by Marco Aurélio Fiochi, July 5th 2004
photos Rubens Chiri
The discussion on Espaços Virtuais Imersivos (Immersive Virtual Spaces), the roundtable that opened the fourth and last day of Emoção Art.ficial 2.0 international symposium could not have started with a more evocative tone. To talk about caves, considered the most advanced stage of immersion in cyberspace, Arlindo Machado, a professor at PUC/SP, critic and curator, traveled two thousand years back and located the embryo of this experience in The Allegory of the Cave by Plato. A cave, or Automatic Virtual Environment, is the integration between what is natural, the cave and what is artificial, the cybernetic space. Plato’s cave was a natural environment, different from the digital cave, which does not have any real element,” he observed.
Machado mentions two works that unite natural and artificial environments: the works Teleportando um Estado Desconhecido, by Eduardo Kac, and ADA – Anarquitetura do Afeto, by Simone Michelin, both being shown at Emoção Art.ficial 2.0. exhibition. “They are examples of caves that supersede the Platonic cave because there is the inner and outer part.”
Cinema – André Parente, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, agrees with Machado in reference to the theory that cinema is one of the main environments of immersion. “Cinema requires psychological transport. No technology makes me interact more than cinema, it is multimedia,” says Parente. A PhD in cinema by the University of Paris VIII, he has worked since 1997 with the interactions between the cinematic movement, audiovisual and virtual immersion. “Virtuality does not depend on technology. We live immersed in language, in simulacrum and in cyberspace, according to Saussure, Baudrillard and Virilio.”
Rejane Cantoni, an artist and professor at PUC/SP, makes a counterpoint and defends technology as the determining factor for immersion. Tânia Fraga agrees with this position. Among the artist’s and architect’s projects, or dreams, as she would rather classify them, are immersive environments, such as the “house-turtle”, the “house-butterfly” and the “house-shell”, which can grow or shrink according to the needs of the resident.
On the opposite way of the technological current, Machado concluded the discussion by declaring that in immersion only the technical apparatus is taken into consideration. “It is necessary to consider the psychological involvement of the interactor, his predisposition to interact, project himself, immerge psychologically.”
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- Simpósio Emoção Art.ficial 2.0 – 05/07/2004
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- Simpósio Emoção Art.ficial 2.0 – 05/07/2004
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- Simpósio Emoção Art.ficial 2.0 – 05/07/2004
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- Andre Parente
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- Arlindo Machado