A Tele-Immersive Collaboration

Synthecology combines the possibilities of tele-immersive collaboration with a new architecture for virtual reality sound immersion to create a environment where musicians from all locations can interactively perform and create sonic environments.

Compose, sculpt, and improvise with other musicians and artists in an ephemeral garden of sonic lifeforms. Synthecology invites visitors in this digitally fertile space to create a musical sculpture of synthesized tones and sound samples provided by web inhabitants. Upon entering the garden, each participant can pluck contributed sounds from the air and plant them, wander the garden playing their own improvisation or collaborate with other participants to create/author a new composition. Continue reading

Add Second Life Pics

The Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) are holding an event this Thursday and Friday, October 26-27, that will collect screenshots and text from the virtual world of Second Life for inclusion in the Yahoo! Time Capsule project, which will be sealed on November 8 and re-opened in the year 2020. That’s pretty cool (and Yahoo!’s Web site is cool as well). One thing strikes me, though. Why aren’t there 3D models being included in the time capsule? It’s not a particular failure of vision on Yahoo!’s part; it probably has more to do with the fact that there’s not yet a standard for such objects, nor can you export such information out of Second Life in a way that’s supported by the company and intelligible to other applications. Virtual 3D objects are not yet widely and easily manipulable, as, say, a chunk of html code is, or a jpeg file. The problem runs far deeper than the technological; the absence of a standard or other open system or protocol means that many people don’t think of the virtual world as just another part of the rest of their lives. When an online world can reach out to and communicate easily with many other online platforms, we’ll start to see more constructive attention being paid. It’s almost as if we’re now at 3pointD v1.0. Personally, I’m looking forward to 3pointD 2.0. If that makes any sense at all. [posted by Mark Wallace on 3pointD]

A User-Controlled Photo Documentary of Second Life

If you didn’t show up to the Second Life Herald’s third birthday party tonight, you missed quite a show. Even if you weren’t in the virtual world of Second Life, though, you may have caught the bash on Destroy Television, the new service from the Electric Sheep Company’s spare-time dev pool, Sheep Labs. Check out the Destroy Television avatar in the screenshot above. She looks innocent enough (even though she appears to be mooning the camera), but Destroy is an avatar of unique stripe; she’s controlled for the most part by users dialing over to the Destroy TV Web site, where they can make her chat or walk around. All the while, she snaps a pic every 30 seconds or so and plugs it into her Flickr page. The result is a user-controlled photo documentary of what’s going on around Second Life. More >> [posted by Mark Wallace on 3pointD]

Le Sacre du Printemps

Media-artist, director and composer Klaus Obermaier has created a new performance of Russian composer Igor StravinskyÂ’s classical ballet Le Sacre du Printemps. In ObermaierÂ’s version, the classical ballet is expressed in the form of an interactive music, dance and 3D project.

On stage distributed stereo-cameras and a complex computer system transfer the dancer Julia Mach into a virtual three-dimensional space. Time layers and unusual views overlay and multiply themselves and enable a completely new perception of the body and its courses of motion. Real-time generated virtual spaces communicate and interact with the dancer. By means of 32 microphones the entire orchestra is integrated in the interactive process as well. Musical motifs, individual voices and instruments influence the form, movement and complexity of both the 3D projections of the virtual space and those of the dancer. As such, music is no longer only starting point, but also completion of the choreography.

Klaus ObermaierÂ’s version of Le Sacre du Printemps was performed first at this yearÂ’s Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. [blogged by Lene Mailund on Digital Experience] Continue reading

On the failure (or impossibility) of mapping

Last night I had an appointment to meet some old friends at Freemans for drinks and – as is both my habit in general, and an occupational hazard when getting around town on a conveyance that moves faster than just about anything else in the mired cityscape – I showed up quite a bit early.

Having locked up my bike, I found myself with a good fifteen minutes on my hands, an absurdly generous stretch of time in which to stroll up and down the not-particularly-extensive length of Freeman’s Alley. I didn’t have a book, I didn’t happen to have my Moleskine on me, I had nothing close at hand with which to divert my attention, and so I wound up subjecting the space of the alley to the kind of close and sustained inspection I so rarely get to lavish on anything.

