Now I'm very much a techie and also an amatueur artist, but I really
have to differ with this one. :-)
I think "what is most compelling" is always going to a function of
individual preferences and cultural environment. For me, gigantic
Impressionist/Expressionist/Abstract Expressionist paintings are the
most compelling works of art that have existed and will probably ever
exist. Even if we get giant CRT screens that are 20 stories high, I'm
not quite sure that they will ever surpass the wonderment of someone
slamming brushstroke upon brushstroke, color upon colr, streak upon
streak.
For me a close second would be the various monolithic totems one sees
in various cultures around the world. Chalk it up to my Anthropology
background. Hey, the Cubists thought these things were pretty
compelling too. :-)
But who knows, maybe in 10 years' time I'll be doing exactly that on
giant CRT screens.... Or maybe I'll be using VR to manufacture
20-story high _paintings_?
At any rate, I certainly agree that VR is a tremendously compelling
medium, even if right now it's only in its potentials.
For that to happen, we as artists have to take a responsibility to
explore every aspect of it
Definitely! Leave no stone unturned! :-)
and define the artistic language that is developing in this medium.
I'm not so sure if I agree here... it depends on how stringently you
want things "defined." I think it's important to _discuss_ VR, not
_define_ it, except insofar as coming up with a few definitions helps
makes a conversation more efficient. Specifically, I don't want/have
no need for _THE_ language of VR. I'm quite happy to use "a" language
on occasion, and to be thoroughly multi-lingual and heterogeneous.
I also like the fact that you haven't read the 'VR classics'- i just
finished reading Snow Crash and while I found it to be amusing, the vision
of the 'metaverse' seemed stiff. Now I don't feel so alone cause i've not
read it all.
I've read "Neuromancer" and "The Difference Engine." I'm a terribly
illiterate person. :-) The latter books really wasn't about VR at
all, but about what would happen if steam-powered computers had been
invented a few hundred years ago. It's not at all improbable.
Mechanical computers existed back then but were very slow. If you
hooked them up to a steam engine, they would compute faster. This was
actually tried in the 1990's on Charles Babbage's "Difference Engine"
by some students at either Oxford or Cambridge, and it actually
worked! We really could have had mechanical rather than electrical
computers back then....
As for "Neuromancer" - big whoop. It was a sci-fi story, and I've
never really seen what the point was in relation to VR. I did like
the idea of the "Chinese Virus," however. :-)
Cheers,
Brandon