EVED
S
: A
RTISTIC
I
NSTRUMENTS
OF
P
ERCEPTION
Experimental Visual Experience Devices (EVEDs) are artistic inventions that alter the spectator’s visual perception of the external real world. The intention of these devices is to re-strict, enhance, reframe, refocus or reinterpret the spectator’s visual perceptions in a manner that causes him or her to see the world in a new way. In a sense, EVEDs go right to the heart of what art is about: they directly reinterpret the visual world for the spectator and, in doing so, cause everyday scenes and
objects to become “special” and “extraordinary” [1]. As opposed to most traditional artworks where the artist presents the viewer with an object or scene for contemplation, EVEDs instead present the viewer with a device that makes a work of art of the real world. By altering the way the viewer perceives the world, the artist reeducates the visual per-ceptiveness of the viewer. Every-day objects seen from different perspectives appear extraordinary A R T I S T ’ S A R T I C L E
Experimental Visual Experience Devices
Joshua Levine
A B S T R A C T
T
his article introduces the concept of Experimental Visual Ex-perience Devices (EVEDs), which the author defines as artistic in-ventions that alter the participant’s visual perceptions of the external real world. The aim of EVEDs is to place the participant in a slightly altered visual reality in order to cause him or her to see real things anew. The article describes several works of participation art that can be seen as historical pre-cedents to EVEDs. The author dis-cusses two EVEDs that he in-vented: Whirld is a cylindrical room mounted on an axle that functions as a spinning camera obscura; Portable Whirld is a hood that functions as a portable cam-era obscura. The author describes how the two sculptures reshape the spectator’s visual perceptions, and suggests some forms that fu-ture EVEDs might take. Joshua Levine (artist, inventor), 400 West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510, U.S.A.E-mail: <[email protected]>.
Fig. 1. Whirld, sculpture of wood, galvanized steel, iron, copper, felt and lens, 12 ft × 3 ft, 9 in, 1997.
(left) door closed. (right) door open. Whirld is a type of camera obscura that functions as an observatory to everyday life. Seated inside of Whirld, the viewer is surrounded by an image of the outside. The cylindrical room inside of Whirld is mounted on a axle, so that as it spins, the viewer sees a panoramic “movie” of his or her surroundings. (© Joshua Levine)
(Color Plate A No. 2). This, in turn, causes the viewer to pay closer attention to these everyday sights and to rethink his perceptions of familiar objects. As some EVEDs may be mobile, their inter-play with the real world allows them to continually present new visions.
EVED
S
AS
P
ARTICIPATION
A
RT
Because EVEDs allow the viewer to be-hold new visions directly through his or her own eyes—rather than through the interpretation of an artist, director or computer programmer—they may be seen as true works of “participation art.” As such they call into question the tradi-tional roles of art, the artist and the spectator. The artwork is no longer pri-marily seen as an object in itself, but in-stead as a device or instrument for hav-ing an artistic experience. The artist’s role as “the creator” is therefore trans-formed as she assumes the role of re-searcher and/or shaman: the artist makes the artistic experience possible for the spectator through her knowl-edge and research. Likewise, the specta-tor leaves behind the traditional role of passive participant and is transformed
into an active, creative and integral part of the artistic process.
E
ARLY
EVED
S
Lygia Clark (1920–1988), Brazilian artist and pioneer of the viewer-participation movement, was perhaps the first major artist to investigate the idea of EVEDs. Her body of work, entitled Nostalgia of the Body (dating from 1964 to 1968), dealt directly with constructions and themes related to EVEDs. Clark used goggles, hoods, gloves, body suits and other objects in order to restrict or en-hance the senses of the participant. Clark’s piece Dialogue (1968) consists of two interconnected pairs of goggles that restrict the two participants’ fields of vi-sion to views of each others’ eyes. Mask with Mirror (1967) consists of a helmet with four small round mirrors, one above and one below each eye, that may be ma-nipulated by the participant, allowing her to look back into herself, reflect back to the world or produce a combination of both perspectives. Art historian Guy Brett has described Clark’s art as “being a kind of kineticism of the body. . . . [She] encourages the spectator to use his own
energy to become aware of himself” [2]. In Clark’s art, the viewer comes to the forefront, and the object becomes sec-ondary. It is the viewer who must input his or her energy to bring the artwork to life. The concern is not with the self-ex-pression of the artist, “but instead with the possibility of self discovery, experi-mentation, invention and transforma-tion” [3]. In his book Art: Action and Par-ticipation, Frank Popper describes Clark’s work as “perhaps the most telling ex-ample of the way in which the disciplines of optical/plastic research has led to multi-sensory participation and a type of aesthetic behavior which reconciles the problem of individual and group activity” [4]. Clark’s work did not center upon seeing and vision, but she made use of the manipulation of the (often domi-nant) sense of sight to demonstrate the interaction and dialogue between the senses of the participant’s body.
