It is good to understand that the technical and artistic
development of interactive virtual worlds is establishing, not just a
interesting live location for 3D graphics, but a unique new medium. The
value of a new medium, as opposed to simply a new venue, is that a new
medium may enable expressions of beauty and meaning in ways that may not
have been easy or even possible before. Perhaps the new language which
is developed for the medium will make possible expressions which have
the quality of furthering the thinking and feeling of people of this
time, and representing a unique and historically characteristic
understanding of the universal themes of our existence.
Suppose we think of this new medium more pragmatically as if it were
a new musical instrument. Certain musical instruments are more effective
at playing pieces in certain genres and 'styles'. If history is
examined, often the particular style and its body of definitive works
emerges because of the development of a new instrument or some technical
advancement or variation of a previous one. The piano, electric guitar,
synthesizer, and the computer, are examples. Due to the technical
advances mentioned earlier we now have a new 'instrument' for our
artistic purposes. We are at the stage of beginning to play more than
simple exercises on this new instrument, and we are just beginning to
hear and create the new pieces which will define and popularize a new
genre and 'style'.
As with any new medium the audience will be built in stages as the
ability to 'read' the works of the medium spreads throughout the
culture. It is only now that the first examples can emerge that embody a
new expressive grammar and vocabulary rather than relying on some
restatement in interactive virtual terms of a set of grammars from the
previously established media. These first works will also demonstrate
the way to 'read' the artistic experience expressed in the new language.
The essence of this new language of interactive worlds is that it can
present experiences similar to 'life' itself, but also with no sensory
or material limitations, and hence no need to imitate what we charmingly
refer to as 'reality'. The medium shares with cinema and theatre the
ability to create a 'suspension of disbelief', a sort of Dream
existence, but with an important difference. Unlike cinema and theatre
we are able to maintain Will and maintain a self-navigating causal
identity able to affect and modify our Dream-like experience.
Perhaps the new medium may help to break the final empty illusion of
our time, that life is a finite sequence of linearly time-ordered
experiences. We can only wonder what transformations will take place on
this new stage of virtual worlds. What concepts and emotions and subtle
aspects of interior character will its viewers discover and rehearse
there again and again for beneficial use in a future existence outside
of time.
Mark Rudolph
Mark Rudolph is an interactive 3D artist and director, a Java
designer and musician. He worked at Silicon Graphics in California as
a VRML director and Java designer, and later founded the design and
production company 'Lucid Actual.' He is involved in Web3D Consortium X3D
design and arts activities, and heads a research project in
interactive 3D funded by the Canadien NRC (National Research Council).
He also has a Ph.D in Mathematics.