杏吧原创

鈥淚 THINK that by using a fully enveloping virtual environment, one can get
closer to re-creating the sensation of being,鈥� says Char Davies. And that
sensation of being is what Davies is all about. Originally a painter, she is now
widely acknowledged as one of the world鈥檚 leading virtual reality artists. In
her worlds, things that we take for granted鈥攇ravity, flat surfaces and
that walls are hard鈥攃an no longer be relied on. 鈥淚 release people from
those physical constraints and allow them to experience `being鈥� in a slightly
different way,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t almost refreshes their perception, so they can
rediscover what it feels like to be here when they come back out into the
飞辞谤濒诲.鈥�

Davies has succeeded in pushing the boundaries of experience to a remarkable
extreme. Last summer, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, she unveiled
her most recent work, the semi-abstract, semi-transparent
贰辫丑茅尘猫谤别. In this virtual world, through which people navigate
simply by breathing and shifting their centre of balance, Davies uses
state-of-the-art 3D graphics and sound to create an experience of stunning
beauty.

With high-end image processors costing several hundred thousand dollars, few
artists outside the film and advertising industries can afford to work on the
latest VR technology. But Davies is no ordinary artist. She set aside her
painting career to spend ten years with the Montreal-based company Softimage,
which is now a leading supplier of graphics software to film makers. When she
joined in 1987, the company had just three employees, and as a director and
vice-president of visual research, she helped to launch the firm on a meteoric
rise.

Softimage鈥檚 success has given Davies enough money to do as she pleases. And
rather than return to brush and palette, she chose instead to work with a
Silicon Graphics Onyx2 supercomputer, the Rolls-Royce of graphics processors.
This decision was not an artistic about-face, she insists, but an evolutionary
progression. 鈥淚 used to want to step into my paintings, past the canvas. I
wasn鈥檛 interested in working with a space that relied on a flat surface,鈥� she
says. 鈥淚 wanted to give people a sense of being themselves embedded in an
enveloping, flowing space.鈥�

In the 1980s, she explored three-dimensional computer graphics as a way of
fulfilling this desire, but when her images were reproduced as 2D photos, they
too lost their 3D feel. Virtual reality seemed the best solution. Only in the
past couple of years, she says, have graphics computers become capable of
rendering the types of effect she seeks.

Davies鈥檚 worlds are not only visually unique, they are breathtaking in their
technological sophistication. Like no other VR experience, they give you the
feeling of really being immersed in 鈥渁nother reality鈥�.

Her first world was Osmose. It propels 鈥渋mmersants鈥� through a cartesian grid
and into a phantasmagoric luminescent forest. They find themselves in a clearing
with a great old oak in the middle. Everything here seems to be constructed of
light. Tree trunks, branches and leaves shimmer with a strange phosphorescence,
while in the distance there appears a river of dancing lights. The whole effect
is stunningly beautiful and the image resolution extraordinary. The air is
filled with vaguely organic, though distinctly electronic, sounds. It is almost
as if this digital forest were alive.

What people do in Osmose is entirely up to them. Unlike most computer-based
worlds and games, there are no quests to pursue or puzzles to solve. The whole
point, Davies says, is that people should explore the space in their own time
and way, simply enjoying the experience.

Moving through Osmose is itself an experience, for Davies has rejected the
joystick as navigational tool. Instead, people control their motion by breathing
and shifting their centre of balance. As well as wearing a stereoscopic VR
helmet, people entering Osmose strap on a chest harness fitted with sensors that
detect movements of the torso. To travel forwards you lean forward, to move
backwards you lean back, and so on. The harness relays what it senses to the
Onyx processor, which recalculates the image with lightning speed and moves it
in the correct direction.

Bodiless exaltation

But in Osmose, moving horizontally is not the only option. If you want to go
up, you simply breathe in鈥攖he harness senses your chest鈥檚 expansion.
Breathing out takes you down. 鈥淭he idea of working with breath fascinated me,鈥�
says Davies.

Shifting away from manual control was a key decision for Davies. A
joystick gives people the feeling that they are operating something, while the
harness makes them part of that thing. 鈥淚 think it emphasises being rather than
doing,鈥� she says.

In his novel Neuromancer, William Gibson famously championed 鈥渢he
bodiless exaltation of cyberspace鈥�. But Davies does the opposite. She works hard
to 鈥渞eaffirm the presence of the body in cyberspace鈥�. It鈥檚 an experiment that
works well: manoeuvring through Osmose using bodily movements is one reason why
this virtual experience seems so uncannily 鈥渞eal鈥�.

Osmose is not one virtual environment but a number of them
(see Diagram).
Each one is reached by moving in a different direction away from the
forest clearing. Moving horizontally, you are engulfed by huge floating,
opalescent leaves. Here on the forest floor, as it were, you are subjected to an
insect鈥檚-eye view of the world. Downwards, you enter a subterranean world of
glowing red rocks 鈥攍ike some cave deep within the Earth. Below this, you
reach at last the 鈥渂ottom鈥� of Osmose, where Davies has created an environment
entirely made up of blocks of glowing green computer code. This virtual world is
literally 鈥済rounded鈥� in the code from which it is created.

Elsewhere, you can travel along the river of lights, which is like being
swept along with a great swarm of fireflies. You can step into the heart of the
oak tree and see its blood-red sap coursing around you, and you can immerse
yourself in a pool of shimmering surreal water.

