OSMOSE

Charlotte

OSMOSE , 1994 – 1995

Co-workers & Funding

supported by IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan Co-Worker: Richard Holloway

http://www.immersence.com/osmose/index.php

Mnemosyne

Last updated: 2009-07-20

Documents

Subterranean Earth. Digital frame captured in real-time through HMD (head-mounted display) during live performance of immersive virtual environment Osmose (1995).

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Immersant as seen through Shadow Screen during performance of

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Public Viewing Area for live performance of immersive virtual environment Osmose (1995).

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Breath and balance interface for performance of immersive virtual

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Rose Tree. Digital frame captured in real-time through HMD (head-mounted display) during live performance of immersive virtual environment Osmose (1995).

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Vertical Tree. Digital frame captured in real-time through HMD (head-mounted display) during live performance of immersive virtual environment Osmose (1995)

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Forest Grid. Digital frame captured in real-time through HMD (head-mounted display) during live performance of immersive virtual environment Osmose (1995).

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Tree Pond. Digital frame captured in real-time through HMD (head-mounted display) during live performance of immersive virtual environment Osmose (1995).

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Description

An immersive interactive virtual-realty environment installation with 3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound, a head-mounted display and real-time motion tracking based on breathing and balance. Osmose is a space for exploring the perceptual interplay between self and world, i.e. a place for facilitating awareness of one's own self as consciousness embodied in enveloping space.
Immersion in Osmose begins with the donning of the head-mounted display and motion-tracking vest. The first virtual space encountered is a three-dimensional Cartesian Grid which functions as an orientation space. With the immersant's first breaths, the grid gives way to a clearing in a forest. There are a dozen world-spaces in Osmose, most based on metaphorical aspects of nature. These include Clearing, Forest, Tree, Leaf, Cloud, Pond, Subterranean Earth, and Abyss. There is also a substratum, Code, which contains much of the actual software used to create the work, and a superstratum, Text, a space consisting of quotes from the artist and excerpts of relevant texts on technology, the body and nature. Code and Text function as conceptual parentheses around the worlds within. Through use of their own breath and balance, immersants are able to journey anywhere within these worlds as well as hover in the ambiguous transition areas in between. After fifteen minutes of immersion, the LifeWorld appears and slowly but irretrievably recedes, bringing the session to an end.

In Osmose, Char Davies challenges conventional approaches to virtual reality. In contrast to the hard-edged realism of most 3D-computer graphics, the visual aesthetic of Osmose is semi- representational / semi-abstract and translucent, consisting of semi-transparent textures and flowing particles. Figure/ground relationships are spatially ambiguous, and transitions between worlds are subtle and slow. This mode of representation serves to 'evoke' rather than illustrate and is derived from Davies' previous work as a painter. The sounds within Osmose are spatially multi- dimensional and have been designed to respond to changes in the immersant's location, direction and speed: the source of their complexity is a sampling of a male and female voice.

Keywords

aesthetics
- acoustic
- illusionary
- real-time
genres
- installations
  - interactive installations
  - virtual reality (VR)
- sound art
  - sound installations
subjects
- Art and Science
  - dynamical systems
  - space
- Arts and Visual Culture
  - panoramas
- Body and Psychology
  - breathing
  - emotion
- Nature and Environment
  - landscapes (environments)
  - Nature
technology
- displays
  - electronic displays
    - head-mounted display (HMD)
    - loudspeakers
    - projection screens
    - projectors
- hardware
  - MAC
- interfaces
  - body sensors
    - breathing-balance-interface-vest
    - motion capture
- software
  - SGI Onyx
  - Softimage

Technology & Material

Hardware

Mac computer (sound), sound synthesizers and processors, stereoscopic head-mounted display with 3D localized sound, breathing/balance interface vest, motion capture devices, data projector, projection screen, and shadow-silhouette screen.

Installation Requirements / Space

During public installations of Osmose, immersion takes place in a private chamber adjacent to a large darkened space where museum visitors can witness the immersive performances as they take place in real time: both aurally, as sound is generated by the immersants behaviour within the work; and visually, as imagery generated from the immersants point-of-view is projected in real time onto a large-scale video horizontal screen. Simultaneously, the shadow-silhouette of the immersant is cast through a translucent vertical screen, emphasizing the relationship between bodily presence and the immersive experience.

Software

Initial development 1994-1995: Softimage® 3|D modeling, animation and development environment and custom-written VR software; Silicon Graphics Onyx2 Infinite Reality visualization supercomputer. Reengineered in 2002 to run graphics entirely on a PC.

