Panel Statement

Panel: Recombinant Culture

Electronic culture is obsessed with spatialization of all representations and experiences: consider, for instance, VR, VRML, computer visualization, or the very concept of cyberspace. What is the visual and experiential specificity of space as represented through computer graphics in contrast to the representations of space in traditional visual arts? What are the consequences in adapting particular models of physical spaces to represent a virtual space? What are the different possible relationships between a physical space of a user’s body and a virtual space inside a computer? In answering these questions, I will discuss a number of recent artists’ installations as well as military and commercial research in virtual reality and telepresence.

• Lev Manovich (USA) is Assistant Professor of Imaging and Digital Arts at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He is trained in art, computer graphics and critical theory. He writes on the theory and history of digital media and has published articles in Afterimage, Design Issues, Machine Culture and edited Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1993). He holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester (N.Y.).