technologies by contemporary artists are reconfiguring perception and contributing Art that creates an environment for envisioning space that remains paradigmatic to this day.  What may be less evident is that      As a common protocol by which the visual world is conceived, perceived, and represented, the idea of perspective as a technology serves as a port of entry into a more general discussion of how changing visual forms alter seeing and being.       Artists throughout history have consistently worked to envision alternative modes of visual representation often at odds with the dominant conventions of the time. (dating back 2,000 years ago) By manipulating and altering form, artists transform human consciousness.  participating in their creation Their work may be seen as artistic consciousness, viewer-participators in their artworks are challenged to change not only the way they perceive the world, but to change the way they exist in the world, and, moreover, to change the world itself How the Alteration of Form Alters the Form of Perception

     As an early example of a politically charged visual reconfiguration of the viewer's relationship to the world, and one which, incidentally, has important parallels in the emerging field of virtual reality, I would like to compare the different ways of depicting space, but represent substantially different ways of configuring the viewer's relationship to the world.  The viewer is on the outside looking in, while the viewer of quadratura is an integral element participating directly in the action. , the experience of space these visual techniques invoke in the viewer produces a different sense of self, relation to others, the polis, and God. 

the relationship between consciousness and power, for those who possess perceptual technologies have access to ways of configuring and manipulating their worlds that those     we mirror ourselves into the world to find ourselves there.. our personal space is the site of our selfhood... our bodies the intimacy of desire, need and fear that manipulates perspective with breathtaking virtuosity, but is also a strikingly beautiful and provocative work of art that transforms the role of the viewer and the status of the image.      The ethos of interactive art is that the behavior of the viewer/participant contributes to, or alters, the state of the work.  A unique aspect of the interactivity of BEING THERE is that the viewer's behavior alters the virtual perspective from which the image is generated, defying the monadism of single-point perspective and affording multiple points of view that transform the image and the viewer's relationship to it.  As you experiment with BEING THERE, you become aware of the flatness and limited purview of your own perspective - both optically, and well as metaphorically.  Because, as I have maintained, seeing is being, this expanded visual awareness has important ramifications for an expanded sense of self and one's place in the world.

allow for the transcendence of limited perceptual schemes.  In relinquishing a certain kind of control, I gained another existential technique, another way of being in the world.  To refer back to an earlier analogy, it permitted insights into how, for example, one might As I have maintained throughout, to transform visual form is to alter the form of vision, and in this respect, to empower it. artistic explorations explore the idea of transforming the viewer into an active participator, and the work of art into a systematic process that incorporated the artist, the object, and the audience. 

Dream states..Instant person to person contact [that] would support specialised creative work...  An artist could be brought right into the dream ... however far apart in perceptive space... By means of holography or a visual telex, instant transmission of facsimiles of their artwork could be effected... [D]istinguished minds in all fields of art and science could be contacted and linked.9


  it is a medium which is essentially participatory; it promotes associative thought and the development of richer and more deeply layered language:  it is integrative of cultures, disciplines and the great diversity of ways of being and seeing.  In short, I am very optimistic about the potential for art of creating change from one dimension to ultimately forgiveness of those who have passed on, of ancient family beliefs, a new vocabulary for a new sense of community where power and consciousness are shared through visionary technology and art. ....the artistic form of collaborative consciousness, a fusion of individual consciousnesses into an integrated whole which exceeds the capacity of any particular node.  Such work cannot be experienced except by participating in it, a process which demands that one conjoin one's consciousness with those of others.
     Cyberspace reproduces the physical world, simultaneously intensifying and dematerializing it.  Along with exacerbating problems in new and unprecedented ways, so telematic interaction also offers potential benefits that are available nowhere else.  with interactive art systems, and since the 1980s, on the emergent behavior of telematic art networks, can be seen as high-end, My early collaborative networking experiments heralded a new paradigm for human interaction which is still in its infancy, and the ramifications of which are as yet uncertain.
     The disembodied sensation of traveling and communicating telematically is open to the gamut of human emotions.  For example, in Paul Sermon's Telematic Vision (1994), I felt myself personally rejected by a person at a remote location who sat next to me virtually on the sofa.  A few minutes later, another person wanted to be a bit more intimate than what I had in mind, and I felt violated to some degree by a phantom image.  This is a difficult experience to explain to the uninitiated.  When I described this at an Art History conference a couple years ago, a professor told me that I was crazy.
     Even amongst the cognoscente in the field of art and technology, the jury is still out on Telematic Art. Symbolic forms of verbal and visual languages are technologies so deeply embedded in consciousness that it is difficult to think of thinking or envision seeing without them.   
 

13 "Technology...is not only changing our world, it is presenting us with qualities of experience and modes of perception which radically alter our conception of it...  The artist's moral responsibility demands that he should attempt to understand these changes...  The artist functions socially on a symbolic level... [and] stakes everything on finding the unfamiliar, the unpredictable.  His intellectual audacity is matched only by the vital originality of the forms and structures he creates.  Symbolically he takes on responsibility for absolute power and freedom, to shape and create his world."  Roy Ascott, "The Construction of Change,"  Cambridge Opinion.  Cambridge: 1964: 37-42.
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