Applying the Ultimate Display

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1 Lewis 1 Amanda Lewis December 9, 2015 History of Art, Media, and Technology Applying the Ultimate Display MIT professor Ivan Sutherland coined the term the Ultimate Display in his essay The Ultimate Display, where he examines current computational technologies and discusses how this idea could apply to future technologies which he was prototyping at the time that this paper was written in In his research, Sutherland claimed that: The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked. 1 Considering how the idea of the ultimate display with its own laws of physics be used in virtual installations seen in contemporary digital art, this research paper looks at how virtual installations can be used to facilitate interactions which create a new perspective of our environment, each other, and ourselves. While virtual reality technology seems like a very recent development, it has been reinvented in different forms several times over the last few decades. In 1956, Morton Heilig began working on the first multi sensory experience called the Sensorama. resembles a modern arcade game and includes a video, smells released, and wind blown in the users face, all designed to make the user believe he was in the video instead of just watching it. The first form of a virtual reality helmet was created by Ivan Sutherland in He built it at MIT s Lincoln library and called it The Sword of Damocles. It tracked the user s head position and used that information to change the image being shown to the viewer. Unfortunately, the Sword of Damocles was so heavy that a single man could not wear it. Instead, the device descended from the ceiling on an adjustable pole which is why it was named after a mythical Greek weapon that hung suspended above the king s It 1 Sutherland, Ivan. The Ultimate Display

Lewis 2 A man using the Sensorama (1956) A man testing the prototype of the Sword of Damocles (1968) throne.

improve upon his work with the current technology. 2 Another work created at MIT, although this time in their media lab, was the Aspen Movie Map in 1978.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after they used a partial replica of - Uganda s Entebbe Airport where hostages were being held to train for the rescue mission.

2 Lewis 2 A man using the Sensorama (1956) A man testing the prototype of the Sword of Damocles (1968) throne. While the Sword of Damocles was a huge technological innovation during the 1960 s, its innovative aspects were left alone for awhile and not returned to for several years as it was difficult to improve upon his work with the current technology. 2 Another work created at MIT, although this time in their media lab, was the Aspen Movie Map in A precursor to Google Maps, the Aspen Movie Map was an interactive map which allowed the user to move where they wish through the town of Aspen, Colorado. The project was funded by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after they used a partial replica of - Uganda s Entebbe Airport where hostages were being held to train for the rescue mission. While DARPA saw this project as an easy way to familiarize trainees with new locations, members of MIT s media lab saw the Aspen Movie Map differently. We showed it to a lot of people, and everyone saw in it Testing the Aspen Movie Map (1978) Courtesy of something different, said Andrew Lippman, project director. They were not seeing a defense-funded mapping program. They were seeing the answer to their own visions of 2 Sutherland, Ivan. The Ultimate Display

3 Lewis 3 interactivity This was global thermonuclear interactivity. 3 The Aspen Map was a way for people to change their ideas of geography and increase their ability to interact with places around the world which they may never before have been able to see. At one time, you could see an image of a pyramid in a book, but now with the technology created for the Aspen Movie Map, you could explore the tunnels of the pyramid. 4 Another work which allows viewers to explore tunnels and faraway places is Maurice Benayoun s The Tunnel Under the Atlantic created in Benayoun created a two meter diameter tube leading to a virtual tunnel which connected the Centre Pompidou to the Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal. Viewers can virtually dig through this tunnel using a joystick, but instead of finding ocean they dig through layers of rock built up with imagery and iconography from the culture on the other side. The diggers can even meet up virtually inside of the tunnel, after six days of digging. The visitors can also talk with their partners across the Atlantic Ocean the sounds of their voices are anchored in space which enables them to find which direction the other is. This digital work uses its fabricated space and time to create a realm of physics to create an interaction which would otherwise be facilitated in an entirely different manner. When this work was created in the nineties, Skype, FaceTime, and widely popular video calling services were still a futuristic idea, making live interaction on a screen an experience unique to this installation. The computer controlled realm creates a collaborative environment which otherwise would not exist the computer controls the way the matter crumbles, while the user controls the computer in order to meet. When the meeting is achieved, other persons can dig the same path or create new ones as if they were in a Crowd experimenting with the Tunnel at the Centre Pompidou in Paris Courtesy of Maurice Benayoun (1995) 3 "Déjà View MIT Technology Review." MIT Technology Review. MIT Technology Review, 22 Dec Web. 08 Dec ibid.

