theatres, cinemas, etc. There are several in each city and literally thousands in some countries. This allows for the presentation and projection of that specific art form. There exist many excellent books in the world, there are also many mediocre ones and even more rubbish ones. The same situation exists in the cinema. The quantity of movies the cinematography industry presents nowadays is on the increase. Films are produced of excellent, good, regular and poor quality. This is possible because established technology exists which evolves and which is possible to work with, on diverse bases, but its not the case for VR.
One of the major problems is there is no established industry for VR for the general public. It has been kept at quite a reduced level. VR has yet to pass through the experimentation and exploitation process that the cinema has gone through when pioneers investing in technology explore its potentialities.
Another of the major problems is that there is a lack of content and production. Many authors fail to take into account, or are unable to understand that VR has to have a story as well and that a VR application has to somehow involve the public. This is not only because it's a great technology with stereo immersion, navigation, and interaction but because of its content and narrative or virtual narrative. There is still a lot to be done.
We expect that the critic, industrialist, businessman, historian, manager, authors, producers, artists and creative people generally, will grasp the importance and the magnitude of this revolution and contribute in solving the basic problems inherent to it. We need great investors, with economic means and visionaries in the digital field to place this media within a cultural and commercial framework. Whoever accomplishes this task will have achieved a truly outstanding feat and created an historical landmark.
At this point it is interesting to remember certain facts. Towards the end of the nineteenth century what was known as the Edison Kinescope Box was installed in many places of diversion. The boxes contained a series of coils that permitted the individual viewing of a movie. Edison himself refused to project the picture on a screen because he thought that the people would have no interest in viewing such a spectacle.
Officially, this novelty came into existence on the 28th of December, 1895. The Lumiere brothers made a public demonstration of their film to the spectators in the Indian Saloon of Paris. The public were very impressed with their first viewing of a film entitled 'The arrival of a train to the Ciotat station'. The effect of the locomotive, which appeared to run out of the screen, was astounding. It was the birth of cinematography. Afterwards movies were produced based on daily life and working conditions with limited content and creativity. The initial exit and impact of this novelty slowly faded into oblivion. The public started becoming bored and tired.
It seems more than likely that the Lumiere brothers were unable to fully comprehend the potential and the versatility of the technology they had invented. It was probably beyond their wildest imagination that the cinematography they presented to the public that day would grow into such a successful industry, as it became later in the United States. Then, when it took another turn with an explosion of super productions, the Lumieres´ reacted and challenged legally, this new outbreak which was termed "The battle of the Patents". After this, some of the producers went to California where the land and the living were cheap, and the possibilities of establishing themselves were better and so started the industry of Hollywood as we know today.
But let's go back in time to that instant when the interest of the public started declining! It was at that key moment in the history of the cinema that Georges Melies entered the scene. Georges Melies had capacity and used the new technology available with creativity. Melies was able to make the dreams of the people reality by showing them images of other realities on the screen. At last, the fantasy could fly through the projected light. Melies is the first inventor of cinematographical fictions; or better yet of science fictions with 'Trip to the Moon' (1902) and 'A Trip through the Impossible' (1904). They are found among the better examples of the inventor of trickery. To a certain extent the excellent productions of Melies recaptured the interest of the public and kept them stimulated. Could it be that Melies in that crucial passage helped to save the cinema from dying?
It is interesting to observe that with Virtual Reality the concept of the optic, movement and that of the camera view, have undergoing revolutionary changes. In Virtual pieces the visitor becomes the 'camera'. The cinema started out with a fixed camera. The Lumiere brothers placed a Tele-camera at a fixed point and filmed all that took place before it. It was a fixed scene of an object or a person in movement.
Possibly, the constant use of this solution was one of the determinant factors that contributed to the monotony of the cinema? After a certain period, they moved on to a more dynamic solution: the camera became movable and in consequence they integrated movement into the process of filming, which meant that the perspective of the scenes and the cinematography object became part of this movement.
In this way, the camera and its movements became closer to the nature of the human eye, permitting greater dynamism to the films and in consequence, the emotive level, the psychology and the resources of the cinema became more intensified. This change required more work to be undertaken of fundamental aspects of filming such as that of the illumination, the composition of the scene, the actors, the story, the ambiences.
The cinema defined and concretised a specific language consisting of: its codes, its communicational system and its technique of language. They created a method, which the authors use for carrying out their work until this day, and depending upon the innovations introduced, these are adapted to the system or scheme already in existence.
The movie was, and still is, seen by a public seated in front of a projection and a screen. The relation, body space and temporary time, is very well defined and delineated. It is a passive system. The intensity has to be developed on an emotive level, both mentally and psychologically. In this sense, VR is revolutionary. The visitor can intervene in the first person. The visitor is interactive. He or she can become a very flexible camera. It is the visitor who decides in to which of the scenes they want to enter, or what perspective they want to observe, if they wants to fly, to walk, to go up or down, to turn around in 360 degrees, or to penetrate the image.
