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)
