Olivier Grau (2003). Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge: MIT Press.
A ideia de mundos virtuais, espaços de realidade imaginária para lá do real táctil, não é um conceito novo surgido com o mundo digital. Nas artes literárias e pictóricas existe uma longa tradição de criação de mundos imaginários ou recriação de locais reais, visitáveis com o folhear do livro ou contemplação da obra pictórica. Grau (2003) observa uma tradição essencialmente europeia de representações visuais imersivas: pintura mural romana de representação de espaços sagrados cujos vestígios podemos observar nas salas da Villa dei Misteri em Pompeia; os faux terrain barrocos, panoramas religiosos que misturam pintura e escultura; espaços perspécticos renascentistas e trompe l’oeil barroco, estilismos de representação que utilizando a ilusão da perspectiva na representação mesclam espaços imaginários com o espaço arquitectónico físico. Podemos talvez ir mais atrás na tradição clássica, a lendas coligidas por Plínio o Velho da tradição greco-romana sobre os pintores gregos Apeles e Zeuxis cuja busca de um realismo perfeito os teria levado a criar ilusões capazes de enganar o olhar mais perspicaz (Gombrich, 2008).
Panorama de Edimburgo: Robert Barker, 1796.
Um exemplo incipiente de espaço virtual, hoje quase esquecido, encontra-se nos panoramas do século XVIII e XIX: imensas pinturas meticulosamente alinhadas em salas circulares. Nestes espaços imersivos óptica, arquitectura e aplicação de efeitos de pintura paisagística e perspectiva combinavam-se para criar um efeito realista, para a época, de estar num local sem estar realmente lá, como observa Grau, citando Alexander Von Humboldt “the new 360º image medium with its huge dimensions could ‘‘almost substitute for travelling through different climes” (2003, p: 69). Sensações mediáticas na época, estes panoramas eram visitados por multidões, constituindo um investimento lucrativo que envolvia equipes de pintores e arquitectos que recorriam às mais recentes invenções tecnológicas da época (projecção óptica e fotografia) como auxílio à representação pictórica fiel de espaços e episódios históricos. Embora esta tecnologia tenha caído na obsolescência, o seu princípio de imersão foi mantido vivo pela cenografia futurista das exposições mundiais e pelo cinema, meio em que cedo começaram as experiências com imersividade tridimensional (Grau, 2003).
Grau analisa a projecção cinematográfica estereoscópica como precursora do da realidade virtual. Analisa vários projectos de arte virtual, recorrendo à realidade virtual como meio de expressão artística.
Citações:
The expression ‘‘virtual reality’’49 is a paradox, a contradiction in terms, and it describes a space of possibility or impossibility formed by illusionary addresses to the senses. (p: 30)
Cyberspace is a completely spacialized visualization of all information processing systems, along pathworks provided by present and future communications networks, enabling full copresence and interaction of multiple users, allowing input and output from and to the full human sensorium, permitting simulations of real and virtual realities, remote data collection and control through telepresence, and total integration and intercommunication with a full range of intelligent products
and environments in real space. (p:38)
Perspective is an effective tool for creating distance; it reduces the size of objects, moves them back, or fades out things that do not fit in with the horizon it envisions. However, perspective is not an expression of natural vision; it is a technical construction, and
what it presents to the perception follows specific conventions. Panofsky’s analysis of perspective is undoubtedly apposite. (p:55)
The term faux terrain was first used in the mid-nineteenth century to describe threedimensional objects that appear either to grow out of the picture’s surface or stand free in the area between the observer and the image. This creates the illusion of adding a third dimension to a flat representation. The join between wall and floor, the transition from horizontal to vertical, is concealed, and the picture’s limits are extended. (p:59)
179 Even in the more sober estimation of Alexander von Humboldt, the new 360_ image medium180 with its huge dimensions could ‘‘almost substitute for travelling through
different climes. The paintings on all sides evoke more than theatrical scenery is capable of because the spectator, captivated and transfixed as in a magic circle and removed from distracting reality, believes himself to be really surrounded by foreign nature.’ (p:84)
When a new medium of illusion is introduced, it opens a gap between the power of the
image’s effect and conscious/reflected distancing in the observer. This gap narrows again with increasing exposure and there is a reversion to conscious appraisal. Habituation chips away at the illusion, and soon it no longer has the power to captivate. (p:167)
Sutherland’s ideas for an ‘‘ultimate computer display’’ of 1965 were also revolutionary. This display would have the capability to rearrange physical laws optically in ‘‘exotic concepts’’ and even visualize these through computed matter.74 One remarkable passage recalls Alberti’s use of the window metaphor: ‘‘One must look at a display screen as a window through which one beholds a virtual world. The challenge to computer graphics is to make the picture in the window look real, sound real, and the objects act real.’’ (p:177)
The U.S. Army works with virtual reality environments for tens of thousands of
participants with simulations that are highly realistic.(p:187)
Thus, the character of immersive art is revealed as located within a bipolar field of
tension. Like the Villa dei Misteri or the battle panoramas, the maximized, suggestive potential of the images aims at ecstatic affects, and this also includes regressive effects. (p: 215)
Virtual imagery proposes ‘‘as-if ’’ worlds. In a potentially infinite, additional space, it develops extensive representations, which connect largely with the appearance of experienced reality, developing it or overwriting it, and the dynamic capability of genetic algorithms appears to bring it to life. Virtual images rely on the ability of computers to copy real or model imaginary worlds while at the same time referring to a utopian space of what is possible. Nevertheless, these representations of complex environmental systems are still based on intelligible formulae and the illusion on logical comparisons. Virtual space is an automatic illusion of hard- and software elements, a virtual image machine that is based on the principle of real time. (p: 267).
Currently, the vanguard of virtual reality on the Internet is represented by the panorama-type formats Quicktime VR and Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which expand Internet images into the third dimension. (p:269)
Telepresence also represents an aesthetic paradox: It enables access to virtual spaces globally that seem to be experienced physically while the same time it is possible to zap from space to space at the speed of light and be present simultaneously at completely different places. (p: 286)
The idea of virtual reality only appears to be without a history; in fact, it rests firmly on historical art traditions, which belong to a discontinuous movement of seeking illusionary image spaces. Although these were constrained by the specific media of the period and used to convey highly disparate content, the idea stretches back at least as far as classical antiquity and is alive again today in the immersive visualization strategies of virtual reality art. (p: 354)
In addition, a history of ideas for artistic concepts of immersion runs parallel, ranging from Wagner’s idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk to Monet’s waterlilies panorama, Prampolini’s plans for a Futurist Polydimensional Scenospace, Eisenstein’s theories of multisensory Sterokino, Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema, Heilig and Sutherland’s media utopias, to the hype of the California Dream and beyond. (p:364)