There is a different style of perception between the world of the image and the action of the visitor. The parameters that define the relationship between the work and the psyche, of the author and of the public, have changed. On the other hand the tri-dimensional aspect, the scenes and the tri-dimensional stereo images give unlimited possibilities in VR, in relation to the interpretation of the image and its perception.
If we were to stop and reflect on the depth of field that the cinema has been exploiting with the use of bi-dimensional images, we would do well to imagine what things we could accomplish, with a technique that permits action in a range of 360 degrees. Add to this the magic of the tri-dimensional stereo and the concept in the field of human precision and the profundity of the field is exalted to unimaginable power. It is important to be able to generate a high emotive level in the public and make them experiment in this revolution in a way in which was not possible to experiment with other media. However much still depends upon the originality and the quality of the author, the ambience, the theme, the aesthetics of the content, the interactive elements, the music etc. There are still some authors who work with Virtual Reality as if it were one of the traditional systems.
It is true that in VR lineal sequences, like those in the cinema, do not necessarily exist. There is to a certain extent a rupture in the classical system. The centre becomes fragmented because each one of the parts is part of the centre. The sequences can be pre-established by the author of the virtual work, but the visitor decides where and how to go. And this the author should always bear in mind. In VR the sequences are not necessarily connected to a unique pathway, but the scenes can be united to a unique body. Within these scenes, things happen, actions and consequences that the visitor could bring about with his/her own intervention.
This new digital media offer us a new aperture. It raises many questions: How do we communicate this story through the means of a new language, new codes, other new parameters and new media, after being accustomed to the traditional systems, that are quite different from this new one? The fragmentation of those traditional systems radically stimulates human thought. For creating, working and producing.
Of course it is much more complex to create under these terms because there is need to think in a more abstract and less figurative and lineal way. In consequence, the creation process suffers an evolution specifically in relation to the concept of 'space time' that we are accustomed to see, experience, create and produce. This specific, new element is part of evolution, within the revolution of the media. It is an evolution in intellectual terms, not intellectual in relation to theory but intellectual in relation to the intellect of the idea, to the essence of human thought.
F.A.B.R.I.CATORS produces VR applications, simulations, interactive installations, animation projects and interactive spaces. It also organises and runs exhibitions and digital events. One of the main objectives of F.A.B.R.I.CATORS is to demonstrate ways in which VR can be used to the benefit of companies, and give innovative solutions for product presentation purposes; original marketing solutions, realisation of innovative applications, digital prototypes, virtual environments, simulations etc.
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F.A.B.R.I.CATORS gives primary attention to the efficiency of the technology, the creativity of the interface, the quality and fantasy of the content, the graphics, the integration between functionality and fantasy and general aesthetics. The group is comprised of an interdisciplinary group of professionals (in house and consultants). The team follows a defined group method: flexible and highly creative, open to a continuous process of renewal, which permits the process of problem solving in an effective way, adopting innovative solutions.
One of the main aims of F.A.B.R.I.CATORS is to devise contemporary ways of creation and communication that combine art and technology in an effective manner. They do so in the design and production of projects, interactive art pieces, VR installations and creative interfaces. To work on the basis of the integration of multidisciplinary expressions and disciplines, such as: art, culture, technology, architecture, design, using the creative system 'Uptodates'.
F.A.B.R.I.CATORS has a keen interest in retaining its own style in a production by giving priority to originality, the intensity of the interaction, the aesthetics and the quality of the content. As well as giving importance to the design of ambience, the light, the concept of perspective, of space, of atmosphere, the texture and skin of the world, and the intensity of the interaction. It is of great importance to bring out the content to its fullest expression.
It is not always easy to resist the temptation of falling into a process of rapidity and easiness resulting in a consequent deficiency in quality caused by several limiting factors; such as too little a time for production, lack of adequate financial resources and others. F.A.B.R.I.CATORS are of the opinion that VR in the cultural sector, in design, artistic and in entertainment has not been fully explored. Production should not be limited to cultural events, entertainment, industry and science, but should penetrate the barriers and also get into the areas of documentary, journalism and ecology in a more consistent way. VR could be utilised and exploited and become a sophisticated tool in cultivating a fair level of consciousness in the general public.
F.A.B.R.I.CATORS main office is located in Milan, Italy. From January 2001 the group will be extending to North and South America whilst retaining the nucleus base in Milan, Italy.
F.A.B.R.I.CATORS have produced numerous titles, a selection are given below. Other titles such as Robot Avatars and CICOV Centro Interactivo can be seen on the Web site [3].
