CAVEs Projecting Imagination into Reality across High Speed Networks

Abstract

Artists, researchers and scientists together can create a CAVE Automated Virtual Environment (CAVE) that can be shared between remote locations simultaneously. CAVE art collaborations are networked through Amsterdam, Linz, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Umea (Sweden), Chicago, Bloomington (Indiana), and Buffalo (New York). Input at each locale updates across the world in real over high-speed networks. Artists involved in iGrid, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica and other ground breaking 'scientific' events exhibit arts in technology showcases to raise the level of arts and science discourse. The CAVE illustrates a visual, spatial, textual language for expression and an emotional, visceral, kinesthetic language for experience. CAVE art reopens issues in art from ancient times through modernism by examining cognitive perceptual shifts that occur experientially through lights and projections. The lights act as strokes of paint to suggest 3D objects to the mind's eyes. From a frozen moment of time (painting) we move beyond linear narrative (film) to a participatory reality (CAVE). This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What does it mean to collaboratively network a CAVE? What implications do sharing CAVEs across a high performance high-speed networks have for the history of art and new media? How are artists shaping experience in a technological world?