Space Odysseys: Definitions

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SPACE ODYSSEYS: sensation & immersion

Definitions

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Accommodation Change in the focal length of the eye.

Afterworlds as VR From the bardo realms of Tibetan Buddhism to Dante's Hell, Heaven and Purgatory, these underworld zones that await us immediately after death seem to be the vivid three-dimensional precursor to Virtual Reality. (See LucasArts Afterlife and Grim Fandango).

Ambient Light Non-directional illumination, all but eliminating shadow.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) The automation of human cognitive skills through rules and such things as recognising speech or visual images, solving problems, or making medical diagnoses.

Artificial Reality A responsive environment in the form of a video display system that tracks people with pattern recognition techniques and creates the illusion that real action is taking place in that world. (See Myron Kreuger, Artificial Reality, 1992)

Biosensors Special glasses or bracelets containing electrodes that monitor a muscle's electrical activity.

Biotechnology The interdependence of machines and living things. The means by which an increasing number of people re-create themselves: prosthetic limbs, plastic surgery, liposuction, hair transplants and other cosmetic operations.

Camera Obscura The first practical instrument to resemble a modern camera was the camera obscura (literally, an 'obscure' or 'darkened chamber'), a contraption which allowed an image to be transferred by means of a lens fitted over the hole to a sheet of paper suspended on the other side of the chamber, where the image could be then be traced with some precision.

CAVE A Virtual Reality environment using projection devices on the walls and ceiling to give the illusion of immersion.

Character A being with a virtual body in virtual reality.

Consciousness Some define consciousness as the totality of experience at any given instant, as opposed to 'mind', which is the sum of all past moments of consciousness.

Consensual Reality The world, or a simulation of a world, as viewed and comprehended by a society.

Cyberspace Coined by William Gibson, in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, to describe a shared virtual universe operating within the sum total of all the world's computer networks. (See Artificial Reality and Virtual Reality)

DataGlove A glove wired with sensors and connected to a computer system for gesture recognition. It is used for tactile feedback and it often enables navigation through a virtual environment and interaction with 3-D objects within it.

Day-dreaming In an important essay entitled 'The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming', Freud argues that art and fantasy have a similar function, to give expression to desires and impulses that cannot be satisfied in a straightforward way because of social norms or personal repressions.

Depth Cueing Using shading, texture, colour etc. to provide a cue for the distance of an object or surface from the viewer.

Diorama A three-dimensional representation of a scene, either full-sized or miniature. It may have a background painted to merge with elements nearest it by means of aerial and linear perspective. It may be made on a platform with or without a clear glass front, set into an illuminated niche and viewed from a darkened area. In miniature form, it may be entirely enclosed and viewed through a peephole. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was a popular form of didactic entertainment, often containing a scene reproduced on cloth transparencies with various lights shining through the cloths to produce changes in effect, intended for viewing at a distance.

Directorial Mode An approach to photography in which the photographer is more like a film director or theatre designer than a traditional photographer. Emphasis is put on making, rather than taking photographs. Examples include Cindy Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, William Wegman, Laurie Simmons and Laura Simpson.

Disorientation Confusion about distances and directions for navigation.

Dreaming Nature's Virtual Reality. A state of mind during sleep where vivid imagery feels real and immersive.

Dream-work The processes by which unconscious desires (i.e. repressed wishes) are 'translated' into acceptable content in a dream. Freud distinguished three such mechanisms: condensation, displacement and secondary elaboration.

Dynamics The way that objects interact and move in space.

Dystopia See Utopia.

Earth Art An environmental art from the 1970s that rejected the commercialisation of art and supported the emerging ecological movement with its back-to-the-land antiurbanism and an often spiritual attitude to the planet. E.g. Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, Robert Smithson.

Environment art Refers to art which involves the creation or manipulation of a large or enclosed space, many effectively surrounding its audience. Architectural (including landscape architectural) design might be said to qualify as environment art, although the term usually refers to artworks which do not function as either of these kinds of environmental design typically do. Several artists -- many associated with American Pop art, such as Edward Kienholz and Lucas Samaras -- created tableaux in the 1960s and 1970s called environments. Many earthworks would qualify as environment art too.

