Saturday, August 3, 2013
Mirror People
Who is in the mirror? This film is inspired by a Borges tale, "The Fauna of Mirrors" in the The Book of Imaginary Beings, which describes how someday the "mirror people" and creatures will break free of having to reflect our lives and go back to their own.
The music is special to me because my student at Berklee College of Music, Isaiah Morfin, wrote and recorded the song "Reflections" after I asked my students if they had any songs with the word reflection in them. I particularly like the song because it explores some of the themes about seeming and being from our course, "What Is Being?"
For University of Western Australia MachinimUWA VI: Reflections.
Mirror People
A Digital Film by Lori Landay/L1Aura Loire
Music: "Reflections"
Composed & performed by Isaiah Morfin
Recorded at Berklee College of Music
Machinima captured in the virtual world Second Life at UWA and Loireland
Reflections set built by Lori Landay with house and furniture from [what next] by Winter Thorn
Inspired by "The Fauna of Mirrors" by Jorge Luis Borges, in The Book of Imaginary Beings. translated by Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006).
Art dresses based on Salavdor Dali's "Landscape with Butterflies" (1959) and Joan Miró's "Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman" (1941) by Thera Taurog
Trapped Wizard Tree by Alexith Destiny
Mocap animations by Abranimations and Henmations
Documentary footage from "Science Nation: Butterflies and Bats Reveal Clues about Spread of Infectious Disease." an interesting kind of reflection involving the symbol of metamorphosis.
For University of Western Australia MachinimUWA VI: Reflections, June 2013, featuring virtual versions of spaces for reflection at UWA:
The Reflection Pond Next to Winthrop Clock Tower
The Sunken Gardens
'Gift from the Gods' by Robin Takinthou, recreated by FreeWee Ling
Mirror People by Lori Landay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
PATHS TO WISDOM: Reflections on Why I Chose Interactive Video for a Recent Project
I had a version of the movie that was the first segment, "Paths to Wisdom" and the "last," "Conclusions?" but I had always had the idea of making this entry interactive because I so firmly believe that the path to wisdom is a participatory, interactive one. That is the bedrock of my educational philosophy as a teacher and a life-long learner. So I wanted the experience of my "Seek Wisdom" entry to mirror the ideas I expressed explicitly and implicitly in the video. Most of the footage is of movement through the art installations I chose as companions to the concepts, with repeated motifs of paths in those installations and Hannah Hannya's terrific Ear Labyrinth. Looking for and filming different paths made me realize once again the spectacular diversity of aesthetic and technical approaches in virtual art. Having only a laptop and not my usual more powerful desktop machine made me more aware of the limitations faced by my students when they film machinima for assignments, an example of wisdom gained from the experience of being on a path different from the usual, and not completely of one's own choosing.
The labyrinth is the central visual and thematic metaphor. A labyrinth that people walk for meditation and contemplation is not a maze, where one is lost, or a puzzle that you try to solve. In a labyrinth, you can see where the end is, but that is not the point. The point is the winding journey, the reversals, taking the time, taking the indirect route to the center. My experience in Second Life and virtual worlds really coalesced when I participated in a research study by the Massachusetts General Hospital Neurology Department to see whether people could be taught the Relaxation Response in a virtual environment. (They conclude yes, and I agree.) I no longer have access to the 3D virtual labyrinth that was built there, so I searched for other labyrinths and looked around until I found Hannah Hannya's Ear Labyrinth.
The idea for Paths to Wisdom is that you watch the first part (below) and then use the links to click on your next path in any order you want. At one point I had a branching structure, where you could only choose between two options, but then I opened it up to all the options in keeping with the overall concept of participation and agency. At the very least, I hope people will watch the first, perhaps one more, and then "Conclusions?"
Click on the links at the end to choose your path -- The Past, Nature, Science, The Future, The Oracle, Art -- in any order you want. You may want to end with "Conclusions?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVhZddnjwz8 -- or not!
Can't see use the interactive features because you are on a mobile device? Use the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL72E8F830FF1D9BC1
The paths to wisdom intersect and circle back; it is the exploration, the journey that is most important, and this interactive video piece uses YouTube annotations to offer you choices about which path to explore next. Form and interface reflect and shape the paths to wisdom.
Written, filmed in Second Life, narrated, and edited by Lori Landay. Music by Moby. Featuring selected art at LEA (Linden Endowment for the Arts) regions and Treasures of University of Western Australia in Second Life. Full credits at the end of the last video, "Conclusions?"
