Information
Char Davies >
»OSMOSE«, 1994 - 1995
Co-Workers & Funding:
supported by IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan Co-Worker: Richard Hollowayhttp://www.immersence.com/osmose/index.php
Technology
Hardware
Mac computer (sound), sound synthesizers and processors, stereoscopic head-mounted display with 3D localized sound, breathing/balance interface vest, motion capture devices, data projector, projection screen, and shadow-silhouette screen. Installation Requirements / Space
During public installations of Osmose, immersion takes place in a private chamber adjacent to a large darkened space where museum visitors can witness the immersive performances as they take place in real time: both aurally, as sound is generated by the immersants behaviour within the work; and visually, as imagery generated from the immersants point-of-view is projected in real time onto a large-scale video horizontal screen. Simultaneously, the shadow-silhouette of the immersant is cast through a translucent vertical screen, emphasizing the relationship between bodily presence and the immersive experience. Software
Initial development 1994-1995: Softimage® 3|D modeling, animation and development environment and custom-written VR software; Silicon Graphics Onyx2 Infinite Reality visualization supercomputer. Reengineered in 2002 to run graphics entirely on a PC.
Descriptions & Essays
An immersive interactive virtual-realty environment installation with 3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound, a head-mounted display and real-time motion tracking based on breathing and balance. Osmose is a space for exploring the perceptual interplay between self and world, i.e. a place for facilitating awareness of one's own self as consciousness embodied in enveloping space.
Immersion in Osmose begins with the donning of the head-mounted display and motion-tracking vest. The first virtual space encountered is a three-dimensional Cartesian Grid which functions as an orientation space. With the immersant's first breaths, the grid gives way to a clearing in a forest. There are a dozen world-spaces in Osmose, most based on metaphorical aspects of nature. These include Clearing, Forest, Tree, Leaf, Cloud, Pond, Subterranean Earth, and Abyss. There is also a substratum, Code, which contains much of the actual software used to create the work, and a superstratum, Text, a space consisting of quotes from the artist and excerpts of relevant texts on technology, the body and nature. Code and Text function as conceptual parentheses around the worlds within. Through use of their own breath and balance, immersants are able to journey anywhere within these worlds as well as hover in the ambiguous transition areas in between. After fifteen minutes of immersion, the LifeWorld appears and slowly but irretrievably recedes, bringing the session to an end.
In Osmose, Char Davies challenges conventional approaches to virtual reality. In contrast to the hard-edged realism of most 3D-computer graphics, the visual aesthetic of Osmose is semi- representational / semi-abstract and translucent, consisting of semi-transparent textures and flowing particles. Figure/ground relationships are spatially ambiguous, and transitions between worlds are subtle and slow. This mode of representation serves to 'evoke' rather than illustrate and is derived from Davies' previous work as a painter. The sounds within Osmose are spatially multi- dimensional and have been designed to respond to changes in the immersant's location, direction and speed: the source of their complexity is a sampling of a male and female voice.
Literature
Davies, Char. »Virtual Space.« In Space: In Science, Art and Society, edited by Francois Penz and Gregory Radick and Robert Howell, 69-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
Davies, Char. »Landscape, Earth, Body, and Time in the Immersive Virtual Environments
Osmose and Ephémère.« In Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 322-337. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2003.
Davies, Char. »Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being.« In Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, 293-300. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002.
Davies, Char. »Osmose: Notes on Being in Immersive Virtual Space.« In Digital Creativity: A Reader, edited by Colin Beardon and Lone Malmborg, 101-110. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 2002.
Deepwell, Katy. »Reverie, Osmose and Ephémère: Dr. Carol Gigliotti interviews Char
Davies.« n.paradoxa, international feminist art journal 9 (2002): 64-73.
Ackers, Susanne. »Consciousness, Art, and Media.« In Dimensions of Conscious Experience, edited by Paavo Pylkkänen and Tere Vaden, 179-190. Amsterdam: Benjamins, John, 2001.
Hansen, Mark. »Embodying Virtual Reality: Touch and Self-Movement in the Work of
Char Davies.« Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender and Culture 12, no. 1-2 (2001): 112-147.
