[ISEA2008] Paper: Hyun Jean Lee & Ali Mazalek – Experiences on the Boundaries: Screens In Between

Abstract

As an object at the boundary between the virtual and physical worlds, the screen exists both as a displayer and a thing displayed, simultaneously functioning as a mediator. The screen’s virtual imagery produces a feeling of immersion in viewers, yet at the same time the materiality of the screen produces a sense of rejection from their complete involvement in the virtual world. Thus, the experience of the screen is an oscillation between these boundaries.

By deconstructing and re-combining its separate existential categories, my screen-based artworks have created two kinds of screen experiences. The first is three-dimensional screens-3D structures with projected video images-which create a 3D space that invites viewers to physically enter into and be immersed in the virtual experience. The second is movable screens, which explore the possibility for the screen itself to become the physical device affording interaction between the screen artifact and the viewer. Physical actions by the interactors and real-world physics affect the virtual imagery, thereby creating a corresponding relationship between the real and virtual worlds. For example, in the tilt-able screen, projected virtual imagery on a horizontal surface moves as the viewer tilts the screen in different directions. Similarly, in spinning screens viewers spin the screen to make a virtual dancer in the screen spin as well. Both 3D screens and movable screens deal with the relationship between recorded time and real time, and the interaction between the past and present, which are also created by the boundary of the screen. In both works, the screen functions as a medium that connects the physical world in which viewers are located to the virtual space where images and illusions are located. They cross over the doubled boundary in different ways, but always with the screen at the center.

  • Hyun Jean Lee & Ali Mazalek, Digital Media Program, Georgia Institute of Technology

Full text (PDF)  p. 302-304