E-topia Title of a book by William J. Mitchell describing the kinds of changes he anticipates will take place in urban spaces as a consequence of the digital revolution. Mitchell foresees the home as a space in which people both live and work, redefines 'public' space as any of a variety of types of electronic 'meeting' areas.

Effect of the Real In art and literature, the creation of a fictive world that appears to be seen through a transparent window, rather than as the result of a particular individual's creative behaviour or the processes of an audience's participation.

Fantastic An imaginative, subjective world of inner expression that transcends mere fantasy or science fiction.

Fantasy Any conscious break with reality, whether in the relatively benign forms of caprices and daydreams, or in the more psychologically charged delusions and hallucinations.

Field of View (FOV) The angle in degrees of the visual field. A head-mounted display for example offers 60 to 90 degrees FOV. Our two-eye vision, or total FOV, is 180 degrees. A feeling of immersion arises with FOV greater than 60 degrees.

Haptic Relating to or based on the sense of touch. Since its application in art writing is almost always about space, texture and/or volume, this word is most typically used as an adjective for sculpture or installation. It is less often used of painting and of architecture (in instances where, for example, a tactile sense of space is created by some arrangement of volumes).

Haptic Interfaces All the physical sensors that provide us with a sense of touch at the skin level and get feedback information from our muscles and joints.

Holodeck Virtual Reality simulation (holographic) system set up for the crew of the Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation television series.

Human Genome Project Currently decoding and loading into computer databases the entire set of genetic instructions that specifies a human being. Artificial life and artificial evolution are seeking to harness powers even greater than the secret of the DNA code.

Hypermedia The grouping of digital text, video and sound, with navigation tools like buttons, links and hotspots, into the one system.

Illusion A deceptive or misleading image or idea. An example: M.C. Escher Balcony 1945 (lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). In the centre of this picture of a hillside town, Escher said he tried to break up the paper's flatness by 'pretend[ing] to give it a blow with my fist at the back, but ... the paper remains flat, and I have only created the illusion of an illusion.'

Image In Ways of Seeing, John Berger stipulated that 'image' means a 'sight which has been created or reproduced ... detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved.' In other words, an image is an aspect of culture, not nature. Since images are made by humans, they embody 'ways of seeing' -- i.e., the assumptions, desires and values of the makers.

Imaginary The psychological dimension of all images, conscious and/or unconscious, whether simply imagined or genuinely perceived.

Imitation A close copy, as in all art that endeavours to reproduce natural appearances. Imitation has played a role in aesthetics since Plato, who banished artists from his hypothetical republic. Art could only lead men further from the truth.

Immersion The feeling of presence, of 'being there', surrounded by space and interacting with available objects. The point of view in the immersive world is omni-directional. Immersion is enveloping, a 360 degree surround, that is physical rather than cognitive. For Joseph Nechvatal, immersion in a Virtual Reality work implies a unified total space, an homogeneous world without external distraction, striving to be a harmonious whole. He identifies 'two grades of immersion: (1) cocooning and (2) expanding within which, when these two directions of psychic space cooperate ... we feel ... our bodies becoming subliminal, immersed in an extensive topophilia ... an inner immensity where we realise our limitations along with our desires for expansion.'

Installation Art made for a specific space, exploiting certain qualities of that space, more often indoors than out. It represents a shift from ideal sculptural space on the pedestal to the use of real materials in real space: interior corridors, ceilings, walls, or floors of a room, or outdoor sites. The term became widely used in the 1970s and 1980s, largely replacing the term 'site-specific', which means the same thing. Installations may be temporary or permanent, but most will be known to posterity through documentation. As a consequence, one aspect of installations is often the difficulty with which they can be commodified. Installations vary enormously, they can be small and intimate, or massive and theatrical. Began with Allan Kaprow's sets for his happenings and Ed Kienholz' tableaux.

Interface A set of devices, software and techniques that connect computers with people.

Intersubjectivity Pertaining to the exchange of the contents of consciousness conceived not as the one-way traffic of objective knowledge but as the mutual communication of two people's responses to experience.

Jack To plug into the matrix of virtual space.

