CAVE Painting: The Integration of Oil Painting with Three Dimensional Computer Generated Environments

ion in his paintings. He uses the real world as a point of reference and departs from it at the same time. He does this by using an abstract approach to apply oil paint to canvas. He is emphasising the painting as an artificial construct. Davies draws on her experience as a painter who erodes boundaries between her natural forms and the space around these forms. This sentiment is carried over into her virtual landscapes. She provides users with a semiabstract depiction of nature, wherein the users can explore her environments not bound by the physical limitations of the body. 82 Ibid p.1 83 Ibid. p.73 36 3.2.3 Exploring the Cartesian grid How does the user explore Davies’ virtual environments? Instead of a mouse and a computer screen to navigate this space, the user explores with a stereoscopic head mounted display helmet and breathing apparatus. The sensation is one of being inside her worlds. The experience usually lasts for fifteen minutes, and the user is able to move through that space by moving the head mounted display, and activating the breathing apparatus attached to the user’s chest. Davies wants to provide an immersive and participatory experience. She proposes that her work can be “kinaesthetically explored by others through full body immersion and real-time interaction, even while such constructs retain their immateriality”. She achieves this by allowing the user to navigate through her three dimensional landscapes using a head mounted display and a breathing apparatus. The head mounted display controls the left and right, forward and backwards orientation, whilst the breathing apparatus controls the up and down orientation, and as stated previously, this causes a sensation of flying. The users control their movements primarily by the head mounted display. McRobert submits that Ivan Sutherland in 1965 wrote down the principles of head mounted display “to serve as a looking-glass into the mathematical wonderland constructed in computer memory”. McRobert points out that between 1985 and 1990 NASA Ames Research Centre built a head mounted display. Their “objective was to develop a multi-sensory virtual environment workstation for use in space station teleoperation, telepresence and automation activities”. The head mounted display is a “headmounted, wide-angled, stereoscopic display system powered by a host computer and external hardware, such as graphics and sound synthesizing equipment, to create a digitally immersive space”. The user is fed real-time three dimensional images from a computer that is attached to the head mounted display. Inside the head mounted display there is a liquid crystal display screen. Two separate images of the three dimensional environment are sent to the liquid crystal screen. The user processes these two separate images in their brain creating an illusion of three dimensions. The user has to ignore the fact that they are looking at two separate images. This illustrates Panofsky’s premise that we perceive images two dimensionally. Each two dimensional image is processed separately by each eye. The images are merged together in the brain to create the illusion of three dimensions. It may take 84 Davies, Char. Virtual Space. 2004.p.2 85 McRobert, Laurie. Char Davies’ Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality. 2007.p.4 86 Ibid. p.4 87 Ibid. p.4 37 the user some time to process the separate two dimensional images as a three dimensional image. This may lessen the sensation of immersion. Davies has opted to use the head mounted display as a conduit to immerse the viewer into her virtual landscapes. This may give the viewer a sense of full body immersion. Another device to illicit immersion in the viewer is a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) environment. McRobert defines a CAVE environment as being a multi-person ten-foot-cube space where three dimensional virtual images are projected onto the surrounding walls and ceiling. He states there is only one viewer who controls the three dimensional environment. The user wears a three dimensional input device that is tracked by remote networked computers which correct the positional perspectives as the user moves. McRobert believes that projection screens appear to be transparent, and there is an illusion of infinite three dimensional space. Davies may have opted for a head mounted display over a CAVE environment because she wants a greater sense of full body immersion. A CAVE environment exists in a real space, thus the users are reminded of a real place. With a head mounted display that restricts vision and hearing, the sense of being in a real space may be lessened. I have explained the technology Davies uses to display her three dimensional landscapes, and I will proceed to explain how the user interacts with this space. Davies defines virtual space as being “immersive” using computer-generated artificial environments and their associated equipment, wherein the viewer can enter into this space. She asserts that virtual space is a “spatiotemporal arena wherein mental models or abstract constructs of the world can be given virtual embodiment – visual and aural – in three dimensions and be animated through time”. She believes that the users are activating all their senses in her virtual worlds, and are able to activate events as they encounter them. Events are triggered as users pass through objects or levels. These events happen in realtime. The users can enter into her three dimensional objects that trigger an event to happen. For example, entering a three dimensional seed-like pod may cause it to open up to reveal its interior. The users might be caught in a stream of light that carries them to another place or level in her virtual worlds. As the users pass through one level they may instantaneously materialise into another level. Levels are discrete areas in a virtual world that are linked to each other. Exploration through Davies’ virtual worlds conforms to Manovich’s proposition that navigating through space involves a narrative being revealed and encountering real-time interaction 88 Ibid, p.100 89 Davies, Char. Virtual Space. 2004. p.2 38 along the way. Journeying through her space takes fifteen minutes from beginning to end. The longer the users are immersed in her worlds, the more that is revealed travelling through this illusory three dimensional space. The users have to learn how to navigate this unfamiliar space, as it differs from being in the real world. They may have to take more than one fifteen minute attempt at exploring this space to discover its vast terrain, and work out what is possible or not. “Osmose” and “Ephemere” are made up of discrete levels or spaces. These levels are nonlinear in structure. McRobert asserts that the up/down dynamics in Davies’ worlds challenge the linear depiction of three dimensional space. 90 As stated previously, the users can fly up and down using their breath. As they descend or ascend they pass from one level to the next. These spaces do not reside side by side in virtual space on the computer, and are discontinuous. This illustrates Manovich’s proposition that three dimensional space is made up of discrete, separate places. As the users pass through one level they may materialise into another level. This non-lateral movement is called teleporting. It involves the instantaneous movement from one level to the next. The users may be in one level, and they may pass through an object that triggers another level to come into view. This non-linear depiction of three dimensional space is in contrast to Renaissance perspective which is linear and fixed. Two dimensional pictorial space cannot be explored in real time, and its viewpoint cannot be altered. 