dprogram • Dan Mapes - Virtual Reality Check


Home > 1 > 2 > 3 View Video Clip Extract from dprogram Volume 1 "When you look through a high powered electroscanning microscope - guess what? The whole physical world disappears, its all just fucking electrons moving about - just like the virtual realities!" Dan Mapes Dan Mapes describes himself as an inventor, software developer, and interactive technology artist and his San Francisco based company SynergyLabs is pioneering 3D design on the Net. Dan helped to produce the first Internet Summit in Cyberspace for the United Nations and his clients have ranged from corporate heavyweights such as the European Community Commission and Pacific Bell to musicians like Peter Gabriel and Ornette Coleman, whose world tours included Dan's interactive audience - participation multimedia productions. His film and videogame work includes special effects for the 1995 movies Virtuosity and Hideaway and the Playstation game TEKKEN 2. His e-mail signature message includes quotes from John Cage: "Everyone is in the best seat" and Wilma Mankiller (Principal Chief - Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma): "We must trust our own thinking. Trust where we're going and get the job done." The New Vision Dan Mapes Everybody has a feeling that there's some kind of expert out there, you can't really speak what you really feel because there's a right way to do things but actually the only right way to do things is to do what you know intrinsically to be true. And this is why we say that it's the child who brings the new vision because they see that the Emperor has no clothes. Everybody else is going "Oh the Emperors clothes are so beautiful" because clearly the Emperor must be wearing wonderful clothes because everybody else is saying "Oh gee these are such wonderful clothes" and the child is saying "HE'S NOT WEARING ANY CLOTHES!" Everybody is afraid to speak their truth. You have to trust in your own thinking and go forward on that basis. That's how you find other people of like mind. Virtual Reality Check Virtual Reality, I think, is right now the crowning gift of science. It gives us a practical tool for making choices, it gives us a new delightful entertainment art form, it gives us a strange mirror to look into and say "Gee, if we can build virtual realities that look this good, maybe normal reality is in fact a virtual reality!" When you look through a high powered electroscanning microscope - guess what? The whole physical world disappears, its all just fucking electrons moving about - just like the virtual realities! Oh my God! (laughter). So it says maybe there's a metaphysical feed-back loop in physics. So out of the peak of our science comes a metaphysical mirror and that is truly a gift. We don't have to have this dialogue any more between religion and science, this split. In fact, back in the rain forest we never had that split. We're about, I think, to enter a new age, where we don't have it again. Now I want to make it clear that I don't think it was a mistake to have that split. I think it was a good thing to have that split. It created a very interesting cosmological dialogue. But now, just as Picasso finished his blue period, we are finishing that dichotomy and are wanting to experience a moment of real bliss where we re-integrate the whole again and we dance the dance of scientific religion or religious science or metaphysical physics, I don't know, you can give it any name you like. Right now we've been exploring things together as beings, conscious beings, we've been putting together consciousness in a way that we call reality. And this is a piece of art - exactly like Picasso's blue period is. It has with it motorcars and airplanes and science and religion and sex and babies and the whole deal! By the way its completely arbitrary, just like the blue period was and we're about to take the whole damned thing apart, right now, in front of your very eyes, probably over the next thirty to fifty years and do something completely new. It's an extraordinary moment because generally when you're in the middle of the era the hypnosis is extremely strong but when you're nearing the end of an era everybody starts to wake up and say "Oh this was in fact an era, it was a period of exploring consciousness in this particular way". And we're just about done, so guess what we're going to do at the end of the era, we're going to have a big party! Home > 1 > 2 > 3 email • mail order credits © dprogram 1996>2008
	Originally broadcast on UK television's Channel 4, dprogram is an award winning, mind expanding trip featuring rare and exclusive interviews with leading edge personalities from areas like cyber culture, consciousness research, parapsychology, music and art. Volume 1 includes: • Dan Mapes CEO of San Francisco's leading edge virtual reality design company SynergyLabs on the metaphysics of VR. • Jah Wobble Musician and founder member of Public Image Limited on Cockney mystics, creativity and the inspiration of William Blake. • Dr Sara Parker UC Berkeley scholar on the New Age 'colonisation' of Native American spirituality. • Bishop Joey Head of the First Church of the Last Laugh - the worlds fastest growing snack relgion! • Burning Man A unique four day experience exploring creativity and consciousness in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. • Willis Harman Former president of The Institute of Noetic Sciences on their 'conventional research into unconventional areas'. • Dr Edgar Mitchell Founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and Apollo 14 astronaut on parapsychology experiments in space. • Nick Pope of the British Ministry of Defence on why he had to change his mind about the UFO phenomenom. • Peter Russell Author, on the global brain, spirituality on the net and our part in the evolution of the planet. • Ann & Alexander Shulgin Pioneer researchers into psychedelics and the mind, on the politics of ecstacy. And more... Running time: 70 mins. £19.99 plus Post & Packing. Post & Packing rates: For the UK add £3.00 For Europe add £4.00 For the United States and the Rest of the World add £6.00 ORDER ONLINE Snail Mail Orders: Make a Cheque, Postal Order or International Money Order payable to Digital Media Labs and send to: Digital Media Labs 8 Manson House 16-17 Manson Place London SW7 5LT United Kingdom Customer Service Helpline: +44 (0) 20 7225 0861 Please Note dprogram is only available on VHS PAL. To play this tape in the US you must use a multi-region video machine capable of playing PAL format tapes. We are currently working to provide dprogram on DVD. If you would like to be notified when this becomes available enter your email address below.