Landscape From the late 16th century Dutch word landschap, signifying a unit of human occupation and jurisdiction, as much as a pleasing object of depiction. Though a familiar motif in classical myths of arcadia, it has always invoked the idea of human engineering. 'Before it can be a repose for the senses, landscape', according to Simon Schama, 'is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.' Lately, landscape has included, not just the view from the window, but the bottom of the sea, the surface of the moon, even the molecular landscape.

LBE (location based entertainment) A Virtual Reality game drawing on another time and place. E.g. Dungeons & Dragons, MUDs, MOOs, and LucasArts' Grim Fandango.

Liminality The condition of being on a threshold or in a 'betwixt and between space' (Victor Turner, Forest of Symbols). Liminality would be a metaphor for the Surrealist condition, which is liminal by definition (the resolution of the states of waking and dreaming). Straightforward limens include doors, passages, windows and window-sills.

Light Electromagnetic radiation that has a wavelength in the range from about 4,000 (violet) to about 7,000 (red) angstrom units and may be seen by the normal, unaided human eye. It may refer to other wavelengths somewhat longer and shorter, such as those of ultraviolet and infrared. Also, either the sensation of light, a source of light, its illumination, the representation of it in a work of art, or an awareness as if there were light on a subject. Light has been important to visual artists for obvious reasons and has frequently become the subject in its own right.

Memory Palaces Elaborate physical constructions for the mind, created by medieval and Renaissance scholars, in order to remember the Church's complex array of vices and virtues.

MUD A multi-user dungeon; a place on the Internet where people can meet and browse. The images in these immersive games 'are not so much conceptual tools as dream-texts, popular allegories that attempt to narrate and contextualise massive techno-communicational mutations.' (Erik Davis)

Naturalism The representation of something in a manner thought to be consistent with natural appearance, as opposed to stylisation.

Navigation Moving through [virtual] space without losing one's way.

Panorama A wide, unobstructed view of an entire surrounding area. A picture or series of pictures representing a continuous scene, either exhibited all at once, or exhibited one at a time by being unrolled and passed before the audience. Originally, it was a building specially designed to house colossal, circular murals. The closest relative to the latter, which is now outdated, is perhaps the IMAX film projection system.

Perspective The rules that determine the relative size of subjects on a flat page to create the illusion of 3D distance.

Photorealism The attempt to create, with much detail and texture, photographic images, by hand.

Presence The defining feeling of good Virtual Reality, that of being there in an immersive environment and interacting with objects. The fact or condition of being present -- i.e. of being at hand or before one, of actually existing.

Realism Popularly, a representation that looks real. In art history, Realism (with an upper-case "R") denotes the type of art practised in the nineteenth century by Gustave Courbet and his successors.

Real time Appearing to be without lag or flicker.

Reality TV E.g. Big Brother, an interactive show,which forced the creation of a new production methodology for television. With a staff of nearly 150, there was a veritable army of story editors, editors, producers, sound editors, camera operators, 'shaders' (who match the light level from camera to camera), switchers, production assistants, interns and so forth. The numbers were necessary because of the panoptic proportions of Big Brother: At any given moment, three story editors sat in the master control room, carefully watching the 28 cameras for signs of interesting activity. If they spotted something worth capturing, the output from that camera was routed to one of the four feeds that were recorded to tape. (These are the same feeds that went out live on the web-site for the show.)

Render To add realism to a computer graphic by adding three-dimensional qualities such as shadows and variations in colour and shade.

Sampling Technology now permits musicians to make digital recordings of any sound and play them back, thus copying any combination of instruments or noises, with or without further electronic manipulation. Sampling also raises the question of copyright and intellectual property.

Slice-of-Life An arbitrary cropping of a scene, especially common in Impressionism and in snapshot photography, where figures or important motifs might be interrupted by the edge of the image or by something put between them and the camera. The device suggests a momentary glimpse of reality, rather than a carefully composed, formal imitation of it. Among others, Edgar Degas used the device in countless paintings of ballet dancers.

Subliminal Below normal thresholds, as in a sound vibrating at a frequency below the normal range of human hearing.

Sound Art The use of sound to chart a variety of courses: sound environments triggered by natural forces like wind, orchestrations of strange instruments or interactive phone lines, for example. A crossover form that breaks the boundaries between art and music. E.g. Laurie Anderson, Ros Bandt, Brian Eno.