----
When “interactive” refers to human-machine communication, we get into the idea of a communication loop. Interactive architecture systems designer Usman Haque explains, “At its fundamental, interaction concerns transactions of information between two systems (for example between two people, between two machines, or between a person and a machine). The key however is that these transactions should be in some sense circular otherwise it is merely ‘reaction’ “ ("Architecture, Interaction, Systems," by Usman Haque, 2006 http://www.haque.co.uk/papers/ArchInterSys.pdf , p. 1). However, and perhaps more applicable to art experiences, motion-tracking and biosensor performer and researcher Robert Wechsler elucidates, “we must think of interaction primarily as a psychological phenomenon, rather than a technical one” ("Artistic Considerations in the Use of Motion Tracking with Live Performers: A Practical Guide," in Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, Susan Broadhurst & Josephine Machon, eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p.62), and adds, “interaction in a feeling you an achieve in a performance setting. It relates to spontaneity, openness and communication” (64).
New media theorist Lev Manovich distinguishes between "open" and "closed" interactivity:
In the case of branching interactivity, the user plays an active role in determining the order in which the already generated elements are accessed. This is the simplest kind of interactivity; more complex kinds are also possible where both the elements and the structure of the whole object are either modified or generated on the fly in response to user's interaction with a program. We can refer to such implementations as open interactivity to distinguish them from the closed interactivity which uses fixed elements arranged in a fixed branching structure. Open interactivity can be implemented using a variety of approaches, including procedural and object- oriented computer programming, AI, AL, and neural networks. (Manovich, The Language of New Media, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002, p. 59).
Although there is not the loop that Haque describes (the videos do not change based on the order, or your input), Paths to Wisdom might fulfill Wechsler's emphasis on interaction as a feeling, and definitely is an example of branching interactivity, a curiously and deliberately open instance of "closed" interactivity. Either way, it employs "interactive video" how it is used and understood right now, with popularly available tools like YouTube. I am working on a more extensive interactive video project, part of which is web-based and uses a branching structure with changing outcomes depending on your choices. The issue with interactive video, like interactive fiction, is creating a satisfying narrative experience that is also interactive, without disrupting the pleasures of reading and watching with unnecessary doing, or rather by augmenting the pleasures of reading or watching with meaningful choices that do not burst the "suspension of disbelief" but create an engagement of belief and co-creation in the text. As interactive media develops with more sophisticated circular information transactions and, simultaneously, easier interfaces through which to experience the loops, or the feeling of a loop, it should be interesting to see what kind of content suits the emerging forms. The only thing I know for sure is that the path to discovering it will be winding, challenging, and fun.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Breaking Barriers: "Transformation: Virtual Art on the Brink" Wins Awards & Other UWA News
Transformation: Virtual Art on the Brink Receives a SPECIAL AWARD FOR BREAKING THE BARRIERS IN THE MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists Competition & MEJOR OBRA DE INVESTIGACIÓN / OPEN THIS END AWARD OF EXCELLENCE FOR INVESTIGATIVE FILM
Several people have asked me for the written transcript of the voice over, and at last I've edited the script I wrote so it matches what ended up in the film:
It is not surprising that much of the virtual world is modeled on what we know--physical spaces like art museums, or that art in it draws on what's come before--each new medium does that. but the best virtual art is a new kind of new media, using the particular properties of the virtual world to make metaphors manifest.
The avatar, the visual representation of the spectator, separates or connects our point of view to the avatar's position with the mobile camera, the virtual kino-eye.
When the avatar approaches Misprint Thursday's video art and music installation "Digital Glove," we only see and hear when we enter the space and turn on the media stream. This is kind of like augmented reality.
Virtual art has to stand on its own, as this piece does, but it also gives us a glimpse of augmented reality, not either virtual or physical, but layers of visual, kinetic, and haptic, interfaces overlayed on the actual world. The physical world becomes part of the interface, or vice versa, recasting the material world as another level of data to be combined with what can be seen only with some kind of device.
"The matter of ideas" by Gleman Jun uses a script to put the visitor's name in the piece, as if you were the person on the bench. It reminds us that matter in a virtual world is data. The ideas which can be realized, the metaphors manifested, are manipulated in a different way than when gravity, scarcity, and other physical limitations are involved. When we use an avatar, we position ourselves both in front of and within the virtual art, and toggle between them literally and metaphorically. Seeing the person with your name on it generate an image of itself, calls our attention to the work of art in the age of virtual reproduction.
In "Here Comes the Sun," Sledge Roffo makes a piece the spectator can not only see, but change, choosing colors, setting off sunbursts, triggering sounds. It raises the questions of whether pieces like this are interactive or reactive, and maybe that depends on whether you experience it from in front of or within it. When we play the piece, we perform it, and enter into a new relationship to the artwork, and the environment in which we experience it, as a performer.
