Introduction

Art will become innovative in the medium of virtual environments when the spectator abandons the act of mere viewing, transcends simple narrative participation and bursts into the scene as an active creator. "Strait Dope" is a CAVE virtual art environment that offer an opportunity to participate in a room size projective construction. The nonlinear nonhierarchical structure of "Strait Dope" stages a stream of consciousness movement that is simultaneously subversive and confrontational.

This structure is not to create chaos but, rather, to present a rebus for symbolic transformation and multisensory interaction. This paper will attempt to describe the virtual environment as a dimensional rebus and the participant as a perceptual collaborator who engages the computer to discover the interplay of the symbolic transformations.

Virtual environments present a visual spatial media of shapes, landscapes and sounds that establish a system for construction and symbolic transformation. The virtual environment as projective construction provides an opportunity for participants to collaborate in a variety of multisensory interactions: visual-spatial, audio-spatial, and kinesthetic.                            

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Collaboration here refers to the constructive collaboration occurring between the participant and the computer to create and update the environment by directing and redirecting the interaction. The participant is able to transform their relationship with the world by manipulating the virtual space they are inhabiting. The ability to activate, manipulate, and deconstruct a virtual environment is a method of personal liberation and a type of metaphoric liberation. The computer updates the display according to the actions of the participant within the system. The participants exercise the guidance of their cognitive structures to ascertain the meaning and content of the virtual experience.

In "Computers as Theater" Laurel (1993) writes:

"As an activity becomes less artifactual (like painting or literature) and more ephemeral (like conversation or dancing), sensory immediacy and the prosody of experience gain primacy over structural elegance in the real-time stream of events. In shared virtual worlds, structural elegance becomes much less about the progression of events and more about facilitating the emergence of patterns and relationships. Shared presence and sensory immersion evoke constructive activities on the part of human participants to a much greater degree and in   

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more structurally interesting ways than I had imagined. Given a multisensory environment that is good enough, people engage in projective construction that is wildly elaborate and creative. And so this turns the problem on its head; rather than figuring out how to provide structure with pleasing emotional textures, the problem becomes one of creating an environment that evokes robust projective construction."

The virtual environment becomes a rebus for the participant. Rebus, literally 'with things,' comes from the Latin word 'res' meaning 'thing.' A rebus is a selection set or construct of "things," such as ideas or images, that convey meaning. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphics is a collection of illustrations that represents ideas and things. It is a selection set that presents a symbol system to convey language conceptually. The virtual environment represents a dimensional rebus in that the artist creates a construct that links sound and sense for expression. The participant completes the act of creation by giving sound and sense meaning.

Virtual environment artists must create beyond pictorial compositions and construct a metaphoric liberation for the participant. Multisensory interaction that is tightly linked with 

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symbolic transformations motivates navigation, learning and discovery. Creative constructions with provocative symbolic transformations inspires the participant to establish an identity within the space. "Strait Dope" offers a virtual incarnation of variant characters who demand recognition through overt facial expressions and unique creative dispositions. Their language is invoked by poking or prodding their face with a virtual wand. Then their language erupts abruptly with a bluster of atonal sounds, gibberish or frightening demands.

The participant realizes a role in the completion of the scene by activating the elements of the scene. Movement is the very essence of "Strait Dope" where the question of starting points and linear directions becomes irrelevant. The participant is constantly moving, and therefore, finds it compelling to impart movement.

Each character emits a dynamic force of varying density with alternate structures. Some have arms that flail, eyes that pop out, or launch sounds or objects with an extraordinary tension. The rebus comes in many enigmatic forms that offer a challenge to the most sophisticated arbiter of sound and sense. Rather than presenting concepts in a simple, straightforward manner, the rebus exploits meaning by presenting pictorial elements with transformations,

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extrapolations and omissions. In the CAVE, participants navigate the environment to establish a sense of perspective, both spatially and metaphorically.

The characters in "Strait Dope" represent physical spatial forms rather than objective spatial forms. Their shapes build a graduated tension in the scene. Their presence remains relative one to the other and simultaneously their boundaries merge one into another. There is a natural energy to becoming involved with the visual, spatial and tonal forms fueled by the background audio.

The energetic tempo of the music and bright colors in the landscape seduces the craftsperson/creator within to involvement. Participants will often repeatedly reincarnate the characters in an act of experiencing a creative totality: pre-creation, creation and post-creation. The scrutiny of the participant guide and creator is significant to giving the space form. This process of giving form to the environment is more important than the form itself.

The interpretation of an enigmatic rebus recalls Freud's method of interpreting dreams.       

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Freud extrapolates the elements of a dream beyond mere pictorial composition. He reveals the more subtle and sophisticated method of interpretation by emphasizing the symbolic connections between dream elements. In his treatise on "looking," Zizek (1995) quotes a reference to the dream and the rebus in the "Interpretation of Dreams" by Freud:

"The dream-thoughts are immediately comprehensible as soon as we have learnt them. The dream-content, on the other hand, is expressed as it were in a pictograph script, the characters of which have to be transposed individually into the language of the dream-thoughts. "If we attempted to read these characters according to their pictorial value instead of according to their symbolic relation, we should clearly be led into error… "But obviously we can only form a proper judgment of the rebus if we put aside criticisms …of the whole composition and its parts and if, instead, we try to replace each separate element in some way or other. The words which are put together in this way are no longer nonsensical but may form a poetical phrase of the greatest beauty and significance."

A rebus virtual environment is composed of three dimensional objects that have no meaning until they are engaged by the participant. The participant's actions manipulate the              

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environment and updates the CAVE display. The changing shapes and forms entice the participant to establish a dialogue with the CAVE and become integral to the rebus formation and completion.

"Strait Dope" is a projective construction that requires the participant to complete the virtual environment with the realization of symbolic transformation and metaphoric liberation. The artist creates an environment that offers multisensory interactions to the participant. In an effort towards metaphoric liberation, the participant must act as perceptual collaborator with the CAVE to facilitate the emergence of patterns and relationships. Multisensory action creates metaphors display style to simulate a stream of consciousness movement and engage the participant in a personal dialogue integral to the completion of the virtual environment.

                             

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