Some More Photos from the Augmented Plateau Exhibition

Photos: Carl-Erik Engqvist

Finally!! Belated Opening of Augmented Plateau at Arts Campus

Finally we had the belated opening of our show "Augmented Plateau" at HUMlabX, Arts Campus, Umeå University.  

During the two hours between 4 and 6 pm we had it open for the opening yesterday,  we had a steady stream of visitors all the time, and we estimate the number of visitors to be somewhere between 40 and 50 people.  The highlight of the day was probably when a whole class of art students from Finland poured in, and asked many engaging questions about the show.  

The show, which was originally scheduled to be between 14 Feb - 8 March was postponed due to the illness of our beloved artistic leader Carl-Erik Engqvist, who has been in charge of the physical art venues for the last couple of years.  Now he is back, we are very pleased to have the opportunity to have this excellent show between 10 - 30 April instead.  

Our gratitude to all the artists who have been with Yoshikaze and have allowed us to show their works.  We are looking forward to receiving more visitors at this wonderful new venue.

Announcing Yoshikaze/HUMlab Group Show "The Augmented Plateau: Art and Virtual Worlds in HUMlab 2007-2013"

The Augmented Plateau: Art and Virtual Worlds in HUMlab 2007-2013

20 February - 12 March 2014 @ HUMlabX, the Arts Campus at Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: Monday - Friday, Noon - 4pm 

(21 and 24 February, 10 March Closed)

Opening: 14 February between Noon - 5pm

HUMlab is a humanities-led, interdisciplinary digital lab at Umeå University in Sweden.  For the last seven years, HUMlab has given support to Second Life artists by hosting their works on SL HUMlab Island for constructions as well as organising exhibitions at HUMlab's Real-Life multimedia venue.  

In 2007-08 Humlab hosted on its Second Life sim Goodwind Seiling's "N00sphere Playground" for the Virtual Moves exhibition at the National Gallery in Copenhagen.  Later, it further supported Avatar Orchestra Metaverse for their constructions and premier performances of "XAANADRuul" and "The Heart of Tones" before providing a home for the Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" virtual artist residency programme in 2010.  Since then, HUMlab has been a host for nine Second Life artists in Yoshikaze artist residency as well as one artist talk by Kristine Schomaker on her project "My Life as an Avatar." Another outcome of HUMlab's engagement for the advancement of virtual worlds and art was their assistance in bringing an ambitious mixed-reality project by Goodwind Seiling to fruition.  The project "Experimentation #1" was based on the use of Kinect to control avatar movements and would have been unable to be realised without HUMlab's support.  

The work conducted in HUMlab and Yoshikaze by virtual world artists and creators has led to a number of academic publications and conference presentations and also resulted in two self-published artist books.

This year between 20 February and 12 March, HUMlab and Yoshikaze proudly present a group exhibition with all the artists who have been involved in shaping HUMlab's engagement in supporting SL artists and their art.  This include, besides those mentioned above, Alan Sondheim, Juria Yoshikawa, Garrett Lynch,  Selavy Oh, Katerina Karoussos, Fau Ferdinand, Pyewacket Kazyanenko, Oberon Onmura, Alpha Auer, Maya Paris, Eupalinos Ugajin and SaveMe Oh.  We would also like to acknowledge the following SL artists for this show: Machinimatographers Marx Catteneo, Mab MacMoragh, Steve Millar, and Evo Szuyuan, as well as Puppeteer Jo Ellsmere.  The exhibition takes place at the newly acquired HUMlab-X at the Arts Campus of Umeå University.

We, who have been working with this project for seven years, would like to thank all the participants.  Thanks are also due to the HUMlab technicians, poster makers, and HUMlab director Patrik Svensson.

Sachiko Hayashi (Yoshikaze Curator)

James Barrett (SL Humlab Sim Manager)

Carl-Erik Engqvist (RL HUMlab Artistic Leader)

February 2014

(The image for the flyer: Still from SaveMe Oh's "Crazy crazy." Image retrieval and Design : Sachiko Hayashi)

TOPOPHONIA Exhibition

 

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presents

TOPOPHONIA: Four Realizations in Sound

Nine Rooms by Oberon Onmura

Listen ... by Alpha Auer

Bank Job by Maya Paris

Jazz on Bones by Eupalinos Ugajin

18 - 22 February 2012 @ HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: 8am - 4pm

Opening: 18 February between 1am- 4pm

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"You will find four completely different pieces, four totally different visions of what that initial concept suggested. To me, the fact that our four versions are so different is tremendously exciting. It is further proof that the artist's mind is unlimited in its ability to make sense of the world, and to convey that sense to others."

