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Cultural Use of CyberSpace: Paradigms of Digital Reality

Modes of Spectating is an elaborate collection of works by academics and creative practitioners and the second book in a series of publications commissioned by Intellect and edited by Alison Oddey and Christine White. The uniqueness of this volume lies in bringing together practice-based and traditional research techniques and methods to illustrate the changes in the way contemporary audiences view and interact with the art world. My essay Cultural Use of Cyberspace: Paradigms of Digital Reality is based on the original research undertaken as part of my PhD at the University of Warwick. This essay advanced understanding of virtual reality not only as a tool or an environment for art practice, but also as an artistic, performance, and educational platform in its own right. It connected such disparate fields of knowledge as ethics, aesthetics, psychology and audience research. It investigated how these disciplines were influenced by rapidly developing new media technologies, bringing the discussion about the ‘realities’ of digital culture to a new level. In addition, this chapter introduced the first ever 3D visualization of Norman Bel Geddes’ 1921 set design for Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which not only contributed to the body of knowledge in the field of history of modernist theatre and stage design, but also introduced a new approach to study 3D artefacts by incorporating a creative element within them. This idea resulted in a number of further publications, conference papers and the 3D model is now part of the permanent Bel Geddes’ collection at the Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas at Austin, was part of ‘I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America’ exhibition in September 2012-January 2013, and will be displayed at the Museum of the City of New York in Autumn 2014.