Charter2 Digital Technologies as a Medium

There are several forms of digital art. I am more in interesting in Virtual Reality and Animation. The following is a short note at my point of contrast and comparison.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that allows a user to interact with a computer simulated environment making a real or imagined one. Like a lot of games of CRPG (Computer Role Playing Game), you can virtually play a role in the game as you are real in the world. See Peter D’Agostino, VR/RV: A Recreational Vehicle in Virtual Reality, it is in a 3D world that simulates a travel along a superhighway by joining scenes from some big cities, and people are sitting from the inside of a computer-generated car.

The other form is animation that is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2D (may be 3D effect sometimes) artwork in order to create an illusion of movement. It could be displayed as a motion picture or video program. The example is that Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, No Ghost, Anywhere Out of the World from No Ghost, Just a Shell. It presents with special facial attributes which is different from real human being.

The reason I compare these two kinds of forms is that they are kind of opposite. Virtual Reality is trying to simulate a real world and making it as real. It appears the view comes from your eyes. However, animation is trying to simulate people’s behaviors but with the special characters or attributes it can’t look real.

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