0E_IN_maquinas&almas:Maquetación 1
26/6/08
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modern lives. And as the machine inhabited our physical world, we were interested in inhabiting the synthetic, virtual world of the machine. By the early 1990s, “virtual reality” was a common term and a place that many wanted to experience. Art has long been concerned with creating alternative worlds that immerse their viewers and carry them to another place. With digital technology the artist began to create virtual environments that were animated, three dimensional and interactive. Those who entered virtual worlds were represented as “avatars”, computer generated forms composed of nothing but data. Avartars could encounter and interact with artificial life, the inhabitants of the virtual world that were brought to life through programs that defined their behaviors and desires. Artificial life could more closely imitate the behavior of living systems and convey the sense of a synthetic creature that was alive and thinking—a virtual machine with a soul. But at the same time the role of the human body and human soul was being questioned. When immersed in virtual worlds, the physical body was not needed and sometimes referred to in a condescending way as “meat” and the physical world as “meat space”. Some artists suggested that the human soul was not locked in the human body but was free to wander in virtual space without the constraints of the physical world. Mixed Reality By the start of the 21st century artists were reconsidering the relationship between physical reality and virtual reality, based again on advances in technology. Fuelled by the rapid growth of networked digital technology and the parallel growth in mobile computing, there was an increasing interest in techniques that combined real and virtual environments to create mixed realities. Between the extremes of physical reality and virtual reality lies the spectrum of mixed reality. Unlike virtual reality that replaces the physical world, mixed reality strives to blend computer generated virtual objects and characters with the real world. Artists began to experiment in mixed reality, creating works that blurred the boundaries between physical reality and virtual reality, between biological life and artificial life. They, once again, questioned our fundamental understanding of reality through new forms of creative experience. Liminal Art In our current life, mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs provide ways to access information and communicate remotely while still engaged in the physical reality around us. As interfaces improve, it will seem natural to move in and out of cyberspace as we go about our daily lives. Portable digital devices allow us to interact in the physical world while coexisting in other places, both real and virtual. Through technology we can immerse ourselves in virtual environments, mingling with simulacra and disembodied entities. We can live parallel lives in virtual worlds, taking on multiple personas with no link to our physical bodies. But it’s not necessary to ignore or exclude our bodies and our physical surroundings in order to participate in a virtual existence. We can coexist in a liminal world.
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