Virtual Rain

A brief description of the project

Concept

Virtual Rain will use a combination of virtual reality, installation and
performance to problematise the boundary between the real and the virtual.
It will involve participants in a Collaborative Virtual Environment in
which the real intrudes upon the virtual and vice versa. It will use the
real, the imaginary, the fictional and the virtual side by side and will
seek to juxtapose these elements as a means of defining them.


The piece will be influenced by Jean Baudrillard's assertion that the Gulf
War did not take place because it was in fact a virtual event. Whilst
remaining deeply suspicious of this kind of theoretical position Blast
Theory recognise that this idea touches upon a crucial shift in our
perception and understanding of the world around us. It asserts that the
role of the media, advertising and of the entertainment industries in the
presentation of events is casually misleading at best and perniciously
deceptive at worst. As Paul Patton says in an essay about Baudrillard,
"the sense in which Baudrillard speaks of events as virtual is related to
the idea that real events lose their identity when they attain the velocity
of real time information, or to employ another metaphor, when they become
encrusted with the information which represents them. In this sense, while
televisual information claims to provide immediate access to real events,
in fact what it does is produce informational events which stand in for the
real, and which "inform" public opinion which in turn affects the course
of subsequent events, both real and informational. As consumers of mass
media, we never experience the bare material event but only the
informational coating which renders it "sticky and unintelligible" like the
oil soaked sea bird."


This reference to the "oil soaked sea bird" as an icon that stands in for
the reality of an oil spill and which, in effect, distracts attention from
and even masks entirely the real complexity and significance of the events
surrounding an oil spill, gives a direct example of the ways in which these
processes affect us every day.
While these ideas form the backdrop to Virtual Rain the piece is not
intended to be a demonstration of this theory merely to accept its
significance in informing our view of the relationship of the real to the
virtual and especially in its assertion that the virtual has a daily
presence in our lives. Indeed we also have a great interest in those who
have coruscatingly attacked Baudrillard's ideas as "absurd theses" which
are "ill equipped to mount any kind of effective critical resistance".
The role of the cinema , particularly Hollywood, in this process is also
important. As a vehicle for dreams, aspirations and fantasies films play a
major role in affecting our self image and as a source of inspiration. The
key motif of the individual overcoming all odds to triumph is a touchstone
for our culture and has an impact on real life. Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Norman Schwarzkopf both exemplify certain aspects of leadership, for
example, and each draws on the attributes of the other.


Virtual Rain will therefore attempt to bring visitors to a new
understanding of the ways in which the virtual and the real are blurred
and, in particular, the role of the mass media in distorting our appraisal
of the world beyond our own personal experience.
The experience will be structured like a game in which five or six visitors
enter the installation at a time. Each visitor will have a cubicle which
is closed on three sides and faces a rain curtain on the fourth side. The
visitor will stand on a square metal footplate and rock it in four
directions to navigate their avatar around the virtual world which will be
video projected onto the rain curtain.


Within the virtual world the visitor gather information, complete tasks and
collect virtual objects. At certain stages in the process the visitor will
need to walk through the rain curtain to leave the virtual world and enter
a real environment. The real environment will parallel the virtual world
in many respects but - it will gradually be revealed - will diverge
significantly in certain key respects. In conjunction with the discreet
intervention of performers the piece will bring the relationship of the
real to the virtual into sharp focus.


Why the rain curtain?
The rain curtain refers to the projection screen at the heart of Virtual
Rain. Each curtain uses three sprinkler heads mounted on a brass tube to
deliver a fine sheet of water spray that is two to three metres high, two
metres wide and approximately half a metre deep.


The rain curtain has several distinct properties. In terms of interfacing
with a screen it has a unique feel; one that incorporates an ethereal,
elusive atmosphere in which the data projected onto it seems to be in
constant motion as well as having a three dimensional quality. This
clearly connects with ideas of elusiveness, intangibility and a world in
which everything is shifting or dissolving. The curtain allows a user or
objects to pass through it, conjuring ideas of travelling, entering/exiting
and cleansing with an almost religious quality. It also holds an image in
a very unusual way because the projector is placed behind the curtain and
pointed at the viewer. This means that the image cannot be seen from an
angle (see diagram 1) and even allows different images to be projected
simultaneously onto the same screen by projecting from either side, thus
raising the idea that information shifts according to where one looks from.
By adjusting the light levels on either side of the rain curtain the
opacity/transparency can be varied and so moving a visitor from
blindness/total immersion to perfect sight/zero immersion.


The system also generates three distinct kinds of noise: a rapid 'whoosh'
when starting up, a steady sound of falling spray during operation and a
loud, intermittent dripping as it comes to rest which isolates the visitor
in a cocoon of rain or white noise. Finally the wetness of the curtain
generates humidity and allows it to easily reshaped or moved by controlling
the individual valves that combine to make the curtain.


Overall therefore the features of the rain curtain itself provide many
parallels with the conceptual base of the project.