My piece, “One and Four Timeboards” takes an imaginary prop from a film I shot in Second Life and installs it like Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 piece One and Three Chairs: the object itself, a photograph of the object where it is installed, and a definition of the word. But this is a virtual piece, so it is clickable, and yields, to the user, an unknown and unpredictable result: being teleported to a sphere above the gallery which mimics the timetravel sequences in the movie. It is meant as a moment of disruption, of instability in one’s perceptual field, and to suggest that in virtual art, there is a fourth aspect of meaning to consider: transformation.
I could click on it because nothing's gonna happen--WAIT! What? No!
Ohh, no and spinning, where is this? So familiar . . . it can't be . . . this is the time lab, but that's not a real place, it's the set I built for making machinima. and those are the other time boards, those are my avatars, my characters! OHHHHHHH!
Misprint Thursday's "Digital Glove"
One of the installations featured in the film, Misprint Thursday's "Digital Glove," took the top prize in the entire Year-long UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. Misprint is one of the artists in the exhibition I'm currently curating at LEA4, InterACT! (and she shared 5th prize with another InterACT! artist Glyph Graves), and her work is continually connecting video, music, 3D virtual art, computer mediated communication, and traditional art technique. I'm delighted "Digital Glove" was recognized because the piece is works so well on many levels--as an installation, as a video installation, as multimedia combining virtual installation, an original song with lyrics and music that make connections to the virtual and digital medium in which they were created and in which they are experienced, as a piece that uses the specific affordances and properties of the virtual world. When I was editing the footage I filmed of "Digital Glove" for "Transformation," I loved being with the piece so much that I cut a video for the entire song, and here it is:
Several people have asked me for the written transcript of the voice over, and at last I've edited the script I wrote so it matches what ended up in the film:
It is not surprising that much of the virtual world is modeled on what we know--physical spaces like art museums, or that art in it draws on what's come before--each new medium does that. but the best virtual art is a new kind of new media, using the particular properties of the virtual world to make metaphors manifest.
The avatar, the visual representation of the spectator, separates or connects our point of view to the avatar's position with the mobile camera, the virtual kino-eye.
When the avatar approaches Misprint Thursday's video art and music installation "Digital Glove," we only see and hear when we enter the space and turn on the media stream. This is kind of like augmented reality.
Virtual art has to stand on its own, as this piece does, but it also gives us a glimpse of augmented reality, not either virtual or physical, but layers of visual, kinetic, and haptic, interfaces overlayed on the actual world. The physical world becomes part of the interface, or vice versa, recasting the material world as another level of data to be combined with what can be seen only with some kind of device.
"The matter of ideas" by Gleman Jun uses a script to put the visitor's name in the piece, as if you were the person on the bench. It reminds us that matter in a virtual world is data. The ideas which can be realized, the metaphors manifested, are manipulated in a different way than when gravity, scarcity, and other physical limitations are involved. When we use an avatar, we position ourselves both in front of and within the virtual art, and toggle between them literally and metaphorically. Seeing the person with your name on it generate an image of itself, calls our attention to the work of art in the age of virtual reproduction.
In "Here Comes the Sun," Sledge Roffo makes a piece the spectator can not only see, but change, choosing colors, setting off sunbursts, triggering sounds. It raises the questions of whether pieces like this are interactive or reactive, and maybe that depends on whether you experience it from in front of or within it. When we play the piece, we perform it, and enter into a new relationship to the artwork, and the environment in which we experience it, as a performer.
My piece, “One and Four Timeboards” takes an imaginary prop from a film I shot in Second Life and installs it like Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 piece One and Three Chairs: the object itself, a photograph of the object where it is installed, and a definition of the word. But this is a virtual piece, so it is clickable, and yields, to the user, an unknown and unpredictable result: being teleported to a sphere above the gallery which mimics the timetravel sequences in the movie. It is meant as a moment of disruption, of instability in one’s perceptual field, and to suggest that in virtual art, there is a fourth aspect of meaning to consider: transformation.
I could click on it because nothing's gonna happen--WAIT! What? No!
Ohh, no and spinning, where is this? So familiar . . . it can't be . . . this is the time lab, but that's not a real place, it's the set I built for making machinima. and those are the other time boards, those are my avatars, my characters! OHHHHHHH!