Banville, Annie-Claude. »La polysensorialité dans Osmose de Char Davies.« In Jeunes chercheurs du CELAT, edited by . Montreal: 2000.
O`Donoghue, Karl. »Virtual Ecology: The Work of Char Davies.« In Thought Lines 3: An Anthology of Research, edited by Paul O´Brien, 284-294. Dublin: National College of Art and Design, 1999.
Rajah, Niranjan. »The Representation Of A New Cosmology: Immersive Virtual Reality
and the Integration of Epistemologies.« In Invencao: thinking the Next Millenium, edited by . Sao Paolo, Brazil: ITAU Cultural, CAiiA, 1999.
Crighton, Gary. »The Real and the Virtual: Karl O´Donoghue Interviews Char Davies.« New Media Notes: Art and Technology in Ireland , no. 2 (March 1999).
Heim, Michael. Virtual Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Davis, Erik. TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information. New York: Harmony Books, 1998.
Davies, Char. »Osmose: Notes on Being in Immersive Virtual Space.« In Digital Creativity, edited by Colin Beardon and Lone et. al. MalmborgVol.9. . Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 1998.
Gagnon, Jean. »Dionysus and RGlobal: Immersion in Char Davies´s Environments.« In Char Davies: Ephémère, exhibition catalogue, edited by . Ottawa, CAN: 1998.
Davies, Char. »Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Being.« In The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, edited by John Beckmann, 144-155. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.
Tuer, Dot. »The Second Nature of Simulation: Mirroring the Organic in the Virtual
World of Char Davies's Ephémère.« In Char Davies: Ephémère, edited by National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa, ON, Canada: 1998.
Goldberg, Ken. »Virtual Reality in the Age of Telepresence.« Convergence Journal 4, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 33-37.
Davies, Char. »Osmose.« In Arte Virtual - Realidad Plural, edited by Karin Ohlenschläger. Monterrey, MEX: Museo de Monterrey, MEX, 1997.
Davies, Char. »Osmose.« Nov'Art: Les états généraux de l'écriture interactive (February 1997): 34-37.
Grau, Oliver. »Vom Zen des Tauchens.« Die Zeit (June 1997): 62.
Davis, Erik. »Osmose.« Wired 4.08 (August 1996).
Davies, Char and John Harrison. »Osmose: Towards Broadening the Aesthetics of Virtual Reality.« Computer Graphics (ACM SIGGRAPH) 30, no. 4 (1996): 25-28.
Wertheim, Margaret. »Virtual Nature: Osmose - Char Davies' Organo-Virtual Odyssey.« Metropolis (September 1996): 58-61.
Sims, David. »Osmose: Is VR Supposed to be this Relaxing?.« Computer Graphics and Applications (IEEE Computer Society) 16, no. 6 (November 1996): 4-5.
Pesce, Marc. »Osmose en Ik/ Osmose and Me.« Wave 17 (March/April 1996): 44-47.
Klaus, Francois. »Osmose-toi si tu l´oses!.« Interactif 9 (May 1996): 94-95.
Lunenfeld, Peter. »Char Davies.« Art + Text 53 (1996): 82-83.
Rutledge, Virginia. »Reality by Other Means.« Art in America 84, no. 6 (June 1996): 38-39.
Dyson, Frances. »Charged Havens.« WorldArt 3 (Fall 1996): 42-47.
Grant Marchand, Sandra. »Char Davies: Osmose.« In Project Series, exhibition catalogue Musée d´art contemporain de Montréal, edited by . : 1995.
Le Grande, Jean-Pierre. »Char Davies: Osmose du virtuel au naturel.« Vie des Arts XXXIX, no. 160 (Fall 1995): 27-29.
Jones, Mark J.. »Char Davies: VR through Osmosis.« Cyberstage 2, no. 1 (Fall 1995).
Asiomanoff, Florent. »Osmose: L´univers de Char Davies.« Nov´Art , no. 18 (Fall 1995): 12.
Bernier, Robert. »Char Davies: L´espace immersif, espace perceptif.« L´informateur des Arts II, no. 1 (Fall 1995): 58-60.
Bureaud, Annick. »ISEA 95, Montreal.« Leonardo Electronic Almanac 3, no. 11 (Novembre 1995).
Exhibitions & Events