In the semi-darkness of the room, on a table positioned directly behind the robot and several feet away from it, was a table upon which were a pair of 3-D glasses. The viewing glasses were set upon a square of black mountainous foam sometimes used in computer packing. Again there was a play between the solidity of rock and flesh, and analogously between that which exists as materiality and the more virtual aspects of "reality". 

I was now confronted by my need to physically interact with this installation if I wanted to move further into its visuality. My composite status as "reader", "viewer", and integral component of this work was foregrounded as I contemplated the glasses. 

Petterd chose to be present at the Sidespace exhibition-space daily. At the very point, then, when I was confronted by my need to put on the glasses, the artist himself appeared to assist me should I require help. The artist was literally becoming part of his work while also admitting that beyond this point the "creator" would not be able to affect what happened as art and its audience participated in the private space facilitated by the viewing spectacles. 

 Of course, viewers always inhabit a space that is unreachable. But there is a sense in which Petterd was inviting his audience to admit this fact, to own their creatorly position as viewer/artist by their decision to move into a virtual space. Computer-generated virtuality is no more or less virtual than any other "viewerly" space, but because of its novelty we still choose to believe that we are somewhere different, somewhere "other". 

Once inside "virtual" space I felt quite vulnerable. I was surprised at how disconcerting it was to be required to confront the artist when so engrossed in my own interaction with the exhibition. As a critic, though, I admired and understood the gesture. I was surprised by my reticence  to use the 3-D glasses even though I am not usually a technophobe. 

Petterd says that some visitors declined to don the glasses at all. In my opinion the installation would still work well if its computer-generated virtuality was not experienced. I can only imagine, however, the unknown spaces those viewers may have invented to fill that unexperienced and unknown 3-D virtuality once they left the room without peering into the 3-D spectacles. 

This is the interesting thing about virtuality. We all wonder what we saw. Did I see what you saw? Again, we might always wonder about this inability to know what others see, hear, smell, know ... But we live with myths that inform us that we all sense more or less the same things, even while knowing that we almost certainly do not and can not. 

The tiny images that entered into the viewing rectangle of the spectacles were not only obscure, but they were also designed so as to move around impishly requiring me to trace their hesitant, unpredictable movements. The movement of the virtual flow into which these abstract entities entered was, for me, like a fast-flowing river. At one point I felt so dis-oriented as to think I was standing by a stream watching photographic images rise up out of the imagined water only to disintegrate. 

My remembrance of the time I entered into this virtual reality will inevitably change as I elaborate upon that memory, as I draw it into fiction, as I dream upon it. It may also be affected by visiting the CLOUDS OF web-site images because I'll most probably see something different there. 

 The 3-D images were elusive on almost every possible level, at times almost completely incomprehensible ... what bliss. 

Diane Caney, 1997 

 References 
Cottingham, Laura. "Incandescent: an electronic exhibition". http://www.louisiana.dk/nowhere/incand/emiko.html 

 Lutfy, Carol. "Emiko Kasahara". Art-News 93 November 1994: 129. 

Rimbaud, Arthur. Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters. Ed. Wallace Fowlie. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1973.