As Steve Guynup, author of the romantic Crystal Cabinet points out, "we negotiate time with the user... Much of what we do to define space is really to affect time." The mere movement through space in itself creates a narrative, and artists as space builders completely control time and space in the initial creation of their world. Thiel agrees that artists "choreograph" the user's experience: "we set up structures of space and embellish them with constraints and lures in order to shape the possible experience that the user can have in that virtual space." Setting up dramatic structures is a common strategy to encourage user engagement.

"How can digital artists tell stories without words? Should they? Is it possible?"
-Roya Jakoby

Commenting on the artist's and the viewer's influence on time, Grégoire Zabé argues that, in a certain way, both authors and spectators are "modelling" time, or sharing time in a relationship axis between creator and user that is unique to Web3D: "The dimension of a shared and delocalized space is an important part of Web3D for me. We can access and act on it at any time / everywhere we can find a computer and a connection. The spectator can perturb the space, make variances, and leave a trace of presence / absence in the work." I proposed "that the relationship between 3D time and space, and components like sound and color have some fundamental overlaps, not existing in separate axes or dimensions but intertwining in the continuum of 3D space. Consequently, users are never free, they may have myriad choices but in computer-constructed space -- in fact, in all space -- all one can suggest is a finitude. Within the structure of the VRML language itself, there is a geographic limit, a time limit, a processor limit, a pitch limit. The author sets gravity, collision, sensors and triggers, anchors, horizons, and controls what the user sees at a time, so one sets the physics and also the emotions of the world."

But perhaps there is no need to define these relations so strongly. As Alan Sondheim philosophically muses (with regard to sound), "This would, of course, depend on the definition of 'sound.' There are arguments that tone or color, for example, depend on perception. Certainly, there are vibrations, but sound might be of another color." Zabé, refreshed after a hike in Vosgian mountains in eastern France, raises another variable concept that may occur when one experiences Web3D, which is "to become captive (in French that word is a synonym of fascinated) of the strong 'aura' of screens." I couldn't help wondering, "just how do you define aura, the invisible thing outside the skin of a human or object? Is it a material property? Is it a vibrational effect? Or an electrical charge? Is it associated with commodity value, e.g. the aura of wealth? I believe electronic works have all of these. They do generate their own charge, rhythm, glow, hype, uniqueness, value. The users are also uniquely generating a vibration or rhythm within them. Every user's keystroke or mouse rhythm is like a digital signature." Simon Biggs, whose work Babel uses the Dewey Decimal System as a mapping and navigation technique for the Internet itself, reminds us that "aura is projected onto the object by the viewer, not the other way around; a bit like those early theories, which had light and vision emanating from the eye, contrasting with current theories, which have external light sources emanating light, which is then reflected off the object of vision to the eye." Jakoby counters that a large part of museum and gallery culture is founded on the exhibition of objects that were taken away from the various imperial colonies, which originally had spiritual (cultural) meaning or aura attached to them. "It is an emotional, somewhat transcendent quality inherent in a being, an object, a piece of art (no matter what medium). Some people also refer to it as the energy (of something) or charisma."

Biggs retorts, "the aura is an article of faith, as these things often are. As Derrida points out, any text is only completely written when it has been read. Interpretation is half the writing process." This prompted me to pose the question, "are 3D environments only alive when a user is in them? Do they have inherent qualities and fixed meanings, or are they like an elemental particle that can fit many different combinations? Do they become like a recessive gene when sitting on the server waiting for human presence to activate them? Is it the passivity of the space (or the potential of the void) waiting for (hu)man to give it life?"

"Games represent, firstly, the highest level of technical sophistication within this medium... Secondly, there are the navigation and interaction paradigm that games introduce... Thirdly, there are the AI and behavioral algorithms advanced and developed by the gaming industry that seem to crop up in artwork all the time... Fourth, if the general understanding would be that a computer's sole purpose is for getting useful work done, there would be no possible hope that the computer could ever be perceived of as an artistic medium... Fifth, very occasionally, some darn good narrative unfolds within a game world... Narrative is, or can be, a form of art."
-John Klima

Writer Sue Thomas suggests that other things besides humans can act within the 3D environment -- "nonhuman things, data-things, manifestations" -- and proposes that, if flesh objects have electromagnetic fields, then perhaps the virtual object's 'aura' is the data 'thing.' Regina Célia Pinto adds poetically, "wouldn't this be just the definition of virtuality, the power of becoming?" Sondheim disagrees, stating that 3D environments are not alive: "Human interaction does give them life for that matter, the way rollerblades 'come to life' when someone is out skating. It's a matter of function and reception." He sees no delineation between the body and technology -- "We're prosthetic from the origin itself. Culture and language are already prostheses."

3D games and 3D art