(Review of "Topophonia" by Quan Lavender http://quanlavender.blogspot.de/2013/01/immersion-in-sounds-topophonia.html)

Between 15 October 2012 - 31 January 2013, Oberon Onmura held the residency at Yoshikaze as our artist-in-residence on HUMlab Island in Second Life, during which time he has completed a unique project entitled "Topophonia," involving three other SL artists in addition to completing his own artwork.

"The principal concept of "Topophonia" is the notion of bringing together a group of artists' to create artworks around a common concept. ….I was less interested in any sort of collaboration than in seeing how (or whether) other artists could understand and work from an artistic framework that I personally found interesting in creating a new piece….whether their resulting artworks in any way mirrored or complemented my own. So not a collaboration; rather, an experiment to test whether an artistic idea is share-able, and to see the result of each artist  independently operating on that idea in his or her unique fashion." (Oberon Onmura)

By basing its starting point on sound to guide the visitors, his chosen artists, Alpha Auer, Maya Paris and Eupalinos Ugajin, have each created an independent installation. Together with Oberon's own work they comprise "Topophonia: Four Realization in Sound."

Yoshikaze is very pleased to present "Topophonia" at RL HUMlab, Umeå University, between 18-22 February 2012.  Four machinimas filmed beautifully by Marx Catteneo will be shown on our screens alongside with four computer stations with avatars who will take the visitors to their inworld installations.

In conjunction to this RL show, Yoshikaze Studio will be open to the public.  We welcome you at http://www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/99/194/25 to experience "Topophonia" from your own loaction.

Oberon's artist statement of the project can be read on our blog at http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com/2013/02/oberon-16-artist-statement.html; about the participating artists at http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com/2013/01/oberon-9.html ; reviews at http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com/2013/01/here-are-some-blog-posts-about.html

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with HUMlab.  The poster design by Carl-Erik Engqvist from HUMlab.

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with RL HUMlab art director Carl-Erik Engqvist, Umeå University, Sweden.  For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden.

Yoshikaze blog: http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com
Yoshikaze vimeo: http://vimeo.com/yoshikaze 

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Pyewacket Kazyanenko Exhibition

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presents

Pyewacket Kazyanenko

11 - 17 December 2012

@ HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: 8am - 4 pm Weekdays

Opening: 11 January Between 2pm - 4pm

In-World Performance at 2pm

SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab%20II/28/71/38

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Minimal Glitch

   

My work at Humlab involved the exploration of the glitch or oddity, both visually and conceptually within a virtual world. I sought to make unexpected things happen revealing new possibility.

I explored the psychology of the avatar through the use of multiple bodies and 'bots' (automated humanoid entities) in Second Life and used them to form concepts about future interactions with robots and artificial intelligence.

"The scientist has responsibility in creating life. There will be glitches." I hope to present abstract but futuristic ideas with a minimalist aesthetic.

Pyewacket Kazyanenko

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Pyewacket Kazyanenko is an established Second Life performance artist, who has been working for Stelarc in Second Life as well as making her own work along the way.  Between 15 February to 12 June 2012, Pyewacket held a residency at Yoshikaze in Second Life.  During this time she has produced numerous works that are typically "Pyewacket": her virtual vision of refined graphics in familiar surroundings combined with beautifully choreographed avatar and bots, making the perceived future tangible to the wide audience almost in a manga-like manner.

11 - 17 December 2012 at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, Yoshikaze is pleased to present Pyewacket's works at HUMlab, Umeå University in Sweden.

At the opening, Pyewacket and his collaborator Jo Ellsmere will also perform an inworld-glitch-sound-performance.  You are welcome to join us at HUMlab at Umeå University or in-world at http://slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab%20II/28/71/38 from 2pm to 4pm on 11 December, 2012.

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with HUMlab.  The poster design by Carl-Erik Engqvist from HUMlab.

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett and RL HUMlab art director Carl-Erik Engqvist, Umeå University, Sweden.  For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden.

Yoshikaze blog: http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com
Yoshikaze vimeo: http://vimeo.com/yoshikaze 

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Some Photos from Fau's Exhibition

Fau Ferdinand Exhibition

 

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presents

Fau Ferdinand aka Yael Gilks

23 - 27 January 2012

@ HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: 8am - 4 pm Weekdays

Opening: 23 January Between 2pm - 4pm

Artist Talk at 2pm

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"On virtual landscapes and real feelings.

