IDEA_ON>!

About the work

Troy innocent’s ‘Idea-On>!’ proposes a new language of cyberspace. Inspired by the abstract nature of code as a form of language, ‘Idea-On>!’ presents five distinct “prototypes for virtual worlds” populated by Innocent’s iconic knowbots, cuties, noodleboys and iconbods. Writing about the work as an exploration of the potential of multimedia in the catalogue for 1996 CD-ROM exhibition “Burning the Interface”, Innocent explains his intent to create a new language for computer art combining a unique vocabulary of signs and symbols with computer generated sounds:

‘IDEA-ON>!’ presents the manifestation of fragments of my own personal reality in what appears to be a living, breathing world. The approach to multimedia rejects traditional flat user interface design, and offers the user many different forms of engagement through four “new realities”, each prototyping different aesthetic, structural and communication based approaches to virtual space. It is interactivity for interactivity’s sake, experimentation with what is possible, experience based as opposed to information based. Things may happen without user interaction, more obscure exploration may be required to find hidden places, or responses given by the objects and beings will vary, often following a surreal kind of logic. Visiting the ‘IDEA-ON>!’ installation can be likened to visiting a sacred site where spirits and myths reside. The information space inside the computer becomes a dreaming or meditational space, a manifestation of the subconscious where the objective contents of thoughts are stored for others to explore and experience. Similar in the way pre-linguistic societies would have a shared body of myths and legends which made up their perception of the universe, a world like ‘IDEA-ON>!’ jumbles together many things towards a prototype of a dreamlike, surreal, communal cyberspace in which people dream, create, imagine, and play with thought and form (Leggett & Michael, 1996:70).

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