Peter d'Agostino (USA), has worked in video since 1971, and interactive hypermedia for over a decade. Professor at the School of Communications and Theater at Temple University, Philadelphia. Recently an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

"VR/RV" is an interactive virtual reality environment produced at the Banff Centre for the Arts. On a drive in a recreational vehicle (RV, also known as a caravan in Europe) through a virtual reality (VR) theme park. "VR/RV" explores the displacement and disembodiment of a technologically determined culture which co-mingles video games and computerized war.

I call "VR/RV" a form of "critical virtually", as it reveals a simulation that reverses map and territory. The recreational vehicle drives through a computer generated landscape - a three-dimensional map - onto which two-dimensional video images are projected forming a new mediated territory of analog and digital memories. By the analogy of navigating through a computer simulated information superhighway in a recreational vehicle to the West (The Rockies), the East (Philadelphia), the Far East (during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) and the Mid-East (during the Persian Gulf War), "VR/RV" represents some of the Utopian hopes and dystopian fears that are a consequence of 20th century technology. As the vehicle drives through this simulated theme park, a progression of sounds emerges from a scanning radio that continously tunes in and tunes out fragments of historical events, songs, and the synchronous sounds of the surrounding environment.

Technical Background

HW: SGI, Onyx, Reality Rack
SW: Minimal Reality Tool, Alias