Thursday, May 31, 2012

the santa fe international new media festival


I have the great pleasure to announce that I will be one of the artists showing at currents 2012. Please read on...

currents 2012, Santa Fe's annual citywide event, will feature the latest developments in the New Media Arts by over 80 artists from throughout the United States and around the world.

Among installations made of light, the virtual world of Second Life will also be shown at the new media festival. Four artists from our virtual world (Bryn Oh, Artistide Despres, Tyrehl Byk, and yours truly Haveit Neox) will exhibit on the sims they have developed by way of a computer monitor set up at the installation in Santa Fe. Plans are to project this onto a ten foot wall. Wish I could travel there to see SL on such a large scale!
   
In December, I was invited to participate in currents 2012 after one of the curators saw my exhibit called Second Libations. I have preserved some of the elements from Libations, but furthered it into quite another concept for the upcoming festival, like a modern civilization resting upon the ruins of its past.

My contribution is called “Stirring the Dreams” a full sim installation on the sim of Sparquerry. Tomorrow is June 1, which gives me 22 days to finish up before opening day. This is the exciting part of the installation process where I begin to see a coherency in the works as I fill the spaces. I will be updating this page as new developments are readied.

The story:

STIRRING THE DREAMS

     Our nights are filled with dreams - good and bad ones. But a nightmare that persists over months or years may leave a dreamer feeling helpless to escape it. Haunting dreams set the stage for this exhibit at the Sparquerry sim, in the virtual world of Second Life. The scenario takes place in a factory-like structure and I try to match the somber atmosphere of nocturnal disturbances in this artwork. Second Life, this vast 3D computer world where I’ve built my own little corner, is a valuable tool for constructing a three dimensional environment. In such a format, I stir in a new element of light and hope. Now with an equatorial jungle outside the factory walls, and coiffed with a perched ship amid its canopy, the visitor may travel beyond the original dark space into more optimistic outcomes. Experiences and the people we encounter have an influence on our dreams. Therefore, inside the front entrance of the factory, I have installed some poetic works written by my friends in Second Life. Arranged like a Cabinet of Curiosities, they are a collection of pieces whose creators weave a common path, thus keeping my own display company. As a dreamscape is not easily navigated, the visitor may also take a little time before finding the verdant world just outside.



Surfacing above the nightmares, the visitor emerges into a jungle. The factory temple is to the right, and the ship perched among the trees is to the left in the above photo.






The drowned city



Court of Libations




The photo above is a detail from a green dream. It was shot using sunset wind setting.




This section of my installation is near the landing point. From this
area under the sea, visitors will climb up to land then onto a stairway
leading to the sky... if they can find it!



CURRENTS 2012 opens June 22, 2012. The schedule of events and full list of artists are listed on the currents website. Please visit them HERE.



LANDING POINT: Click here to transport.


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Saturday, May 26, 2012

PRIM ARMATURE LANGUAGE


PRIM ARMATURE LANGUAGE

     Over the past couple of months, when I have spare time, I have been developing this abstracted language of prims for my city of ACCentaury. Look at the banner that tops my blog page, and you see its precursor. That graphic prim language used shapes in a concrete fashion. In the current system I’m inventing, you won’t actually see any prims, but you will know they are there! It will become clear as you read this entry. 
     My urban center employs prims not only for building structures, but three among their shapes also serve as an armature for the language. They are the SPHERE, the PYRAMID, and the TORUS. I chose each shape for its unique features. A sphere has no specific beginning or end, as it is perfect roundness. It rolls, spins, turns. The pyramid is composed of planes and points, giving angularity and sharp edges. It sits with stability. The torus weaves in and out of itself like a circulatory system, a pathway ripe to be journeyed within.
     I apply these three building blocks into the English language. But how is that done? The first order of business is to determine which qualities of the shapes listed above apply to the sentence you wish to translate. When the shapes are chosen and set in position to support your sentence, it is called an armature. Here’s an example, first shown in conventional English:




1.       The sim crashed when the count exceeded 45 avatar visitors.

     In this sentence, I might represent the armature as a sphere atop a pyramid. The sphere cannot balance on such a small point at the top of the pyramid, and would roll off. (This assumes of course, that the prims are always physical, in deference to gravity in the Real World). This instability of how one prim interacts with another shows an abstract correlation to the sim which cannot balance a count of 45 or more avatars. At this point, I will insert the first principle of Prim Armature: Prims always come in pairs. They show an interaction. (The only time you don’t use more than one prim is when the pair consists of the same prim, such as two spheres, two tori, or two pyramids. In this case, it’s considered that the single prim is doubled. This language economy saves space and time). Principle two, is that prim armatures are only used when they have cause to be ‘on stage’. A paragraph is usually delineated by the development of a theme, and so the frequency of using the prim armature approximates this ratio, and in so doing, usually only needs to center on the one basic theme for all the sentences in each paragraph. In other words, an armature is typically only used once per paragraph.

ATTRIBUTES of the three prims.

     Inserting a prim armature into a given sentence requires that the writer or speaker assesses the nature of the sentence. Is the feeling one of balance, growth, instability, nurturing, etc? Below are the prims with a brief sampling of their possible attributes. Remember, when you combine them into pairs, they will further hone the abstract quality you wish to convey.

SPHERE:  round, planet, roll, wheels, turn, etc.
PYRAMID: point, blade, slice, stand, cut, plain, field, etc.
TORUS: tube, circulate, journey, flow, system, etc.

SETTING UP the pairs.

     As mentioned above, regarding my interpretation, I chose to place a sphere onto a pyramid where gravity will cause it to roll off. This is the first stage in bringing the armature into the sentence. Find words that fulfill the attributes of the prims you will use (I gave a couple examples in the paragraph above). You will be marrying your appropriate attributes to the original words of the sentence you are translating. Let’s look at it again:

1.       The sim crashed when the count exceeded 45 avatar visitors.

     I’m going to choose the SIM and the VISITORS as my key words of the sentence. I could just as easily have chosen CRASH and COUNT, so it is highly subjective with how you feel on any given day. Today, I gravitate to the sim and visitors, so I’ll demonstrate that version. Now that I have my vocabulary pair selected, I must match them with the attribute vocabulary I wish to assign from their armature prims. SIM is paired with the first prim which is the pyramid. VISITORS is paired with the second prim, which is the sphere that will roll off. My choice for SIM’s partner might be “field” because a sim is a span of land, and for VISITOR, I might choose “turn” because the sphere is readying itself to fall.

So far, this will give us something to work with: The sim + field crashed when the count exceeded 45 avatar visitors + turn.

That’s making progress. Now let’s position them.


POSITION.

     There are only two positions. Horizontal (in a line), and vertical (stacked). I intend to use verticality to show that the sphere is instable on the pyramid’s tip. Grammatically speaking, this is demonstrated in a practical manner. To make something vertical, you add vocabulary that will indicate an upward or downward concept. To make something horizontal, you think in terms of lining up. Here are a few examples:

HORIZONTAL: along, line up, lean against, propel, forward, etc.
VERTICAL: atop, over, balance, up, climb, stack, topple, etc.

     Being that our sample is vertical, I’ll insert “topple”. Position needs to match both the dynamics of the armature prims, as well as the original sentence vocabulary.

NOTE: The default position is horizontal. If you do not insert any qualifier into a sentence, it will be understood as being horizontal.

COMPOSITION

     The last step is fitting the armature prims with the original English sentence in a way that preserves the original sentence, but with an armature inserted. The grammar should also be as close to conventional English as possible. You may wish the sentence to signal itself with just enough quirk so that the listener or reader is aware they are presently facing an armature.
     There is more than one way you can assemble the parts, but here’s what I composed:

1.       The sim crashed when the count exceeded 45 avatar visitors.

     Now I’ll support the original English sentence with the new armature: (+ field, topple, turn). This gives:

“The sim field crashed when the toppled count exceeded the turn of 45 avatar visitors”.