4 Lewis 4 collective quest of a shared memory. 5 Another artwork preser ving an interactive space, Luc Courchesne s Paysage No. 1 (1997) is an interactive video panorama projection which multiple users can experience at once. It includes four computers with touch plates, microphones and body detectors, four videodisc players, video projectors, and screens on which video images of Mount-Royal Park in Montréal are projected. Installation of Paysage No. 1 Courtesy of Luc Courchesne (1997) The projections are of the park over a period of 24 hours, and include actors with whom the viewers can interact with. Although the actors can move throughout the park, the viewers cannot without first interacting with one of the actors, who then guide them through the park. The experience is dictated by the viewer s decisions as to how they interact with the prerecording in the videos, as one can only fully experience it by engaging with the virtual people. Similar to The Tunnel Under the Atlantic, Paysage No. 1 creates a socially engaging space using virtual technologies to facilitate interaction. This artwork creates its own world out of a fictionalized and orchestrated potential reality allowing the viewers to guide themselves through a real place, but with an experience they couldn t have if they actually visited the park as everything is prerecorded and predetermined by a computer. Considering environments which mix both physical and virtual, Perry Hoberman s work The Bar Code Hotel creates a multi-user interface which is controlled by scanning barcodes. Guests who check in to the Bar Code Hotel are given a set of 3D glasses and a barcode scanning wand which allows them to interact with the interface presented to them. The users interact with computer-generated objects of their choosing within a large three-dimensional projection by scanning one of the many barcodes available to them within the room to summon an object, pattern, or action within the virtual space. The objects, each corresponding to a different user, exist as agents that are only partially under the control of their human collaborators. The objects created within the space have 5 "The Tunnel Under the Atlantic." Maurice Benayoun's Art Installations Virtual Reality and Interactive Art Works. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec

5 Lewis 5 their own sets of limitations while they can be controlled by the users, they also respond to other objects in the virtual space and to their environment, as well as making their own sounds, they have their own behaviors and personalities, and even a lifespan. While they have their own virtual life, the objects are based on inanimate objects, but react to each other like living things, creating a virtual ecosystem within the frameworks of the interface used to create them. 6 While Benayoun s work allows people to interact over long distances, Daniel Steegmann s installation Phantom, created in 2015, allows the user to move ghostlike through the Brazilian Mata Atlántica rainforest using only an Oculus Rift. Steegmann worked with ScanLAB projects in London to scan a fifteen-hundred-square foot area of the rainforest using a FARO Focus3D laser scanner and converted the plot of jungle into millions of points, then sculpted the data into an immersive record of the forest. 7 In the installation, the Oculus Rift hangs from the ceiling very similarly to Sutherland s Sword of Damocles, while using alternate physical laws in a real environment while you are moving through a recorded existing space, there is no evidence that you exist as a corporeal entity, more like a ghost of yourself in a space you may never actually visit. The virtual forest viewable via Oculus Rift may provide us with novel insights into the way in which we see and coincidentally manufacture the world. Or that most elevated and immaculate mathematical constructions of reality may simply evince the impossibility of its representation. The near-perfection of the image ends up refuting its power, or at least exposing the impressive, elaborate work of abstraction and quantification that goes into collapsing the gulf between representation and perception. We see ourselves seeing the world as an image of our own fabrication. 8 While the Brazilian Mata Atlántica rainforest is quickly dwindling away due to environmental impacts and deforestation, Phantom will perfectly preserve it in a moment 6 Hoberman, Perry. "Bar Code Hotel." Bar Code Hotel. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec < 7 Steegmann, Daniel. "Phantom." Daniel Steegmann. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec Provan, Alexander (2015): Formatting Reality. In: Surround Audience. Catalogue of the New 8 Museum Triennial 2015, p. 50

Lewis 6 in time on a single method of display. We may not be able to smell or feel the rainforest exactly as it was, but this artwork will serve to preserve the memory of what this space once was.

chance to take a longer look. Potthast requests something very simple of his users : to slow down in our high-speed world.

