Crossing over the Boundaries: Beyond the Screen (original) (raw)

2008, In the proceeding of 14th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA '08)

As an object at the boundary between virtual and physical reality, the screen exists both as a displayer and a thing displayed, simultaneously functioning as a mediator. The screen’s virtual imagery produces a feeling of immersion in its viewer, yet at the same time the materiality of the screen produces a sense of rejection from his complete involvement in the virtual world. Thus, the experience of the screen is an oscillation between these two states. With these perspectives, I approach the screen by deconstructing and re-combining its separate existential categories. This has resulted in two categories of screens: three-dimensional screens and movable screens. I have created video installation works with a three-dimensional screen structure and projected video images onto them. These works create a three-dimensional video space and invite viewers to physically enter into and be immersed in the virtual video experience. In these installations, the three-dimensional screen itself is stationary, because the work cannot respond to the viewer’s actions and the response from the viewers becomes serene and meditative. After that I have attempted to explore another level of interactivity between a virtual space and viewers. I involve physical interaction around the screen, so the screen itself becomes the physical device used for interaction. The “move-ability” of the screen affords interactivity between the screen artifact and the viewer, and between the virtual and physical spaces. In movable screens, physical actions by people affect the actual images on the screen–their movements change the images of the virtual world. In the project entitled “Cross-Being: Todd (tilting table),” I created a table structure as a screen interface with one leg and a tilt-able screen as a tabletop. The tabletop functions not only as a screen, but also as the structure that corresponds to the viewers' actions. If the viewer tilts the tabletop, it triggers a certain movement of the video image that is projected on the top of the table. Viewers feel like their movement controls the virtual world. This creates a corresponding situation: the corresponding relationship between the real and virtual, so the real world physics employed in the virtual world. Another work titled “Cross-Being: Dancer (spinning screen)” is also built with a similar concept. This work involves rotary physics into virtual world like the tilting tabletop screen involves projecting gravity from the physical world into the virtual world. If the viewer spins the screen, then the dancer’s video image in the screen spins as well. Both works deal with the relationship between recorded time and real time, and the interaction between the past and present, which are also created by the boundary of the screen. From the three-dimensional screen to the movable screen, the screen functions as medium that connects the world of physical space in which viewers are located to the virtual space where images and illusions are located. Thus, my approaches cross over this doubled boundary in different ways, but always with the screen at its center.