Last week digital artist Char Davies came to Darwin College, Cambridge to give the fourth talk in this year's annual Darwin Lecture series.

Last week digital artist Char Davies came to Darwin College, Cambridge to give the fourth talk in this year's annual Darwin Lecture series.

Formally a painter and filmmaker, Davies began working with 3D digital media in the mid-eighties. She was a founding director of the software company Softimage but recently left Softimage to found Immersence Inc., as a vehicle for pursuing her artistic research.

"As an artist constructing immersive virtual reality environments, I think of virtual space as an entirely new kind of space, paradoxically conceptual yet physical - a visual/aural spatial/temporal 'arena' wherein abstract constructs of the world can be virtually embodied in three dimensions and then kinaesthetically explored through full-body immersion and interaction," explains Davies. "When approached as a site for artistic expression and possible psychological transformation, the potential of this medium is profound. Computer technology aside, as Gaston Bachelard wrote many years ago in The Poetics of Space: "...by changing space, by leaving the space of one's usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating...For we do not change place, we change our Nature."

Davies' artistic investigation of immersive virtual environments follows fifteen years of painting and constructing three-dimensional computer graphic still images. Her series of 3D CG still images, collectively known as the Interior Body Series, has been shown in Europe, North America and Australia and won numerous international awards including the Ars Electronica Distinction in 1994. Her immersive virtual environment OSMOSE(1995) has, to date, been exhibited in Montreal, New York City, London, and Monterrey, Mexico and has been widely written about. Davies has lectured extensively. Her most recent immersive virtual artwork Ephemere had its world premiere at the National Gallery of Canada on June 26, 1998 and is on exhibition until Sept 7.

The Darwin Lectures
The theme for this year's lecture series is space, a choice in part inspired by Stanley Kubrick's seminal film 2001-A Space Odyssey. "It occurred to us that the theme of space would be at once timely and ideal for the series, as it has such different resonances in different fields," explains Francois Penz, a Fellow of Darwin College and one of the organisers of this year's lectures. "We have planned our intellectual journey from inner to outer space, with excursions into the brain, language, buildings, virtual reality, mapmaking, politics, astronautics, and cosmology."

The Darwin Lectures, a series of public lectures run in the second term of each academic year, were established in 1986 and quickly established themselves as one of the highlights of the University's yearly programme of public education.

Each series has been built around a single theme, approached in a multi-disciplinary way. Previous themes have included commmunications, intelligence, catastrophe and the environment. Each lecture is given by a leading authority on his or her subject. The list of distinguished speakers from previous years includes Stephen Hawking, Helena Kennedy, Jonathan Miller, Roger Penrose and Roy Porter.

Lecture programme
19 January Inner Space
Susan Greenfield (Department of Pharmacology, Oxford)

26 January Space and Language
Karen Emmorey (Salk Institute, California)

2 February Architectural Space
Daniel Libeskind (Berlin)

9 February Virtual Space
Char Davies (Montreal)

16 February Mapping Space
Lisa Jardine (School of English, University London)

23 February International Space
Neal Ascherson (London)

2 March Outer Space
John Barrow (Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge)

9 March Exploring Space
Jeffrey Hoffman (NASA, Paris)

The lectures will start at 5.30 pm in The Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue. An adjacent overflow theatre is provided with live TV coverage. Each lecture is typically attended by 600 people, so it is advisable to arrive around half an hour early to ensure a place.

Further information To find out more about the lecture series go to the events section on the Darwin College website.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.