New perceptions, experiences at CyberArts

At the CyberArts International show in Pasadena, CA last month, hundreds of “cyberartists” gathered to discuss new modes of perception and experience made possible by digital technology.

What was apparent was that new creative systems are setting new thresholds and standards exceeding the conventional definitions being discussed in the computer and consumer technical communities for multimedia platforms. At CyberArts, artists explored the limits of audio, visual and performance media.

HOLO-VIDEO ARRIVES

One historic event at CyberArts was a demonstration by Steve Benton from MIT Media Lab, showing “the world’s first holographic movie.” Fresh from the Spatial Imaging Lab, the videotape showed MIT’s new Holo-Video system, which transmits a digital image over fiber to a special display, creating a moving, computer-generated digital hologram.

The source image is computed with a Connection Machine (the powerful parallel processing system from Thinking Machines), derived from an image created on a Silicon Graphics Iris workstation. A unique set of algorithms reduce the normal amount of holographic information to a data stream that can actually be transmitted over fiber.

The dream, of course, is to be able to project such holograms into the raw space of, say, your living room. But Benton says today this can’t be done without also filling the room with some kind of vapor to hold the projected light. However, MIT hopes to accomplish the same goal with rotating mirrors and specially ground lenses.

The Holo-Video signal itself is actually composed of output from three lasers (since it’s a color image, one laser each for red, green and blue), blasted into a rotating mirror that modulates the three beams into a viewing space — an imaging area where the laser beams are projected and then converge through a lens toward the viewer.

MIT will submit the Holo-Video transmission and compression specifications to the committee for possible inclusion in the MPEG-2 standard.

Beyond spatial sound. Three-dimensional or spatial sound is another area where much interesting work is being done by a number of leading theorists and music companies that attended CyberArts. Spatial sound is the realization of dimensionality in audio perception, in the same way a hologram allows you to view an “object” from different angles.

Listening to 3D sound through headphones is a hyper-real audio experience, delivering the uncanny impression of sound emanating from any precise location — in front of you, behind you, whispering up to you, scissors rasping to cut your hair — as opposed to in the middle of your head, which is where today’s stereo sound aims. The sense of presence is heightened with the addition of a baseboard (by BodySonic Inc. of Tokyo), placed either beneath a chair or underfoot, which vibrates in the low bass registers and heightens the experience.

At CyberArts, the overall impression was that a well-tuned digital signal processor (DSP) added to a multimedia platform could easily deliver 3D sound. New technology ranged from the Roland Spatial Sound processor, used in the current Michael Jackson video, to Bo Gehrig’s Focal Point 3D audio DSP board for the Macintosh. Gehrig, founder of Focal Point, showed some of his ideas for an audio spatial interface, which he claims allows you to hear things in space, estimate the distance of a sound source and make commands to objects in the space without a display.

SENSORAMA (1960) STEALS THE SHOW

The subject of virtual reality (VR) made a full day at CyberArts, beginning with the “Existential Funhouse,” an experimental, computer-enhanced participatory theater. Although Jaron Lanier from VPL Research Inc. discussed many new projects ranging from the redesign of the transportation system of Berlin to new VR theme parks in Tokyo and Los Angeles, inventor Mort Heilig stole the show by demonstrating one of the only remaining patented Sensorama simulators, first introduced in 1960 to demonstrate what he calls “experience theater.”

Sensorama provides a complete “multimedia” experience in which you simultaneously watch a stereoscopic 3D movie, listen to stereo sound, feel motion in a chair, smell aromas of scenes and feel wind blow by at various temperatures.

SETTING A PUBLIC, VOCAL AGENDA

Trip Hawkins, chairman of Electronic Arts and president of SMSG Inc., was the keynote speaker. He delivered an hour-long “state of the media” address, imploring the creative community to become involved with the issues of the new technology. Hawkins concluded the conference by calling a “town hall” meeting to help set a public, vocal agenda about requirements for new interactive media.

Attenders voted that no current platform or standard is sufficient. The CyberArts conference raises the question, Are we planning sufficient standards for the digital future of multimedia? When the end user is a studio visual artist, someone in the film or sound industry, will we be able to deliver the peak experiences these artists are already prototyping?

Mark Esserlieu