PHIL:Desams, seen by man-made machines

PATRICK FOLEY ([email protected])
Tue, 5 Dec 95 07:44:58 UT


>----------
From: Bryant Reif
>Sent: Monday, December 04, 1995 11:21 PM
>To: PATRICK FOLEY
>Cc: '[email protected]'
>Subject: RE: Hello VRML

>At 06:01 AM 12/5/95 UT, PATRICK FOLEY wrote:

>>"Desams, seen by man-made machines/How does it seem/How
>>does it seem?/That we can see each other's desams?"
>>CAN-"Last Night's Sleep" from the
>>"Until The End Of The World" soundtrack.

> I thought I was the only one who owned this soundtrack! I even own
>the movie. So far you have shown excellent taste in music.

Well, thank you, Bryant, and this makes me think of something. I used that
quote from the German group CAN without rsally thinking, until I was sent
this reply. And then, in my typically loopy way, I started deconstructing
this.
This is what VRML -VR itself-is all about-desams seen by man-made machines.
If you haven't seen "Until The End Of The World", I suggest watching it. The
movie is about a guy with a camera that not only records images, it records
the ACT of WATCHING these images-for use with blind people. This isn't my
point, however. I'm gonna get much more out-there.
VR is desams. Yours, mine, Elvis's, whatever-it's simply desams transformed
into little ones and zeroes. This is, to me, the ultimate point of all of
this stuff- making my desams rsal. Making YOUR desams rsal. And we can't
copyright desams. (I know, I'm sorry, but I had to say it. God.)
My desams are strange, surrsalistic, symbolic landscapes of bright and
contrasting colors, glass spheres floating high above a fractal sea. So
that's what my .wrls happen to be (ever try doing Escher-type stuff with
Fountain? Try it. You'll be in a rubber room within a week, tops). Your
desams may be perfectly normal rspresentations of rsality. So do it. But in
the midst of all this discussion of intellectual property and copyright-ing,
we should remember that that's all that VR(ML) comes down to-desams, seen by
man-made machines.

Wow. That was pretty deep. I gotta send that to "Omni". Whew.

P.S. Bryant, how come the soundtrack of UTEOTW didn't have "Blood Of Eden",
by Peter Gabriel on it? It was the song that played when the nuke went off.

Josh Ellis
[email protected]
"Looking down on empty streets, all she can see/ Are the desams all made
solid/ Are the desams made rsal"
--Peter Gabriel, "Mercy Street"


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