Bibliography

Davies, Char. »Virtual Space.« In Space: In Science, Art and Society, edited by Francois Penz and Gregory Radick and Robert Howell, 69-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Davies, Char. »Landscape, Earth, Body, and Time in the Immersive Virtual Environments Osmose and Ephémère.« In Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 322-337. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2003.
Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
Deepwell, Katy. »Reverie, Osmose and Ephémère: Dr. Carol Gigliotti interviews Char Davies.« n.paradoxa, international feminist art journal 9 (2002): 64-73.
Davies, Char. »Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being.« In Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, 293-300. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002.
Davies, Char. »Osmose: Notes on Being in Immersive Virtual Space.« In Digital Creativity: A Reader, edited by Colin Beardon and Lone Malmborg, 101-110. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 2002.
Hansen, Mark. »Embodying Virtual Reality: Touch and Self-Movement in the Work of Char Davies.« Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender and Culture 12, no. 1-2 (2001): 112-147.
Ackers, Susanne. »Consciousness, Art, and Media.« In Dimensions of Conscious Experience, edited by Paavo Pylkkänen and Tere Vaden, 179-190. Amsterdam: Benjamins, John, 2001.
Banville, Annie-Claude. »La polysensorialité dans Osmose de Char Davies.« In Jeunes chercheurs du CELAT, Montreal: 2000.
Crighton, Gary. »The Real and the Virtual: Karl O´Donoghue Interviews Char Davies.« New Media Notes: Art and Technology in Ireland , no. 2 (March 1999).
O`Donoghue, Karl. »Virtual Ecology: The Work of Char Davies.« In Thought Lines 3: An Anthology of Research, edited by Paul O´Brien, 284-294. Dublin: National College of Art and Design, 1999.
Rajah, Niranjan. »The Representation Of A New Cosmology: Immersive Virtual Reality and the Integration of Epistemologies.« In Invencao: thinking the Next Millenium, Sao Paolo, Brazil: ITAU Cultural, CAiiA, 1999.
Davies, Char. »Osmose: Notes on Being in Immersive Virtual Space.« In Digital Creativity, edited by Colin Beardon and Lone et. al. MalmborgVol.9. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 1998.
Gagnon, Jean. »Dionysus and RGlobal: Immersion in Char Davies´s Environments.« In Char Davies: Ephémère, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, CAN: 1998.
Davies, Char. »Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Being.« In The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, edited by John Beckmann, 144-155. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.
Tuer, Dot. »The Second Nature of Simulation: Mirroring the Organic in the Virtual World of Char Davies's Ephémère.« In Char Davies: Ephémère, edited by National Gallery of CanadaOttawa, ON, Canada: 1998.
Heim, Michael. Virtual Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Goldberg, Ken. »Virtual Reality in the Age of Telepresence.« Convergence Journal 4, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 33-37.
Davis, Erik. TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information. New York: Harmony Books, 1998.
Davies, Char. »Osmose.« Nov'Art: Les états généraux de l'écriture interactive (February 1997): 34-37.
Davies, Char. »Osmose.« In Arte Virtual - Realidad Plural, edited by Karin OhlenschlägerMonterrey, MEX: Museo de Monterrey, MEX, 1997.
Grau, Oliver. »Vom Zen des Tauchens.« Die Zeit (June 1997): 62.
Davis, Erik. »Osmose.« Wired 4.08 (August 1996).
Davies, Char and John Harrison. »Osmose: Towards Broadening the Aesthetics of Virtual Reality.« Computer Graphics (ACM SIGGRAPH) 30, no. 4 (1996): 25-28.
Wertheim, Margaret. »Virtual Nature: Osmose - Char Davies' Organo-Virtual Odyssey.« Metropolis (September 1996): 58-61.
Sims, David. »Osmose: Is VR Supposed to be this Relaxing?.« Computer Graphics and Applications (IEEE Computer Society) 16, no. 6 (November 1996): 4-5.
Pesce, Marc. »Osmose en Ik/ Osmose and Me.« Wave 17 (March/April 1996): 44-47.
Klaus, Francois. »Osmose-toi si tu l´oses!.« Interactif 9 (May 1996): 94-95.
Lunenfeld, Peter. »Char Davies.« Art + Text 53 (1996): 82-83.
Rutledge, Virginia. »Reality by Other Means.« Art in America 84, no. 6 (June 1996): 38-39.
Dyson, Frances. »Charged Havens.« WorldArt 3 (Fall 1996): 42-47.
Grant Marchand, Sandra. »Char Davies: Osmose.« In Project Series, exhibition catalogue Musée d´art contemporain de Montréal, : 1995.
Le Grande, Jean-Pierre. »Char Davies: Osmose du virtuel au naturel.« Vie des Arts XXXIX, no. 160 (Fall 1995): 27-29.
Jones, Mark J.. »Char Davies: VR through Osmosis.« Cyberstage 2, no. 1 (Fall 1995).
Asiomanoff, Florent. »Osmose: L´univers de Char Davies.« Nov´Art , no. 18 (Fall 1995): 12.
Bernier, Robert. »Char Davies: L´espace immersif, espace perceptif.« L´informateur des Arts II, no. 1 (Fall 1995): 58-60.
Bureaud, Annick. »ISEA 95, Montreal.« Leonardo Electronic Almanac 3, no. 11 (Novembre 1995).

37 publications

OSMOSE

Charlotte

Co-workers & Funding

Documents

Description

Keywords

Technology & Material

Hardware

Installation Requirements / Space

Software

Exhibitions & Events

transfigure

BEAP 2002: PREMISE

010101: Art in Technological Times

Serious Games

Arte Virtual - Realidad Plural

Serious Games

Osmose

Code

Bibliography