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I can imagine that you\'ve probably never heard of Jeffrey Shaw, so I\'ll tell you first about who he is and then his biography and something about his works.
Jeffrey Shaw is used to work with new mechanisms of digital technologies - for example he works with computers, video-animations, multimedia-installations and so on.
He lets the work of art grow to a simulation of reality, so he produces immaterial, digital rooms, which the viewer is able to step in. Now the viewer becomes a traveller and discoverer and is no more only a consumer.
Now to Jeffrey Shaw\'s biography.
He was born on 23rd October 1944 in Melbourne, Australia.
1963 he began to study Architecture and 1964 Art History in Melbourne.
1965 he studied Sculpture at the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and one year later the same subject at St Martins School of Art in London.
1970-1980 Shaw was a founding member of the Eventstructure Research Group,
1989 he was guest professor at the Academy of Art in Rotterdam and
1990 guest professor at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
Since 1991 he is director of the Institut für Bildmedien at the ZKM/Zentrum für Kunst+Medientechnologie and
since 1995 he is professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.
He has made interactive media events, installations and sculptures since the mid 60s. He has been awarded the Ars Electronica Prize (Linz) and the L\'Immagine Elettronica Prize (Ferrara) among others. His works have been shown at major museums and festivals worldwide.
Now I will tell you something more detailed about a few works by Jeffrey Shaw.
1985 "The Narrative Landscape" was exhibited at the Aura in Amsterdam. On the whole floor was a canvas where the visitor could stand on. Onto this was projected a picture which represented an aerial view of a landscape or a city. The visitor was able to move this landscape with a joystick in this virtual room - in the North, South, East, West and he could zoom in and out the virtual axis, too. If he zoomed, he could get on 2 other levels. The first level represented a landscape, as I said. The 2nd showed situations in which people get, the 3rd and last level was an arrangement of symbols which matched the 2 other levels.
In Shaw\'s installation "Going To The Heart Of The Center Of The Garden Of Delights" (exhibited 1986 in the Netherlands), three pictures changed if the viewer went up to the canvas, on which the 3 pictures were projected. The changing of the pictures was released by infrarot sensors.
Another installation, "Heavens Gate", was shown 1987 in Amsterdam. Shaw projected videopictures of baroque ceiling frescos and aerial views of heaven and on a horizontal canvas which hung over a big mirror which was installed on the floor. So when the viewer stepped onto this mirror, he was located on a dizzy axis between above and under and felt the very awe-inspiring being of the universe.
The computergraphic-installation called "The Legible City" was exhibited 1988 in Maastricht, Netherlands.
There the visitor could cycle through a virtual city (Manhattan, Amsterdam or Karlsruhe). This city consisted of 3-dimensional letters which built words and sentences.
These letters replaced the real architecture of the city. The visitor got a map of the city (on a monitor in front of the bike) and so he was able to cycle the ways he liked to. This had the effect, that the words and sentences got combined very individually, and individual stories were created.
Another installation is "The Virtual Museum" (Art Frankfurt in Frankfurt, 1991). It was a 3-dimensional museum produced with a computer. It consisted of immaterial rooms and exhibits. The viewer sat on a chair in front of a computer, moreover there was a big video-monitor and a circuit rotating platform. So he could move in this virtual museum by moving his chair.
Jeffrey Shaw himself says that this virtual reality is the gate/door to Meta-Realism, which offers a new and deeper experience.
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