Mike King works at the intersection of art, science and the spiritual, regarding each as a systematic and open inquiry into the deep structure of human experience. Virtual Visions is an exhibition series that explores and presents the artistic third of this inquiry, dealing directly with issues of light and space.

King is interested in the 'prior given' of light and space, an issue that concerned the Enlightenment philosophers but which was not adequately dealt with by them, because, as philosophers, they were neither artists, scientists, or, with the exception of Spinoza, mystics. Descartes, in searching for a single term that would characterize the material world, hit upon 'extension', but ignored the scientific progress that was crucially dependent on light with which to explore that extension. The computer, as an instrument for generating light, is a development of the technologies that were the basis of microscope and telescope. These fundamental technologies enabled the science that led to both the Newtonian and Einsteinian revolutions (telescope for Newton, and interferometer for Einstein), while the computer, now in the hands of artists, can explore virtual space and light in ways that Descartes could not have dreamt of. While art, science and the spiritual are seen as investigations into the deep structure of our prior given world, a synthesis or integration is not being sought. Each works at its own level, and can engage in a dialogue with the other two, but none must be subordinate to the other. We are at a period in history where science, since the Newtonian revolution, has attempted to encroach on spheres of human experience to which it has no natural claim. While art may exploit the latest technologies and consider the implications of the new science, it must resist, as must the spiritual, any attempt to be read in terms other than its own.

On a practical note the software used for the artwork is called 'RaySculpt' and has been evolving for the last fifteen years. An important component of it, the ray-tracer, was kindly donated in 1988 by colleague Dr Richard Wright after working for a period as Research Fellow at IBM Winchester. By writing and developing his own software King can explore a personal aesthetic that is hard to pursue with proprietary packages. RaySculpt runs under Windows on a domestic PC, often taking overnight to complete a single high-resolution image. King's ideal would be to create the virtual spaces in real time, but this would take a machine some 200 million times faster than current PCs.

See the Essays section of this site which includes some essays by Mike King on the electronic arts, and the metaphysical and the technical issues behind the digital medium. His complete writings are archived at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mr.king/writings