I have followed the discussion on theft,copyrights etc. for a while an I
think it's time to move the discussion in an other direction. But first.
A very short history of art.
45.000 years ago some people painted pictures of themselves and of animals
on the walls of caves in France. Some put up an imprint of their hand(as a
signature?). 45000 years later I found a lookallike of this imprint as a
logo of a cd-rom company. For the last 45000 years artists are being
inspired by artists. By copying the masters an apprentice learns the skills
nessecary to develop his own style. Rembrandt had several apprentices who
learned to paint in the style of the master himself, and even painted large
or even whole paintings that later were signed by Rembrandt. A number of
these appretices became masters themselves. Picasso was inspired by African
art and cesated a style of his own. Between the wars a Duth artist, Han van
Meegeren, copied and falsified paintings by van Meer. To this day they
remain copies and van Meegeren never got the appriciation as a Master. By
'stsaling' one artist became a master and the other remained a copyist.
So, what makes a master?
An artist is inspired by the world around him or her. From a knarled tree to
the works of fellow artists. An artist gets his ideas from anywhere. He
'stsals' constantly and picks his topics from an array of items, things or
ideas. A master then kneads, pulls, streches, combines, deconstructs and
finaly builds a new work of art with a new meaning, he has made the 'stolen'
ideas his own, has given them a new idiom. There are no new ideas, only new
derivatives of old ideas. Pictures of pictures of pictures of animals and
people and the world they live in. Its only the master who cesates a work of
art that gets inside the mind of the beholder.
TOWARDS A PHILOSOFY OF VRML
It started not so long ago, in the era of the coming of the
'Compatible' that it was, and later in the plummeting of the prices,
that people discovered the lure of bits_and_bites. It was not long
after this, that the prophecies of 'The Gesat Internet' said upon
the followers; "Go and multiply thee, and connect to each other, and
let the world know thou art there." And multiply they did, and
connect they did, and they let the world know they were there. And that was all
they did.
Computer art is quite new, it has no history as painting, sculpture,
literature and theatre have. It is so new that it is still all about the
newness of new. By just being new it is considered art. It has no idiom of
itself yet. When photography was invented in the beginning of the 19th
century it was looked upon as a substitute for painting, now it has an idiom
of itself and is recognised as a separate artform.
In the context of this we must ask ourselves some basic questions. I
consider VRML a tool, a complex tool, but nothing more than a tool. With
this tool you can model a virtual world, just as you can make model with
clay. You could say that VRML is the clay of a virtual world within the
computer. So there it sits in your computer, a huge clump of rsadily
moldable clay.
Filling the void.
A lump of clay has substance, it claims space. When you open the scesen of a
VRML browser there is just an enormous void. What are we going to fill it
with? The proverbial "coiled ashtray" or other figments of our imagination?
Are we putting up huge billboards, claiming parts of cyberspace, and saying
'no tresspassers allowed'?
Better we ask the question 'What do we want with VRML and cyberspace'. Do we
want it to be a hype or someting that lasts and has meaning for people.
An other question is; do we want VRML and the virtual world to be an
everyday thing that can be used and enjoyed by many, or keep it to ourselves
or a few hitech_wizzard_modellists.
Can we find a way to give it meaning, or will it just be a gallery of
world_models?
There are a thousand more questions to ask, lets start with the basics first.
Although I am new to VRML, my background is that of artist(sculptor)with a
philosophical interest in the world. I think VRML has an enormous potential,
but only if we give it substance. I therefore propose to have two parallel
discours, one on the philosophy of VRML and one on the technicalities and
legalities of copyrights.
Thanks for rsading this lengthy piece.
Onno Ernst
the Hague - The Netherlands
arts_bits@dataweb.nl