New Media - well they are not really new any more - perhaps 'Those Ever-Adapting Series Of Media' (TEASOM) might be a more apt term - present a challenge to those participants who wish to come away from the glow of the screen for long enough to consider how to exhibit the exhilarating genius of their newly generated creations/life forms. No, hey I am being sincere here! The tongue is wedged firmly between the teeth... But the question remains, how does one successfully exhibit the experience of the virtual world within the world that is seen as the real one? The challenge is to translate a vast world into a gallery space: a vast world that is is deceptively housed within a 14 to 21 inch screen. 'It' is also to be exhibited to the jaded and 'nothing if not critical' gallery-going audience and measures need to be set in place to ensure it is not treated like the latest in T.V. While the artists are so engaged there are also notions of installation and site to be broached... fortunately there are data and video projectors more readily available these days - so the installation aspect is somewhat easier to approach - even so, this is a difficult medium to transcribe.

One exhibition I visited recently took on this challenge. Browsing Beauty was a multi-media installation housed at the new SCA Gallery. This large gallery space, with an initial dividing wall, was darkened for a series of four works operating as collaborative exhibits between the three artists Anita Kocsis, Andrea Sunder-Plassmann and Sigi Torinus. A true collaboration it seems (and not the standard battle of wills that collaboration often entails), with no one piece the work of any one artist. These artists have worked together over a period of two years culminating in this their second, in a continuing series of exhibitions.

Briefly, a physical description of the exhibition to fill in the gaps the images leave out, and to ensure that you, the reader, understands the backdrop of referencing throughout the rest of this article. Entering the space one encounters a huge-projected jelly fish floating gracefully up and down a wall. Laughing groups of people are excitedly mulling around two monitors situated on either side of the big blue jelly. Over the other side of the wall, suspended from the ceiling, are three huge weather balloons onto which are projected ever-changing slides of aesthetic organic and/or scientific images dissolving into each other. A sound collage of body sounds and whispered text - "the Golden Mean, the Mystic Hexagram..." - soothingly operates as the gelling subtext.

Moving back for a closer look at the two monitors, one houses a very colourful MOO world with click on and move through the scene access. The user can add tongues and noses to their freshly created MOO 'character' and none of the standard MOO commands are necessary. Unfortunately on the two separate occasions I used the MOO, there was nobody at the other end - or a very infrequent body - and the MOO kept slipping you off - requiring top menu intervention to get back in (and that not so clearly labelled). After being slipped off one too many times to bother going back in, I explored the links to the many and varied sophisticated and well-executed web sites. Pure pleasure... On opening night the other monitor housed a CU SeeMe Video Conference with a couple of diehards from the other side happily taking on the kind of in ya face behaviour we all seem to so readily slip into in an on-line communication situation. A line-up of waiting and watching audience adding a 'slapstick' element to the 'event'.

What of the original question of exhibiting the virtual in the real world, which the Cu SeeMe and the MOO work takes on? Has this worked? But perhaps more importantly, after viewing the exhibition, is this the question that springs to mind? Well, in actual it WAS the so-called virtual (or distance) interaction that proved the most interesting... After the seduction of the images and the liquid-like audio had dissipated from the experiential memory, it was the recollection of watching the ever-changing line-up of newbies and old-hands interacting (sassy, scurrilous, and flippant as you can) in on-line communication - and in public - that left an indelible impression. So what is this phenomenon? What is it about this medium that elicits the bumptious rejoinders? It is surely a curious one...

The situatedness that permits total anonymity must play a large factor... It seems unlikely you're ever going to meet the people on the other end (or know if you do). Even with looking through CU SeeMe, the reception quality is so 'other' that it is unlikely either party will be recognisable: it is also just as conceivable that they reside in the U.S of A or Europe, as in Australia. Consequently, there is a long rope and a lot of latitude in these virtual territories with, initially anyway, very little liability. This becomes very evident particularly if you begin your on-line life hanging out some where like LambdaMOO, which is the equivalent of a big fast city bus or train terminal with at least 100 players always on-line. There always seems to be a 'Gary' who follows you around "Name, Age, SEX? Wanna come to the dungeon?' Any one else met him? There are many like him - not that interesting (depending on your mood) - but there are many others and many different conversations likely. As with any event, it depends who shows up and this non-predicability can work as a drawcard. The continually disrupted narrative that occurs from all the comings and goings, may be picked up and flown with, or left behind. It can be fun, you always learn a few new things - maybe info about communicating or building there - or info on the real world, a conversation on Derrida, Agent Mulder's death three months prior to Australia receiving it - anything is possible. All of this interaction is 'usually' a one-to-on-line world experience, but at Browsing Beauty there was an extra pressure to perform for, or entertain the watching exhibition audience, all of which added to the spontaneous hilarity of the event and the flippancy of the banter. Even with these 'limitations' the medium is a seductive one - a flight from the narrow confines of our 'little lives'.

