Monday 28 July 2008

Wellington Railway Station simulacrum 6

6 comments:

Wild Swimming Heart said...

I selected this image for its coverage of in-life dance movement, the sense of scale differences between the avatars(characters) and the props with which I am working and to highlight the contrast between Real and Second Life when working with simulacra in an imperfect interface: In world, I have ambient sounds playing, of train hiss, people talking and the echoing sounds of walking, muted traffic noise. These are provided by almost invisible sound balls placed on the floor. I work through proximity so that the sounds change when you leave one area and move on to the next. Obviously, none of this is audible on my blog - at this stage. I will endeavour to provide a sample that can be activated here.

Anonymous said...

for me this glimpse of 2nd life makes the strangers strange-er even than they were... & adds more echo to the space of the hall

Wild Swimming Heart said...

Thanks for the post Sylvie. I agree with your comments and my intention here is to try to create a shifting montage of feeling and half-noticed movement. I have a way to go yet but it is a start. It is definitely a process of evolving possibilities. With fragments of sound now added to the space, the acoustical signature is subtly establishing itself.

Wild Swimming Heart said...

The presence of avatars dancing in the space is difficult to capture in stills - indeed, harder I believe than in Real Life due to the very linear visual properties of the avatars. It is more difficult for the eye to accomodate because the movement blurs, when they occur, are still quite tightly defined. The character still looks cartoon-like.

I have been researching for some time now in SL and still it seems that a semblance of Contact Dance qualities in the movement modes is as yet, too demanding to manage and of course, any movement needs to be scripted and then looped so improvisation is still out there, waiting to happen. I contracted an SL design/animator to make me a rolling animation and this was too difficult 6 months ago. However, with 14 million plus people in SL now, the possibilities are endless and these issues may be able to be addressed at any time. Meanwhile I plan to go ahead with the 'Experimental dance' animation that Fiona and I are using, which is closer to a contemporary framework than most other dance animations which tend toward waltz, erotic, jazz, etc ... middle ground movement. I am switching to a faster server next week and this should make my control of movement and camera in SL much better, so I may be able to develop compensatory camera work for the lack in the actual movement of the avatars.

Leelee said...

This still of the work you're doing with second life fascinates me. The contrast between the 'so called' 'real' imagery in 'mirror image' like reflections on the walls, in contrast to the surreal quality of the avatars in second life intrigued me. Between this and the changes in scale of the 'photographic style' reflected imagery compared with the scale of the virtual characters, in this 'non space' or shall I say the virtual 'non space' creates a whole different way of thinking around the 'non space' subject. Although it's a work in progress I love what you are doing so far.

Wild Swimming Heart said...

Hi leelee, (that sounds like a Second Life name...) Thanks for your response! Yes, I am continually endeavouring to offset, juxtapose, mirror and reflect the presence of the real and so-called virtual. When I bring in my Real Life videos I am hoping that the subtle alignments and tensions which currently exist in quite a passive way will be stimulated further. We shall see - I welcome your comments after this has been recorded. My aim is to film in Second Life, the in-life projection of my Real Life footage and then to bring that back into Real Life, so I can post that on this blog. That way people do not need to be in-life (although it is better to be) to attain a certain sense of the dynamic I am attempting to achieve. I will be moving the various components and elements of my station compositions around continually so look out for more posts with this in mind. This work is very much an ongoing enquiry - there may never be a fixed resolution compositionally. In the same way, if Real Life is a simulacrum of Second Life (rather than the expected reversal) then my work in the real station will surely echo this non-static, ' ... non-present potential to vary ...' Massumi B. 2002. Parables for the Virtual - Movement, Affect, Sensation, Duke University Press, Durham and London