I saw windows bricked up, apparently against the encroachment of a neighbor building that was no longer in evidence. I saw fronds of razorwire tangled in rusted lengths of now-obsolescent barb, the both moored to a stanchion that had somehow worked or been torn free from anything more solid than the wire itself and which remained hanging stupidly in the void. Above all I saw a thousand ad hoc interventions, each the trace of some occasion on which an electrician or a plumber or a contractor made an off-plan, field-expedient modification in the name of getting things done – the outstanding example of which was a congeries of coiled, small-gauge utility lines staplegunned to the alley’s westerly wall, their distal ends disappearing through holes into the buildings beyond. Some of these were still tagged legibly (feed 193 chrystie roof), but most had long gone mute as to their function or purpose. Continue reading

Art and Poetry Between the Electronic and the Visual

e and eye: art Art and Poetry Between the Electronic and the Visual :: Led by Penny Florence, Tim Mathews and John Cayley :: Monday 13 November 2006, 18.30–20.00.

Modern art has had a close historical relationship with poetry and performance since its formation. Electronic poetry has developed a strong element of performance, an implicit demand for some form of exhibition. This series of events explores the relationship between the visual, the poetic and the electronic in art. The sessions begin with a conversation in which invited speakers discuss issues relevant to the Collection and to electronic and visual poetry. This is followed by a short performance or reading of an electronic poem, and an open discussion. Laptop computers with video projection showing interactive electronic works are also placed within the galleries.

The speakers are theorists and practitioners in a variety of media and virtual curators, and include John Aiken, Patrick Burgaud, John Cayley, Penny Florence, Elizabeth James, Mark Leahy, Tim Mathews, Brigid McLeer, Sharon Morris and TNWK (Kirsten Lavers and cris cheek). Continue reading

International Competition

12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07 (C) WRO Center for Media Art Foundation in Wroclaw, Poland announces an international competition open to any work created using electronic media techniques, exploring innovative forms of artistic communication.

The competition welcomes creators of artistic projects of diverse forms such as screenings (video art, computer animation), installations, objects, performances, multimedia concerts and network projects from all over the world. The main prize is eur5000 and the total prize money awarded is eur8000.

The deadline date for entry submission is 15 February 2007. Presentation of works selected to the very final along with the international jurys announcement of competition results will take place during public screening at the WRO 07 Biennale.

Agenda: 16 – 20 May 2007 competition, special events, symposium; 16 May – 17 June 2007 exhibition. National Museum in Wroclaw, WRO Art Center. Continue reading

The New Reviews/Interviews, Oct/Nov 2006

Welcome to Furtherfield’s current collection of reviews and interviews. Please find time to read all of the writings, they are in no particular order. After reading, do explore all the networked behaviour generously written and thought about, in context.

Boredom Research: Interviewed by Aaron Steed
PHONETHICA: Reviewed by Franz Thalmair
Alex Dragulescu – Blogbot: Review by María Victoria Guglietti
VISP Project MACHFELD: Interview by Julian Bleecker
The Lost Biology of Silent Hill: FurtherCritic Article by [[Mez]]
disturb.the.peace [angry women]: Review by Eliza Fernbach
2nd Upgrade Meeting at Oklahoma City: Review by Luis Silva.
Jason Nelson – Vholoce: Review by John Hopkins

Boredom Research: Interviewed by Aaron Steed Continue reading

The Web before the Web

The Web before the Web :: Christophe Bruno (2004-2006) :: James Joyce, Jeremy Bentham, Edgar Allan Poe, Stéphane Mallarmé, Alan Turing, Georges Perec & Marcel Bénabou, Stanley Milgram, Frederick Taylor, The Great Chain of Being, The Web after the Web.

In September 2004 Bruno was a guest-blogger for the French online magazine fluctuat.net. He wrote a series of short posts about what could be called “the precursors of the Web”… or “the Web minus the technology”. (the posts in french are here.)

Here is an augmented and updated version in English.

To be published in the magazine for art and new media Aminima N°20. Continue reading

An Online Networked Performance TONIGHT!

November: An online Networked Performance :: Join us as we cast out the stale air of the fading summer and move together into winter. Celebrating Halloween and the changing of the season, we come together online to exchange our collected thoughts across the Internet whilst each eating garlic cloves.

This networked performance by Patrick Simons and Kate Southworth (glorious ninth) in collaboration with Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett (Furtherfield.org) will be launched at: – Time: 9 minutes and 41 seconds before midnight (GMT) :: Date: 31st October 2006 :: Location: http://november.gloriousninth.net

NOVEMBER is a performance that utilises peer-to-peer instant messaging technology, and the participants were able to see and hear each other on their computers throughout. Working with their own pre-chosen texts, each participant alternated between reading aloud and listening, amending and improvising their performances in response to each other. At times a cacophony of competing voices, the performance was a spontaneous and unrehearsed encounter, exposing moments of vulnerability, intimacy, connection and rhythm. Continue reading