The “non space” as an environment for artistic creation and training

摘要

This paper presents results from an attempt to define a virtual common space for artistic creation and training, which is open and overcomes the barriers of verbal language communication. This work was carried out within the scope of the European funded Intensive Programme 《ATELIE: Art and Technology for an International Language? (http://www.medialab.asfa.gr/delphous). The working team was setup by the Multimedia-Hypermedia Laboratory of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), the Department of Sculpture of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), and the Department "Art and Technologies of the Image" of the University Paris 8 (Univ-Paris8). Participants (students and professors) worked throughout one academic year (2005-2006) towards defining such a virtual space. Many theoretical questions arose, such as: Is it going to be a city based on realistic models (e.g. with houses, galleries)? Should it be related to nationality/religion? Finally, after extensive discussions through the network, the working team adopted an Abstract space with no rules and not a specific architectural style. Rules are defined as long as new virtual objects are incorporated, and the space exists as long as a student constructs something. Unlike other virtual environments, here, an idea, a colour, an object, or even a software component play the same role and can become parts of the virtual environment. This common space was implemented as a Macromedia Flash-based multi-user environment, developed by Pascal Ruiz, Lecturer at University Paris 8, for hosting students' creations. Database support was provided through open technologies (php/MySQL). A set of tutorials, was exchanged throughout the academic year about how to construct avatars and stages that can be immediately host by this platform. In this way, students were able to create their own projects both separately and jointly, and upload them to the common infrastructure. The working team met in Greece, at Delphi (from 3rd to 13th July 2006), where all the pieces were put together and an open, multi-user space for artistic creation and experimentation was released. The final view of the virtual space is an endless environment, where each user, as an ?avatar?, can wonder around and explore different parts of the world or trigger interactions with other avatars through symbolic language--each avatar may carry its own symbols or retrieve predefined from the database. The results concerning the view of this virtual world after the students' projects were inserted are described in this paper. Three different categories of such projects came out during the training process: those that concern and/or affect the whole world and avatars (e.g. viruses, knowledge registration), those that appear as different ?stages? where an avatar may be “trapped” during navigation (e.g. labyrinths), and first person projects which are directly linked into the platform.