Misprint Thursday's "Digital Glove"
One of the installations featured in the film, Misprint Thursday's "Digital Glove," took the top prize in the entire Year-long UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. Misprint is one of the artists in the exhibition I'm currently curating at LEA4, InterACT! (and she shared 5th prize with another InterACT! artist Glyph Graves), and her work is continually connecting video, music, 3D virtual art, computer mediated communication, and traditional art technique. I'm delighted "Digital Glove" was recognized because the piece is works so well on many levels--as an installation, as a video installation, as multimedia combining virtual installation, an original song with lyrics and music that make connections to the virtual and digital medium in which they were created and in which they are experienced, as a piece that uses the specific affordances and properties of the virtual world. When I was editing the footage I filmed of "Digital Glove" for "Transformation," I loved being with the piece so much that I cut a video for the entire song, and here it is:
Iono Allen's "Virtual Love" Also Wins a Machinima Prize at UWA
Virtual love also won one of the top prizes. This is an inspired film about an artwork, because of the way it both shows it and also transforms it, making a film that enters into dialogue--or dance--with the piece, rather than only documenting it. It is in that way an original piece of film art, standing (or dancing, or plunging) on its own.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
InterACT! with Mixed Reality at LEA4: 11/26/11
Tonight you can see for yourself the mixed reality performance/participatory environment that is Senses Places at InterACT! on LEA4. I've been experimenting with two of the ways of interacting with my avatar from outside of the Second Life interface: the webcam interface and the wii mote. These are not really spectator sports, but something you do and experience, but I think that when we do them together at the event on Saturday night, it might be really fun and interesting. For the wii mote, you need a mac computer (that is the platform the program you download was written for), but for the webcam, all you need is the webcam, and the HUD available at Senses Places. Instructions are at the environment, too.
SENSES PLACES
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WEBCAM, LIVESTREAM, & WII MOTE ARE AVAILABLE AT THE SENSES PLACES ENVIRONMENT
WEBCAM INTERFACE --this is what it looks like in your web browser when you use the HUD in Second Life and the web interface with webcam. Only you see this on your computer, but your avatar responds to what you do.
SENSES PLACES
MIXED REALITY PERFORMANCE & PARTICIPATION EVENT
Curated by L1Aura Loire/Lori Landay, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Visual Culture & Interactive Media, Berklee College of Music
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26
5-7pm (PST/GMT-8)
AT InterACT! on LEA4
5-7pm (PST/GMT-8)
AT InterACT! on LEA4
InterACT! art exhibition entrance SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA4/21/10/21 (There is a teleporter there to go up to Senses Places environment or go directly to: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA4/53/144/301
SENSES PLACES
Mixed Reality Participatory Performance Environment
With livestream video of performers in Portugal and Japan who will also be in SL, as well as the opportunity for you to participate in SL, with or without a mixed reality component of your own with webcam or wii mote. If you have either of those, you can manipulate your avatar from outside SL. Come over and experiment with other people who are doing that, too, and see what it's like.
Instructions and a HUD are available at the Senses Places environment,
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA4/53/144/301
See the LEA blog for more details. http://lindenarts.blogspot.com/2011/11/mixed-reality-participatory.html
SENSES PLACES
By Butler2 Evelyn/Isabel Valverde & Toddles Lightworker/Todd Cochrane
with Anisabel/Ana Moura, Lux Nix/Clara Gomes, In Yan/Keiji Mitsubuchi, Island Habana/Yukihiko Yoshida, Jun Makime, Yumi Sagara and others
InterACT!
A Linden Endowment for the Arts exhibition showcasing interactive virtual art
SENSES PLACES
Mixed Reality Participatory Performance Environment
With livestream video of performers in Portugal and Japan who will also be in SL, as well as the opportunity for you to participate in SL, with or without a mixed reality component of your own with webcam or wii mote. If you have either of those, you can manipulate your avatar from outside SL. Come over and experiment with other people who are doing that, too, and see what it's like.
Instructions and a HUD are available at the Senses Places environment,
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA4/53/144/301
See the LEA blog for more details. http://lindenarts.blogspot.com/2011/11/mixed-reality-participatory.html
SENSES PLACES
By Butler2 Evelyn/Isabel Valverde & Toddles Lightworker/Todd Cochrane
with Anisabel/Ana Moura, Lux Nix/Clara Gomes, In Yan/Keiji Mitsubuchi, Island Habana/Yukihiko Yoshida, Jun Makime, Yumi Sagara and others
InterACT!