Organic feel

Osmose鈥檚 organic environment sets it apart from the overtly 鈥渢echno鈥� settings
of most VR worlds. Gone too is the hard-edged geometry so typical of computer
games and virtual worlds. But perhaps most special of all is that Davies wanted
the objects in this world to be semi-transparent鈥攁 requirement that
presented enormous technical challenges for both hardware and software.

Davies experimented with transparency in her paintings and still images on a
computer. 鈥淚 would cast shadows through a semi-transparent texture and the
shadows would project onto other semi-transparent textured objects, and so on,鈥�
she says. To achieve that transparency in her VR world, Davies hired John
Harrison as part of her Softimage team, to develop programs to mesh with the
company鈥檚 modelling and animation software. He faced a huge challenge.

鈥淚f you want to be able to see through objects in a virtual environment, then
the computer has to be able to keep track of, and process, multiple layers of
imagery at once,鈥� Harrison says. And the more layers you want, the faster the
processor you need. To give a feeling for the scale of the task, building one of
Davies鈥檚 still images would take a computer 30 hours. Yet to create smooth
motion in a virtual world, the supercomputer needs to generate about 30 frames a
second.

Harrison鈥檚 solution exploits the Onyx鈥檚 ability to draw pixels at a
fantastically high rate, which is used to feed very high resolution monitors.
But virtual reality uses lower resolution monitors, so Harrison tweaked the
system so he could redraw a single VR frame several times in the time it took to
draw a single high-resolution frame. If he wanted 10 layers of transparency, he
simply drew over every pixel 10 times.

Osmose received high praise at its premiere in 1995. With Harrison and
digital animator Georges Mauro, plus sound composer Rick Bidlack and sonic
architect Dorota Blazsczak, Davies had created a virtual experience far beyond
anything else in existence. But already she was planning her next work. In
Osmose, although you can explore the world in your own way, the environment
itself does not change. Davies wanted to create a VR environment that would
respond in real-time to the immersant鈥檚 presence and actions. In her new world,
Eph茅m猫re, objects within the world 鈥渟ense鈥� your presence and
respond with subtle movements and changes of sound.

Other worldly

Where Osmose has many environments, Eph茅m猫re has only
three鈥攍andscape, earth and body鈥攁nd all are far more abstract and
surreal than the realms in Osmose. Here, again, people navigate using the chest
harness. But the 鈥渙ther worldly鈥� feeling is far more intense.

Eph茅m猫re also has its own time. As you travel through the
world, the landscape passes through day and night, as well as four 鈥渟easons鈥�,
starting with winter, then spring, summer, and finally autumn. As the seasons
pass, the three environments change their appearances and different things
happen.

The experience of Eph茅m猫re is so abstract that it is hard to
describe. At times you appear to be underground amid strange rocky forms. And
elsewhere there are bone-like forms, and microbe-like forms with 鈥渢ails鈥�
that flicker gently as you approach. Throughout are enigmatic rivulets of
lights. The overwhelming feeling is of being on a planet on the cusp of life.
The British scientist James Lovelock once described Earth 4 billion years ago as
鈥渁 world itching to be alive鈥�, and that seems a pretty fair description of
贰辫丑茅尘猫谤别.

This organic feel is reflected in the sounds of this world. Though they are
totally unrecognisable, Bidlack conjured them all from digital recordings of
natural sounds and stringed instruments. There is a strong element of
interaction too. Blazsczak has positioned sounds at different points in the
environments using an 鈥渁coustatron鈥�, which creates a three-dimensional sound
stage around the immersant
(鈥淗ear me, see me, feel me, New 杏吧原创, 7 November 1998, p36).
Some of these are triggered to play by the actions of the
immersant. 鈥淵ou鈥檇 hear one sound when you looked that way,鈥� says Davies,
pointing. 鈥淥r this sound would call you to get your attention, and then
something visual would happen.鈥�

If Eph茅m猫re has a more primeval feel than Osmose, technically
it has taken a giant leap forward. The image quality is much finer. Objects are
rendered in greater detail and the effect of transparency is more subtle.
Moreover, the whole space seems much larger. Where Osmose is decidedly intimate,
Eph茅m猫re is epic in scale. But processing speed is still a
problem, Davies admits. Though Eph茅m猫re runs on an upgraded
machine and its software has been optimised, 鈥淚 keep putting more stuff in
there,鈥� she says.

So far, Eph茅m猫re has been shown only in Canada, though Osmose
travelled to Canada, the US, England and Mexico. Davies is inundated with
requests for exhibitions from around the world, but the cost of staging the
experience is still a hurdle. In time, Davies expects that cheaper computers
will become powerful enough to run high-resolution VR software, and other
artists also will be able to work in the medium. Eventually, she believes,
people will be able to access the technology from their homes.

Davies is worried that once this happens, and VR environments proliferate,
people will forget about the need to protect the natural environment around
them. She is also under no illusions about the uses to which VR will be
put鈥攖op of the list are computer games and pornography. 鈥淚 have two
options. I can either give up and say it鈥檚 all going to hell, or I can remain
engaged with this technology,鈥� she argues. 鈥淭o remain engaged, you must have the
hope that you and other people who have like-minded sensibility will be able to
create alternative currents that offer something different from mainstream
applications. These seem to be highly reflective of our society today in terms
of the violence, aggression and speed, speed, speed.鈥�

When that harsh reality gets just too much, it will be a shame if in future
there is not somewhere to run鈥攕omewhere to at least refresh your sensation
of being.