As the technologist half of our collaboration, I'm responsible for providing the software-based immersive ("virtual reality") environment for our art projects. Clearly, in our case, the technology is essential to the art; indeed, it is the actual medium of the art. So it is not inappropriate to compare this software to, say, watercolors or oils or crayons. During the early Renaissance the development of colorants, pigments and oil-based media defined the limits of possibility for master painters, who responded by making their own paints and working with the chemists of the time to push their technology envelope further, no doubt creating something of a cottage industry in support of their work, thereby influencing interior decoration, furniture, etc.
It is as true now as during the Renaissance, or even the late Paleolithic when the beautiful polychrome Lascaux paintings were air-blown through reeds onto cave walls, that the technology an artist chooses both enables the art and limits its possibilities. Sometimes, when the artist chafes at the limitations, the technologist rises to the challenge and extends or improves the medium. Sometimes the technologist just makes cool new stuff and the artist exploits it. It's not an either-or situation; there is an interdependence, a back and forth interaction of mutual influence, between technology and art. Art and technology entwine together in social and economic contexts that create an overall complex system in the sense that complexity theorists think of such things. We should look at Flatland in this sort of light: as an actor in a co-evolving complex dynamical system that may eventually exhibit stable and enduring emergent properties, at least if the system turns out to be sufficiently rich in the contributions of its actors.
Flatland is a software tool-set for creating immersive environments. Our artwork is created with immersive digital environments, so perhaps we're a good test case. Our current piece, the Color Organ, uses a different software toolset, since we were fortunate enough in early 1999 to have gotten EAI to contribute licenses for their Sense8 World Toolkit (WTK) package. Alternative software choices could range, for example, from using a video gaming engine such as the Quake engine, which is freely available and provides a structure of sorts for presenting immersive 3D visualizations, to hand crafting the entire application in raw OpenGL C++ code.
Based on the web site descriptions I reviewed before we came to the artist-in-residence session I expected Flatland to have all of the core functions of an immersive environment tool-set. These are: a) construct the 3D models and paint them with 2D texture map image files, b) manage the viewpoint, rendering the display frustrum in real time from a user-interactive movable location and orientation in the 3D space, c) handle the simulation loop that cycles through getting user interactive input, processing any activity in the environment and rendering the next frame. Flatland does have these abilities, as I expected. The question is where it goes beyond these basics in its contributions to the ecosystem of today's complex immersive technology.
Its principal limitations are two-fold. First, it is not yet easy enough to use for many immersive art efforts to consider. That is, it is a complex, powerful package of C++ source code that presently can only be used by VizLab students who have become sufficiently experienced in its specifics AND who are competent Unix C++ programmers. In practice during our residency at the VizLab, it took Chris two days (including a very late night) to prepare and cross compile a simple Flatland application to merely display some of the new 3D objects Jack had created in Maya. This is not because Chris is a weak programmer or Flatland a bad product, it is simply a feature of its current state of the art.
Second, and more important because it prevents or at least greatly inhibits fixing the first problem, is that Flatland is proprietary and not commercially available - that is, it is held by UNM as restricted use intellectual property. Therefore no one in the art or technology world outside the VizLab can consider it. We, by virtue of our artist-in-residence involvement have been granted permission to use it within our contract terms, and as a reasonably competent C++ programmer I could probably master its intricacies. However, there is no compelling reason for us to do so, and some reason not to use it.
As software under constant development Flatland is a moving target. If we used it today, it would be different in a week or a month. There is no mechanism for insuring upgrades, other than the VizLab's own internal process, which is part of why Chris took two days - he had to get the latest version working on Linux and then cross compile to Irix. There were minor, but essential elements and features he had to find out about as he went through the process - which is educational for a graduate student but needlessly frustrating for use as a working artist's tool.
The VizLab has its own culture and style and processes. To use Flatland requires learning and adapting to that world, not a bad thing in itself, but inherently and necessarily demanding, since it is within an academic high performance computing center.
To make Flatland suitable for use as an artist's tool, two paths need to be considered: first, I recommend that the Flatland project be entered formally into the "Open Source" movement. This is appropriate for its state of development, and its situation as an academic and scholarly project. Placing it within the GNU public licensing framework and maintaining it as a conventional open source project, with CVS repository and peer reviewed external developers, would greatly widen its value to the world. For example, programmers could develop interface features for use in their specific projects that could be added to the central code base, making Flatland easier to use, perhaps even providing a non-programmer's authoring interface, such as I have developed for the software that underlies the Color Organ application.
The other path is to commercialize it as a product. This would be very problematic since the market is presently very small and already has established players such as EAI. There's no money to be made here, in my humble opinion, at this point. The time to commercialize it is AFTER it has become an accepted and widely used and trusted open source project. Then advanced versions and features and add-ons can be sold, as well as support and consulting services. Graduating VizLab students and faculty would be in a good position to create such a commercial support company, in the style of many other open source companies such as Red Hat. In any case, if Flatland were offered as a commercial product, with commercial-grade support available from competent staff, it could be considered for use, but would it be financially accessible for artists' use? At present Flatland is marginalized by its proprietary unavailability, but if it were commercially available it would still be marginalized for artistic use unless it were offered inexpensively.
As an open source project it would benefit from outside users' input while still remaining under the Vizlab's control. Artists and their technology collaborators such as myself, would be in a position to take advantage of it without fear of being unsupported or trapped in a proprietary system and at a financial disadvantage. On the contrary, a wide community of support would be available, and one would have the comfort of using a more or less industry standard. Flatland could become a crystallizing tool around which immersive artwork could form.
I recognize I am preaching to the converted here, in the sense that Dr. Caudell expressed to us his preference for open-sourcing Flatland, but I make the recommendation because it is clearly germane to the evaluation, and to endorse and support Dr. Caudell's position going forward.
In this high technology world, there are artists who need new kinds of paints and brushes. An open source Flatland would be an attractive toolset for immersive art, providing the opportunity for artists to exploit emerging technology.
Dissemination through the AccessGrid
The AccessGrid is not only a structural part of the piece of music we wish to present both sonically and visually, but is also the means of dissemination to a wider audience. While we were in Albuquerque Britton and I met with people at the digital planetarium called Lodestar. Caudell and his team have been working on the necessary software so that real time communication can occur between AHPCC and the digital dome theater. This means that the audience in New Mexico will be able to experience the GridJam in an immersive environment which holds a decent number of people. Where the viewpoint is in this environment could be determined by an experienced navigator and the whole audience would experience the Gridjam in the same way.
In other locations where the performance will be received on the AccessGrid audiences may be located in auditoriums with a live video and sound feed from the local immersive environment. With a large non-immersive screen the audience would get a feeling for what is really happening if more than one viewpoint were to be shown on a split screen. As the AccessGrid expands nodes, the prospective audience will also grow. I can imagine connecting with England on SuperJANET4, their AG. Also, when the growing number of digital dome theaters connect with each other, one could have a very large audience base, all in immersive environments.
It is true that the AG has limitations. Limitations are not always limitations, however. Because of the sound time lag due to the slower speed of sound, we needed to have a semi improvised musical performance which would not depend on a regular rhythm. Alvin Curran was our solution to this problem. He is a pioneer in composing music which is performed over great geographic distances. He has also collected many sound files over the years which he loads onto MIDI keyboards and plays them by pushing the proper key. Because of the time lags, an even larger layer of complexity will be achieved through the interactions of the visual and sonic speeds.
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