Digital Vista, 1999

Installation involving a 3D Computer model consisting of a navigable mile-wide virtual cube of visual and textual information.

In the group exhibit BAD SCIENCE, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS AND FABRICATED DIALOGS, presented by mixed mess@ge, in association with The DTW Gallery, New York City

View screen captures:

Project Description:
The title refers both to the look of digitally produced landscape, but also to what’s on the horizon if present trends in our cultural perception of space continue. The work can played with like a big video game you fly around in and explore, but my hope is that for some it may be viewed as a sort of critique of western visualization. It is about the Western historical perception of landscape in the most basic sense.

 

Digital Vista
Review by Chris Jordan

[abstract]
Digital navigable environment projected on surface of metal tube cube approximately 8′ x 8′ x 8′; two facing surfaces covered and used as digital projection space; pillows, carpet, keyboard and trackball.

[details]
Digital Vista is a multifaceted artwork that questions the massive societal movement towards all things virtual. It blurs the boundary between digital and tangible through viewer interaction, both physical and mental. The traditional role of artist-audience is torn down through the collaborative and interactive nature of the installation.

This is a participatory artwork, utilizing the calm stillness of Zen to create a gateway into the virtual experience. The real life space, contained within the square mesh, welcomes you as well as supports you through the virtual experience. Once you are seated and Paul has coached you, like the Zen master, on the controls, you begin the exploration. The first thing you see are three dimensional green lillypad-like extrusions floating on a cyan background. Zooming into these stark structures, you notice gray tombstone-like obelisks on them. Further navigation towards these obelisks reveals simple words and phrases on their surfaces. As you stop and look around these spaces, you begin to notice words combining into more complex thoughts as different obelisks line up in 3 dimensional space. While shifting around these cubes, the combinations change; some disappear, some emerge, positions are altered, and you begin to realize the delightful complexity of this experience.

Your mind soars, dreamlike, while your body rests comfortably within the peacefulness of the cushioned cube. For me it felt like an out of body experience. I zoomed from lillypad to lillypad, creating different motions, rhythms, and phrases out of the objects. It was exciting, thinking of Burrough’s work with audio cutups in the 50’s, conjuring 3D meaning out of the recombination of words. The smooth response of the system allows you to hunker down in a cluster of cubes, and spin around, the words and shapes combining in a blur of meaning, form and phrase fusing into one.

As I became more immersed, the starkness of the environment created a feeling of walking through a graveyard. I then interpreted these tombstones as a memorial to the actual words written on them. Initially the flash and discov- ery of this virtual space gave the Digital Vista meaning, showing humanities moth-like draw to all things bright and shiny. But paradoxically it is a statement on how that flash is eroding society’s connection to not just literature, but the use of words. We see this every day, as more and more people turn on, and tune out. People have been reading less and less, opting instead for the somnambulism of television, and the bang of video games. Digital Vista not only questions that shift in society, but creates a memorial to the casualties in this future atmosphere.

The Dadaist notion of the “Exquisite Cadaver” opened the 20th century with word play exploration as an art form. Now at the close of the century, Paul Clay’s Digital Vista is appropriately representing the use of language or words as the modern Cadaver.

Project Credits:
Digital Vista by Paul Clay
Text: Karen Williams with additional text by Paul Clay and Ed Pastorini.
Early versions of the presentation included contributions by Yuki Takagi, Willyum Delirious, and Jamie Leo.