Imagine you've been enticed and you're a few weeks on from there - you've gone and got yourself a character, you've given it a name, a gender, a description and perhaps you've created a home for it, some furniture and maybe even some toys/'things' which converse or do 'things'. This new character is neither 'you', nor is it 'not you'. It is your creation and you can reinvent yourself within it, without fear of recrimination or betrayal of others. Those dormant aspects of the psyche get a chance to express themselves and what's more your new character forms a 'whole' identity that holds meaning for others . Enter the environment and don the newly developing identity. The more bookish or the less extrovert amongst us have a chance to exude personality and charisma with witty interactivity - shy and reclusive types generally fare well in this environment. But for those who rely on their powerful persona's or good looks - forget it, it's the text, the word that holds the key to successful conversations in the virtual world, you'll be a wall flower unless you have something real to say. Texts get read and responded to, roles get reversed and you can always gag the ranting of the bullish ones - a simple @gagMarie command - and they are no longer heard... tee hee (typical on-line type behaviour). And whispering allows for a plain old-fashioned 'naughtiness' that our adult lives may too often preclude. A world of escape and childish behaviour, mmm... acting as a superlative antidote for pressured lifestyles. Recreation and social interaction are in abundance... one can keep in touch inexpensively with previously 'flesh-met' or newly acquired 'on-line' or 'distant' friends. Dealing directly with the raw matter of communication technology leads to a propensity to 'toy' with the exposed mechanics and the fallacy of the notion of communication itself, which can provide an endless source of either individual or group amusement and intellectual stimulation or speculation.

The other world within this world entails programming, building and creating 'things' in a virtual environment. There is no need for storage or work space, or even Zip Disks or CD's for these 'creations'. It's all housed there on whoever's server started the MOO. One gets a seemingly minuscule 80,000K as a 'matter' allowance to play with and you can build what you can figure out how to. (That 80,000K can build you a lot!). The tutorials are all there in the virtual world - you can create new kinds of 'things' to have and work out different kinds of activities for them to partake in with you and others: it's analogous to being back in the sand pit with a few different shaped buckets and spades - and I always found that a pretty good place to be...

Footnotes

1. from here on in referred to as the afore-mentioned 'they', or the afore-defined groups 'they'.
2. Even tease Em ; )
3. The New Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, now housed in Rozelle Hospital grounds is available by application to interested Artists/Curators (not a student gallery): Contact person Deborah Kirby Parsons (02)9351-1020
4. A MOO is actually a MOOVE; a Multi-User Object-Orientated Virtual Environment. There are several programs that let people create and connect to these sorts of environments. (These connected people then 'talk' to each other by typing on their keyboards. There is 'usually' a series of very basic commands that allow these interactions to occur.) Essentially MOO's manage objects in a database as a result of it's virtual users' actions. A MOO is just a program running on a server which updates a file which takes up space on a server. Thanks to Doug Scoular for this definition. http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~doug
5. A software that allows videocam cameras connected to the computer to send 'live' images of the parties at either end of the keyboard.
6. new comers to on-line communication
7. I admit exposure to constant computer-mediated communication and/or collaboration (as well as the sheer pleasure of making 'things' do 'things' in a virtual environment) may well have tainted my sensibilities here.
8. On-line interaction that is text-based can often allow for an easier exchange of detail and cross-referencing of information than phone and face-to-face interaction facilitate and in distance situations can prove very useful. For a more thorough investigation of these issues visit this site to look at a case study of implementing moo-conferencing and on-line forms with virtual/distance clients http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~morris_a/titlecase.html
9. As many different meanings for as many different others as your fragmented selves can enjoy.