A Linden Endowment for the Arts exhibition showcasing interactive virtual art
Virtual art can invite, or even insist, that you interact with it. The artists in this exhibition cleverly and creatively make art out of interactions between data, objects, actions, and people within and beyond the virtual world in a stunning array of installations and experiences that stretch the possibilities of virtual art. Expect the unexpected, and click whenever you can. #interactLEA
Installations by:
Eupalinos Ugajin
Glyph Graves
Lorin Tone
Maya Paris
Misprint Thursday
PinkPink Sorbet
Selavy Oh
Interactive environment for audience participation & interactive mixed reality cross-cultural performances by: Butler2 Evelyn/Senses Places
With: Mesh by Sage Duncan, Machinima Mutoscope Viewers by FreeWee Ling, Twitter Garden by Frans Charming, Inner Tube Ride of Your Life by UzzU Artful
Curated by L1Aura Loire/Lori Landay, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Visual Culture & Interactive Media, Berklee College of Music
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
LEA 1-4 Art Shows Open Mid-October
The Linden Endowment of the Arts is an official Linden Community Partnership program whose purpose is to help new artists, cultivate art in SL, and foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration within the art community.
The Linden Endowment for the Arts is proud to announce four art shows opening in mid-October:
On LEA1: The 2011 Survey of Hyperformalists in Second Life, curated by DC Spensley AKA DanCoyote
Opening October 15
The Museum of Hyperformalism, founded in 2006, to promote the unique genre of metasculptural abstraction in simulated space.
featuring the metasculptural artwork of:
Josina Burgess
Oberon Onmura
Ray FX
Sabine Stonebender
Selavy Oh
Suzanne Graves
Velasquez Bonetto
On LEA2: The Path, curated by Bryn Oh
Opening October 14
Based off the Surrealists exquisite corpse concept, each artist was randomly given a scene to compose. A narrative is begun by artist one who then passes it on to artist number two. Artist two adds to the story and passes it on to three and so on until the narrative reaches its conclusion at artist number eight.
Artists in order by scene
1-Bryn Oh
2-Colin Fizgig
3-Marcus Inkpen
4-Desdemona Enfield / Douglas Story
5-Maya Paris
6-Claudia222 Jewell
7-Scottius Polke
8-Rose Borchovski
On LEA3: FAST ART: Competitive Build Improvisation In The Virtual World, hosted by Solo Mornington
A series of speed build competitions, until the sim is full.
Twice-weekly events, with a number of options for artists in all time zones.
On LEA4: Interact!, curated by L1Aura Loire/Lori Landay
Opening October 15
Virtual art can invite, or even insist, that you interact with it. The artists in this exhibition cleverly and creatively make art out of interactions between data, objects, actions, and people within and beyond the virtual world in a stunning array of installations and experiences that stretch the possibilities of virtual art. Expect the unexpected, and click whenever you can. #interactLEA
Installations by:
Eupalinos Ugajin
Glyph Graves
Lorin Tone
Maya Paris
Misprint Thursday
PinkPink Sorbet
Selavy Oh
Interactive environment for audience participation & interactive mixed reality cross-cultural performances by: Butler2 Evelyn/Senses Places
With: Mesh by Sage Duncan, Machinima Mutoscope Viewers by FreeWee Ling, Twitter Garden by Frans Charming, Inner Tube Ride of Your Life by UzzU Artful
All four art shows will run for three months.
Also, on LEA6, ongoing, monthly, the LEA Full Sim Art Series
and the first Wednesday of each month, 7 pm SLT, at the LEA Theater, the Month of Machinima Screening Event, with conversations about the films with L1Aura Loire & the filmmakers
Check back here for more information about opening events, schedules for LEA3 speed builds, performances, and more . . . including some big news from the LEA.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Thinking about Virtual Art: One and Four Ways
I've been thinking a lot about virtual art, about art in virtual worlds, between teaching about it, making it, being a member of the Linden Endowment for the Arts Committee, and working on a paper and presentation for the Media in Transition 7 Unstable Platforms: The Promise and Peril of Transition conference at MIT. The paper ended up growing beyond a conference paper, the seed of a major project for me, and I focused on virtual art for the presentation. (Presentation I gave at the conference is here, the part of the paper about art is here, and the bigger paper is here. Both papers are PDF files and take a little while to load.)As I often do, I made something while I thought about my ideas, or maybe I thought about the concepts while I made something: "One and Four Timeboards."
This piece, offered tongue in cheek, takes an imaginary object, a prop from my machinima "Time Journey," and installs it according to the instructions for Joseph Kosuth's "One and Three Chairs." Kosuth certainly was not the first one, in 1965, to destabilize the meaning of the object in the gallery, but his piece was part of the crystallization around Conceptual Art that called those categories into question, and emphasized process and transition, in both art-making and meaning-making.
Plus, because we are in a virtual world, there is more. Click on the timeboard. Your experience suggests a fourth aspect to add to the object, image, and word to which Kosuth called attention in 1965.
