Post Me_New ID-Forum Day One

Yacov Sharir’s keynote speech mentioned his major work from the early 90’s, “Dancing with the dervish” (i hope I remember that right) and that reminded me of how I used to love, and how I am still fond of, the golden age of virtual reality. I rememeber how I used to admire those bulky headsets, not paying the least attention to the fat bunch of cabling protruding from the back of the head of the unlucky virtuanaut. Few know, how the history of virtual reality is intertwined with the history of gaming: Jaron Lanier, the man himself, made a funny and quirky little game for the Commodore C64: Moondust. For the time it was an incredible technical feat, maybe even more than those low res goggles: engaging, if weird gameplay, generative music(!), a little art piece in itself, all within 64kbytes of memory. These days, Fallout 3 is coming out, what will no doubt become a milestone in the evolution of virtual reality. OK, some dreams and metaphors we had to dispose of, technological immersion is still not where it has been imagined 25 years ago to be today, but we had received other precious gifts, quite unexpected. Just look at Fallout, look.
Yakov’s piece reminded me of the heroic struggle, when artists and engineers drove current (often military) technologies to the very edge of its possibilities.

My most prominent memory of the first conversation – Hellen Sky is a fascinating speaker :)
Should I say performer? I guess so.

Then, the quickfires, which I barely survived. If there’s one thing I think am not, it’s being entertaining in public. Faced with the harcore demands of pechakucha style presentation, I short-cicrcuited and spoke about completely different things then what was my resolve. Turned out every message finds its recipient anyway.

Watching the other quickfires was still a fine learning experience. I think we saw a great lineup of people with a mission, culminating with a fascinating, petrifying impromptu by Hellen.



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