encounterBLOG // 23 November, Friday

2,5 degrees, grey skies, dry, occasional light raindrops.

there is a rehearsal this afternoon, Glow is getting ready for its premiere tonight. as there are two dancers who each perform the solo, both of them will rehearse the full piece with the motion tracking system. the two dancers are Kristy Ayre and Sara Black.

glow, chunky move

the festival has been a remarkable series of re-locations, repositionings.

re-locating ideas of interactivity and choreography, visual art (light, spatial composition, use of color, abstraction) and its relationship to the moving image, real-time sound composition and granular synthesis, other forms of digital decomposition (the Mulleras Details) and recomposition, networked performance and tactical media, and of course an on-going investigation of the role of physical action, physical presence in digital art, sensorial (synaesthetic) experience, shared and collaborative play (multi-player online composition).

(fly on the screen: a nostalgic image from the colonial imagination, subtropical heat, high humidity, flies, and white noise of course, in the dark ground)

and life in Second Life was briefly touched, explored, celebrated.

the climate in Second life is not known, but Magruder has suggested that Second Life simulates the times of day and night, the changes of the season.  there are flies in the air in Second Life, and worms in the ground, occasionally  one sees wolves in the distant steppe.

here is the Appia sun, as imagined in his drawings and sketches. this was the sun we watched last saturday in Magruder’s “Rhythmic Spaces” environment, except that the sun in Second Life began to change, to oscillate and vibrate, it was a sun that seemed affected by unknown digital tropical pressures…

perhaps i need to spend some more time talking about SL, after reading, last night, that the folks on the soft-skinned-space maillist (EMPYRE) are discussing the phenomenon of “avatar nostalgia” in the late hours of the night. one concern in this discussion is the function of memory and of remembering in the digtal technosphere, the creation of event-archives. but in regard to “avatar nostalgia” – i wonder whether this is a reference to the memory of avatars? one would think that avatars don’t really have a memory — but can we be sure? robots and other intelligent agents have memory, so why not avatars, and the wind dancer in SL, surely, will remember the sunset in “Rhythmic Spaces?”

what do you think is avatar nostalgia?

johannes birringer

Tags: 2007, CYNETart, cynetart2007, encounterBLOG, review