The piece is one of the ideas I have for installations that connect "art" and machinima in virtual worlds. More of these from me in the future, especially around the time travel idea.
Slurl to teleport to the piece at UWA in Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/UWA/63/132/249
AND, when I went over to Cyland to install "One and Four Timeboards" in the virtual FutureFluxus exhibit, where I'll add an audio dimension (the piece should evolve each time, I think), I got completely sidetracked by the Carrot teeter-totter Man Michinaga has there. But the timeboards will be there soon. For more on FutureFluxus, see: www.futurefluxus.org
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Visualizing Theorem: New Virtual Art Exhibit (with Catalog Foreward by me!)
Visualizing Theorem is a group show in Second Life that is international, transdisciplinary, multi-media, and interartistic, drawing on tracks from a music album, Theorem, (itself inspired by math and science concepts), as a starting point for each virtual art piece. I was pleased to write the foreword to the catalog for this excellent exhibit.
And here is the SLurl to the virtual location of the exhibit in Second Life.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
New Basic Viewer for Virtual World Second Life: Video Glimpse
There is a new easy-to-use viewer--the program you use to access a virtual world--for Second Life. This means that a person can get going in a virtual world faster. Once you're comfortable, you can move up to the other viewer and learn some more functions. I think this is an excellent development, and so I made a quick, hopefully fun machinima video that shows the features of the new viewer that people can use for their students, friends, or anyone. It takes advantage of one of the amazing things about machinima (or the moving image in general): the ability to be able to show people what you have experienced or seen that they have not without them doing it themselves--yet!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
IceOpal: A Virtual Interpretation of Amy Lowell's Poem, "Opal"
My virtual art piece, "IceOpal: A Virtual Interpretation of Amy Lowell's Poem 'Opal," is at the University of Western Australia's monthly 3D Art Challenge in the virtual world Second Life, along with 70 or so other entries. The UWA art sims are the happening places in Second Life these days, with the most interesting art and artists converging on them. There is a sim where the past monthly winners are on display for the year, as well, so it is a terrific place to see some of the best virtual art (although it certainly is not an exhaustive collection, and pieces are limited to 100 prims, so are small-ish in scale in that way, and do not include performance art, or the performing arts). Some pieces (including mine) have sound and also machinima or video.
Above are some still images of the scultpure, and here is the machinima that plays on the little sphere in front of the big sphere, but the video does not include the sound that an avatar hears within the sphere, other than the music in the video itself.
Slurl in Second Life, only for a few more days!
SOUNDS ON
MEDIA ENABLED AND HIT PLAY
YOU CAN SEE MACHINIMA ON THE SCREEN IN THE LITTLE SPHERE IN FRONT or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFWvxvV-JQ&hd=1
Sound in machinima: The music was created with rjdj's reactive music app for iPhone, which turned my recording of icicles dripping into music. You can hear the icicle drip sounds recorded at Drumlin Farm Audubon Sanctuary at the end of the video.
CLICK ON THE POSEBALLS AND HIT ESCAPE
Disclaimer: Not responsible for damage caused by falling icicles, cloudy vision, slippery situations, or irresolvable paradoxes of the heart or mind.
****
Opal
You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis,
The silver of moon-touched magnolias.
When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches.
Amy Lowell, 1919
Ice Textures: SkyBeam Designs
Flower Textures: from photographs by L1Aura Loire
Freeze & Melt poses by L1Aura Loire
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
OPEN END: A Digital Silent Film Screwball Comedy about Irresolution
Ta-DA!! At long last, here is the screwball comedy! Yes, I started it so long ago I don't want to say! It ain't called "about irresolution" for nuthin'.
OPEN END: A Digital Silent Film Screwball Comedy about Irresolution
When a distracted woman and her pink leopard crash their hot air balloon into a handsome rogue who is just minding his own business . . . well, you know how it will end. Or do you??
If you're a film buff, this machinima movie (digital video captured in a virtual world or other 3-d game environment) may very well entertain and delight. And if you like seeing people and a pink leopard chase each other, you will like it, too.
