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Charlotte Davies «Osmose» | Phaedrus or Blue World
Charlotte Davies, «Osmose», 1995
Phaedrus or Blue World | © Charlotte Davies
«Phaedrus or Blue World», oil and acryl on canvas, 38 x 58, CDN 1985, collection of the artist The use of transparency as the primary design element can be traced back to the paintings of Char Davies, which she abandoned in the year 1987 [see comments on the production-aesthetic context]. An example of this is the painting «Phaedrus or Blue World». Replacing the conceptual approach, the central perspective as a symbolic form [cf. Erwin Panofsky, «Die Perspektive als *symbolische Form*» (library catalog No. 36), in: Hariolf Oberer / Egon Verheyen (eds.), Erwin Panofsky: «Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft,» Berlin 1985, pp. 99–167. First printing in: Lectures of Warburg Library, 1924/1925, Leipzig/Berlin 1927], with an alternative spatial depth, art-historically connects with the type of late eighteenth-century landscape painting that reached its height in the works of Joseph M. William Turner. The continuation of this painting tradition with a medium that puts the viewer in the position to actually look around the designed data space is credited to Char Davies. Melinda Rackham, whose VRML work «Empyrean» (2000) also does without the central perspective as a visual tool, nevertheless holds to a clear difference between objects (whose transparency echoes Char Davies’ data worlds) and the surroundings without horizon that encircle them.


 
Charlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose (installation view)Charlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose (Head Mounted Display)Charlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose, «Tree Pond Red», Real Time Frame CaptureCharlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose, «Rose Tree», Real Time Frame CaptureCharlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose, «»Rocks and Roots», Real Time Frame CaptureCharlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose, «Tree», Real Time Frame CaptureCharlotte Davies «Osmose» | Osmose, «Forest and Grid», Real Time Frame CaptureCharlotte Davies «Osmose» | Phaedrus or Blue WorldCharlotte Davies «Osmose» | play video

Categories: Virtual Reality

Keywords: Landscape | Space | Perception

Source text:

Davies, Charlotte «Artist's statement»| Ackers, Susanne «Exhibition list «Osmose»»| Ackers, Susanne «»Osmose« – Anmerkungen»

Relevant passages:

icon: authorOliver Grau «Immersion and Interaction From Circular Frescoes to Interactive Image Spaces»| icon: authorRudolf Frieling icon: authorDieter Daniels «Milestones of Media-Art»| icon: authorClaudia Giannetti «Endo-Aesthetics»| icon: authorJill Scott «Extensive Bodies»

Works by Charlotte Davies:

Éphémère

Check as well:

Melinda Rackham «Empyrean»


Canada | SGI Onyx Infinite Reality Engine2 mit R4400 150 Mhz Prozessor, 2 RM6's, plus 128 MB RAM, DAT drive, 2GB Hard Disk, CD-ROM drive, Macintosh Computer, HMD mit Polhemus Tracker, Datenbeamer, digitaler Stereo-Amplifier mit Lautsprecherboxen | Concept: Char Davies | Music: Rick Bidlack | Participants: Georges Mauro, Dorota Blaszczak | Software: John Harrison | interactive environment
 

 Charlotte Davies
«Osmose»

If in virtual environments during the first years of Virtual Art one often witnessed the use of gateways that caused abrupt crossovers, what one experiences in the image spaces of «Osmose» are osmotic crossovers from one sphere of images to the next, always aware of how an old sphere deteriorates and then amalgamates with a newer one. This, of course, entails calculating both image spaces at exactly the same time. [...] Two worlds of text parenthetically accompany this simulacrum of nature: on the one side, the 20,000 lines of the programming code that produces the work, which in the artificial world arranges itself to an enormous column awaiting inspection. On the other side, there is a room filled with fragments of texts, focussed on expressions that appear in the study of nature, technology and the body. The huge programming code fails to substantially lessen the overwhelming impression. But, at times, the binary fundament of the image space is exposed, and one consciously perceives the roots of the illusion in this way.

The inconsistency between technology and nature that Char Davies seems to develop as the theme in the work «Osmose» (osmosis), and in the succeeding work «Ephémère,» is explained only in part by an interest in economy. The work’s exceptional quality lies more so in experiencing time aesthetically—a time repeatedly brought to a halt through the process-like shifting and intermingling of transparent and (only in the approach) concrete visual elements that exist in a conceptual balance with the acoustic elements and a specific way of moving through the data space. The attempted standstill in data space is nevertheless laborious, since the breathing interface continually collects data that causes a change of position. This constant need for repositioning within the dimensions of time and space creates an aesthetic experience that irritates the ideas of time and space as experienced in reality. In the data worlds of Char Davies, light and speed are the only parameters used for drawing references – so our practiced sense of orientation, normally used to lead us along a wall or through a door, no longer applies here.

Susanne Ackers (also the author of all the following descriptions of Char Davies’ works)

(cf. Susanne Ackers, «Consciousness, Art and Media – Reflections on Mediated Experience,» in: Paavo Pylkkänen / Vadén Tere [eds.], «Dimensions of Conscious Experience,» Amsterdam / Philadelphia, 2001, pp. 179–189. Printed copy of a workshop article for the University of Skövde, Sweden, October 1997.)