Virtual Reality print problems (<1K)
The following three wiseacrings were written in 1993 for the Guardian UK newspaper. Only the first was published (July 22, 1993).

Virtual Clubbing

   Linked with with the evolution of electronic house music is the development of psychedelic computer graphix, often displayed at danceclubs and raves.
    The computer power available to those who create such images is presently limited so they take a single image from a fractal space and cycle the colours.
    This does not exploit the property that any portion of a fractal can be magnified to produce a different image of similarcomplexity.
    With increased power it will be possible to produce continuous "zooms" into the fractal space. The operator will have a pointer defining the centre of, and a throttle controlling the rateof, expansion or contraction. Animated "flights" through fractal spacewill be composed live by "graphix DJs". With or without colourcycling, these images will be breathtaking.Imagine tripping in a room whose walls, floor and ceiling are displaysof such images!
    While dance clubs may build such rooms, they may instead use Virtual Reality (VR) technology to simulate them althoughin practice it may prove aesthetically more pleasing to simulate a spherical or continually distorting room.A home VR set will contain some form of goggles or headset and highquality stereo headphones. Put in video backdrop and music CDs andyou're gone. Some artists will produce combined graphix and audioworks.
    Currently these involve graphix created independently of themusic being subsequently merged, spliced, and edited into synchronisation with it. As compositional tools become more advanced,visuals will become more intimately linked to sounds (cf. Bachsequence in Disney's 'Fantasia').
    Bopping at home in electronic isolation will be fun but ultimately unsatisfying. Enter posture interpretation body suits. These take theform of small sensors attached to body joints, possibly linked bydiscrete wires and tell the VR software the orientation of the user'sbody.
    The pressure to develop this technology may come from humanoid robot control systems or from a desire for better VR arcade games. Further technology will provide physical sensations from the VR worldbut this is not required for the posture interpretation suit to become the Dance Suit.
    Data from a dance suit will be used to create a marionette simulacrum of the wearer on a cyberspace dancefloor.Imagine a club (Club Virtuality) where the dancers wear VR goggles and dance suits. Each dancer sees the simulacrum of the others relatively positioned in cyberspace precisely as they are in reality. Surrounding the dancing simulacrums is a dynamic psychedelic backdrop; provided either by the club's computer or taken from personal CD walkmans.Talking to other dancers is easy, even across the room.
    If the headset includes a throat mike then spoken words can be relayed into the recipient's headphones or displayed as text in his visual field. Simulacrums will probably be humanoid and to scale to minimisecollisions and enable contact dancing but skin colour, clothing, andfeatures will all be fully definable and dynamic. Electronic fashion houses will appear on the electronic communication network (the Net)with constantly varying catalogues of morphing simulacrums forpurchase or rental.Some of the simulacrums in the cyberclub will be semi-transparent andflying.
    These are dancers who have stayed at home to plug their home VR set and dance suit into a high speed modem and log into ClubVirtuality's computer. Such _quot absent dancers _quot would be able to occupy the same cyberspace as others although in practice the software may discourage this. They would probably not experience any "vibe" generated between the present dancers. When the license expires the clubbers have to leave. But the computeris still running and the absent dancers have the floor to themselves,until the clubbers get home and return electronically.
    We are now discussing the Virtual Club. There is no building, justone piece of VR software running as one task of many on a computersomewhere on the Net. You visit the club via the Net and pay perminute connected. A virtual club is an entirely abstract environment.People dance in a three dimensional volume with no shared concept of"up". Collisions are no longer a risk so simulacrums become moreexotic. People who dance badly cheat and rent dance suit recordings ofprofessional dancers or fabricated entirely using choreographysoftware. Having met somebody at a virtual club you can instantly blink out of the dance volume into a virtual chill-out space, anintimate virtual bar, or a deserted virtual beach. If your dance suitshave certain localised pressure feedback systems then you can entertain the possibility of virtual sex.Such interactions merely imitate the sort of interactions that happenin physical reality, albeit in an idealised way.
    The final technological ingredient for this future recipe is the brainwave driven input device. The fractal pilot now controls his pointer and throttle just by thinking in a certain way that surface electrodes inhis headset can pickup. This is one example of Thought Created Computer Graphix. Lets use the word mentate, short for mentally create.
    Dance manequins will start to sport images on their foreheads or torsos mentated live by the dancer. Some clubbers will start todance less and mentate more. Non-dance clubs will appear. Softwaremanequins will persist for a while as structures on which to hangmentated images and sounds but soon disappear. Clubs will become gatherings of disembodied metal creations (mentations) admiring,interacting, and jointly creating each other. The best mentators willbe meditators and artists.Virtual clubs will cease to be simulated extensions of physical clubs and become "simulations" of a form of astral domain where souls meet and interact. What people look like, where they live, even who theyare, will become irrelevant (a "meat thing" - William Gibson). Allthat will matter is the dance of mentations. Ultimately the mentations will pass through the walls of the club environment software and wander the Net itself.