Here's another example sentence:

 2. The birds are flying high in the sky.


I'm choosing two tori and aligning them horizontally to represent a flock of birds in the sky. The torus gives a sense of movement in the context of a path, such as the birds' flight could be described. Since I am doubling up the tori, I only need to refer to it once as described in the economic rule I mentioned earlier. Because a horizontal format is chosen for this sentence, I also can choose to dismiss position, since it is automatically understood by the rule of default: If no position is added to the armature, then it is horizontal by default. So this sentence is really easy to compose. Which word, then, stands out most prominently? This is a sentence about birds, so we already know that. And the word sky is almost unnecessary, because we can assume that's where birds fly naturally. So the most prominent word here, in my opinion, is 'high'. This is in contrast to birds that fly low, a more common sight in my neighborhood. My very simple armature then is condensed into one torus that is affixed to the adjective 'high'. I assigned the circulatory attribute of 'orbit' from the torus. Adding the armature into the original English sentence now yields:

"The birds are flying orbit high in the sky".

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a slice of a fun journey stacked with this! 

- Haveit

May 26, 2012


Monday, May 14, 2012

"A RUSTED DEVELOPMENT"


“A RUSTED DEVELOPMENT”
On view, May and June 2012
Click HERE to transport to the exhibit.


Photo courtesy of Kareena Panthar. 2012
Click on this photo to enlarge it, you'll be glad you did.


“A Rusted Development”, an exhibit curated by Rowan Derryth is now open to the public until the end of June, 2012. Rowan had approached me two months ago with an invitation that knocked my socks off. She had a vision for a full sim exhibit for which she wanted me to build the whole city, into which a dozen other artists would populate the spaces with their masterworks. In her own words: “I envisioned an installation where there exists a main build –a ‘development’ – that has fallen into ruin. It is subsequently rescued and repopulated by a selection of artists whose work loosely embraces similar themes.” For this, I needed a story, and wrote a brief history for the Rusted Development which is contained in the catalog which you will be able to read online by clicking here.



Beautifully crafted film by Chic Aeon about "A Rusted Development"




When Rowan first contacted me about her plans, and started mentioning names of well-known and extremely talented artists who she planned to invite to the project (and in fact she did achieve that goal), the realization hit me that I was entering a realm of collaboration for which I had no previous experience, like walking into a fairy tale, and so prepared myself for this most exceptional ride. I built the city over a month’s time, but the magic which is essential in every fairy tale, didn’t start to flicker until the first artists arrived on the scene, rezzing their imaginations into the rusted shell. As the city planner, I stood back to observe this transformation in amazement. Everyone knew what to do, and Rowan herself kept on top of things, working with all of us when she had suggestions, or alterations to discuss. And she is a most compassionate conductor, giving extraordinary freedom of expressive rights to the participants.

Here are the names of the artists who made A Rusted Development possible. I wrote their names on little pieces of paper, scrambled them up, then stacked them up with eyes closed so the order of names below are totally random:


Stephen Venkman
PJ Trenton
Rose Borchovski
Ziki Questi
Trill Zapatero
Bryn Oh
Scottius Polke
Eliza Weirwight
Artistide Despres
Claudia222 Jewell
Blue Tsuki

Please make sure to click for the catalog. Rowan Derryth and PJ Trenton collaborated their excellent writing and photography skills to produce a wonderful tour of the project for you.
Hope you enjoy the exhibit, it is multi leveled from sea to sky within the dome that covers the city. It is a good idea to walk much of the time, because some of the artists have triggers that initiate only when your avatar approaches them.

ABOUT THE HEADER PHOTOGRAPH:
Yesterday, I received a very encouraging and congratulatory IM from Kareena Panthar. She sent me the photo above as a gift, telling me how much she appreciated the exhibit. I wanted very much to be able to share this fine artistic interpretation of the sim with visitors to my blog. Kareena graciously gave me permission to post it. 

UPDATE:
Larkworthy Antfarm contacted me with information about her new film "PANOPTICON" of which some scenes from A Rusted Development are included. Please watch this highly energetic film below:





UPDATE: NicoleX Moonwall has just made these 5 shorts which she filmed at the installation. They are very short, very very short, but a most interesting perspective Nicole chooses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stao-H8LFcw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_o4NmGMZ_Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCC-7SngLMk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA9vbu9L3So

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-B-WwkoS-E

NicoleX has also made another 4 min film. This is quite an exotic ride into the virtual world, into a drawn world:









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