A Painting in Space

The goal of our research is to enable artists to interact with the world of their imagination; to create art by moving, molding, and shaping virtual forms as if by their own bodies. We show a print that represents a scene painted into virtual reality and tell how the scene and the subsequent print were done. There will be some discussion of the meaning of the work, the intent of the artist and the relationship between the art and the technology used to create it. The print seen here is both a picture of an exotic place and the artistic fruit of research into how to embody the user in virtual reality. Our approach is based on the premise that embodiment is an appropriate direction for developing tools to facilitate artistic expression. It is also a premise of this research that the constraints requisite to creating art will also result in tools that serve the visualization community in general. BLUI (Body Language User Interface) is a virtual reality program that facilitates drawing and sculpting in 3D space. It employs elements of a gestural interface. BLUI is described as a tool for artistic creation, as well as for annotation and exploration of 3D visualizations in general. The quality of the artistic example presented here derives from the truly 3D approach.