FleshFactor - Informationsmaschine Mensch

"FleshFactor - 'Informationsmaschine Mensch', the title of Ars Electronica 97, makes it clear that this year's theme is the Mensch, the human being. In light of the latest findings, developments and achievements in the fields of genetic engineering, neuro-science and networked intelligence, the conceptual complex now under investigation will include the status of the individual in networked artificial systems, the human body as the ultimate original, and the strategies for orientation and interrelation of the diametric opposites, man and machine, in the reciprocal, necessary processes of adaptation and assimilation." Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf Directors Ars Electronica Festival, 1997 In this version of The Virtual Studio: Work in Progress, the liminal, hybrid, or in-between position of the human in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) is explored. Immersed in a three-dimensional drawing of a virtual studio the user is able to alter the architecture based on their position in the digital space, unfolding a series of potential virtual spatial narratives. The work discusses how, in immersive VR, the user is required to wear technological prosthetics such as data gloves or head mounted displays, the movement of these devices is tracked and the world experienced by the user responds in real time, giving the appearance and feeling of immersion and agency. In the Virtual Studio the user is able to shift the very walls of the gallery to reveal new journeys and access to new artefacts. Virtual prosthetics place the user in and between actual (analogue) and the virtual (cartesian) space - they are effectively in two places at once.