We usually think of an artwork as a physical object. However, an artwork also lies in the concepts and feelings that are suggested and produced by our intellect. Early computer art was based on batch-processing. Now, with the advances in computer technology, artists can create new art forms based on interactivity. Thus, Virtual Worlds could be one of these, a major new medium based on the collaboration of science, technology and art. The field of Virtual Worlds is concerned with using the computer as a tool to help understand the universe around us. It is like a telescope or a microscope, allowing us to see the unseable. The sciences of complexity are still very much in its infancy and many of underlying ideas were anticipated by generative art. The early form of computer art were almost entirely exploration of the computer's capacity for generating complex images. Many pieces have explored the theme of how complexity grows from the working of simple rules. As we look back to them, we see now illustrations of the new fractal and chaos theories. Art exists thus as the counterweight and the complement of science, so that the two together complete the human discovery process. Most of the time, scientists seeking to explain or understand complexity have to create a new visual vocabulary to do this. This is an imaginative and aesthetic act which empha-sizes that the creative and understanding acts are inseparable. This is one of the main reason why art plays an important role in the synthesis of virtual worlds.

Exhibition Preliminary Program

* * CyberArt * *

	Tina LaPorta

	Lin Hsin Hsin

	Bernardo Uribe Mendoza

	Luigi Pagliarini


* * Le Funambule * *

	Michel Bret


* * IceBorg * *

	Andy Best


* * 3D Sounds * *

	Pierre Estève


* * Virtual Ecosystems * *

	Framestick (M. Komosinski)

	Darwin Pond (J. Ventrella)

	Gene Pool (J. Ventrella)

	Artificial Plants (C. Lattaud)

	LifeDrop (J.C. Heudin)

	Breeding Gliders (Jeffrey Ventrella)

	Life (J.C. Heudin)