Char Davies, "Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being"

Char Davies explains thoroughly the concept of what people generally call “Virtual Reality.” He introduces the definition and the difference between virtual reality and the Telepresence. Although the general meaning seems to be the same between the two, they are actually different in their functions and their fields of importance. Virtual reality and Telepresence both involve humans interfering with the machine in a remote cyber space. In Davies piece Osmose, he makes the participants or what he calls the “immersants” to be in a 3D virtual reality and to make decisions and choices to discover their own selves and experience being alive in this cyber environment. After knowing about the Osmose, I look at virtual reality in a different way. Now I realized that Virtual reality is a whole field of artistic experimentation to make the individual discover their inner selves and existence. In Jeffery Shaw’s piece Configuring the Cave, the participant needs not just make choices in his/her mind, but it requires them to physically make decisions and changes in order for them to interact with the cyber environment. Immersants have to move a wooden body to be able to go forward with the experiment and to cause change. So, the concept of the Telepresence and Virtual Reality is present and almost the same in both experimentations, but the way each one performs and functions is different and that what makes multimedia a whole new field that’s open to adaptability and evolution, and makes it stands out depending on the distinct use of it by the operator or user.

Related Links
http://www.immersence.com/
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/waic/chdavi/chdavi_e.htm
http://cat.eciad.bc.ca/r_and_p/char_davies.html