Pinocchio Interactive is a dynamic installation, which integrates robotic, animation, digital fantasy and interactivity. The installation comprises of a real stylised robot, Pinocchio Puppet, who is 1.8 meters tall and made out of wood and metal. Pinocchio Puppet acts in the middle of the scenery, between the digital world projected on the screen that forms the scenery and the interactive visitor.
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An interactive script has been written based on the original story of Pinocchio. The visitor slips into each of the digital chapters through the Pinocchio Puppet whilst interacting in real time with the digital world contained in the chapters. The literary Pinocchio becomes a virtual personage and the story, the people the adventures, the ambiences where the action takes place are digital worlds which it is possible to navigate and interact with. It is like opening a book of Pinocchio stories and slipping into a tri-dimensional world.
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| Figure 1: The set up of Pinocchio Interactive |
Multimega Book (MMB) in the Cave was the winner of the Foreign Title Award in the Theater and Exhibition Section at Multimedia Grand Prix 1997. The application is primarily designed to run in the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE); a VR full-inmersive-interactive installation with high-resolution stereoscopic images. This multi-person, room-sized VR system was developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), University of Illinois at Chicago. It is however, capable of running on a number of different VR platforms, including the Immersa-Desk and simpler graphics workstations.
The user experiences, and creatively interacts with two revolutionary moments in human history and experiences the shift between the printed communication (XV century) and electronic communication (XX century); the Renaissance and the Electronic Age are integrated into one unique environment. The application juxtaposes two revolutions, which have transformed the history of communication and in consequence human history.
The navigation and the interaction of the Multi-Mega-Book is often surprising, it is designed to draw the user from the Renaissance to the Information Age, exploring two different modes of communication and showing how both eras combine mathematics, innovation, art and cutting edge technology. In its entirety, the MMB is a metaphor for means of communication through time. The different pages of the MMB-installation give access to different aspects of the history of communication.
"I touch one of the Maxi/Pages and it collapses into a 3D environment ....Suddenly I am inside a classical city which surrounds me on every side. Buildings, streets, squares, arches, corners, sculptures, objects, paintings of the epoch of the Renaissance. Pieces by artists of the calibre of Michelangelo, Albert, Botticelli, Leonard da Vinci, Brunneleschi are painted like murals onto the walls of buildings and become protagonists in this imaginary city which contains such buildings as: Santa Maria delle Grazie, Santa Maria del Fiore, Uffizzi, Piazza Innocenti, Palazzo Pitti, the Laurenziana, etc."
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The user can also visit and penetrate Leonardo famous masterpiece The Last Supper and use and interact with Gutenberg's printing press. They can also travel through a cyber tunnel which leads into the CD-City, a cyber city that visualises the movement of digital and networked information.
Kali was produced ad hoc, for the Berliner Festspiele GmbH in Germany, for the exhibition Seven Hills - Images and Signs of the 21st Century. The show opened from the 14th of May to the 29th of October 2000 in the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin/Germany.
Two diverse, versions have been produced of Kali. The first version integrates an interactive sculpture and three-screen projection. The second version, the VR application, can be visualised through different interactive platforms, such as Cave, Visionarium, and V-Desk, or simply by using a workstation and a large screen.
For the VR production Division of Parametric, Softimage, 3D Studio and PhotoShop were used. For the Video-interactive Premiere and Macromedia with Pinnacle in Mpeg2 were used. Specific Plug-ins for the integration of the Video-interactive and VR were written and the eyes of Kali's sculpture were adapted with Crystal eyes to allow stereoscopic vision. The application can run on a SGI platform as well as NT Workstations. Kali is a very rich application in VR as well as in video interaction. It is possible to make it run in NT by using an extremely good frame rate. (About 25). This was resolved by designing the VR model with a specific, esthetical approach, keeping really high quality of the content and assembling specific hardware and writing Plug-ins.
The sensors integrated in Kali’s neck allow the visitor to interact and navigate with Kali's VR-environment and the Video Interactive in a very friendly way. The sensor is an aluminum cylindrical structure embedding one IR pulsed transmitter, one receiver, and a blue LED; When a finger is placed close to the sensor, IR beams are reflected and detected by receiver. Data collected by all these elements are elaborated by a microprocessor-based circuit and sent through serial communication line to Computer-hosting VR rendered.
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"Kali emerges like an enigma, with her four winding arms, her body naked, a dark intense blue and her eyes illuminated by virtual spaces. Oriental melodies, sounds, music, slip from her body saturating the entire space. Kali's interactive sculpture is 2mts in height and stands on the top of a hill, immersed in a play of shadows. A retro projection screen lays on her right foot. Two retro projection screens of 3mts x 2.25mts are placed onto Kali's right and left sides."
