Artist Statement

We all know that the earth is round and that anyone who ever thought otherwise was an idiot. At least, that is what we are told. In fact, we have no first-hand experience that tells us that this is true. We simply take the scientists’ word for it. To make being on a sphere palpable, this environment shrinks the world to a scale that can be circumnavigated very quickly. Participants stand in front of a large projection screen depicting a realistic three-dimensional terrain.The projection screen is a portal into that world. Participants are able to move through that terrain by pretending to fly exactly as a child would — by holding their hands out from their sides and leaning in the direction they want to go. In addition, they can control their altitude by raising or lowering their hands. The participants can skim along the surface of the ocean, dart through mountain ranges, and if they keep their hands raised, they will fly into orbit. iamas.ac.jp/interaction/i97/artist_Krueger.html

• Myron W. Kreuger (U.S.A.) was the first artist to focus on computer-based interactivity as a composable medium. He pio­neered the development of unencumbered, full-body­participation in computer-created telecommunication experi­ences. Dr. Krueger’s 1974 doctoral dissertation defined human-machine interaction as an art form. In 1983, it was published by Addison-Wesley as Artificial Reality. Starting in 1969, Dr. Krueger created a series of interactive environ­ments in which the computer perceived the visitors’ move­ments through sensory floors and responded though elec­tronic sounds and environmental scale displays. His later VIDEOPLACE installations used video cameras to monitor participants’ movements, analyzed their images in real-time, and displayed them in computer-generated graphic worlds inhabited by other human participants and graphic creatures. Dr. Krueger’s work has been funded by both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation. In 1990, he received the first Golden NICA from Prix Arts Electronica for interactive computer art. He has also received awards from the scientific community. He gave the keynote address at TISEA in Sydney in 1992. Recent exhibits include interaction ’97 in Ogaki, Japan, and the interact! show in the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany.