Second Dreamtime
Ulrich Plank, Hannover 1994/95
The project discusses the fundamental ethical problems of media, especially those of VR: the escape from the boring, uncomfortable material reality to a parallel universe where you can play God - renouncing real life with other humans. And with that great dream of Artificial Intelligence - immortality due to the continued existence of our mind in the machine after death. This is to be paid by electronic jail for all eternity - or at least till the power is switched off. To achieve this, the player will have to solve the mysteries of an alien world, but in the end he will confront his own addictions and longings. All this in the shape of an interactive computer game which in turn is, of course, VR itself. The contradiction as a method .
On the Subject
The technologies of "Virtual Reality" and of Telepresence have come to be the currently most advanced forms of interactive computer usage. Based on the long-standing development of - first for military purposes, later for civil applications as well - computer simulation like flight simulators and the latest developments of computer animation, a new communication instrument will emerge in terms of quality. The cultural and social impacts of those new technologies seem to go beyond television, and, as for their significance, they will probably be only comparable to the invention of script or of the printing press. Experts suggest that interactive computer applications will thoroughly change the mass communication, the learning, and the leisure-time activity in the next 10-15 years. Even some of the biggest multinational companies in the field of entertainment and communication are backing these trends, while currently massively investing in the development of the respective technology.
Being a filmmaker, I consider this development, with its cultural chances and dangers and its artistic potential, a great challenge, and I would like to make it the subject of the present project.
What is Virtual Reality?
The current technological developments will completely digitise even the ultimate domain of analogous image storage, the animated image in the shape of video or film, thus making it available in a computer-suited form. The presence of data in digital form, however, will make those data indefinitely manoeuvrable, up to the generation of entirely synthetic information. At the same time, further possibilities of the human-machine-interaction emerged during the attempts of making computers easier to operate - e.g. using visual symbolism, and new input and output media, apart from keyboards and screens. The most far-reaching approach consists in providing humans with all, or at least the most important, sense-impressions in such a way that they are being transferred into a computer-provided world of illusion, where they may even move and trigger actions by their gestures. When such a world of illusion directly refers to an existing outside reality, we talk of "Telepresence", in case of purely synthetic representations of Virtual Reality (VR or Virtuals in the following).
The usage of Telepresence ranges from computer-aided teleconferences to the employment of machines in places that are dangerous to humans, a nuclear waste deposit or other planets, for instance.
VR is as suited for the fast perception of the transformation of complex, abstract structures in science or economics as for learning, with the most important thing about it being the aspect of interactivity, and not the spatial image and the sound. The most rapid and most lasting way man will learn is by imitating and self-acting, not by reading or listening. Learning by doing, by trial and error is superior to all other forms. However, in the everyday reality of modern industrial societies, it is out of the question because of reasons of finance and, frequently, of security. Therefore, the training of pilots in flight simulators was the first, still tremendously expensive application of VR. Today a much broader usage can be imagined, and there are, for example, already some computer games that make complex ecological or technical relations a thing you can experience in simulations, even in situations where any blind testing would have disastrous consequences in reality.
On the other hand, the merge of computer and television within the individual experience of Virtual Reality prepares the ground for a cultural danger potential which contains all the negative consequences already observed with TV in a much more massive form: addiction behaviour, escape from reality, and the loss of social interaction.
Working Hypotheses
Momentarily, the project extrapolates sociological, ecological, and economical trends into a near future, thus being close to science-fiction. In particular, it starts from the following assumptions: The lack of ecological resources will force mankind to make essential changes in production and consumption in a foreseeable future. The most apparent consuming sector of industrial societies is the transport of people, to their working places or to their places of leisure, for example. But the other consumption of material goods and products will also have to settle down to a considerably lower level, if we do not start from the assumption of a violent destruction of most of the earth's population by wars or environmental catastrophes.
Completed communication technologies will allow a development towards "teleworking", towards the modern working place at home. Physical work by people in production will almost cease to be in demand in the developed industrial societies. Instead, there will be a demand for creating, planning, and co-ordinating intellectual workmanship which might be supplied by computer-aided information technology, even without delivering material transportation work. The required acquisition of knowledge, the contact to co-operative human partners, and the passing-on of the results could partly be done by "Telepresence".