Stelarc is an Australian artist whose work also centers around the human body and makes use of EVED-type devices. His work between 1968 and 1972 included a series entitled Helmets: Put on and Walk. He described the work as follows:
There were six different helmets struc-tured to split your binocular vision in various ways. Because each eye saw unre-lated sets of images, the visual effect was not a three-dimensional solid, but a field of super-imposed moving images that changed as the person walked around. The fragmentary and fleeting images undermined depth perception and al-though the person’s vision was saturated with a multiplicity of images (combina-tions of side, back, up and down) there was no frontal vision, resulting in the person groping forward [5].
The focus of Stelarc’s more recent work is the exploration of the human body’s tolerances and limitations, its re-lationship with emerging technologies and their promise of being integrated into the human body. The goggles and hoods that he created 30 years ago may be seen as a starting point for these in-vestigations [6].
R
EFINING
THE
D
EFINITION
:
W
HAT
I
S
AND
I
S
NOT
AN
EVED?
In its simplest form an EVED may con-sist of a pair of eyeglasses or a sheet of translucent material hanging in front of the viewer’s eyes. Both of these “devices” (as well as microscopes, kaleidoscopes, binoculars and myriad other visual in-struments) partly fulfill the definition of what a visual experience device is—they
Fig. 2. Portable
Whirld, sculpture of
plastic, wood, felt, copper and lens, 28 × 12 × 42 in, 1998. The partici-pant first puts on the harness and then places the viewing barrel into the harness’s socket. (© Joshua Levine)
alter one’s vision of the world. Still, a couple of qualifiers may exclude these and similar instruments from being con-sidered true EVEDs. First, it is important to realize the significance of the term “experimental.” If the devices create sights that are so familiar to the specta-tor that they are of little visual interest, then they are by definition not experi-mental. When they were first invented, telescopes and microscopes were cer-tainly fantastic experimental visual de-vices, but with time they have lost some of their capacity to surprise, especially for those who routinely use them as sci-entific tools [7].
The second necessary qualifier is the term “artistic.” As anyone who has grappled with the task of defining the term “art” is aware, art has much to do with intent. In summary, a model EVED must be a new invention (or a new con-figuration of known devices) that di-rectly reinterprets the visual world in a way that hasn’t quite been done before. It must be created, or at least put into use, to function as an artistic device.
EVED
S
AND
C
OMPUTER
-G
ENERATED
I
MAGERY
On the sur face EVEDs may seem to share much in common with the virtual environment helmets. Both virtual real-ity (VR) paraphernalia and EVEDs are devices that alter the participant’s visual reality and may do so with similar look-ing head-gear. However, there are at least two major differences between the
two types of devices. First, VR uses mil-lions of bits of electronic data to gener-ate artificial images of the world, whereas EVEDs rely directly on available light in the real world in order to re-ceive their image. Like film, photogra-phy and television (at least until the mid-1970s) EVED sights have tradition-ally corresponded
to the optical wavelengths of the spec-trum and to a point of view, static or mobile, located in real space. Com-puter-aided design, synthetic hologra-phy, flight simulators, computer anima-tion, robotic image recognianima-tion, ray tracing, texture mapping, motion con-trol, virtual environment helmets, mag-netic resonance imaging tracing, and multispectral sensors are only a few of the techniques that are relocating vi-sion to a plane severed from a human observer. . . . Most of the historically im-portant functions of the human eye are being supplanted by practices in which visual images no longer have any refer-ence to the position of an observer in a “real,” optically perceived world [8].
In contrast, EVEDs find their place in the tradition of an earlier historical reor-ganization of vision “that produced a new kind of observer and that were cru-cial preconditions for the ongoing ab-straction of vision . . . [that is taking place today]” [9].
Perhaps more significantly, the aims of computer-generated imagery and EVEDs are often different. Computer-generated imagery places the partici-pant in an artificial world in order to educate, entertain or produce some tan-gible result. EVEDs are artistic devices
that aim to place the participant in a slightly altered visual world or altered reality (AR), in order to allow the par-ticipant the experience of seeing real things anew. VR is an immersion into non-reality; AR is immersion into the observation of reality.