Written, directed, filmed in the virtual world Second Life, and edited by Lori Landay (L1Aura Loire). Starring KinoEye Galaxy, Mildly Nefarious, and L1Leopard Warrhol. With Arrow Inglewood, Kristine Kristan, L1Aura Loire, Maya Paris, Misprint Thursday, and Quixote Berwick. Original piano score composed and performed by Dan Gross, http://www.dangrossmusic.com
TRICKSTER PRODUCTIONS
http://www.tricksterproductions.com
The music is by Dan Gross, one of my former Film Scoring students. One day in The Language of Film, the sound wasn't working on the videotape of The Great Train Robbery. I asked if anyone wanted to try to accompany the film on the piano (every Berklee classroom has a piano, you know), and Dan stepped up. At that moment, he discovered something he really enjoyed, and is extremely good at, and went on to accompany silent films live at the Harvard Film Archive and in Los Angeles. You'll hear what I mean about his affinity for interpreting the visual story in his music, in his touch on the piano keys, in the piece he wrote and performed for the film.
You can also watch on vimeo.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Various Updates
As is often the case, the blog action is over at the blogs for the courses I'm teaching this semester. I've got Digital Narrative Theory and Practice again, very exciting, and it is now required for two new interdisciplinary minors, Visual Culture and Interactive Media Studies, and Video Game Scoring. The students are smart and focused, and I can't wait to see the cut scene or game projects they create by the end of the semester that explore the concepts we will encounter between now and then. I don't have a blog for The Language of Film, a Film Studies course I teach in the Film Scoring department; maybe someday. And the new course I have is one of the most exciting projects I've ever worked on, a seminar called "What Is Being?" It's the product of a National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Questions grant, and plays off of the Berklee motto, "to be, rather than to seem," an interesting proposition in any age, but especially in our time of increasingly convincing illusion, and for our musician-students, in light of performance, both on stage and in every day life. The students in that seminar blew me away in our first full meeting last week, maybe profound connections between Cicero's essay "On Friendship" (the origin of our being/seeming motto) and questions about friendship in contemporary life, some unchanged from Cicero's time, and some quite new in the age of the facebook "friend."
I've been working slowly on an OpenSim region on the Education Grid, and that is exciting, but also makes me really appreciate all the content available in Second Life. I joined Pathfinder's Hypergrid Adventurer's Club and look forward to my virtual metaverse experience continuing to expand across the grids, and I've been nosing around on Craft, Jokaydia, and other places. All very interesting, and I do indeed feel like a pioneer. I continue to build, make virtual art installations, collaborate, and make machinima in Second Life as well. My Domestic Technology or, Never Alone installation is still up at the inworld Cyberfest, so check that out if you haven't, and I hope to have some new interactive sculpture sometime soon.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
L1 in CYBERFEST 2010: Domestic Technology or, Never Alone
CYBERFEST 2010 is happening now in St. Petersburg, Russia (see) and also in Second Life at the Cyland sim (slurl). My installation, which plays a new machinima and lets you reenact moments from it for yourself, is called: Domestic Technology or, Never Alone.
When I first heard the concept for Cyberfest 2010, "Housebugs," exploring technology in everyday domestic life, I knew I had to take a comic angle. The tools of domestic technology, like vacuums are great, but what I could really use...
All the promises of technology for improving domesticity, like so many of the images of domesticity in culture, are idealized fantasies very distant from my everyday experience. In a virtual world like Second Life, representations of homes and homelife are even more idealized than on film or television, and the necessarily messier reality beyond the computer screen conflicts with the idealized images on it.
When I first heard the concept for Cyberfest 2010, "Housebugs," exploring technology in everyday domestic life, I knew I had to take a comic angle. The tools of domestic technology, like vacuums are great, but what I could really use...
All the promises of technology for improving domesticity, like so many of the images of domesticity in culture, are idealized fantasies very distant from my everyday experience. In a virtual world like Second Life, representations of homes and homelife are even more idealized than on film or television, and the necessarily messier reality beyond the computer screen conflicts with the idealized images on it.
Domestic Technology or, Never Alone: Cyberfest 2010, Housebugs from Lori Landay on Vimeo.
Click on Vimeo link above to watch larger movie.Monday, November 8, 2010
WORKING ON CYBERFEST 2010
I'm editing a new machinima for my installation for Cyberfest 2010, and pulling together music for it. Yes, I know a lot of real film composers, but I am always working so close to deadline, I am usually pulling things together from recorded sources, or bodging my own music in GarageBand (my screwball comedy, which has been in the works for a long time, will be a notable exception, with a live piano score by Dan Gross). I've licensed great music from Moby, and used pieces from Kevin MacLeod, and this time I think it might be from
Free Sound Effects Download thousands of free sound effects from PartnersInRhyme.com And if you, too, put this link on your site, you will get a free sound effects library :)
More about CYBERFEST 2010: HOUSE BUG: see & the Cyland blog
Free Sound Effects Download thousands of free sound effects from PartnersInRhyme.com And if you, too, put this link on your site, you will get a free sound effects library :)
More about CYBERFEST 2010: HOUSE BUG: see & the Cyland blog
Friday, October 15, 2010
Caerleon Museum of Identity: "Somebody"
Machinima of my installation, seen on Viewer 2 (see previous post below for details about that). Watch in full letterbox format on youtube.
