Re: Surrealist compliment generator - a hoax?

Lee Hollingworth (lee@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au)
Tue, 9 May 95 15:03:10 EST

> > One thing that makes all of this work, is that contextually speaking,
> > we know that we are supposed to be receiving complements. Perhaps if
> > a user is told that there's a certain way they are supposed to look at
> > things, then their perception of story will be held together much more
> > concretely than if they were to simply walk in without knowing "what's
> > going on."
>
> But if the user is the one creating the 'world' then it is up to them
> how they interpret it? We should not be providing a finished product
> and saying "here come and see what I have done" as is the case with
> art or verse. We should be concentrating on providing the tools for
> the _user_ to create the "master piece"?
>
> Why is it so important whether the "user" gets to reinterpret or
> rewrite everything? Why is their view somehow more paramount than
> that of the person who created a given piece of VR artwork? What if
> the user and artist are the same person?

I guess this is my fault for coming in late in the discussion, but I
had thought that the user and artist were one in the same. Forgive
me for making wrong assumptions.

I thought the purpose of this discussion was to come up with the
"tools" that will allow anyone (user/artist) to create their own
virtual world. If all we are talking about just providing a finished
piece of "art" then it would seem we are debating the wrong issues?

> Then you simply have a
> "user" providing a finished product and saying "here come and see what
> I have done." You have the same authorial politics.

Well the driver of a car does not claim to be the manufacturer, nor
does the provider of the paint claim to be the the artist.

Wouldn't it be better to be providing a system that supplies all of
the tools *any user* can utilise to create a surreal world? After
all, I may not like yours :-)

> I think the issue you are pointing at is "who should have control of
> online editing? How much control?" That all depends entirely on the
> whims of whomever owns a given piece of intellectual property that we
> are referring to as VR Art. That person may wish to make their
> creation alterable, or may not. There is no a priori reason to
> postulate one approach as morally superior to the other - they are
> just different approaches.

If we are simply trying to create or design one piece of art, (be that
virtual of otherwise), then most certainly these issues come into play.
If however we are trying to create a system that is a set of tools,
then we need not worry about whether it is to be changed and by whom,
but rather is such a thing possible?

Lee.