This being said, there is no reason why EVEDs and computer-generated techniques could not be combined (as they have been) to form hybrid devices that rely partly on the real, optically per-ceived world and partly on a computer-enhanced version of that real world. It is interesting to note that
Many aspects of virtual reality, includ-ing full-body participation, the idea of shared telecommunications space, multi-sensory feedback, third-person participation, unencumbered ap-proaches and the data glove all came from the arts, not from the technical community [10].
O
N
C
REATING
N
EW
EVED
S
Most EVEDs consist of devices that are head-mounted (such as hoods, masks, goggles, etc.), as normal vision must be modified in some way in order to present a new kind of vision. However, the EVED may be a room or chamber into which the participant enters. De-vices that allow the participant to walk or move around increase both the participant’s control of the artistic pro-cess and the number of things that may be viewed.
The visual field can of course be al-tered in innumerable ways. With EVEDs the artist is not choosing a moment in space and time for the viewer to contem-plate, but rather designing a device which acts as a new “lens” on the world. That being the case, the experience I find most interesting is one that results in an image that is mostly real, but slightly altered or unusual—objects and/or patterns are identifiable, but presented in a novel way [11]. When or-dinary things are presented in a way that reminds us of just how extraordinary they really are, it is a powerful artistic experience. I have designed and built two artistic devices that will serve to illus-trate this discussion.
T
HE
C
AMERA
O
BSCURA
:
I
MMERSIONS
INTO
O
BSERVING
R
EALITY
Two devices I have designed and con-structed are variations on the idea of the camera obscura. The historical
precur-Fig. 3. Portable Whirld, sculpture of plastic, wood, felt, copper and lens, 28 × 12 × 42 in, 1998. Portable Whirld is designed in two pieces. The shoulder harness supports a collar that contains a “lazy Susan” bearing ring. The hood barrel includes a focusable lens and an in-terior viewing screen. (© Joshua Levine)
sor to the modern camera, the camera obscura relies on the principle that light travels in straight lines. If a pinhole is placed in the door of a darkened cham-ber, the light from outside will pass through the hole and project an upside-down image of the scene outside onto the wall opposite the hole. This phe-nomenon has been discovered and re-discovered since the fourth century B.C.
in Greece and the fifth century B.C. in China [12]. The use of a lens in place of the small hole or pinhole in the camera obscura is first mentioned in British sci-entific literature in the second half of the thirteenth century [13]. The camera obscura itself has traditionally been used by artists, who use it to trace accurate renditions of reality. The artist’s camera obscura can be made in the form of a portable box with the addition of a mir-ror and a pane of ground glass. An opaque drape may be used to cover the artist’s head so that light is blocked out. The device has also been used by scien-tists as a safe means to observe the sun and its eclipses. A hundred years ago it was not uncommon to have a camera
obscura on docks or overlooking a sce-nic vista where patrons could observe the projected image for their amuse-ment. With the advent of the modern photographic process (which can be re-garded as an invention that allows the chemical fixation of the camera obscura’s projected image onto a sur-face) and motion pictures, the camera obscura as a source of amusement be-came less fashionable.
T
HE
“M
AGICAL
” E
XPERIENCE
OF
THE
C
AMERA
O
BSCURA
Even with modern technology’s advances in capturing and projecting visual im-ages, the camera obscura’s projections remain unique and fascinating. A cam-era obscura with a proper lens can project a highly detailed color image onto an opposite wall or screen. Every movement, whether it be blades of grass waving in the wind or a cyclist passing by, is projected. Often parts of the image re-main still and quiet like a photograph, while others are highly animated. The sound going on in the immediate
vicin-ity corresponds to the upside-down pic-ture, but is slightly muffled due to the observer’s position inside a chamber. So-cial historian Jonathan Crary notes that
Many contemporary accounts of the camera obscura single out as its most impressive feature its representation of movement. Observers frequently spoke with astonishment of the flickering im-ages within the camera of pedestrians in motion or branches moving in the wind as being more lifelike than the original objects [14].
Even to a modern person’s jaded eyes, constantly bombarded by spec-tacular images, there is something peaceful, meditative and even magical about seeing the world through a cam-era obscura. It is something like real-ity—but it is not reality.
In his book Techniques of the Observer, Crary describes two phenomena that may account for this magical, meditative feeling. First, because the camera obscura is a darkened chamber that the observer must enter, it removes the ob-server from the external world and al-lows her to view a framed piece of the world from a highly focused vantage
Fig. 4. Portable Whirld, sculpture of plastic, wood, felt, copper and lens, 28 × 12 × 42 in, 1998. (left) front view. (right) back view. The par-ticipant may either stand in place and rotate the barrel or may simply walk around to change the view. (© Joshua Levine)
point. Second, Crary posits that the cam-era obscura “decorporealize[s] vision” by separating “the act of seeing from the physical body of the observer” [15]. The intermediary “mechanical eye” of the camera obscura per forms the task of seeing and chooses what is seen, causing the observer to reflect on his own visual capabilities. Due to these two factors, Crary suggests that the camera obscura may be seen as a model “simultaneously for the observation of empirical phe-nomena and for reflective introspection and self-observation” [16].