The Caerleon Museum of Identity, and my installation, "Somebody," best seen with, yes, Viewer 2, with media enabled to play automatically, opens Saturday, Oct 2, at 12 pm PDT. SLURLhttp://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife//219/65/3438
Download Viewer 2 HERE
Feeling even more experimental??? Download newest beta version of Viewer 2 HERE
Friday, October 8, 2010
Mahalo
I was editing machinima I filmed during the last days of one of the loveliest surfing sims in Second Life, Friends Beach at Mori Pwani, which I had already set to a reggae cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" (Alpha Blondy's "I Wish You Were Here") when I saw the announcement about the discontinuation of the discounted pricing for education and non-profit sims. I wish it would not signal an exodus, but I fear it will. I hate seeing creative and innovative people depart, and beautiful builds dissolve into nothing but memories and machinima. I guess it is time to move on to a new beach, hopefully to meet up with friends there, too.
UPDATE: Linden Lab sent a letter to its education and non-profit customers offering them a grandfathered price extension for up to two years, which may or may not make a difference.
Mahalo, Mori by L1Aura Loire from Lori Landay on Vimeo.
Filmed during the last week of Friends Beach at Mori Pwani in the virtual world Second Life, this video is for the places--and people--we wish were here, wherever here may be.
A virtual world is impermanent, ephemeral, and as quick as it is to create entire environments, they can vanish in an instant. People come and go, as well. And then there are the places and people you wish were really here, wherever you are, not only there in a virtual world.
Mahalo, in Hawaiian, means thank you, and also has some of the same connotations as peace or namaste.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
"I, too, dislike it" or, Why I Built My Caerleon Museum of Identity Installation for Viewer 2--
Why I built my installation at the Caerleon Museum of Identity even though I know you probably don't use it, and why I hope you will log in with v2 to see it.
The short answer: I am in Second Life to experiment with what is new, and to keep changing and evolving. Shared media in viewer 2 means being able to play more than 1 movie file on prims on a parcel as well as having a media stream for the parcel.
Here is the longer answer: I started to build for v2 for SL7B in the summer, but in the end, built for the classic viewer, because hardly anyone I know (that means you!) regularly uses v2. The way v2 can handle video is much easier and versatile than the classic viewer. It has more possibilities. As artists, we should see what those can do, even when the tool feels uncomfortable at first in our hand/on our screen/as our interface, or maybe especially then.
My piece for Caerleon is a video art piece, and the prims are screens showing video, and also a short mixed reality gag, as video installation. It plays with the idea of still and moving images by using video of an Emily Dickinson poem poised over Boston Harbor outside the Institute for Contemporary Arts and putting it on various prims (in addition to some other things going on in the installation.)
I turn your attention to the poet Marianne Moore; her poem about poetry, a poet's response to poetry: "I, too, dislike it" kept echoing in my head as I used v2 to create "Somebody," my Caerleon piece, and not only for the toads (that will make more sense when you see the installation.) If we think of "poetry" as any art we are trying to make or experience, with its limitations of form and just of any representation, then once again Marianne Moore has a lot to say to us, this time about v2 and the interfaces with which we experience and create the virtual world.
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and
school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
The Caerleon Museum of Identity, and my installation, "Somebody," best seen with, yes, Viewer 2, with media enabled to play automatically, opens Saturday, Oct 2, at 12 pm PDT. SLURL http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife//219/65/3438
Download Viewer 2 HERE
Feeling even more experimental??? Download newest beta version of Viewer 2 HERE
Thanks, Torley, for the great photo of my installation! See Torley's flckr
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
New Video: CLICK: Immersive & Interactive Virtual Art
This machinima video showcases some of the prize-winning entries in the year-long University of Western Australia Imagine 3d Art & Design Contest held in Second Life. It focuses specifically on "clickable" art, that is interactive and immersive, to highlight a unique aspect of virtual art. I plan on using this in my classes as a quick way of introducing them to virtual art, so I put in a list of the formal elements of art: line, shape, value, form, color, space, and texture. In some of my classes, we'll go into a virtual world and have a workshop on how to build/basic scripting, but in some of my classes, machinima and slides have to suffice. I hope others might find this video useful, too.
To see the video in full size, go directly to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sf3Q2VAlKE
To see the video in full size, go directly to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sf3Q2VAlKE
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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