Zen Zen Zo is a physical theatre company based in Queensland and there’s already a huge buzz about how they incorporate participation from the audience into their theatre. Next year’s performance is Sub-Con Warrior 2.0. The screenshot above explains it all. I love the concept and am definitely hoping I can find space to go to a performance.
Fascinating new blog find (via Christy) – the Extratextuals, a group blog defined as the following:
This is a blog about the media. However, with other blogs on television, film, and the media in general, we wanted to carve out a specific niche. So our blog will focus primarily on the extratextuals that surround the media. By this, we mean everything but the show itself: previews, merchandising, industry buzz, branding, interviews, posters, spatial context, temporal context, related websites, ARGs, spinoffs, spoilers, schedules, bonus materials, transmedia extras, games, YouTube clips, etc. But we’re interested in these things not to be arcane or eccentric; rather, we believe that the extratextuals often make the show what it is. Hence this blog is about the mediation of media.
In hunting for the term extratextual I also came across a wonderful study by Marianne Cantwell, all about fan knowledge and participation in the extratextual.
Yesterday I attended Second Life’s famed Vaudeville production The Show Must Go On, which was held as an opening in world event to coincide with the opening of the SLCC (Second Life Community Convention) being held in Chicago right now. It was fun to be there with some NMC friends and join into the conference in a small way, since I can’t be in Chicago. To be honest I am a bit conferenced out AND I have three more conferences coming up in the next few weeks so it was kind of nice to relax, be social, and not have any commitments to worry about.
Here’s my huge photo set of the many acts from the show. There were many acts – from a snarky comedienne that I found very amusing, to a group of synchronised knitting unicyclists who also defied gravity… errrr… and many other weird and wonderful and not so wonderful but still freakishly “only-in-Second-Life-so-interesting-to-experience” acts.
Wow! Robbie Dingo created the most amazing 3D version of Van Gogh’s painting, and it is shown in this time lapse machinima. Robbie’s blog post about here.
What fun! I managed to get to some of the special dLux Media rl/sl mixed realities event today that I blogged about here. This is me on my magic pony ride tour of SL art hot spots. In a very clever pop culture / high culture hybridisation, the tour incorporated visits to some wonderful art spaces – entire sims that are works of art, exhibits and all sorts of alternative types of art spaces as well as some traditional ones. The ponies had a follow the leader script so the tour guide could fly us all over Second Life, but there was lots of discussion and all participants had the opportunity to share and comment. Tours are being held weekly.
Thanks to Prok for showing me this amazing sound installation in Second Life during the week. Here’s the description from the artist:
“Resonating-With-secondlifeWind” by Edo Autopoiesis.
Resonating-With-secondlifeWind is a permanent, large scale, generative sound-installation in Second Life.
One might not immediately be aware of it but everywhere in Second Life there is wind, constantly changing and twisting air streams. Resonating-With-secondlifeWind works and responds to this wind. Above the clouds there are floating 100 windmills, ordered in a grid. Each windmill shows us the direction and speed of the wind at that specific position. Together, they give a visual representation of how the wind behaves on a larger scale, through the whole sim.
Each windmill uses the available wind-energy to lift a red object: More wind and the object is lifted faster. Once the red object is at its top it’s ready to drop down again so it will hit the acoustic resonator at the bottom, and thus making a sound. The red object will only drop down though, when there is another windmill nearby also making a sound. So, the rhythm with which the sound will be played depends on the wind as well as on the sounds from the neighboring windmills. Since the wind in Second Life is always changing and never the same, the musical result will always be different: Infinite variations on rhythm and melody.
Edo Autopoiesis (in rl Edo Paulus) is an Amsterdam based sound-artist who uses generative processes to create sound-compositions. This results mostly in real-life sound-installations and sometimes software based works or performances.
more info: http://www.eude.nl
I loved this – there are so few artists experimenting with sound in SL and yet all the capabilities are there. There is something about floating above the clouds among 100 windmills with bell like sounds echoing all around you that is quite magical.
Location: Harmonia, Harmonia (110, 94, 22)
Gaza does it again – you might remember Gaza Stripped, an article from Slatenight magazine (now sadly on hiatus for the time being), where Gaza, pictured below, discussed her philosophy about real/virtual/pop art.
Nude Descending is another play on an artistic icon, in which falling nude art pieces topple down a staircase, and if you want to really interact and become art you allow your naked avatar to topple down too.
