MEDIUM: Digital Collage
DESCRIPTION:
This work started with a popular stock image of a model, whose name I could not find. It was then digitally manipulated in a virtual reality program to create the unique color, stretching, and resolution effects. 3D cursors specifically helped create the psychotropic, but tightly controlled, results. A quote describing cyberspace from William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ was then added to the image. Gibson’s writing coined this term in 1984, influencing the language and paradigms of the world wide web during its early development. His works still hold relevance and reverence to this day.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
The virtual reality software that was used to create this artwork was designed and programmed by myself, as I am an engineer first and artist second. I created both items inspired by the words of William Gibson and Ted Nelson, on the potential of multi dimensional, high throughput human computer interaction systems. I wanted to create a program, and artwork from that program, that followed through on their ideas – that showed explicitly the things that could be done differently in those systems. The work also portrays some of the inherit strangeness that comes from those differences, through its conflicting colors and digital artifacts. To me, the artwork invokes the idea of separating perception from the body and reality. The upper half of the woman’s head, where a virtual reality headset would be adorned, is the most distorted. Its colors stretch and mix within themselves, while being separated from the pixelated, fading lower half of her body. While it’s very different from the typical result of photo editing, I believe it achieves the goal of showing something that would be much more difficult to create with conventional modes of interaction, evoking interest through its differences. I hope to continue to develop the program, and publish it through my studio, OdachiVR.
