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Categories: Virtual Reality
Keywords: Apparatus | Interface | Perception
Source text:
Sutherland, Ivan «The ultimate display»
Relevant passages:
Heike Helfert «Technological Constructions of Space-Time
Aspects of Perception»
Oliver Grau «Immersion and Interaction
From Circular Frescoes to Interactive Image Spaces» Claudia Giannetti «Endo-Aesthetics»
Check as well:
Alfons Schilling «Video-Head-Set» Jochem Hendricks «Augenzeichnungen»
Ivan Sutherland
«Head-Mounted-Display»
While conducting his initial research in immersive technologies, Sutherland wrote «The Ultimate Display» in 1965 in which he made the first advance toward marrying the computer to the design, construction, navigation and habitation of virtual worlds.
Sutherland predicted that advances in computer science would eventually make it possible to engineer virtual experiences that were convincing to the senses. Sutherland believed in the ineffable potential of computers to transform the abstract nature of mathematical constructions into habitable, expressive worlds in the spirit of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland.
Although it was several years before the invention of the personal computer, in 1970, Sutherland took a crucial step towards the implementation of his vision by creating the «head-mounted display» – a helmet shaped apparatus designed to immerse the viewer in a visually simulated 3D environment.
(Source: «Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality», by www.artmuseum.net based on the book of the same name, co-edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, MIT Cambridge, 2003.)