6 Lewis 6 in time on a single method of display. We may not be able to smell or feel the rainforest exactly as it was, but this artwork will serve to preserve the memory of what this space once was. Trying also to preserve the memory of our rapidly changing environment, Lorenz Potthast s The Decelerator Helmet presents the user with the opportunity to take in our surroundings by giving them the chance to take a longer look. Potthast requests something very simple of his users : to slow down in our high-speed world. Attached to the helmet are video cameras which record the The Decelerator Helmet being using in a public setting- Lorenz Potthast (2012) user s immediate surroundings. The slowed down images are displayed right before the user s eyes via a Head-Mounted Display and simultaneously shown on a monitor on the outside of the helmet. There are three different speed settings which are changed with a remote control: the automated setting which slows down time and reaccelerates it after a specific interval, the press mode allows a specific deceleration of time and the scroll mode allows you to fully control how time moves around you. By cutting off the user from how time passes using a completely immersive technology, Potthast created the Decelerator Helmet to challenge how we will relate to our surroundings in the future and how we view our own time passing. This Oculus experiment by BeAnother Lab, The Machine to be Another, is an ongoing Open Source Art investigation into the relationship between Identity and Empathy. Two participants use the Oculus to Gender Swap Experiment - Courtesy of BeAnother Lab (2014) see what life is like from the other s eyes, using it as a tool to promote empathy between individuals of different social, cultural, and ideological

7 Lewis 7 backgrounds. Constructed similarly to The Deceleration Helmet, each user dons an Oculus Rift with a camera on the front however the feedback from their camera is seen inside the Oculus of the partnering user, allowing each of them to see exactly what the other sees. Users synchronize their body movements in an attempt to feel the movements of the other person. This artistic investigation uses the recent neuroscience approach of embodiment to generate empathy between users and to investigate the self based on how you understand the other. BeAnother Lab uses its experiment to allow users to ask themselves the question If I were you, would I better understand myself? 9 and gives them the opportunity through using virtual reality technology to answer that question. The project Seeing-I is currently still trying to get funding via Kickstarter, but if it succeeds artist Mark Farid will wear an Oculus Rift for 28 days while inside of a room. He will see through the eyes of another person who he doesn t know through their specially made glasses which connect to the Oculus. The goal is to discover whether Mark will begin to lose his sense of self, replaced by the life of the person wearing glasses. Mark Farid being fed the same thing as his counterpart during a 24-hour test run Courtesy of the artist (2014) Farid is interested in the sense of personal validation which comes from creating a virtual self on social media and the idea that were striving for our lives to be documented shared and validated by someone else. Under the assumption that validation can only come through the restraints of recognition, Farid looks at how the anonymity of his interaction with his counterpart who s life he will be continuously witnessing changes considering he will be always watched. Neither of them are free anymore as their actions are no longer anonymous. With Seeing-I, Farid looks to break down the barriers between the virtual and physical world, asking if one overrides the other or does the relationship change into something new entirely as you're always being watched in a way different from the internet. Ivan Sutherland predicted the future of the technology that would exist to create virtual and augmented reality art in his essay The Ultimate Display, but contemporary 9 BeAnother Lab. "The Machine to Be Another." The Machine to Be Another. Web. 07 Dec

8 Lewis 8 artists have taken his ideas farther by using this technology not just to create a physical space, but to use that space to facilitate interactions which create a new perspective of our environment, each other, and ourselves. The artists described have used their work to teach people something through art, making it not only conceptual and beautiful but also educational and useful. As these technologies continue to evolve and adapt to different uses, including those outside of the art world, we can hope that they will continue to teach those who continue to use them.

9 Lewis 9 REFERENCES BeAnother Lab. "The Machine to Be Another." The Machine to Be Another. Web. 07 Dec "Déjà View MIT Technology Review." MIT Technology Review. MIT Technology Review, 22 Dec Web. 08 Dec < Hoberman, Perry. "Bar Code Hotel." Bar Code Hotel. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec < "The Tunnel Under the Atlantic." Maurice Benayoun's Art Installations Virtual Reality and Interactive Art Works. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec < id=14>. Potthast, Lorenz. "The Decelerator Helmet." The Decelerator Helmet. N.p., Web. 08 Dec < Provan, Alexander (2015): Formatting Reality. In: Surround Audience. Catalogue of the New Museum Triennial 2015, p. 50 Steegmann, Daniel. "Phantom." Daniel Steegmann. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec < Sutherland, Ivan. The Ultimate Display

VIRTUAL REALITY. Mete CINAR - Merve KAYA - Gonul KANBAY - Umit VATANSEVER. Course Professor Rushan ZIATDINOV FATIH UNIVERSITY

VIRTUAL REALITY. Mete CINAR - Merve KAYA - Gonul KANBAY - Umit VATANSEVER. Course Professor Rushan ZIATDINOV FATIH UNIVERSITY VIRTUAL REALITY Mete CINAR - Merve KAYA - Gonul KANBAY - Umit VATANSEVER Course Professor Rushan ZIATDINOV FATIH UNIVERSITY Mete - Merve - Gonul - Umit Virtual Reality FATIH UNIVERSITY 1 / 16 What is virtual