The visitor approaches Kali by walking up three steps and laying their face against hers, looking through her eyes and interacting and navigating with the sensors integrated in her neck. Kali's content is articulated by Kali's inner world, the virtual world, the world of causes and decision making. Kali's external world is the world of effects, generated by the person who is interacting within the virtual worlds.
Kali's virtual world goes beyond the scope of traditional VR applications. It's an interactive passage between the real and the imaginary, orient and occident, cosmos and earth, nature and city cause and effect. A compendium of forms and content of mythical elements and ancestral memories integrated into the digital era. It contains themes such as history, mythology, nature, city, chaos, equilibrium, and evolution ... establishing a sort of active pathway between the orient and occident ... the era of the myth and that of the electronic. The visitor can interact from 5 to 35 minutes.
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| Figure 2: The set up of Kali |
A VR interactive journey into the Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece: L'Ultima Cena, The last Supper. This virtual application is a powerful tool that allows users to understand the relationship between the real architecture of the refettorio and the painted architecture by Leonardo. Approaching the Ultima Cena you discover the beauty and the details of this masterpiece. The painting can be observed from 6 metres away or from a very close viewpoint, enjoying the details and navigating through it. Leonardo's masterpiece can be considered as an outstanding example of the renaissance synthesis between art and science: the mathematics of geometric constructions was then well established and known to scientist as well as art people. The computer based perspective representation is the final result of the continuing growing knowledge during the centuries in geometry and mathematics, which allows us now to compute accurately the numerical parameters of the ancient constructive methods.
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"Far on the horizon I recognise a famous renaissance church and monastery: Santa Maria delle Grazie, built in the 1500's in Milan and partly attributed to Brunnelleschi. Inside the monastery, in the refettorio, Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Ultima Cena. I go towards it and look around the building, enjoy the facade and the aerial view. Then I pass through the wall: the inner architectural structure of the church raises gradually in red wire-frame lines, and after few seconds, the space is filled by the complete structure rendered in a red line drawing. I navigate within the columns, arcades and vaults and I get a real feeling of the volume and space of this church". The overlay of the Theorem in the original viewpoint demonstrates the exact position of the perspective composition. The computer programs construct the homogeneous co-ordinates represented in the painted space, perform the linear transformation in the perspective space, and produce the final projection on the visualisation plane, in Cartesian co-ordinates, of the three dimensional scene imagined by Leonardo.
Tracking the Net is a powerful VR and Motion Capture installation and a collective interactive installation. More than 10 users can interact in real time and the interaction between the subjects and the Net are identified by a motion capture system.
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Visitors can freely interact and navigate within the virtual environments by touching, pulling, and stretching the Net. They have to use their hands and body to get real time visual and acoustical feedback from the VR system. Cameras detect position of small infrared beam reflectors placed on different points of the elastic ropes. A computer-based process generates real-time 3D positional information about reflectors, and issue commands to another computer, which hosts VR software. Two installations, placed in different areas, even into non-local spaces, can be connected together. Tracking the Net has been designed to host interactive teams and for different applications in fields such as cultural, architectural, design, artistic, games, physical rehabilitation and research. Applications in the medical area have been identified with particular reference to physical rehabilitation and its connections with psychology. The structure can be modified both electronically and mechanically and also the content can be specifically developed and produced in accordance with requested typology of use, navigation and interactions.
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| Figure 3: The set up of Tracking the Net |
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Franz Fischnaller
F.A.B.R.I.CATORS
Via Fratelli Bronzetti 6
20129 Milano
Italy
fabricat@galactica.it
franz@evl.uic.edu
URL: <http://www.fabricat.com/>
URL: <http://www.evl.uic.edu/>
Phone: (0039) 02 70128233
Fax: 02 76110498
Franz Fischnaller was the co-founder of F.A.B.R.I.CATORS and is now the art and production Director. He is a Professor at the Università degli Studi di Firenze (University of Florence, Italy), and teaches art and multimedia on the Master of Multimedia of Florence (Italy), supported by the RAI, the national Italian TV organisation. He is also Professor at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.
Franz was the Director of 'Virtuality and Interactivity', the International Exhibit of Multimedia Art and Applied research of Mediartech (Digital Renaissance). Mediartech is a yearly international multimedia show dedicated to cultural heritage, the arts and performing arts promoted by the region of Tuscany/Italy and organised by the Tuscany Hi Tech Network. He is also the designer and Project Co-ordinator of a new Interactive art centre in Cordoba, Spain called CICOV (Centro Interactivo Cordoba Virtual).
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For citation purposes:
Fischnaller, F. "The Virtual Revolution", Cultivate Interactive, issue
3, 29 January 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue3/fabricators/>
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