Virtual Raving

Prehistorically, dance is a communal activity intended to lead to trance states. Recreational dance in ego-oriented western society degenerated into a competitive posing skill. In many cultures, techniques became refined and denaturalised to the point of absurdity, producing such sterile activities as ballroom dancing, ballet or oriental formal dance. Rave is an attempt to recapture the tribal (communal) trance inducing nature of dance, hence its strong connections with mind expanding drugs such as LSD or MDMA (Ecstasy). It has been repackaged in a form more acceptable to society in the club scene but the illegal rave scene lives on. For a virtual rave as opposed to a virtual club culture to emerge on the Net a degree of illegality will be required. This is almost certain to be delivered by a succession of knee-jerk reactions by the State.
    The computer power required to produce the cutting edge of Virtual Dance experience will always be beyond the reach of those attempting to provide Virtual Dance venues for people to enjoy. Just as current physical rave organisers take over barns, hangers, or motorway service stations, virtual rave organisers will be tempted to hack into and take over the computer systems available to more worthy and constructive institutions such as the military.
    Virtual ravers will then log into the system, preferably through various convoluted pathways to make it difficult for the Net Police to trace them back to their home modem. When such illegal CPU use is detected, sysops will attempt to shut them down but smart organisers will make it hard for them to do this without risking valuable data, or threaten reprisals if they are not left in peace until a promised orderly withdraws from the system. When this is the case, sysops will be reluctant to call in the Net Police, so it will quickly be made an offence not to do so.
    While the Net Police try to trace the virtual ravers, undercover Net Cops will log into the rave to try to socialise with, and hopefully establish the identities of, the dancers; enabling the DS to kick down their psyical doors and search for physical drugs. But even if virtual rave organisers have legal access to a suitably powerful Net sites they will still be tempted to break the law in other ways. One way of facilitating the attainment of dance induced trance, and enhancing the effects of ingested psychedelic drugs, is the provision of psychedelic imagery and it is possible that higher frame rates and greater technical sophistication will enable truly mind altering graphix to be developed. One can imagine the likely response of society and the tabloid press to such _quot sinister electronic brainwashing _quot. Current psychedelic videos are exempt from classification by the BFFC. This will not remain the case for long. Under the guise of protecting us for epilepsy and _quot undue neurological stress _quot, such images will become more strictly controlled.
    Things will not stop there. Some work is already being done on "meditation helmets" which generate computer controlled electromagnetic fields within the brain. Illicit home VR headsets will incorporate such field generators as well as electrodes designed to monitor brain activity. Interesting enhanced feedback software will evolve, as well as combined audio-visual-brain VR software. Such mindware will be designed to do in ten minutes what it takes a Zen monk ten years to attain. Given the State's response to mind altering chemicals, it does not seem unduly paranoid to predict that such developments will not be well received and strenuous efforts will be made to deny us access to them.
    Electronic components specific to electromagnetic field generators, even ones with many general uses, will become controlled "substances". It will become an offence to write software to drive such devices just as it is currently (and with justification) an offence to develop virus software. The result of this criminalisation may be, as it always has been up to now, to drive the distribution of such literally mind-altering technologies into the hands of criminals who are out to make money rather than enlightened individuals keen to illuminate their fellow man. How will we then know what subliminal directives have been inserted? This will provide a feedback most acceptable to the State: Criminal abuse of the potency of mindware technologies acting as justification for greater degrees of suppression of the technologies.
    The vast volume of international encrypted Net traffic will make mindware very hard to control however. The only possibilities open to the State will be the illegalisation of full encryption, and extremely severe penalties for traffickers, users, and suppliers of mindware. But just as mentated computer imagery will surpass software generated imagery, so software links between electromagnetic field VR headsets will enable a crude form of teleptahy. With users influencing eachothers brain activity.
    Such brain-brain links, between people already tripping on psychedelic graphix and chemicals will take on an intimacy and power akin to a form of electronic mind sex, either one to one or in groups. This should provide, and probably enhance, the "vibe" missing from virtual clubbing.