Photons, camera lens, screen, eye -  mashed then mashed again.

Are landscapes seen from afar not virtual ? I can hardly see a thing but colour anyway, unless it’s on a screen near me soon.

The shrinking field of view, that particular scene  affects me - that  bird I couldn’t save. The cat too fast and ants have spread the word. Life abounds around death.

I join in, giving up on quality  to make believe I’m really there though I was there.

Inflation and deflation of an avatar that was death before processing. Death gets pregnant by Deformation.

The avatar, as the persona, is a battlefield.

I’m what eats me.

Distress grabbed." 

(Fau Ferdinand)

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Fau Ferdinand, a.k.a. Yael Gilks, is an established Second Life performance artist, who has produced memorable works since her entry into SL in 2004.  Her work manifests metamorphosis of life, often dealing with the theme of life and death,  from one state of existence to another,  in a manner almost expressed as surreal.  Dissolving in fluidity, her subjects enter her world through the dreamscape which surrounds her Self.

During her residency at Yoshikaze, she has taken a step into a new direction, in which video/machinima proceeds not only as a mere documentation of her virtual performance but as a hybrid medium of the virtual and videoart for which she expands her theme as the end result.

Between 23 - 27 January 2012 at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, Yoshikaze is pleased to present her first independent videowork "Bird Funeral" which she has completed during her Yoshikaze residency.  In addition the exhibition offers an opportunity to experience two additional derivative videoworks, into which "Bird Funeral" with the elements from the virtual world has metamorphosed itself through the techniques of moving image.

Currently Fau Ferdinand/Yael Gilks is a co-director and co-curator of SL sim Odyssey.  Her work "Bird Funeral" completed at Yoshikaze is online at http://vimeo.com/32119484.  The remains of "Bird Funeral" can be experienced inworld at Yoshikaze residency spot: http://www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/84/216/701.

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with HUMlab.  The poster design by Beatrice Rosberg at HUMlab.

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches.  For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden.

Yoshikaze blog: http://yoshikaze.blogspot.com
Yoshikaze vimeo: http://vimeo.com/yoshikaze

Katerina Karoussos' NOETIC GRACE - FROM IMAGE TO IMAGO Exhibition

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presents

NOETIC GRACE - FROM IMAGE TO IMAGO by Katerina Karoussos

5-9 September 2011

@ Umeå University, Sweden

Opening Hours: 8am-4pm Weekdays

Opening: 5 September Between 2pm-4pm

Artist Talk at the Opening via Video Skype at 2pm

NOETIC GRACE - FROM IMAGE TO IMAGO "regards the process of 'virtual vision' such as St. John of Damascus yielded, back in the 7th century. It refers to a course of action that disregards the conventional way of viewing as it entertains the idea of intellectual vision which is beyond any sensory origin. The intellectual eye gazes without any supporting images to the image itself as an endoscopic procedure. In this context the noetic awareness faces all of what can be seen and unseen as epiphanies." (Katerina Karoussos)

Katerina Karoussos' exploration into our noetic awareness in the virtual as our Yoshikaze artist between 20 May and 5 August this year has led her to step-by-step inquiries into "imago" of the virtual.  Her residency has been a unique journey, for which her objective from the start was rather to conduct an in-depth examination of virtual vision than to produce work of art.  With the concept of image as an apparition of our mind, her voyage consisted of a series of experimentations to better apprehend our new state, each unfolding a subtle rupture of our auto-responses from the reminiscent unconsciously employed.  The process of her exploration has been thoroughly documented on our blog and in a print-on-demand book from Lulu (www.lulu.com/spotlight/kkaroussosatgmaildotcom). 

Between 5-9 September Yoshikaze will proudly present a new video by Katerina Karoussos at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden.  This video puts together her observations in Second Life during her Yoshikaze residency as a singular work of art, and exposes the dimension of her philosophical concern by revealing her course of contemplation over our noesis on time, space, physical entities, natural phenomena, and body.  The exhibition will be combined with her presentation at HUMlab at 2 pm on 5 September.

