Please forgive me if my opinions are a reiteration of what has already
been said, as I have only recently joined this group.
It seems to me that we are getting hung up on trying to *copy* one
style and portray that as being "Virtual Surreality" (VS).
Who really cares if we can create an optical illusion that makes
flowing water defy the natural conventions of gravity - I'm sure that
to do so is simply (I use the term loosely), a matter of an algorithm
that can fool the eye.
I think we are missing the *entire* spirit of surrealism if all we do
is design a reality engine that copies one style or another.
My perception of VS is to visually represent those concepts put
forward by Andre Breton and other founding surrealists. Namely that
the virtual world be an "expression of pure thought, freed of all
controls imposed by reason and by moral and social prejudices." In
fact what I propose is a combination of automatic writing and automatic
painting.
Our reality engine should be able to accept a script describing *my*
perception of reality, and should then create that world for me.
I see this as a type of "black void" that become my canvass. My
world may be bounded, or it may be unbounded in which case I would
"fall through" the "worlds" of others (assuming they specified that
their world to be violated). Those things I have defined as belonging
to my world would fall with me, and interact with me in a dream like
sense. It would be the responsibility of the VS engine to make the
world interact with me in the manner in which I described it.
Using this "free form" engine, I could then describe any work of art
(though preferably a surreal piece) and then have the dream come to
life for me to *experience*.
I am sure that with this type of system, it would lend itself to new
work being created. Once I have experienced the 'Gradiva' of Andre
Mason, I could learn from that and add my own imaginings, my own
dreams and "chance" generated by the engine to experience my *own*
unconsciousness.
Which reminds me, a large part of surrealism has to do with chance,
that of the accidental incident - something that we should include in
our VS system.
It is important I feel that the initial state be a black void, thus
representing the night; the unconscious and the dream. Naturally one
of the first things a user could do is change that.
Anyway, that is my first impressions of where we should be heading.
Not toward defining what a VS world should look like, but rather
providing all of the tools for the users of the system to define their
of perceptions of the surreal.
Lee Hollingworth
lee@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au