Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive, or destructive. This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one.
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media.
Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way.
Karl Sims is a computer graphics artist and researcher, who is best known for using particle systems and artificial life in computer animation.
Rebecca Allen is an internationally recognized digital artist inspired by the aesthetics of motion, the study of perception and behavior and the potential of advanced technology. Her artwork, which spans four decades and takes the form of experimental video, large-scale performances, live simulations and virtual and augmented reality art installations, addresses issues of gender, identity and what it means to be human as technology redefines our sense of reality.
Virtual art is a term for the virtualization of art, made with the technical media developed at the end of the 1980s. These include human-machine interfaces such as visualization casks, stereoscopic spectacles and screens, digital painting and sculpture, generators of three-dimensional sound, data gloves, data clothes, position sensors, tactile and power feed-back systems, etc. As virtual art covers such a wide array of mediums it is a catch-all term for specific focuses within it. Much contemporary art has become, in Frank Popper's terms, virtualized.
Immersion into virtual reality (VR) is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.
A projection augmented model is an element sometimes employed in virtual reality systems. It consists of a physical three-dimensional model onto which a computer image is projected to create a realistic looking object. Importantly, the physical model is the same geometric shape as the object that the PA model depicts.
Joachim Sauter was a German media artist, designer and technology entrepreneur. He was appointed Professor for New Media Art and Design at the Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK in 1991, and in 1993 he created Terravision, before pursuing a lawsuit against Google for infringing the patent. He became an adjunct professor at UCLA, Los Angeles in 2001.
Aaron Koblin is an American digital media artist and entrepreneur best known for his innovative use of data visualization and his pioneering work in crowdsourcing, virtual reality, and interactive film. He is co-founder and president of virtual reality company Within, founded with Chris Milk. Formerly he created and lead the Data Arts Team at Google in San Francisco, California from 2008 to 2015.
New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies, comprising virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts. New Media art has origins in the worlds of science, art, and performance. Some common themes found in new media art include databases, political and social activism, Afrofuturism, feminism, and identity, a ubiquitous theme found throughout is the incorporation of new technology into the work. The emphasis on medium is a defining feature of much contemporary art and many art schools and major universities now offer majors in "New Genres" or "New Media" and a growing number of graduate programs have emerged internationally. New media art may involve degrees of interaction between artwork and observer or between the artist and the public, as is the case in performance art. Yet, as several theorists and curators have noted, such forms of interaction, social exchange, participation, and transformation do not distinguish new media art but rather serve as a common ground that has parallels in other strands of contemporary art practice. Such insights emphasize the forms of cultural practice that arise concurrently with emerging technological platforms, and question the focus on technological media per se. New Media art involves complex curation and preservation practices that make collecting, installing, and exhibiting the works harder than most other mediums. Many cultural centers and museums have been established to cater to the advanced needs of new media art.
Diane Gromala is a Canada Research Chair and a Professor in the Simon Fraser University School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Her research works at the confluence of computer science, media art and design, and has focused on the cultural, visceral, and embodied implications of digital technologies, particularly in the realm of chronic pain.
John Craig Freeman is a contemporary artist and a Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston.
Marc Lee is a Swiss new media artist working in the fields of interactive installation art, internet art, performance art and video art.
Patrick Lichty is a conceptual media artist, activist, curator, and educator. Lichty is currently a Creative Digital Media professor at Winona State University.
Franz Fischnaller is a new media artist and transdisciplinary researcher. He is recognized for the creation of his digital, virtual reality and interactive art installations works across the fields of art, technology, humanities and cultural heritage.
Chiara Passa is a visual artist working in media art since the second half of the 1990s.
Monika Fleischmann is a pioneering German research artist, digital media scientist, and curator of new media art. She is one of the most relevant European women artist working in art, science, and technology. She founded and co-founded departments for interactive media art such as ART+COM in Berlin, the MARS – Exploratory Media Lab and the eCulture Factory within the largest German research institutions such as GMD and Fraunhofer Society. In 1992, together with her partner Wolfgang Strauss, she received the Golden Nica of the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria for Home of the Brain (1990/1992), the first artistic virtual reality installation. She is the recipient of the 2018 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art and was elected to the SIGGRAPH Academy as a research artist that has contributed to the field of interactive media art since the 1980s to the present day. Since the mid-1980s she has been working collaboratively with the architect Wolfgang Strauss as an artist couple. As part of their research in New Media Art, Architecture, Interface Design and Art Theory, they focus on the concept of Mixed Reality, which connects the physical with the virtual world. In 2008 she was appointed Honorary Professor of Media Theory and Interactive Media Art for the cross-university course of studies for digital media at Bremen University of Applied Sciences, Academy of Fine Arts and University of Bremen. Monika is Member of the MIMA ART Board at MIMA University | Munich Institute of Media and Musical Arts.
Behnaz Farahi is an Iranian-born American architect, designer and educator. She is best known for her designs of interactive wearables and installations.
Starbright World was an online community for children with chronic illnesses established in 1995. Initially conceived as a 3D virtual world for use in hospitals, it was developed by Worlds Inc. for the Starbright Foundation. The 3D world―credited as one of the first applications of virtual reality in medicine―operated until 1997, when it was shut down due to technical issues. In 1998, it was replaced with a private social network, which is now defunct. Worlds Inc. would later launch lawsuits against several massively multiplayer online game companies, claiming that they held the rights to the concept of multiplayer virtual worlds based on patents obtained in relation to Starbright World.