Katerina Karoussos is an artist and researcher. Her research is based on the convergence of old and new media and especially between Byzantine and new media visual practices. From 1994 to 2003 she was the director and a co-founder of the Hellenic Center of Fine & Applied Arts. From 2004 since 2010 she was working at The Athens School of Fine Arts as a free lancer at the Fresco studio. She holds a Master of Arts from Middlesex University in Art & Technology Interdisciplinary Methods. From 2009, Karoussos is a member of Planetary Collegium (CAiiA) as a PhD Candidate under the supervision of Pr. Roy Ascott. She has participated in many international conferences (ISEA, Aber, Dimea, Consciousness Reframes Series etc).  Apart from her work as a Byzantine mural painter at Orthodox churches her work has been exhibited in various international media exhibitions (Athens, Japan, Madrid, New York, Frankfurt, Montenegro, Cuba etc).

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency (www.slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351) is a Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with SL HUMlab sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden. As part of HUMlab, its 3264 sqm land in Second Life supports SL artists in their pursuit of virtual art practices and researches.  For inquiries, please contact: goodwind.seiling@gmail.com.

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with Didge Burroughs/James Barrett at HUMlab.  The poster designed by Carl-Erik Engqvist at HUMlab.

Yoshikaze is funded and hosted by HUMlab, Umeå University.

Interview with Selavy Oh on CONSTRUCT

 

At the opening of the RL exhibition of CONSTRUCT (11-18 May, HUMlab, Umeå Univeristy), Selavy Oh gave an artist-talk via Second Life, moderated by James Barrett at HUMlab.  Below is the essence of her talk from the opening, with slight modifications for this web publication. The questions were prepared by Yoshikaze curator Sachiko Hayashi and HUMlab sim manager James Barrett.

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Jim: Would you mind beginning by introducing yourself Selavy and telling us about who/what you are and what/how you do?

Selavy: Selavy Oh has been created as an avatar in the virtual world of Second Life in 2007. She started in the same year with her first art project in Second Life. Selavy thus acts as something between a pseudonym and a representation of her creator. You can think of her as impersonating specific aspects, like a novelist may choose a pseudonym, not to hide behind it, but to express different aspects of authorship. In this sense, talking about “Selavy” and “me” is most of the times synonymous, but sometimes useful to distinguish not only between the avatar and the person, but also between the different facets of identity.

Jim: The diary-form of the construction seems to be intrinsic to CONSTRUCT. Could you explain something of how the work could be seen to function as a diary?

Selavy: What happens when you write in a diary? Of course, some people write down “got up at 7am, drank a coffee, had lunch with Jim, went to bed early”, but that’s not the type of diary I’m referring to. It is rather the idea of keeping a record of selected thoughts, feelings, moods, ideas, etc. The important part is, of course, that you do that regularly. And that is exactly what I did in CONSTRUCT: I added one room each day. Every one of the 75 days of the residency has its own room, often relating to the topic of the residency itself, a time capsule of ideas, artifacts, or reference to other work.
If you read a diary, you may get an idea about the writer and her life. If you visit CONSTRUCT, you may get an idea about Selavy Oh and her residency.

Jim: There are bots in the work and this is the first time we have worked with bots in the Yoshikaze Residency Program here at HUMlab.  Could you explain something of the bots and what they do in CONSTRUCT?

Selavy: Bots are avatars, which are controlled solely by software, that is, there’s no person behind. But since they look exactly the same as an avatar with a person behind, they are an extremely interesting aspect of virtual worlds. The bots in CONSTRUCT are all called Selavy Oh, they look like Selavy Oh, but they are not, let’s say, engaging you in a conversation. Nonetheless, they are interacting with the visitor in a way: the visitor can sit inside the same day together with the Selavy-bot and perform the same movements. So, on one level of explanation, the bots are actors or dancers playing the role of the artist and performing a simple choreography, which is connected to that day.

Jim: I wonder if you could say something just to introduce the transformation/exchange of the rooms and temporal transparency of the outer shells (walls) in CONSTRUCT?  How are they triggered, for example? What are the emerging patterns? Where does the material come from as I noticed very specific references to avatars when they enter the space?

Selavy: The cubic rooms, or days as I prefer to call them, have been set up one after the other just as you would when writing a diary. But the linear structure of a written diary doesn’t, except trivially as a line, translate to a spatial structure. In space, each day, i.e., each cube can have six neighbors instead of just the usual two, the before and the day after. That means that the order of days becomes somewhat arbitrary. You can start shuffling them around and permute them. There are several ways to do that, but I chose a simple one: from time to time, two days randomly exchange their positions. Thus, after a certain time, the whole structure will be different, even though its overall shape remains the same. Since each day has at least an entry and an exit - two walls are missing – the paths you can take within the structure will be different. There are even days that are inaccessible at a given moment, but maybe tomorrow they will be part of an open room. The visitor can also trigger exchanges or transformations: two of the days change position when the visitor enters, there’s a day that will cause all walls, also those of other days, to become transparent, another one is encaging the whole structure in a huge sphere, yet another one performs a Google search for the name of the avatar, etc. The visitor changes the installation by being present and, in some cases, this change is not just temporary, but affects the future of the installation.