Surrogate satisfaction will increasingly replace physical travelling when the inconveniences and perils due to traffic overstrains, local conflicts, and crises as well as more and more distinct destructions of environment and culture make tourism and outdoor leisure activities less attractive. A similar trend towards a visual or auditory substitute satisfaction (e.g. in private TV or the party lines on the phone) in terms of sexuality is already appearing on the horizon under the influence of the fear of AIDS. Completed forms of VR will, unlike today's computer games or feature films, not only be able to satisfy the desire for adventures and new sense-impressions, sports competitions or emotional thrills. They might as well address areas of sensual joy that so far have been covered by material products.
It's difficult to imagine a future culture full of Virtuals that is not a nightmare. Where will the (our?) cultural values be? But even our contemporary culture is already too far from material reality in many of its most outstanding achievements, without us considering this basically an impoverishment. We appreciate the works of literature, of music, or of cinema, which are essentially defined by their capability of immaterial experience, and not by the information carrier itself (without wanting to forget the joy a beautifully composed and bound book gives). Science will also contribute to information in the first place, hastily materialised utilizations, however, are partly to blame for our present situation.
The enormous wealth of information mankind has produced and gathered to the present day, however, has also ceased to be accessible for "the normal citizen" using conventional means. To provide every man with even a small part of the knowledge of mankind in the shape of a book would demolish even the last forests. What is more, it would take quite a staff to investigate and prepare the information required. VR and modern storage technologies can make cultural experience and knowledge available and accessible on a new scale, just like the book or the disc have democratised them (even though they also trivialised them a number of times). A positive aspect of the new information technology could be an increase of immaterial values, such as the chance of improving their education in fields of knowledge which are not professionally used or to be active in arts, the material expenditure of which still reduces the access to only a few.
Undoubtedly the positive utopia is far more difficult to construct than the warning of the nightmares which can simply be extrapolated from the present. Possible reasons for a dampened sort of optimism can merely be indicated at this point.
Form and Technique
Discussing the medium with the means of the medium would suit the subject best, the same way experimental film dealt with the effect and the expressive capabilities of film. But for this purpose, the technique is not widespread enough at the moment, and the few existing plants are too expensive without being capable of achieving the complexity and image quality of a conventional television film, let alone cinema quality. Therefore I intend a parallel realisation as a television film and as an interactive CD-ROM with a plot. The film script has already taken this into regard, since the single sequences (apart from beginning and ending) do not necessarily presuppose a linear and narrative structure. The film version primarily uses synthetic sceneries and animation-film sequences, the outdoor shots have also been alienated by computer graphics, only the actors and the props are real.
In the interactive version, the viewer (male in this description) will be put in the role of one of the principal actors (Martin Cheng). He will be unexpectedly placed on board a space station by way of a futuristic means of transport, and by then he will have to find out what his tasks are and what has happened to his predecessor who is obviously to be replaced by him. For this purpose he is allowed to get into contact with other persons aboard. In these cases, short sequences taken from the television film will be inserted, possibly with different dialogue versions, depending on the formulation of the question. But he may as well use the station's computer and its vast databases which provide a wealth of information in text, image, and sound, in order to get informed on the goals of the mission and the findings already gained .
He will not only have to learn how to use the equipment of the station, he will also have to familiarise himself with flying a glider, controlling robots, and conducting archaeological work. Only this way he can find out what has actually happened, with several endings of the plot being possible, depending on his behaviour. But he may as well relax in between, playing optically extravagant, conventional computer games. Those, however, will not always correspond to the expected course, they often take a slightly satirical turn.
The title refers to the creation myth of the Australian Aborigines. The same way their dreamtime-beings have sung the world into existence, the machines will now conjure up a second universe made of coloured light.
For "Second Dreamtime", multilayered episodes will be embedded into a continuum made of images of an "empty" world. I found the material for this "empty world", which is full of synthetic objects and occurrences, in the Sahara; not only in the seemingly untouched deserts of stones and sand, but also in the rubbish-covered areas close to settlements or in the parched, decayed oasis settlements. The framework is as prehistoric as it is eschatological, and, in the end, it will remain vague.
An important formal means of style will be metamorphoses of images and objects, like they are only possible with computer animation, meaning soft transitions from real to synthetic images, partly involving changes of location. Another principle consists in the crossing of the respective illusion of reality, i.e. real images are being alienated in such a way - by applying grids, time shifts within the image or subtle changes of colours - that they seem to be synthetic. Computer presentations, however, especially inside situations will be given the highest possible naturalism by sophisticated surface textures and careful lighting. This is meant to provide for a permanent irritation, up to confusing levels of simulation and outside reality.