Space [1]What can be experienced from the 'inside' as if it were a place.

[2] An element of art that refers to the distance or area between, around, above, below, or within things. It can be described as two-dimensional or three-dimensional; as flat, shallow, or deep; as open or closed; as positive or negative; and as actual, ambiguous or illusory.

Space-time A concise way of referring to the understanding of the universe as an entity composed of inextricably interwoven space and time; a conception based especially on the theories of Albert Einstein. In this view of the universe, anything that happens to alter the condition of space also affects the conditions of time, and vice versa.

Technology Originally used to describe a systematic study of the arts or the terminology of a particular art. The more fully specialised sense of 'science' opened the way to the familiar distinction between 'knowledge' (science) and its practical application ('technology').

Teilhard de Chardin Canadian religious thinker who proposed a vision of the global brain. Teilhard believed that evolution was the progressive unfolding of biochemical complexity, leading to ever-greater organisations of consciousness -- architectures of mind that he believed were intrinsic and internal to material forms. For Teilhard, the emergence of human consciousness and its collective networks of culture and civilisation constituted the leading edge of the evolutionary wave of Earth itself.

Texture Mapping A bitmap texture superimposed on another texture to give apparent realism to an object.

Three-dimensional Having, or appearing to have, height, width and depth.

Trompe l'oeil (French for 'trick of the eye') Perspective paintings that deceive viewers into believing they are real (e.g. painting a vineyard on a wall, or sky and clouds on a dome).

Utopia A perfect, remote and almost unthinkably ideal 'place' (construed as a location, an era, a political state, or even a state of mind) and therefore the opposite of 'dystopia'. Pictorial instances of utopian scenes are fairly commonplace, e.g. Arcadian vistas of the golden age (Greco-Roman wall paintings, some of the landscapes of Poussin and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, etc.).

Virtual Reality (VR) Jaron Lanier's term for immersive interactive simulations of realistic or imaginary environments.

Some of these VR definitions have been drawn from the glossary of terms in Virtual Reality Systems by John Vince. 1995 ACM Press. ISBN 0-201 87687-6.

[Home] [Introduction] [Q&A] [Artists] [Definitions] [Timeline] [Activities] [Further Reading]