T
HE
S
CULPTURES
: W
HIRLD
AND
P
ORTABLE
W
HIRLD
Whirld
My spin on the camera obscura was to project its images onto the walls of a ro-tating cylindrical room so that the image surrounds the viewer (Fig. 1). The room is the interior of a hut, a 3-ft, 9-inch-in-diameter cylindrical barrel formed of paneling secured to two discs of ply-wood. The room itself spins with the viewer inside, resulting in a movie-like effect that is created as the room rotates on its axle. The image wraps 2⁄3 of the way around a cylindrical screen 8 ft high and 12 ft in circumference.
Four wooden arms extend from the bottom disc of the hut (see Fig. 1). Their placement allows a person on the outside to spin the hut, although the participant inside can also control Whirld’s movement from the interior by shifting his or her weight to different points along the perimeter of the floor. The hut has a 4-ft-high copper door with a black felt curtain secured to the inte-rior of the wall above the door to keep the interior chamber light-proof. Cen-tered above the door is a round uncut eyeglass lens with a focal length of 3 ft, 9 inches through which images are pro-jected to the interior walls.
On a sunny day the image projected inside Whirld is clear enough to observe the veins on the leaves of nearby trees. Placed on a street corner, Whirld func-tions as an observatory to everyday life. Inside Whirld the spectator will notice several things: everything outside is shown on the screen in front of one’s eyes; things in the distance appear very small and things nearby are rendered in exquisite detail. Everything is upside down and one’s field of vision changes (as Whirld spins) without moving one’s head. These factors contribute to the observer seeing things in a new way.
Jaron Lanier, VR pioneer, has said that VR sensitizes those who immerse them-selves within in it for a period of time:
There’s this wonderful phenomenon where when you’re inside a virtual world and if you take off the head-mounted display and look around, the physical world takes on a super real quality where it seems very textured and beautiful and you notice a lot of details in it because you’ve gotten used to a simpler world. So there’s actually a sensitivity-enhancing effect [17].
In experiencing Whirld there is a sensi-tivity-enhancing effect because the par-ticipant has had the real world presented before her in a startling, eye-opening way. When there is a lot of light the world is highly detailed and one notices details that one may have not noticed before. On a gray day, the world takes on a misty, dreamlike manner. At night the moon and streetlights and headlights form a moving, abstract geometric pic-ture. What we see is actually a heighten-ing of the normal functionheighten-ing of our own eyes; Whirld simply brings such phe-nomena to our attention.
Portable Whirld
After designing and building Whirld, which is kinetic but stationary, my next challenge was to build a small, portable version (Fig. 2). My aim was to expand the image possibilities of Whirld, give greater control to the spectator and make the artistic invention accessible to a greater number of people. My solution was to create Portable Whirld by forming a viewing-hood (30 inches high and 15 inches in diameter) of two opaque, black plastic planters. I constructed a shoulder harness with a socket for the viewing-hood to sit in. The resulting har-ness looks something like an old diver’s suit, the type with a glass globe helmet. Sitting in a collar formed of two rings that sandwich a “lazy Susan” bearing, the barrel spins around smoothly and easily. Portable Whirld’s two-piece con-struction allows the user to first put on the shoulder harness and then lift the barrel and place it in the collar (Fig. 2). I stretched black felt over the openings between the collar and the harness and secured it with staples and tacks. The felt blocks out a good bit of light while allowing enough airflow for breathing.
The viewing screen inside the barrel is constructed of high-quality poster board, selected for its ability to produce a clear image (some white boards tend to “fuzz” the image). The interior screen is 24 inches high and approximately 45
inches in circumference. The lens is an uncut plastic eyeglass lens (4 inches in diameter) with a diopter of +2.65, pro-ducing a focal length of 14.25 inches. It is mounted on a tight copper tube, which allows for slight adjustments to the focus (Fig. 3). While wearing Portable Whirld, one may appear to onlookers to be as curious as the world one is experi-encing within it (Fig. 4).
