Memory Theater VR is an example of a virtual museum that embodies original architectural, interface and visualization strategies that converge the experience of real and virtual formations. The installation itself is set inside a cylindrical space, which is constructed out of wood panels that resemble a theater set. The user interface, a three dimensional spatial tracking device, can be moved around inside a clear plexi-glass replica of this cylindrical enclosure, and images are projected onto a large curved screen that is set into the circular wall opposite the interface.
Moving the interface device allows the viewer to choose and enter four distinct virtual spaces through a clock-like compass, North, East, South, West indicating the four different virtual spaces, each of which is also a virtual replica of the overall cylindrical architecture of the installation. In each of these represented spaces there is a specific scenography of images and objects that are arranged inside this shared architectural environment, and the projection screen in the virtual space becomes a surface for showing film clips.
The content of this installation is a personally contrived cultural and technological history of virtual reality. The four thematic worlds constitute a virtual memory theater of diverse quotations and references from the history of art, science, theater, literature, cinema and architecture. Specific precursors of modern virtual reality techniques are re-embodied such as tromp l'oeil, anamorphoses. The concept of the memory theater is used as a frame to create a newly compound space that is both a virtual museum and curiosity cabinet of heterogeneous images and artifacts that encompasses a profuse collection of works arranged in the following groupings:
South
(pioneers of modern
virtual reality research )
SCOTT FISHER
IVAN SUTHERLAND
JIM CLARK
HUGHES (UK) LTD.
MARK ANDREESEN MOSAIC
JEFFREY SHAWVIRTUAL MUSEUM
MARK BOLAS MONDRIAN
WEST
(on the theme of wunderkammer:
early models of knowledge, collection of curiosities)
ROBERT FLUDD APE OF NATURE
ANAMORPHOSES
LIQUID LIGHT SHOW
BILL SEAMAN WORLD GENERATOR
MASAKI FUJIHATA GLOBAL INTERIOR
PERRY HOBERMAN BAR CODE HOTEL
MATT MULLIGAN ...
MARCEL DUCHAMP
RENE MAGRITTE
MARCEL BROODHAERS
PETER WEIBEL
EAST
(a child's room: imagination as virtuality)
LEWIS CARROL ALICE IN WONDERLAND
SWIFT GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
ANTONIN ARTAUD
DRAWINGS OF CHILDREN (from the Kinderhaus Neurot)
AGNES HEGEDUS FRUIT MACHINE / HANDSIGHT / ISE D'OIL
JEFFREY SHAW GOLDEN CALF
PAUL SERMON TELEMATIC DREAMING
WIZARD OF OZ
THE FROG PRINCE
JEAN COCTEAU ORPHEUS
THE GOLEM
THE INVISIBLE MAN
NORTH
(on the theme of deconstruction,
recent models of knowledge: analysis and disassembling)
UMBERTO BOCCIONI
DANIEL LIEBESKIND
ROLLER COASTER
DE VRIES PERSPECTIVE DRAWINGS
LEDOUX EYE
LABYRINTH
JAMES JOYCE
(A. Hegedüs)