Accommodation	Change in the focal length of the eye.
Afterworlds as VR	From the bardo realms of Tibetan Buddhism to Dante's Hell, Heaven and Purgatory, these underworld zones that await us immediately after death seem to be the vivid three-dimensional precursor to Virtual Reality. (See LucasArts Afterlife and Grim Fandango).
Ambient Light	Non-directional illumination, all but eliminating shadow.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)	The automation of human cognitive skills through rules and such things as recognising speech or visual images, solving problems, or making medical diagnoses.
Artificial Reality	A responsive environment in the form of a video display system that tracks people with pattern recognition techniques and creates the illusion that real action is taking place in that world. (See Myron Kreuger, Artificial Reality, 1992)
Biosensors	Special glasses or bracelets containing electrodes that monitor a muscle's electrical activity.
Biotechnology	The interdependence of machines and living things. The means by which an increasing number of people re-create themselves: prosthetic limbs, plastic surgery, liposuction, hair transplants and other cosmetic operations.
Camera Obscura	The first practical instrument to resemble a modern camera was the camera obscura (literally, an 'obscure' or 'darkened chamber'), a contraption which allowed an image to be transferred by means of a lens fitted over the hole to a sheet of paper suspended on the other side of the chamber, where the image could be then be traced with some precision.
CAVE	A Virtual Reality environment using projection devices on the walls and ceiling to give the illusion of immersion.
Character	A being with a virtual body in virtual reality.
Consciousness	Some define consciousness as the totality of experience at any given instant, as opposed to 'mind', which is the sum of all past moments of consciousness.
Consensual Reality	The world, or a simulation of a world, as viewed and comprehended by a society.
Cyberspace	Coined by William Gibson, in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, to describe a shared virtual universe operating within the sum total of all the world's computer networks. (See Artificial Reality and Virtual Reality)
DataGlove	A glove wired with sensors and connected to a computer system for gesture recognition. It is used for tactile feedback and it often enables navigation through a virtual environment and interaction with 3-D objects within it.
Day-dreaming	In an important essay entitled 'The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming', Freud argues that art and fantasy have a similar function, to give expression to desires and impulses that cannot be satisfied in a straightforward way because of social norms or personal repressions.
Depth Cueing	Using shading, texture, colour etc. to provide a cue for the distance of an object or surface from the viewer.
Diorama	A three-dimensional representation of a scene, either full-sized or miniature. It may have a background painted to merge with elements nearest it by means of aerial and linear perspective. It may be made on a platform with or without a clear glass front, set into an illuminated niche and viewed from a darkened area. In miniature form, it may be entirely enclosed and viewed through a peephole. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was a popular form of didactic entertainment, often containing a scene reproduced on cloth transparencies with various lights shining through the cloths to produce changes in effect, intended for viewing at a distance.
Directorial Mode	An approach to photography in which the photographer is more like a film director or theatre designer than a traditional photographer. Emphasis is put on making, rather than taking photographs. Examples include Cindy Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, William Wegman, Laurie Simmons and Laura Simpson.
Disorientation	Confusion about distances and directions for navigation.
Dreaming	Nature's Virtual Reality. A state of mind during sleep where vivid imagery feels real and immersive.
Dream-work	The processes by which unconscious desires (i.e. repressed wishes) are 'translated' into acceptable content in a dream. Freud distinguished three such mechanisms: condensation, displacement and secondary elaboration.
Dynamics	The way that objects interact and move in space.
Dystopia	See Utopia.
Earth Art	An environmental art from the 1970s that rejected the commercialisation of art and supported the emerging ecological movement with its back-to-the-land antiurbanism and an often spiritual attitude to the planet. E.g. Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, Robert Smithson.
Environment art	Refers to art which involves the creation or manipulation of a large or enclosed space, many effectively surrounding its audience. Architectural (including landscape architectural) design might be said to qualify as environment art, although the term usually refers to artworks which do not function as either of these kinds of environmental design typically do. Several artists -- many associated with American Pop art, such as Edward Kienholz and Lucas Samaras -- created tableaux in the 1960s and 1970s called environments. Many earthworks would qualify as environment art too.
E-topia	Title of a book by William J. Mitchell describing the kinds of changes he anticipates will take place in urban spaces as a consequence of the digital revolution. Mitchell foresees the home as a space in which people both live and work, redefines 'public' space as any of a variety of types of electronic 'meeting' areas.
Effect of the Real	In art and literature, the creation of a fictive world that appears to be seen through a transparent window, rather than as the result of a particular individual's creative behaviour or the processes of an audience's participation.
Fantastic	An imaginative, subjective world of inner expression that transcends mere fantasy or science fiction.
Fantasy	Any conscious break with reality, whether in the relatively benign forms of caprices and daydreams, or in the more psychologically charged delusions and hallucinations.
