From: abvax!iccgcc.decnet.ab.com!herrickd@uunet.UU.NET (daniel lance herrick)
Subject: Re: Sensory Modalities (was Re: Musical Virtual Worlds)
Date: 13 Dec 90 17:13:18 GMT



In article <12146@milton.u.washington.edu>, cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) wri
tes:
> In article <12072@milton.u.washington.edu> mukesh@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Mukesh Pa
te
> l) writes:
>>
>>
>>In article <1990Nov20.205922.12716@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> garry@cs-sun-fsc.cpsc.uca
l
> g
>>ary.ca (Garry Beirne) writes:
>>>
>>>> Bringing this discussion back to VR, I think that the focus of VR has
>>>> been on the visual modality because vision is a more information-rich
>>>> domain than sound.  Sound is a one-dimensional medium while vision is
>>>> two-dimensional (two-and-a-half-dimensional for stereo vision).  
>>>
>>>Arguments have been made that vision is *NOT* more information-rich
>>>than sound.  Sound is *definitely NOT* one-dimensional.  The problem,
>>>is too many people *believe* that sound is less important than images
>>>because of our cultural bias towards a greater conciousness of image.
>>
>>Yes but why is there a cultural bias in the first place.  If you dont
>>attempt to answer that question than the above is no more than a trivial
>>restatement of the obvious.
> 
>>>But, that raises the question of what images are NOT symbolic ?  How
>>>do we extract meaning if we don't perform some kind of interpretation? 
>>>This is, I expect, a well discussed topic in the visual arts.  
> 
The visual media are in some ways limiting.  The best presentation of
this idea that I have read:

When the radio announcer said, "... and a fiery horse with the speed
of light ....", children all over America saw a fiery horse with the
speed of light.

When the television announcer said, "... and a fiery horse with the
speed of light ....", we saw this silly guy in a mask on a gray
horse (television was monochrome, back then).

There was a lot more communication moving through the audio only
channel than moves through the audio-video channel.  But it was
more work to receive that communication because it communicated
by stimulating the receiver to do great inventive work, while
the current channel does everything for the observer.

A book provides a rather low bandwidth communication channel compared
with the numbers available for the possible visual bandwidth.  To 
respond to one of the comments I deleted from the previous postings,
I have shed a tear or two over a book (never one with pictures in it),
and a rousing performance of The Star Spangled Banner has made something
happen in my chest more than once.

dan herrick
herrickd@astro.pc.ab.com