Virtual Art or Introduction to Object COBOL

Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion

Author: Oliver Grau

Winner in the 2003 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Competition in the Jackets category.

Although many people view virtual reality as a totally new phenomenon, it has its foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive images. Indeed, the search for illusionary visual space can be traced back to antiquity. In this book, Oliver Grau shows how virtual art fits into the art history of illusion and immersion. He describes the metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image and relates those concepts to interactive art, interface design, agents, telepresence, and image evolution. Grau retells art history as media history, helping us to understand the phenomenon of virtual reality beyond the hype.

Grau shows how each epoch used the technical means available to produce maximum illusion. He discusses frescoes such as those in the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii and the gardens of the Villa Livia near Primaporta, Renaissance and Baroque illusion spaces, and panoramas, which were the most developed form of illusion achieved through traditional methods of painting and the mass image medium before film. Through a detailed analysis of perhaps the most important German panorama, Anton von Werner's 1883 The Battle of Sedan, Grau shows how immersion produced emotional responses. He traces immersive cinema through Cinerama, Sensorama, Expanded Cinema, 3-D, Omnimax and IMAX, and the head mounted display with its military origins. He also examines those characteristics of virtual reality that distinguish it from earlier forms of illusionary art. His analysis draws on the work of contemporary artists and groups ART+COM, Maurice Benayoun, Charlotte Davies, MonikaFleischmann, Ken Goldberg, Agnes Hegedues, Eduardo Kac, Knowbotic Research, Laurent Mignonneau, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Paul Sermon, Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Christa Sommerer, and Wolfgang Strauss. Grau offers not just a history of illusionary space but also a theoretical framework for analyzing its phenomenologies, functions, and strategies throughout history and into the future.

Table of Contents:

	Series Foreword
	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
Ch. 1	Introduction	2
Ch. 2	Historic Spaces of Illusion	24
Ch. 3	The Panorama of the Battle of Sedan: Obedience through Presence	90
Ch. 4	Intermedia Stages of Virtual Reality in the Twentieth Century: Art as Inspiration of Evolving Media	140
Ch. 5	Virtual Art - Digital! The Natural Interface	192
Ch. 6	Spaces of Knowledge	212
Ch. 7	Telepresence: Art and History of an Idea	270
Ch. 8	Evolution	296
Ch. 9	Perspectives	338
	References	352
	Author Index	402
	Subject Index	408

Introduction to Object COBOL

Author: E Reed Dok

Are You Ready to Meet the Demand for Object COBOL Programming? Now you can keep up-to-date with the newest standards in COBOL. With its use of straightforward language and real-world examples, An Introduction To Object COBOL is a concise and accessible introduction to using Object COBOL. You'll discover how object technology is applied and how the resulting Object COBOL code is constructed. All of the programs included in the text can be downloaded from the Wiley web site (wiley.com/college/). You are encouraged to execute and experiment with them. As you work with these programs and follow the related case study, you will gain important experience in using Object COBOL in a business environment. Inside these pages you will:
* Keep up-to-date with the state-of-the-art in COBOL programming.
* Understand the relationship of object technology to the business environment.
* See how object technology is applied to real-life examples.
* Receive a non-technical introduction to object technology without the use of intensive vocabulary.