Jim: Developing further the idea of interactivity, could you give us some of the details concerning the interactivity of CONSTRUCT- especially the chairs which automatically change the camera view of the avatars who are seated?

Selavy: Two days contain chairs on which a visitor can seat her avatar. Upon sitting, the camera, i.e., the viewpoint of the visitor, will be taken over by the script attached to the chair and will temporarily loose control of the avatar and the user interface. The scripted camera movement takes you through all the days, but unlike a video loop it has random elements and is never completely the same.
While interactivity usually means participation of the visitor - you can click on objects to trigger an event, can bump into things and make them break, etc. – I use the chairs to temporarily take away that participatory aspect. Suddenly, the visitor is sitting again in front of the computer screen watching a moving scene instead of embodying her avatar and being inside the virtual installation.

Jim: Your work requires the visitor to have some SL skills in relation to the space where the work is operating, but at the same time you present videos of the actions of CONSTRUCT. For me this is very interesting in the sense of where the work is located. Is it a virtual work, and the videos are documents of that work, or are they each an extension of each other? If one is part of the other then I wonder about the avatar as viewer/participant. Do avatars have art also? Or are they our keys to access the work, as they cannot share in the videos?

Selavy: For me the virtual world is a medium, just like a canvas. The work is realized using the virtual world. The videos are not documents of the work, but an extension in a different medium; they are part of the work. Documenting a virtual installation such as CONSTRUCT with screenshots or video is impossible, anyway, because the participatory aspect cannot adequately be captured. Of course, just as a visitor of the gallery space needs the physical skills (and make the effort) to leave home and walk into the gallery, just as the visitor of a web site needs to know how to navigate through the pages, the SL visitor needs some basic skills to navigate a virtual space. In this case, that means also you need to know how to fly or teleport, because CONSTRUCT is not a physical space with stairs and elevators and so on, just like a web site is not a book. Thus, as a visitor of the HUMLab gallery space, you experience part of the work. As a visitor in Second Life, you experience another part. The work as such has no single location: it is distributed.

Jim: The permutations of CONSTRUCT are very interesting, you have already stated that permutation “is indeed one of the recurring themes in the installation. There are several days with permutations such as the CONSTRUCT letters, the 10 cubes inside a day, etc. the top and the bottom of the whole thing are also permuting, the chair sequence permutes days and their descriptions, the days permute, - and in the video, which takes up this theme, we have the permutations again.” Could you elaborate further on the permutations? I am particularly interested in if you attach meaning to them or if you expect the audience of the piece to do so?

Selavy: The permutation as a central motif in this work appears already in the first announcement, the little text on the Yoshikaze blog. And of course the visitor is welcome to attach a meaning to the permutations. Maybe the accidental neighborhood of temporally distant days evokes a feeling, a thought, a new association. The visitor is a participant; the permutations provide freedom of interpretation. As mentioned above, the days are created like entries in a diary, but then transferred into a three-dimensional structure like a stack of boxes. But is that initial order the most meaningful? Was it meaningful at all except for its occurrence in time? Instead of understanding the diary as a storyline, we can read it differently. The nine letters, which may by chance again form the word CONSTRUCT at some moment, certainly do have a preferred order. But what if we try to imagine all the possible configurations of days, to look at them at once, instead of looking for the one, which maybe doesn’t happen or which we just missed?

Jim: As you say the permutations are days, and I notice in the exhibition space, each day is represented or replaced by a code sequence. It is as if time and space have joined in action. Could you comment on this?

Selavy: As I mentioned above, time and space are indeed in a way equated in CONSTRUCT. The code – one page of code per day – is the instruction for what happens in each of the rooms, each day. Some days need lots of code. Others do not require specific code, because they contain only a static texture or a specific shape. You can see the code as a reduced form of the work – the code as concept.

Jim: What is the future of CONSTRUCT?

