Virtual Reality Installation
inSite '94, San Diego, CA
September 23 - October 30, 1994
Apparitions, a virtual reality installation by a Vital Signs, was exhibited as part of inSite ’94. Members of Vital Signs were:
Sheldon Brown, project director
Kelly Coyne
Cheryl Devereaux
Jason Ditmars
Brian Duggan
Christa Erickson
Dorota Jakubowski
Andy Mirkis
Tim Nohe
Eric Riel
Mark Tribe
Niklas Vollmer
Payton White
Click here to view Quicktime video
Installation view:
Apparitions consisted of a physical installation that served as an interface to a computer-generated virtual environment. Gallery visitors were able to move through a virtual medical clinic using a wheel chair as a navigation device. By turning the wheels of the chair, visitors were able to travel down virtual corridors and enter virtual examination rooms and laboratories. By approaching objects in the virtual environment, visitors triggered video sequences. Together, the virtual environment and video used the clinic as an allegory for technologies of representation.
A view from within the virtual environment:
An
excerpt from the project description:
"Technologies
of representation from the Daguerreotype to Magnetic Resonance Imaging
affect and are affected by the ways others see us and the ways we see
ourselves. As a new and much discussed technology of representation, Virtual
Reality raises and reiterates a host of questions about ourselves and
the world. Apparitions addresses issues that circumscribe our
most basic assumptions about identity. Social institutions, as sites of
knowledge and authority, draw lines between public and private, deciding
for us what parts of our lives and bodies we control. In medicine, imaging
technologies are used both to inform these choices, and to legitimate
medical authority. In popular culture, emerging information technologies
will send unprecedented quantities of entertainment, information and advertising
into the consumer's home, targeted with an almost military precision.
Our exhibition is designed to examine the revolutionary and restrictive
possibilities of these technologies, as well as their interplay with the
human body and identity."
A view from within the virtual environment:
Video still:
Video still:
Objects within the virtual environment:
