The introduction of new technology is often a complex process that retains strong ties with the cultural context into which the technology is introduced. We live in the computer age, yet the process of its unfolding is far from permitting us the ability to understand the full potential of its impact. This is particularly true due to the rapid-paced, innovative, and continually changing nature of technology development. With respect to architecture, the computer as a medium for long-distance design collaboration, visualizing negative space as a problem-solving strategy, requiring code compliance software, and as a graphic grammar system that generates designs for human interpretation has become a great inspiration and practical tool for architects and other artists. Recent technologies have caused a shift in the perspective of computer technology and design from an architectural perspective. As Chesher (27) maintains, ôVirtual realityàproposed a paradigm shift: that computers can be æreality generators,Æ not just symbol processes.ö
Hegel believed that the transition of art history represents a dialectic development from the ôphysicalö to the ômental.ö He used examples of Egyptian architecture, Grecian sculpture, and modern painting to prove his theory. Afterwards, Italian philosopher Beneditto Croce proposed an even more radical notion, that art lay only in the ômental.ö Though conventional art of CroceÆs era could not be liberated from physical constraints, the artistÆs intuitive mind realized the final product. Ridiculed and scorned for his views, computer technologies like virtual reality have revitalized interest in CroceÆs assertions among contemporary philosophers, architects, and artists.
In an examination of virtual reality, I find support for both HegelÆs theory of transition from the ôphysicalö to the ômentalö and CroceÆs assertion that art lie in the ômental,ö especially as virtual reality...