Three Wearable Devices for Augmented Virtuality - Device #1: A Wearable Garden

Device #1: A Wearable Garden is the first in a series of three planned wearable devices for performance in Second Life (SL). These devices are intended to give myself and/or my representation a heightened/augmented sense of place.

Device #1 is primarily a visual prop for myself as viewer of my representation from a non first person point of view. It functions in much the same way as a flat used in theatre, providing a background and context to the presented content. Here the background is worn by my representation and so moves, clumsily, with my representation through the 'virtual' space. The imagery, a live video feed from my garden in Cardiff, Wales, 'real' life, is static while my representation moves. Seen in relation to the environment of SL, computer graphics overlaid with a graphical user interface and framed within a windowing operating system, it is the video feed which becomes more unreal, representative, virtualised and affirms the visual identity of the place we would normally call 'virtual'.

All footage and imagery shot at HUMlab Island, Second Life and in my garden in Cardiff, Wales.

Blue Screening from Second Life

Testing a blue screen plugin for CamTwist I'm developing for the residency. In the video above and the first image below the plugin is capturing my representation in Second Life (which has a blue screen backdrop) and a video stream. The blue in Second Life is removed and replaced with the video stream in real time. In the second image a test with a flat blue is being carried out to see how sharp the colour mapping is without issues such as light/shaders etc.

After

After, documents the site of numerous performances by Garrett Lynch at the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon in Google Earth during the artists Yoshikaze Residency.

The camera moves around the site to view both historical 'real' and performative 'virtual' artefacts. Artefacts left by the artist include a flag to mark the location of the performances and his customary sandwich board worn during all Second Life performances.

Moon Walk

A simple moon walk performance at the site of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon in Google Earth during the artists Yoshikaze Residency. In the background is a flag to mark the location of the performance.

Meeting Sang (Colorado/Cardiff)

Sang (Sang Ahn, a Google SketchUp employee) is the default Google SketchUp in-application person used for measuring the scale of 3D constructions. SketchUp's primary use is to allow 3D builders to populate Google Earth with models of 'real' life (RL) buildings in their correct place. Sang is the sole inhabitant of SketchUp's 3D world and occupies a space next to the point of origin (a north pole of sorts). His is a lonely existence.

Visiting Google Earth, Sang arrives at the default geographic position for English users of SketchUp, Boulder, Colorado (Latitude: 40.0170N, Longitude: 105.2830W), where SketchUp is created. Sang is a representation of the RL Sang, no attempt has been made to create this avatars persona, instead he is an extension of himself beyond a singular existence.

Venturing outside of Second Life, Garrett Lynch, my representation of myself in Second Life, goes to meet Sang and then invites him to visit the representation of my home in his virtual world.



Above: Meeting Sang in Google SketchUp at the point of origin.



Above: Meeting Sang in Google Earth at the point of origin, Boulder, Colorado.

Walking, not Running, and Getting Nowhere - technique

What follows is a description / tutorial of the central technique employed in creating Walking, not Running, and Getting Nowhere.

While both performances are distinctly different and use live video recorded from different locations piped through different live video feed sites there is a common set of scripts, software and site(s) to enable their viewing in Second Life. All of these are free and / or open source. The setup involves bambuser.com, php, json, html and CSS.

Live video feed (e.g. from CamTwist or an iPhone) -> bambuser.com -> php -> json -> html (styled by CSS).

Above, is an example of the flow of the live video feed in Walking, not running, and getting nowhere (exploration 2). For full details on how to get this working for yourself, download the zip provided below and follow the readme.txt and comments in the various scripts.

To download the tutorial files click here.

Walking, not Running, and Getting Nowhere (Exploration #2)

Walking, not Running, and Getting Nowhere, the second mixed reality exploration, consists of a 'walk' on the Moon in Google Earth. The intention here is to explore an immersive experience for my avatar and myself as my avatar in Second Life (SL) through a first person point of view.

My avatar is set to animate a walk on the spot, on top of a screen broadcasting a live video feed of a 'walk' on the moon in Google Earth around the perimeter of the Apollo 11 landing site. Exploration of the perimeter of the site reveals one of a few locations on the moon which is documented in detail and has a distinct edge / boundary where photographic detail is of a noticeably lower quality outside the site. This site and its boundary are reminiscent of virtual worlds, notably traditional gaming worlds, which often have a boundary that hems users in.

The moon walk is source media/experience for my avatar, augmenting its SL experience. Unlike exploration #1 however where SL and 'real' life (RL) are mixed, here another virtual world, itself a representation of RL, is employed and folded into SL.

The result is a virtual reality experience for my avatar, already within a virtualised world, walking in a visual space beyond its own with no control or locomotion yet constantly reminded of the limitations of that virtual experience.

Walking, not Running, and Getting Nowhere (Exploration #1)

My residency is now underway at the Yoshikaze space at the HUMlab Island in Second Life and for the last two days I have been working on a mixed reality experience for my avatar, full details below. This is the first in a series of works exploring place in and out of Second Life (SL) and combinations with 'real' life (RL). Works undertaken over the next 2/3 weeks will take the form of:

• Performance props
• Wearables
• Sculptural objects

Walking, not Running, and Getting Nowhere is the first performance exploration. The intention here is to explore an immersive experience for my avatar and myself as my avatar in SL through a first person point of view.

My avatar is set to animate a walk on the spot, on top of a screen broadcasting a live video feed of a walk from RL. Alongside is a heads up display (HUD) showing my RL position as the walk occurs. My RL walk is source media/experience for my avatar, augmenting its SL experience and inverting what is often the purpose of virtual worlds, augmenting our RL experience (i.e. through SL social networking etc.)

The result is a mixed reality experience for my avatar, walking in a visual space beyond its own yet with no control or actual locomotion, extended as a result of streaming lag, augmented in some ways yet futile in others.