Working with technology

Having a sysems software/electronics background is an asset when working with the challenges present in realising conceptual ideas through the medium of technology.

I believe it is essential to understand the capabilities of the medium of technology in order to know both the limits of what is possible and what is not. It is often too easy to take an software tool which on the one hand enables work to be created fairly easily but on the other limits and defines what is possible, to the point of having its own signature.

VR tools generally fall under this category, most of them having grown from a CAD/simulator background thus containing inherent structures and assumptions as to usage and presentation - typically the production of static, or linked objects, with limited animation capabilities coupled with a camera fly through approach to viewing the vr world.

There is a balance, one can argue not everyone should have to create their own tools, nor perhaps are tools always inherently limiting eg wordprocessors, drawing packages. However when one is working in new and relatively undefined areas, there will be a need to create new tools and methodologies and to question the facilities and funtions provided by the tools that do exist.

This approach could be extended to the inherent assumptions present in current computer technology,
the Von Neuman architecture and thus the programming languages that sit on this layer - a serial step by step changing of symbols, equivalent to the paper tape Turing machine - the universal machine?
Parallel processing, neural networks, object based programming, hint at alternative methods of processing and in turn offer new methods of problem conceptualisation..