Next Thursday I’ll be presenting at the Web Standards Group in Sydney with a talk called ‘Thinking Outside the Web: How the Entertainment Industry is Integrating All Media and Why’.
Thursday 2nd August @ 7pm
Australian Museum
6 College Street Sydney
(opposite Hyde Park)
Museum Theatre
Here is a listing of the previous speakers. Hope to see some of you there!
Last Sunday I presented at the Revelations Film Festival in Perth on Second Life art in the panel: ‘Second Life & Beyond: Virtual Communities and Making Media in a Digital World’.  During that presentation I mentioned a dance film, Thursday’s Fictions, that will be broadcast on the ABC this Sunday @ 3pm, which will be followed by a Q&A in Second Life and the opportunity to experience the Second Life version of the storyworld. This Sunday I’ll be moderating the Q&A panel @ ABC Island.
The work, Thursday’s Fictions, began as a multimedia stage production in 1995 (which was also on radio), became a poetry book (which became the primary text in this multi-platform work), recently became a dance film and has just had a Second Life rendition created. I’ve been speaking to Richard James Allen for a while about the development of this project and his creative approach is quite interesting. Although each iteration is more an adaptation than a continuation of a narrative, it is interesting to see a project that was conceived to be expressed across a number of artistic forms from the beginning. I don’t know how much we’ll get to talk about this on Sunday, but for those interested you can join us inworld (at ABC Island Ampitheatre) at 3pm EST, watch it being streamed live or view it afterwards at SLCN.tv.
Thursday’s Fictions in Second Life Credits:
Director: Richard James Allen
Writers/Producers: Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman
Second Life Producer and Designer: Gary Hayes
Conceptual Artist: Kate E. Wills
Story Consultant: Jackie Turnure
A Physical TV Company Production
[and Tony Walsh was the guardian mentor of this project when it was developed at LAMP]
Sorry about the radio silence here. I’ll be back in cyberspace very soon. (big smiley). In the meantime, here is a discussion I’ll be participating in at empyre next month, hope you join in:Â
Join us at -empyre- in August 2007 for: *The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Being in Second Life* when hostess Melinda Rackham is joined by special guests: Annabeth Robinson, Patrick Lichty, Stephan Doesinger, Dr Ricardo Peach, Christy Dena, Kathy Cleland, Adam Nash and Dr Fabio Zambetta.
Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse reigns supreme. One of it’s current incarnations- the multi-user virtual universe Second Life claims a population of 8 million avatars. SL is embraced by many as an innovative and safe fantasy scape – enabling play, creativity, education, companionship, love and lust. It is reviled by some as a cesspit of antisocial isolationist addictive behavior; and SL is dismissed by others as simply an over-inflated hype driven commercial venture expounding the values of property acquisition and commodity exchange. Whatever your perspective, SL is serious business with an exchange rate which fluctuates against the $US and an estimated Second Life avatar electricity consumption equivalent to the average citizen of Brazil. In this seemingly infinitely expandable universe aesthetic endeavors, creative constructions and artistic performances are enacted daily.
—> Annabeth Robinson (UK) is a Second Life Artist focusing on interactive and sound driven projects, Metaverse consultant and Sim builder, Lecturer – Design for Digital Media at Leeds College of Art and Design. aka AngryBeth Shortbread http://www.annamorphic.co.uk/
—> Patrick Lichty (US) is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer,independent curator, co-founder of the Second Life based performance art group, Second Front, animator for the The Yes Men, and Executive Editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. http://www.voyd.com/voyd/
—> Stephan Doesinger (Austria) is a conceptual artist and architect. His second book “Learning from Sim City,” will be published in September. He initiated Bastard Spaces the 1st Annual Architecture and Design Competition in SL to be announced at Ars Elctronica. aka Doesi Beck http://www.doesinger.com/ http://www.sl-award.com
—> Dr Ricardo Peach (AU) is the Program Manager for the Inter-Arts Office at the Australia Council for the Arts, which is funding a SL residency. Born in Volksrust, Mpumalanga in 1968, he and his family migrated to Perth, Australia in 1980. aka Ricardo Paravane http://www.ozco.gov.au/grants/grants_new_media_arts/second_life_artist_residency/
—> Christy Dena (AU) is researching changes to art and entertainment in the age of cross-media production for her PhD at the University of Sydney. Dena works as an industry strategist, mentor, educator and journalist. aka Lythe Witte https://www.christydena.com/ http://www.lythewitte.net/
—> Dr Fabio Zambetta (AU) lectures at School of Computer Science and Information Technology at RMIT University Melbourne and researcher in the area of 3D embodied conversational agents, 3D virtual environments, and interactive storytelling. aka Fabio Forcella http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~fabio/projects/
—> Kathy Cleland (AU) is a writer, curator and lecturer in the Digital Cultures Program at The University of Sydney and is currently completing her PhD investigating avatars, digital portraiture and representations of the self in virtual environments. aka Bella Bouchard http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/digitalcultures/?page=staff&id=katclela
—> Adam Nash (AU) is a media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer who works in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His work has been presented at SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. aka Adam Ramona http://yamanakanash.net/
—> Dr Melinda Rackham (AU) is the Executive Director of ANAT – Australia’s peak body for artists working with emerging technologies. Her Ph.D. explored the nature and construction of avatars and multi-user Virtual Reality Spaces. aka Marina Regina http://www.subtle.net
Join us at –empyre