3.2.3 Challenging the Cartesian grid Davies suggests we still conceptualise the world around us in terms of the old Newtonian/ Cartesian paradigm which postulates separate, solid objects in empty space. Her view of three dimensional space resembles Manovich’s concept of three dimensional space as empty Renaissance perspective space based on the Cartesian coordinate system, and this space comes into being once objects are added. Davies believes that this way of thinking has infiltrated its way into constructing three dimensional computer generated immersive space. As stated previously, three dimensional computer generated space uses Euclidian geometric theory, Renaissance perspective and the xyz coordinates of Cartesian space as a basic structure for building three dimensional pictorial space. Davies believes this leads to a “never ending quest for visual realism”. As a result three dimensional computer generated imagery can be mathematically exact based on geometric primitives. 90 McRobert, Laurie. Char Davies’ Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality. 2007.p.79 91 Davies, Char. Virtual Space. 2004. p.2 92 Ibid, p.2 93 Ibid, p.2 39 Panofsky asserts that Renaissance perspective is a human construct and symbolic of a scientific/mathematical approach to depicting nature. This geometric ordering has infiltrated the design of three dimensional computer generated pictorial space according to Davies and Manovich. Renaissance perspective is made into three dimensional computer space by adding the Cartesian coordinate system. It enables the representation of three dimensional objects and space in the computer environment. If we go back to looking at a two dimensional polygon that has length and width, we extend that into three dimensional computer space by adding a depth. Using the Cartesian coordinate system, there are three x, y and z coordinates for the three dimensional object. The fixed system of two dimensional pictorial space has developed into three dimensional computer generated pictorial space. Now the users can navigate through this space, according to Manovich, by way of computer technology. Its view can be changed and explored over time. Davies challenges this geometric Cartesian space by dissolving boundaries between her objects, and space around these objects. As stated earlier, Davies’ aesthetic principles are guided by her physiological experience of the world. As McRobert points out, her eyes are myopic which causes things to go out of focus, and objects and space fuse together. Near and far are indistinguishable from one another; solid objects become semi transparent and blend with each other. There are no hard edges. McRobert states that Davies “explores techniques based on transparency and the non-linear dynamics that break through our once iron-clad imaginative obsession with Euclidean geometry, and hence through our mathematically rigid conceptions of space/time”. Borders between space and objects are gently eroded in her virtual worlds, wherein the users can enter virtual objects and travel along with moving objects. One can penetrate the interior of objects, such as a boulder, that is impossible in reality. Davies aims to unify the objects in her three dimensional environments with the space around them. Three dimensional spaces can be thought of as void until objects are added. There is no relationship between the objects once they are created, and the void that surrounds them. Three dimensional space is empty without objects in that space, much like a blank canvas. However, lying at its heart is the three dimensional Cartesian grid as its invisible structure. Manovich claims that this three dimensional pictorial space, which Davies uses, is more like the clumped space of antiquity. He means that the paintings of the antiquity era, before the Renaissance, biased the depiction of objects over the space around them. Thus the objects were arranged in clusters, with little space around them. Davies presents a challenge to this by dissolving boundaries between her objects and the space around her objects. This provides a unified pictorial space that resembles Panofsky’s homogenised space of the Renaissance. 94 McRobert, Laurie. Char Davies’ Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality. 2007.p.7 40 Davies reinforces the idea of three dimensional space being an artificial construct, according to McRobert, by deliberately abstracting her pictorial language. This is done intentionally to avoid creating the perfect geometrical image, and therefore prevents the users being too seduced by the imagery as to forget where they are. As stated previously, she does this by using transparency to dissolve the boundaries of her objects, and the space around these objects. She is also showing fragments of reality derived from the real world. Her forms may resemble natural forms, but they become otherworldly at the same time. Davies is challenging the idea of perfect reality by distorting or abstracting her three dimensional computer images of nature. She also lets the users see the computer code and Cartesian coordinates in “Osmose“. This reinforces the artificial construct of the digital environment by reminding us that computer code is used to construct the imagery. In Davies’ virtual landscapes she challenges the rigid depiction of three dimensional space, however she also relies on its geometric based structure. Her virtual realms involve precise mathematics in the form of computer code. The computer’s precise mathematical logic in constructing virtual worlds allows for an exactness to the three dimensional forms that may give them an aesthetic beauty. This mathematical construction is virtual space’s strength in that can render a scene with such preciseness. It echoes the straight and receding parallel lines of the perspective grid. Davies also displays the Cartesian grid as an object of aesthetic beauty in “Osmose”. The users can fly through this grid and see how three dimensional space is structured. On the one hand she is highlighting the geometry, and on the other trying to dissolve it. We have seen that Davies uses the Cartesian grid developed from Euclidian mathematics, Renaissance perspective and the Descartes’ Cartesian coordinate system to immerse the users in her virtual worlds based on the natural world. On the one hand she delights in showing the users the Cartesian grid that has an aesthetic beauty all of its own, yet she subverts this paradigm at the same time by dissolving the boundaries between the objects and the space around the objects. She does this by using transparency in her objects. The users are able to navigate through this space, triggering events in real time, using head mounted display and breathing apparatus. She wants to totally immerse the viewer in her worlds. Central to her vision is creating images that maintain a link to her painting practice. She wants to create brushstrokes in flux in three dimensions, based on the natural world. 95 McRobert, Laurie. Char Davies’ Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality. 2007.p.73