Field of View (FOV)	The angle in degrees of the visual field. A head-mounted display for example offers 60 to 90 degrees FOV. Our two-eye vision, or total FOV, is 180 degrees. A feeling of immersion arises with FOV greater than 60 degrees.
Haptic	Relating to or based on the sense of touch. Since its application in art writing is almost always about space, texture and/or volume, this word is most typically used as an adjective for sculpture or installation. It is less often used of painting and of architecture (in instances where, for example, a tactile sense of space is created by some arrangement of volumes).
Haptic Interfaces	All the physical sensors that provide us with a sense of touch at the skin level and get feedback information from our muscles and joints.
Holodeck	Virtual Reality simulation (holographic) system set up for the crew of the Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation television series.
Human Genome Project	Currently decoding and loading into computer databases the entire set of genetic instructions that specifies a human being. Artificial life and artificial evolution are seeking to harness powers even greater than the secret of the DNA code.
Hypermedia	The grouping of digital text, video and sound, with navigation tools like buttons, links and hotspots, into the one system.
Illusion	A deceptive or misleading image or idea. An example: M.C. Escher Balcony 1945 (lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). In the centre of this picture of a hillside town, Escher said he tried to break up the paper's flatness by 'pretend[ing] to give it a blow with my fist at the back, but ... the paper remains flat, and I have only created the illusion of an illusion.'
Image	In Ways of Seeing, John Berger stipulated that 'image' means a 'sight which has been created or reproduced ... detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved.' In other words, an image is an aspect of culture, not nature. Since images are made by humans, they embody 'ways of seeing' -- i.e., the assumptions, desires and values of the makers.
Imaginary	The psychological dimension of all images, conscious and/or unconscious, whether simply imagined or genuinely perceived.
Imitation	A close copy, as in all art that endeavours to reproduce natural appearances. Imitation has played a role in aesthetics since Plato, who banished artists from his hypothetical republic. Art could only lead men further from the truth.
Immersion	The feeling of presence, of 'being there', surrounded by space and interacting with available objects. The point of view in the immersive world is omni-directional. Immersion is enveloping, a 360 degree surround, that is physical rather than cognitive. For Joseph Nechvatal, immersion in a Virtual Reality work implies a unified total space, an homogeneous world without external distraction, striving to be a harmonious whole. He identifies 'two grades of immersion: (1) cocooning and (2) expanding within which, when these two directions of psychic space cooperate ... we feel ... our bodies becoming subliminal, immersed in an extensive topophilia ... an inner immensity where we realise our limitations along with our desires for expansion.'
Installation	Art made for a specific space, exploiting certain qualities of that space, more often indoors than out. It represents a shift from ideal sculptural space on the pedestal to the use of real materials in real space: interior corridors, ceilings, walls, or floors of a room, or outdoor sites. The term became widely used in the 1970s and 1980s, largely replacing the term 'site-specific', which means the same thing. Installations may be temporary or permanent, but most will be known to posterity through documentation. As a consequence, one aspect of installations is often the difficulty with which they can be commodified. Installations vary enormously, they can be small and intimate, or massive and theatrical. Began with Allan Kaprow's sets for his happenings and Ed Kienholz' tableaux.
Interface	A set of devices, software and techniques that connect computers with people.
Intersubjectivity	Pertaining to the exchange of the contents of consciousness conceived not as the one-way traffic of objective knowledge but as the mutual communication of two people's responses to experience.
Jack	To plug into the matrix of virtual space.
Landscape	From the late 16th century Dutch word landschap, signifying a unit of human occupation and jurisdiction, as much as a pleasing object of depiction. Though a familiar motif in classical myths of arcadia, it has always invoked the idea of human engineering. 'Before it can be a repose for the senses, landscape', according to Simon Schama, 'is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.' Lately, landscape has included, not just the view from the window, but the bottom of the sea, the surface of the moon, even the molecular landscape.
LBE (location based entertainment)	A Virtual Reality game drawing on another time and place. E.g. Dungeons & Dragons, MUDs, MOOs, and LucasArts' Grim Fandango.
Liminality	The condition of being on a threshold or in a 'betwixt and between space' (Victor Turner, Forest of Symbols). Liminality would be a metaphor for the Surrealist condition, which is liminal by definition (the resolution of the states of waking and dreaming). Straightforward limens include doors, passages, windows and window-sills.
Light	Electromagnetic radiation that has a wavelength in the range from about 4,000 (violet) to about 7,000 (red) angstrom units and may be seen by the normal, unaided human eye. It may refer to other wavelengths somewhat longer and shorter, such as those of ultraviolet and infrared. Also, either the sensation of light, a source of light, its illumination, the representation of it in a work of art, or an awareness as if there were light on a subject. Light has been important to visual artists for obvious reasons and has frequently become the subject in its own right.