This exhibition is being shown at the Odyssey Gallery, and also includes all sorts of other interactive and thought provoking pieces. Just DO NOT say a certain phrase or term, or you will be attacked by a tornado and catapulted across to another sim! (I haven’t seen one person not test this, despite the warnings 
All art has notecards with commentary and questions for you to ponder about the art work, which helps you understand what intention was had by the artist. How you interpret it though is still dependent upon your own experiences, expectations and belief systems about art and virtuality, so if you visit the exhibition with friends it can raise some very interesting discussions.
As part of the d/Art/07 festival being run by dLux Media Arts there will be a mixed reality event showcasing the Arts in Second Life. Here are the details:
Saturday, July 14, 2007
1:00 PM
Australian Centre for Photography
257 Oxford Street
Paddington, New South Wales 2021Description
Some call it a better life while others say ‘Get a life’. Second Life is a 3D social networking site where participants can not only meet with each other but could also contribute to the design, coding and construction of their new world. When the laws of physics have no meaning, when people can fly and when a large number of the women you meet are actually men, it is inevitable that this new world has evolved in …er… unconventional directions that no longer simply mirror real life.
As part of the d/Art/07 festival, d/Lux/MediaArts will present a series of in-world guided tours of Second Life where we will explore the work of artists practising in SL and some of the interesting communities that are emerging there. You can join in the real world at the ACP or online in SL. The tours are free but booking is required for those joining us at the gallery. See our website below for details.
Homepage: http://dlux.org.au/dArt07/slife.html
It should be fabulous as Christy Dena has been advising the dLux team about the range of art spaces and practices in SL.
The question is – since the event is about experiencing art in SL, do I actually want to attend in person at the live venue?
I was fortunate enough to listen to Christy Dena today presenting a truly stimulating lecture on Multi-Platform Art versus Commodity Intertexts. Her point of departure was a quote from Henry Jenkins about transmedia storytelling, which she interrogated by tracing the history of cross-media art forms, from pre-internet media such as Twin Peaks to new forms of 3D animation storytelling/art inside Second Life. She discussed the relationship and tensions between what is transmedia art and what is marketing, and invoked her own theorisation of the features that genuinely characterise transmedia storytelling. She raised some really provocative questions about perceptions of what is art, and how some forms are revalued as aesthetic only when somebody renames them as such. I am guessing Christy will be publishing some of her work so I don’t want to pre-empt that and discuss her theories before she is ready, but you can read more on her blog. It has certainly helped crystallise some of my own thinking.
Click the image to go to the slides for my talk at the NMC’s Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video
A complete list of all videos mentioned in the talk are included “under the fold”.
There’s a fabulous line early on in The Devil Wears Prada:
“Fashion is not about utility. An accessory is merely a piece of iconography used to express individual identity.”
I’ve been thinking of analysing this film (along with the TV series “Desperate Housewives”) to add to some workI did in 2005 – “Discourses of Desire in Sex and the City” – about gender, discourse, textuality, feminine identities and the body, in preparation for a conference about semiotics at the end of the year. Well, that is my excuse for watching the movie and all the DVD extras several times over anyway
Clever clever clever!!!!! This latest music video from the Barenaked Ladies features a whole bunch of popular youtubers:
The Youtube celebrities whose voices/performances you know and love have come together to perform Barenaked Ladies’ “Sound of Your Voice” from the album “Barenaked Ladies Are Me”. Sound of Your Voice Stars:
Here’s a group that really “get” new media!!!
Australian readers will no doubt recognise Boh3m3, who rose to fame for criticising Australians and their love of vegemite. That story was picked up by traditional media who … well they tried hard… but they obviously didn’t “get it”. The Vegemite Wars is covered well by Angry 365 Days a Year.
One man draws some of his youtube subscribers:
The beatboxing flautist:
One of my long term research participants, Jandalf, pointed me to this art for charity site: The Million Masterpiece. What I love about this is that it does a replay of Jandalf’s art in progress. Have a look! I think it’s always amazing to see the process of a piece of artwork unfolding in front of you. It achieves two purposes I think – 1) it demystifies the art and allows you the chance to replicate the process, thereby being a wonderful teaching device, and 2) it astounds you to see the talent and genius of others.
Yesterday I also saw this video of the sidewalk art genius they call “Pavement Picasso” – check it out:
