vr art
		1990 was a great year for me. I started working at the Visual Systems Lab at the University of Central Florida, a part of the Institute for Simulation and Training. I was able to work on several interesting Virtual Reality Projects, including PolyShop (for the ARI), Navigator (for the State of Florida), and a series of learning experiments in VR (I'll have to look up the exact name of this one.). After hours, we used the testbeds developed for our paying clients to create artwork. The first such piece was called StudioV, an immersive, full bodied, 3D drawing program. An artist would wear an HMD and a  Polhemus tracking device on their hand,  and could trace out any desired path with a fuzzy ball primitive.  In a synaesthetic mapping, we linked the hue, saturation and intensity of the fuzzy ball's color to the yaw, pitch and roll of the Polyhemus.  While it took some time to get to a level of control (okay - there wasn't all that much) it was till great fun to create art while standing inside it!  The programmer on this project was Richard Dunn-Roberts, who had lots of wonderful ideas on how to use this new technology.
			StudioV image  1990	StudioV image  1990
	In 1991 a new talent appeared at the Visual Systems Lab. Mike Goslin was a former Physchology Major who was now studying Computer Science. He also had quite an artistic streak  He enrolled in a 2D computer animation class I taught in the UCF Film Program and did some of the most amazing work.  We soon discovered that we had similar interests and decided to team up to do some unfunded VR Art which we entitled Virtopia.  This was a series of virtual environments designed to evoke emotional responses from the participants. Our first world pitted you against a 30 foot high spider who responded to your movements in the world.  We then collectively designed about a dozen more worlds, linked together via an interface of a barren desert.  Roaming the desert one would come upon oases, which contained palm trees and water pools. If one entered into the pool, it would become a portal to one of our emotional environments. Virtopia was started in 1992 and premiered at the Florida Film Festival, Orlando in May, 1993.  It was also shown in a more mature form at the 1994 Florida Film Festival, and at SIGGRAPH '94 in the Kabota Booth. See Virtopia article in Leonardo, January 1996 for more details.
The Endless Forest			The Conversation Room	Fang City	The Desert interface
			Links to videos of Virtopia experiences à	Spider Conversation Room Desert