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A vision of a virtual worldMultimedia artist Troy Innocent is leading a dedicated group of academics and students into a virtual world of artistic possibilities, writes DEREK BROWN. Imagine a place where coloured spheres float through the air, strange pyramids produce music on demand and metallic cubes attack one another on sight. Welcome to the world of Mr Troy Innocent.
Over the past decade, Mr Innocent, who is a course coordinator in Monash University's Department of Multimedia and Digital Arts, has become one of Australia's most internationally recognised multimedia artists. His latest artwork, 'Evolglyph', builds on six years of experimentation and research into digital art and iconic language. It will be installed for the first time at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image within Melbourne's Federation Square project, scheduled to open in the next two years. A complete virtual world, 'Evolglyph' is filled with a variety of computer-generated icons made of spheres, cones, cubes, lines and dots which, like living creatures, can multiply, evolve, interbreed and die in response to conditions created by visitors interacting with the system. Mr Innocent says people will be able to manipulate the icons using one of five consoles surrounding the installation's central screen. "The consoles will include joysticks and sensory pads that allow participants to select icons from within the virtual space. The icons can then be encouraged to perform actions in response to the participant's interaction. For example, because each icon has a signature tune, they can be played like instruments," he says. Even the simple act of choosing one icon over another could alter the dynamics of the digital world, according to Mr Innocent. "The more attention a particular object receives from participants, the more its 'energy' is boosted and the more likely it is to reproduce within the digital world. Alternatively, the less attention an object gets, the more likely it is to die off." For Mr Innocent, 'Evolglyph' is both a digital artwork and an experiment in how languages and the symbols that represent languages evolve. As part of the experiment, each icon in the 'Evolglyph' system will be assigned meanings or characteristics such as good or evil, loud or quiet, aggressive or peaceful, allowing them to be used in basic forms of communication between participants. According to Mr Innocent, visitors to a website linked with the exhibition's software will be able to assign up to four characteristics to each icon, which will be recorded on the website. "The website will document all the icons as they are generated by the system and allow visitors to assign to them one of the 128 potential characteristics on the list," he says. "The most commonly assigned meanings for each icon will then be communicated back to the installation space at Federation Square, altering the behaviour of the icons." Mr Innocent hopes the experiment will provide some interesting insights into the way humans use and develop languages. "I am interested in seeing how both the meanings of the icons and the icons themselves change in response to people's manipulation of them," he says. "At the end of the project, I want to see if the icons have become something totally unique or something more familiar to people. Did the evolution of icons favour soft or hard forms, symmetry or asymmetry, and were 'good' icons more popular than 'bad'?" And far from being a lone explorer in a virtual world, Mr Innocent heads a dedicated group of academics and artists in Monash's Department of Multimedia and Digital Arts who have gained national prominence in their field. Renowned multimedia artist Mr Vince Dziekan, who is a lecturer and coordinator of digital imaging within the department, believes multimedia art and digital imaging are becoming more widely accepted. "Multimedia art and digital imaging are increasingly finding their way into traditional art institutions and changing those institutions as a result," he says. Mr Dziekan recently curated an exhibition called The Synthetic Image, which dealt with digital technology and its use in contemporary Australian art. Held at the Faculty of Art and Design Gallery at Monash's Caulfield campus in July, the exhibition explored the development and increasing diversification of digital art, which exaggerates the relationship between the real and the virtual. It is a characteristic evident in the work of Mr Dziekan's colleague Trinh Vu, an artist and lecturer in multimedia at Monash. In her most recent work, Ms Vu uses a computer to generate digital images of different shaped, sized and textured blobs, which she then paints onto canvas. "To an audience, the blobs seem instantly familiar and totally foreign at the same time, because I use traditional media such as paint and canvas and fine art techniques to represent computer-generated figures that could never exist in the real world," she says. In her role as lecturer, Ms Vu also provides encouragement for many of the department's 500 students, assisting them with the computer software needed to create digital images. "Ten years ago, I taught myself how to use computers from a manual because I was fascinated by the impact this technology could have on my art. Now I am able to pass this knowledge on to a new generation of artists," she says. Action box |
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