P
ROPOSALS
FOR
F
UTURE
EVED
S
The EVED can easily lend itself to new forms and expressions [18,19], both ar-tistic and educational:
• EVEDs as a Lesson: Instructing col-lege students (particularly those studying fine arts, design, film, op-tics, visual psychology, visual studies and media arts) to create EVEDs of their own. Students would gain in-sight into the visual world and learn skills in design and construction, cre-ative thinking and problem solving. Completion of the project would teach students much about visual per-ception and should enable students to see and think about vision and the world in a slightly different way [20]. • Animal Vision: One interesting idea for a new kind of EVED would be to design and build a series of masks or hoods that attempted to give the spectator some sense of how various animals see the world. Various lenses could mimic different types of ani-mals’ fields of vision, depth of per-ception, number and placement of eyes, etc. It should be noted that one would not actually be able to simu-late what various animals actually see, as it is currently unknown how animals’ brains process the visual in-formation they receive from their eyes. However, this could be an inter-esting art/science research project to lend some insight into other liv-ing beliv-ings’ points of view.
• Portable Whirld with Multiple Lenses: One variation on Portable Whirld would be to place a number of lenses or pinholes along the body of the hood. The apertures would have covers to allow the wearer to open or close them at will. For example, a lens on top could be opened to let in a view of the sky, a lens tilted toward the ground could be opened to al-low a partial view of the ground. • Using EVEDs in Film Making:
EVED-type devices could be used to create special effects in films.
References and Notes
1. E. Dissanayake, What Is Art For? (Seattle, WA: Univ. of Washington Press, 1988). Dissanayake of-fers an interesting discussion of the purpose of art in culture.
2. G. Brett, Kinetic Art: The Language of Movement (New York: Reinhold, 1968) p. 65.
3. S. Osthoff, “Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica: A Legacy of Interactivity and Participation for a Telematic Future,” Leonardo 30, No. 4 (1997) p. 283.
4. F. Popper, Art—Action and Participation (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1975) p. 13. See also Popper’s Origins and Development of Kinetic Ar t (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1968).
5. Stelarc in a letter to Simone Osthoff, dated 27 October 1996 as quoted in Osthoff [3] p. 286.
6. Osthoff [3] p. 286.
7. It is interesting to note how quickly the human mind loses interest in new phenomena once it has gained familiarity with them. For example, an opti-cal device as simple as a mirror is still regarded with superstition by cultures that are unfamiliar with it. See B. Goldberg, Mirror and Man (Charlottesville, VI: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1985) chap. 1.
With the introduction of the first movies in the 1890s, audiences reacted strongly to films of every-day events. Legend has it that some audience mem-bers panicked at the sight of a train moving toward them in the Lumiére Brothers’ short Arrival of a
Train at La Ciotat (1896). Three generations later modern movie audiences seem to need ever in-creasing special effects to hold their visual atten-tion. See R. Sklar, Film: An International History of the Medium (New York: Adams, 1993) p. 29.
8. J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1990) pp. 2–3.
9. Crary [8] p. 3.
10. M. Krueger, “The Artistic Origins of Virtual Re-ality,” SIGGRAPH Visual Proceedings (New York: ACM, 1993) pp. 148–149.
11. There are an infinite number of choices to be made when creating an EVED, but some choices are ultimately more interesting than others. It is very easy to create a kaleidoscope effect, multiple images, blurred or greatly distorted sights with EVEDs. These images are compelling at first, but their interest is not sustainable. The human brain struggles to decipher greatly distorted images and after some time, gives up. This is not to say that ab-stractions are not interesting, but that images that offer large amounts of confusing visual information are less interesting.
12. J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura (Bristol, En-gland: Adam Higler, 1981) pp. 1–7. Hammond pre-sents a readable, straightforward history of the cam-era obscura.
13. Hammond [12] pp. 8–10.
14. Crary [8] p. 34.
15. Crary [8] p. 39.
16. Crary [8] p. 40.
17. L. Leeson, “Jaron Lanier Interview,” Clicking In (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1996) p. 44 as quoted in Osthoff [3] p. 283.
18. For an exploration of kinetic art that incorpo-rates science, see F. Malina, Kinetic Art: Theory and Practice (New York: Dover, 1974); J. Benthall, Science and Technology in Art Today (New York: Praeger, 1972).
19. I would be interested in hearing others’ ideas for new kinds of EVEDs. Contact me at Joshua Levine, 400 West Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
20. Alan Berliner, of the Film Department at New York University, teaches a class in which some of these ideas are introduced. For further reading on teaching art as research see S. Wilson, “Art as Re-search” at <http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/ artist.researcher.html> (1996) pp. 1–6; G. Szekely, Encouraging Creativity in Art Lessons (New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1988); P. Doherty, D. Rathyen and the Exploratorium Teachers’ Insti-tute, eds., The Magic Wand and Other Bright Experi-ments on Light and Color (New York: Wiley, 1995).