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Manifestes
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Manifestes
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Interactive 3-D graphics are a rather recent invention, but are fast becoming a common media genre. History has proven that whenever a new technology-driven medium becomes available there will always be artists who will use that medium to create art.Of course, interactive 3-D graphics have been around for more than 20 years. In the early days, an expensive Evans & Southerland vector scan monitor and a super computer could be used to create a street lined with tall wire frame buildings that one could 'walk' down. However, if the means to view such graphics cannot be easily purchased anywhere by anyone at a reasonable price, they will not become an established form of expression.
We would like to announce that we will call art which uses interactive 3-D graphics technology "world art." Let us ponder and attempt to define what "world art" is and what types of art are unique to a true "world."
1) The world must feel adequately large and complex
Virtual reality is first of all simply a world within a computer. Experiencing the world is much like going on a trip. Once you have arrived, you experience the world by walking around on your own, by touching objects and by talking with people. We dare say it would not be as fun if you were pushed around the world in a stroller by your mother.
The theme of the world has to be compelling. It must be a world where few people go, a world where no one can go, a world where no one has ever been or a world that exists only in the imagination. The world could be a foreign country, space, deep below the ocean surface, the past, the future, the world of microorganisms, the next world or even another dimension. There is no shortage of ideas in novels and in the movies.
The world has to be adequately complex and of a convincing size.
Dot the world with secret hideouts to relax in and other hidden locations. Though there will always be the risk that no one will find them, your efforts will add depth to the world.
2) The modeling, materials, textures, lighting and sounds must be convincingConvincing modeling means more polygons, and textures and sounds require a large amount of data. But if a world is going to move people as an art form, the details have to be convincing.
Abstract structuralists say they have no need for concreteness. They may create a world made only of, say, spheres and cubes. They may say that clicking on a sphere will make a certain cube spin or that a certain sphere is a link to another world, and that structurally their world is the same as yours. But they are forgetting one important aspect.
A sphere and, for instance, a human face are not the same. When a person sees a human face, his or her memory bank is instantaneously given a jolt. And consequently various neighboring emotions are awoken. These emotions differ slightly depending on the person, but basically they are the same.
A sphere does not arouse these emotions. Artists need to understand this principle, and somehow move people by intuitively coming up with visuals so as to deftly arrange and control the emotions that are brought up.
3) The world has to be interactive and there must be causal relationships
The real world is interactive. It reacts to your actions. If you push a door it will open. Telephones ring, and if you answer the telephone you will hear someone's voice. If you throw a stone it will fall. If it falls in a pond it will make a splashing noise and the water will ripple. And so on and so on.
The world must be filled with causal relationships. In other words, there must be chain reactions with sometimes unpredictable outcomes.
If the grass is watered it will grow. Cows will then eat the grass. When the cows die they will enrich the land with their bodies.
This truth dates back to the beginning of Indian philosophy.
4) Characters who inhabit the world must exhibit 'gnarly' behavior
Gnarl, coined by Rudy Rucker, is behavior that lies at the edge of chaos. The word gnarl originally meant a knot in a tree. It was later used by surfers to describe a wicked wave and eventually by those in the computer industry to mean sufficiently complex.
Life is gnarly. Human behavior is gnarly, as well. If your virtual world is inhabited, the digital life forms that visitors to the world meet should react to them in a gnarly manner.
What this means is that the inhabitants should not be simple toys which endlessly repeat the same action. They should be capricious and unpredictable. Sometimes they should run away, on occasion they should be intimidating, and when they are in a good mood they should approach the visitor. That is what visitors to the world want to experience.
5) The very existence of the world must have meaning
If you want to make a 3-D game in your world, go ahead and make a 3-D game. What we refer to as a game here is a simple game where you shoot down an enemy, fight with someone for the highest score or complete some objective within a certain time limit.
A world which exists as a form of art, like other forms of art, must make the visitor feel happy and fulfilled. The viewer must feel as if he or she has had a gratifying experience. The feeling one gets after listening to good music, watching a good movie or reading a good book.
It is probably best not to incorporate too many objectives into the world. Rather than going on a package tour where you just rush to all the sightseeing spots in the travel guides and snap some photos, wouldn't a trip where you go to the beach, find an interestingly shaped rock, and sit and look at it for half an hour be more suitable for art appreciation?
That's right. Like the real world, the very existence of the virtual world must have meaning.