Memory Palaces	Elaborate physical constructions for the mind, created by medieval and Renaissance scholars, in order to remember the Church's complex array of vices and virtues.
MUD	A multi-user dungeon; a place on the Internet where people can meet and browse. The images in these immersive games 'are not so much conceptual tools as dream-texts, popular allegories that attempt to narrate and contextualise massive techno-communicational mutations.' (Erik Davis)
Naturalism	The representation of something in a manner thought to be consistent with natural appearance, as opposed to stylisation.
Navigation	Moving through [virtual] space without losing one's way.
Panorama	A wide, unobstructed view of an entire surrounding area. A picture or series of pictures representing a continuous scene, either exhibited all at once, or exhibited one at a time by being unrolled and passed before the audience. Originally, it was a building specially designed to house colossal, circular murals. The closest relative to the latter, which is now outdated, is perhaps the IMAX film projection system.
Perspective	The rules that determine the relative size of subjects on a flat page to create the illusion of 3D distance.
Photorealism	The attempt to create, with much detail and texture, photographic images, by hand.
Presence	The defining feeling of good Virtual Reality, that of being there in an immersive environment and interacting with objects. The fact or condition of being present -- i.e. of being at hand or before one, of actually existing.
Realism	Popularly, a representation that looks real. In art history, Realism (with an upper-case "R") denotes the type of art practised in the nineteenth century by Gustave Courbet and his successors.
Real time	Appearing to be without lag or flicker.
Reality TV	E.g. Big Brother, an interactive show,which forced the creation of a new production methodology for television. With a staff of nearly 150, there was a veritable army of story editors, editors, producers, sound editors, camera operators, 'shaders' (who match the light level from camera to camera), switchers, production assistants, interns and so forth. The numbers were necessary because of the panoptic proportions of Big Brother: At any given moment, three story editors sat in the master control room, carefully watching the 28 cameras for signs of interesting activity. If they spotted something worth capturing, the output from that camera was routed to one of the four feeds that were recorded to tape. (These are the same feeds that went out live on the web-site for the show.)
Render	To add realism to a computer graphic by adding three-dimensional qualities such as shadows and variations in colour and shade.
Sampling	Technology now permits musicians to make digital recordings of any sound and play them back, thus copying any combination of instruments or noises, with or without further electronic manipulation. Sampling also raises the question of copyright and intellectual property.
Slice-of-Life	An arbitrary cropping of a scene, especially common in Impressionism and in snapshot photography, where figures or important motifs might be interrupted by the edge of the image or by something put between them and the camera. The device suggests a momentary glimpse of reality, rather than a carefully composed, formal imitation of it. Among others, Edgar Degas used the device in countless paintings of ballet dancers.
Subliminal	Below normal thresholds, as in a sound vibrating at a frequency below the normal range of human hearing.
Sound Art	The use of sound to chart a variety of courses: sound environments triggered by natural forces like wind, orchestrations of strange instruments or interactive phone lines, for example. A crossover form that breaks the boundaries between art and music. E.g. Laurie Anderson, Ros Bandt, Brian Eno.
Space	[1]What can be experienced from the 'inside' as if it were a place.
	[2] An element of art that refers to the distance or area between, around, above, below, or within things. It can be described as two-dimensional or three-dimensional; as flat, shallow, or deep; as open or closed; as positive or negative; and as actual, ambiguous or illusory.
Space-time	A concise way of referring to the understanding of the universe as an entity composed of inextricably interwoven space and time; a conception based especially on the theories of Albert Einstein. In this view of the universe, anything that happens to alter the condition of space also affects the conditions of time, and vice versa.
Technology	Originally used to describe a systematic study of the arts or the terminology of a particular art. The more fully specialised sense of 'science' opened the way to the familiar distinction between 'knowledge' (science) and its practical application ('technology').
Teilhard de Chardin	Canadian religious thinker who proposed a vision of the global brain. Teilhard believed that evolution was the progressive unfolding of biochemical complexity, leading to ever-greater organisations of consciousness -- architectures of mind that he believed were intrinsic and internal to material forms. For Teilhard, the emergence of human consciousness and its collective networks of culture and civilisation constituted the leading edge of the evolutionary wave of Earth itself.
Texture Mapping	A bitmap texture superimposed on another texture to give apparent realism to an object.
Three-dimensional	Having, or appearing to have, height, width and depth.
Trompe l'oeil	(French for 'trick of the eye') Perspective paintings that deceive viewers into believing they are real (e.g. painting a vineyard on a wall, or sky and clouds on a dome).
Utopia	A perfect, remote and almost unthinkably ideal 'place' (construed as a location, an era, a political state, or even a state of mind) and therefore the opposite of 'dystopia'. Pictorial instances of utopian scenes are fairly commonplace, e.g. Arcadian vistas of the golden age (Greco-Roman wall paintings, some of the landscapes of Poussin and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, etc.).
Virtual Reality (VR)	Jaron Lanier's term for immersive interactive simulations of realistic or imaginary environments.