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Virtual Reality vs. Real Virtuosity "There's nothing like time in cyberspace to make you love physical things." -- John Perry Barlow at Music West '95. the fact that these Impressionist and Post-Impressionisl works have been stored in an underground vault ever since they were "liberated" from Nazi German) by Stalin's trophy brigades at the end of the Second World War. ITiej may simply be dirty pictures. But even clean, well-lit reproductions ' lien Wh . it conies to art. there is cannot convey weight, density, scale, or the sensual qualities of texture and surface. At best, photo images and video screenings are second-class exercises in art appreciation, comparable to listening to a C D instead of actually being in a theatre and experiencing the magical synergy between performer and audience. Dealing with art via virtual reality puts us in the same position as voyeurs. The experience is located outside our own body knowledge. Somebody else -- the camera operator or cyber-technician -- does the feeling. We just watch. While communication technologies during the past decade have broadened our view, increasing reliance on video and computer-generated pictures has transfixed our gaze. Now. when we see photos or digitallyproduced art. we assume we "know" what is being imaged, forgetting that knowledge doesn't always come through our eyes -- and that the tactile and the emotional are equally valid ways of "knowing". 0 © Taking a virtual tour of the Louvre in the web site called Paris Pages (http:llmeteora.ucsd.edul -normanlparislabout) one can see the Venus de Milo and other famous treasures of the Louvre. Arts Alive staff agree with Gustafson, there's nothing like the real thing. Still, it's pretty cool to surf over to Paris and see what's up at the Louvre. no substitute for the real thing. At least that's the message from two recent, unrelated magazine articles. The March 1995 issue of Vanity Fair, which featured a 21-page colour spread about the long-lost art treasures "discovered" in the Hermitage Museum, and the special Spring 1995 issue of TIME magazine devoted to Cyberspace inadvertently reinforced some of my own convictions about the primacy of the art experience. In his essay in TIME, culture critic Robert Hughes pokes holes in the claims of Internet enthusiasts about instantly available art. "With a roll and a click of a mouse, we will summon Titian's Assumption from the Frari in Venice onto our home screen, faithful in every respect -- except that it isn't, being much smaller, with different (electronic) colour, no texture, no surface and no physical reality, and in no way superior (except for the opportunity to zoom in on detail) to an ink reproduction in a book," he writes; Hughes admits that this new delivery system might satisfy archivists and iconographers, but he asks "how many people will realize that the only way to know Titian is to study the actual, unedited physical works of his hand, in real space, not cyberspace?" Vanity Fair's reproductions of the Hermitage masterpieces by van Gogh. Gauguin. Cezanne and Renoir back up Hughes's doubting assessment of techno-benefits. Page after magazine page of dark, muddy photographs flatten these magnificent paintings beyond recognition as light-filled canvases. A partial explanation may lie in N O B East 14th Street, N o r t h V a n c o u v e r tel/fax 9 8 3 - 9 8 5 5 O p e n Sundays f r o m N o o n to 5 p m . Parking in rear. W h e n we opened this new Bookstore (NoRTHSlIORE B ooks), we had announced good news to the ears of the Readers: we have made our policy: 5 (thin). $T|](profit), ^ ( m u c h / m o r c / m a n y ) . and % (sell)." In keeping with this, we are able to stand and at the same time, this is the wav we can contribute to the society in which we belong...we still maintain the policy o f "15% off the Entire Stock." (We have plenty o f parking available in the rear and underground. T h e entrance can he found in the lane between 14th and 15th Streets. A l l the visitor stalls are for vour use.) Lts Pagts it Puis Paula Gustafson is a visual arts writer for the Georgia Straight and the editor of the magazine. Artichoke: writings about the visual arts. Welcome | What' by Paula Gustafson Feine? tfeßEäb N O R T H S H O R E B O O K S A sanctuary where readers a n d authors are respected.