Re: Surrealist compliment generator - a hoax?

Lee Hollingworth (lee@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au)
Sun, 14 May 95 9:37:49 EST

> This comes back to the surrealism tools vs environment discussion. At
> first, I was getting worried what kind of art would be produced if the
> viewer was given a black hole and the means to create their own surreal
> experience. What is the role of the artist in such a piece. I've been
> reading the posts about this and I'm looking for a middle ground. I want
> to find a place between completely user-generated experiences (with the
> artist providing the tools) and completely packaged experiences (with the
> user having little control over the environment itself).

My point is, unless we are going to provide a "packaged experience,"
_someone_ must have the tools (artist or user), to be able to
initially create the world - so why shouldn't that be the end user?

Perhaps, I am coming from a different angle. I am a programmer with
an interest in art and in particular surrealist art. So whilst I
dabble with painting/sketching/poetry etc., most of my time is spent
cutting code. With this background, what I would like to see is a set
of tools (provided by the program), that would enable me (the amateur
artist), to create a surreal world that I could experience through
interactive VR. Whether anyone else wants to, or gets to share my
"world" is of little importance to me...
Naturally there are others, who are professional artists, who would
want to create a world for the explicit purpose of sharing it with
others. I would like to think that that artist would use the same
tools I did, those tools being the ones supplied by "our" system?

Lee.