Selavy: CONSTRUCT will continue to change. With 75 cubes and one exchange per minute, the chance that you see the same configuration again until the end of the solar system is almost zero. CONSTRUCT will be transferred to one of the Soup Sims owned by Mab MacMoragh. Thanks, Mab!

Selavy Oh's CONSTRUCT Exhibition

Yoshikaze "Up-In-The-Air" Second Life Residency presents 
CONSTRUCT by Selavy Oh

11 - 18 May 2011
@ Humlab, Umeå University, Sweden
Opening Hours: 8am - 4pm Weekdays

Opening: 11 May between 1:30pm - 4pm
Artist-Talk at the Opening via Second Life at 2pm

SL Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ HUMlab/95/215/351

"CONSTRUCT is a 75-day project performed during Selavy Oh's residency at Yoshikaze/HUMLAB. Selavy Oh was present every day adding one cube representing one day to the installation. The resulting installation built of 75 cubes, most of them reacting in various ways to the presence of visitors, can be conceived as collection of dynamic time capsules, a spatial blog or diary, that transforms time to space and thus breaks up the inevitable causality of its development by folding it to a multidimensional ensemble allowing for novel relations between its constituents. Moreover, the single days continuously exchange their positions, resulting in an everchanging labyrinth of cubes - some days even becoming inaccessible - which allows the visitor to discover new connections and associations that go beyond formal or semantic similarity." (Selavy Oh)

For the HUMlab RL exhibition, Selavy Oh adds another dimension to her inworld installation by exposing codes she has employed for the construction of her work.  By letting a code represent each day of her residency in the same manner as her inworld cubes, Selavy Oh's CONSTRUCT conceives a highly conceptual artwork, in which multiple representations can be cross-referenced and examined via a thread of a day, revealing creative process of interconnections, transformations and even contrasts between virtual construction, subjectivity and the behind-the-scene hardcore coding.

Mab Macmoragh from Soup/Lovers Lane Studio has kindly contributed with a 23-minute-long beautifully edited machinima of CONSTRUCT to the RL HUMlab exhibition. Mab Macmoragh's thirty-seven "mini" machinimas, each depicting various scenes from Selavy Oh's inworld installation, are online and can be viewed at SL: Selavy Oh's construct:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mabmacmoragh/sets/72157626065546768

Curated by Goodwind Seiling/Sachiko Hayashi in collaboration with Didge Burroughs/James Barrett at HUMlab.  The image above is part of the original exhibition poster designed by Carl-Erik Engqvist at HUMlab.

Some Photos from Garrett Lynch's RL Humlab Show & Mixed Reality Performance

On 8th February Yoshikaze and HUMlab opened Garrett Lynch exhibition at HUMlab's RL show space at Umeå University, Sweden. During the opening, Garrett, present from Cadiff, Wales, performed a mixed reality audio-visual performance with SL audience.  We even had some employees from Umå Municipality drop by to experience his work during the performance.  The exhibition, which shows Garrett's work completed during his two months' residency at Yoshikaze in Second Life, runs between 8 - 14 February, and shows SL art of the new generation.

The Green Stage

The final work created for the Yoshikaze Residency involves a live mixed reality performance before an audience in Second Life, in Umeå Sweden and streamed on the web.

An enclosed stage was constructed for the performance. This was populated with a set consisting of a green house, silhouettes of 'real' people and props of reclaimed and reworked Second Life marketplace items (image top). Behind the house through the trees a live vista of a mountain range (the Rockies) can be seen. Next to the house is a floating Second Life client window.



During the performance, props within the space and client windows which appear and float through the space are timed to change colour periodically (images above). My representations movements and direction of gaze is choreographed by a controller software external to Second Life and it is this gaze that is broadcast live to the Second Life client window. The audience simultaneously see the performers representation and through its point of view as my representation moves through the space panning, tilting and zooming.

The live broadcast however is manipulated. Green within the imagery has been keyed out and replaced by a video of the artist from the 'real' world (images below). As my representation moves around the space, my photographic representation moves around its surfaces as they change to green, flattening the 'virtual' world, looking through its very window into another and breaking its stylised illusion. Sound heard is the artists heart beat from an ultrasound monitor reworked in a number of ways. Image and sound links the constructed space to the artist.



While the space of the performance as a whole exists as a combination of 'real' place, constructed 'virtual' representations of place(s) and physical personal data directly experienced by all present, the client window displays a unique vision of a multi-layered hybrid space, an inner 'virtual' world replete with representations, seen only first hand by my representation.