Attached are the links to download my dissertation and the cover.

Dissertation

Well it’s just less than a month till final dissertation hand in. I have my introduction and all 4 chapters complete and am now in the task of writting my conclusion and then completing my abstract and I am done!!! It was quite a struggle to get it finished and last thursday I pretty much spent the whole day finishing off two chapter so that Mike could read it on friday and give me some feed-back. Luckily he seems to really like it and weirdly I have enjoyed writting it quite a bit and would love to take this onto a PhD or something but am not too sure if that will be possible….

Any ho when it is all complete I shall post it up for the world to view…

I think I can offically call the library my second home. All last week (including both weekends) I spent in the library working to get my dissertation finished by friday. I didn’t managed to get it finished in the end just because there is so much to write and I didn’t know what to include and what not. I re-wrote my chapter structure so that I stop wondering off the subject when writting and have another meeting in 2 weeks to show Mike the hopefully finished first draft - fingers crossed.

I just thought I would post the conclusion of my fourth chapter up!

The idea of immersion has a long history and is well connected with art. It can be created in many ways as shown in this chapter ranging from new forms of navigation with data gloves, bikes, joy sticks or data suits; to full immersion into a space such using the human body as with Osmose and new forms of interface which is critical to any installation and defines the character of interaction and perception. Some see this advance in immersion and interaction as liberating computers to enter into a fuller range of human life. Others see it as the further extension of control and domination into the realm of the body. The investigation of immersive virtual reality is still in the early stages of development where the technology lags behind the concepts being explored by many artists, but the debate of embodiment and disembodiment is long going and without any real conclusions. As artists strive to make more powerful and realistic realities to absorb the observer into.

This basically sums up the chapter ‘Examples in contemporary life of the virtual as material’

Well it had to happen sometime and this morning was it. I went to open up my dissertation and wham the file is corrupt loosing all my work apart from my complete chapter 4 which was saved in another document. Sadly my back-up was also corrupted but am lucky enough to have a printed out version that is only a week or so old. So today my task is to re-write the 11 page document in time for the weekend. On the positive side I have learnt that I can touch type pretty well!!

Well it’s taken all weekend and some serious reading (of about 6 different books) BUT chapter 4 is complete for my dissertation. I am working backwards with this dissertation by completing my last chapter first but it was the easiest one to get done. In the end it totalled to just over 2,000 words so only another 6,000 or so to go1

I have started to string together my dissertation. I built up a template for my dissertation with the chapter outline and then under each chapter writting the topics that I want to address. Now I am writting up all my notes under each topic and slowly starting to string together a dissertation and hopefully by the 26th I will have the firdt draft chapter!

First of all yay for the fact am at home for the next 3 weeks, which basically means i’ve moved from sitting infront of my uni desk all day working to my parents sofa working all day.

I had a meeting with Mike P on friday and discussed my dissertation and it’s progress. I have decided not to do anymore on my abstract as it should come at the end of a dissertation anyway and I don’t think I can right a clear final one until I have finished all my research and created some sort of conclusion. I have written my chapter outline in more detail and keep updating it with bullet points to write about as I read more. I am still looking for more books to read but as I am away from the uni library I am going to have to raid Colchester libraries resources - I don’t hold out much hope.

I sort of changed my argument again but this time I think I have made it stronger and am really excited about writting it and Mike P seems positive about it. So here it is:

Virtual art has always existed. The observer and the observed play a crucial role in the development in virtual art in combination with the advances in technology. Artists have always seeked new ways to immerse the observer into art and developing technology has been a tool to the artist to acheive this.

Artists paintings are a collection of signs designed for the observer to interact with and create their own signifers and virtual demension. This can only be acheived by the observer being placed at a distance away from the painting to critically analyse the peice.Interactive computer art seeks to destroy this distance between the observer and the observed in an attempt to create a more immersive experience for the observer but by removing the distance this can remove the observers chance to create their own virtual demension and instead have the computer create it for them.

In this dissertation I will argue that art has always been immaterial as it exists within a demension of the observer and by artists removing the distance needed to create this virtual dimension artists are producing less immersive and more materialized peices of art.

Today my housemate Steve brought a new game for his PSP that uses “3D googles” where the user is shown 2 images on the screen and using a cardboard box/goggle things that you look (about 2 inchs from the screen) through it merges both the images into one making a 3 dimensional interactive gaming experience. It’s great that Sony have cottoned onto an idea that was thought of in about 1538!

But at least I finally got to see an example of it….

The evolution of art illusion

The evolution of art illusion has a long history. Towards mid-century, it was technological advances in film and video that were adopted by artists that launched virtual art. The computer made possible a new type of art in which the audience could participate. This form of art began attracting attention in the late 70’s and 80’s. The computers ability to perform calculations at high speed made it possible to create interfaces that linked the human body to the images and sounds used in the work of art.
If however, you examine the creative behaviours of artists themselves, you find that works of virtual art emerge from a dialogue between the artist and subject. The audience exercise their own power of imagination to absorb the meaning and emotion the painting conveys thus creating their own signifier. An example of signifiers within art can be found by looking at medieval art. Here you can find examples of illusion and hidden meanings that can only be understood if the user actively works at deciphering them.
The relationship between the observer and the observed has always played a crucial role; artists have always been fascinated with devices that allow the artist to immerse the observer into a virtual world. Claude Monet for example, spent decades searching for new ways to fuse the observer and the image. The triptychs, Iris, Saule pleureur, Agapanthus and Nuages were painted between 1915 and 1917 and were painted to create the illusion of a single continuous canvas. The stereoscope invented in 1838 by Charles Wheatstone utilized our physiological ability to perceive depth, providing an escape to physically inaccessible places. “A thousand hungry eyes were bending over the peep-holes of the stereoscope, as if they were the attic-windows of the infinite” (Charles Baudelaire). As a tool of visual perception, the camera obscura was the result of a long process of scientific discovery and development. Since the seventeenth century, the view onto reality has been gradually liberated through developments in science. The camera obscura represented a pioneering achievement in the history of cinematographic modes of perception because it introduced a restructuring of possibilities for visual experience through optical techniques.
Tracing the cultural significance of illusion and the dominance of vision has been a major focus of many analysts and looking back at artists behaviours towards illusion and immersion it is possible to state that the virtual has always existed within art but as artists adopted new technologies, the virtual was enhanced by the medium in which it is presented on.

I intend to look at the signifiers of the immaterial and the virtual in art to identify the virtual dimension in interactivity so as to amplify the design process.

Chapter Outline:

Introduction to Virtual Art

Art and its Virtual – representing the material and the virtual:
- Spiritual art
- Medieval art

The virtual and the material – The observer and perception

The virtual as material

Examples in contemporary life of the virtual as material

Findings and Conclusion