Virtual Being

It is possible that a counterculture revolution, such as the ravescene, is caused by a group of likeminded people conducting similar,though often unconscious, voyages into the group consciousness or Taothat underlies and forms the universe. Voyaging into this realm toretrieve knowledge or inspiration is perhaps known as intuition when done subconsciously, and shamanism when done consciously.
    It ispossible that such knowledge comprises conceptions within the Tao offuture permutations or manifestations in the reality of ideas, or knowledge, on how best to act in harmony with the universe. Perhaps such knowledge was originally as "basic" as how to form amolecular bond, how to grow a leaf, how to spin a web, which berrieswere edible, where the game had gone, which herbs would heal whatcomplaints, who would win the battle, where the underground streamwas, and so on. Once survival and security were assured, shamen become artists; for "quality" is just another word for Tao. The process continues, future art is always edge art. It may be that shamen are now bringing back blueprints for VR and computer technology (hardware and software). Why do programmers worklate at night with no food? Perhaps because they are intuiting.
    Computer and VR technology have these three important functions at least:

  1. The creation of new art or quality.
  2. The creation of new ways of expression or even of being. Newways of living. Perhaps even new forms of life. A myriad more possiblemanifestations of the universal dynamic.
  3. VR will be a powerful psycotechnology. It can stimulate theseeker impulse and guide the spiritual seeker in ways unimaginablebefore now.
To give just one example of (iii): Sacred movement patterns (TaiChi, Sacred Dance, Yoga) can be placed within a hypnotic audio visual context. On second viewing the hind brain knows all the moves (perhaps even on first viewing if it can tune into the group consciousness or Self) and can enable the dynamic participant to experience Tai Chiwithout learning it, perhaps.Shamen are bringing back knowledge on how to illuminate others. But they can also use it on themselves, enabling a feedback processreminiscent of a bootlace lift. Perhaps this has been happening for millennia but the communality of "surface" information available to us now may make all the difference.
    Perhaps the whole cyberinformationpool is becoming a model of the group consciousness for Virtual Shamento access. A sort of Virtual Consciousness, a Yang equivalent to a YinTao. A merging of the twin spirals of ideas and reality. Possibly.
    Will artificial intelligences be able to act as shamen? Can computers think? If they need a soul, or spirit, to do so how will you tell if they get one? Can you see it in a human? Will AI's tap the Tao forblueprints for better AIs and bootlace themselves beyond ourimaginings? Is that what we are here for? Ask your Self.
    How do you spot the most effective self and social transformational tools? They are the ones most opposed by the status quo. The tools brought back by the shamen now are very powerful. Mind control and surveillance technologies, vast data bases. Big brother scenarios loom. But the potential for a positive transformation is also awesome.
    The white man has spoiled a lot of class acts in his time but perhaps now the Western mindset can achieve something positive, so long as it reincorporates the wisdoms it has hitherto shunned.It will be fought against but one hopes defensively. The status quo never quite knows what's coming, like a boxer with a poor guard.

(c) Ian Bell 1993
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