Digichotomy was featured in two online publications this past week!
You can now find us at the Calit2 Life website, and at Walkingtools.net!
We’re still working on getting the word out about Digichotomy. If you’d like to feature it in your blog, please email us!
Digichotomy has been accepted to UCSD’s BEST OF ICAM 2009!
Come watch us perform at 5:00pm on Wednesday, June 10th at UCSD’s Calit2! (Or, at the same time in Second Life at Digichotomy!)
We just finished our first official performance of Digichotomy!
Here you can see the video documentation:
A lot of really interesting moments took place. People in First Life tended to associate the voices they were hearing with the performer, despite how often the Second Lifers told them that they were in other countries. Second Lifers, devoid of the ability to see the human performer, had difficulty understanding that the avatar they were speaking with was backed by a First Lifer who was both outside and mobile. Fascinating.
We’ve been testing the WiFi equipment all day. Soundiego, who normally works on professional media such as the popular TV show Veronica Mars, was so kind as to lend us some of their audio equipment! Second Life will be broadcast in style.
Here you can see a video of Atom and Angela trying to communicate with mobile Second Life:
The ideas for Digichotomy are all ironed out! Today we will begin building, coding, and testing.
Our idea has morphed considerably over time.
We’ve renamed the project “Digichotomy” to reflect the dichotomy between the real and virtual worlds (and, admittedly, to poke fun at academia’s incessant and often unnecessary usage of the word ‘dichotomy.’)
We’ve also decided that Digichotomy would function most successfully as a mobile performance piece. Walls and rooms hinder our goals of complete immersion.
We also spent some time with Micah Cardenas (Azdel Slade in SL) and her Becoming Dragon performance piece:
More information soon to come!
Here’s a picture of Angela’s husband setting her very successful live video feed on fire:
Also,
We’ve contacted Josephine Dorado via Second Life. She has done a considerable amount of performance work with Second Life, and has offered to arrange a time that we can speak. Her work is very insightful, and we’re hoping that speaking to her will help us to focus some of our ideas.
So thanks to streamguys, and their awesomely affordable streaming, we are in business.
Here you can see Angela streaming her face LIVE into Second Life, right alongside her avatar!
The foundation of Digichotomy took place via email. Angela Black had just returned from studying in Córdoba, Spain, and Atom Leonhart was currently working in Berlin, Germany.
Angela Black
10.08.08 @ 9:39pm
Here’s the rough draft of the proposal:
Bi-directional Iris
For my project I propose to create a new type of space where people can interact with the virtual world.
Using the platform of Second Life I propose to build the illusion of a vortex between the virtual reality of Second Life, and “First Life.”
The way I propose to do this is to project Second Life onto a wall so that is it life size; in this way we can observe what is going on in Second Life from a first life perspective. Inside the virtual space of Second Life there will also be a live webcam feed so that the Second Life avatars can view First Life, from the Second Life perspective. Both worlds will be able to see each other in real time. I will also employ the in game voice-chat, so that the virtual characters of Second Life, and the people in First Life, can carry on conversations with each other. Ideally, due to the scale of the projection, in both worlds it would create the sensation of doorway between the worlds.
In addition to this I will attempt to create art pieces that blend from First Life into Second Life. One way I could do this, is to create objects in Second Life, and then project those images onto 3-dimensional objects in First Life, giving the Second Life projection a 3-dimensional feel. A second way would be to create objects on the sides of the projection that I can draw into Second Life. The goal of both approaches would be to make the objects appear to pass through both worlds.
More difficult, but a possibility, would be to create an object in both the Second Life space, and the First Life space simultaneously, that could be interacted with, and would respond on either side.
Similar to the project “Hole in Space” by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, which in 1980 connected two pedestrian locations one in New York and one in Los Angeles California via life size projection and live video feed, my project aims to create a doorway between two realities life-size and in real-time.
Like “Hole in Space” this inter-dimensional portal will allow people to simply walk into and interact with both realities as they would in daily life without using the traditional mouse keyboard interface. I feel I will demystify the relationship between virtual worlds and the natural world.
The work of Jeffrey Shaw is also relevant in that he has developed innovative approaches to interacting with virtual space in works such as “Place – Ruhr.” In this work users are able to rotate projections on a large circular projection screen to explore the location of Ruhr easily from where they stand.
Too many people still view “games” such as Second Life as an escape from First Life. I feel my project will demonstrate the continuum between the two realities. Rather than opposites they are inter-related levels of the same reality.
Tools I will need:
Atom Leonhart
10.09.08 @ 5:39am
This idea is actually really cool. If I had to change something, I’d eliminate the wall. I’m thinking along the lines of a Lars Car-style helmet or something. It sort of sucks to have everyone wearing this stupid helmet, but it eliminates that physical wall barrier between your worlds.
Look into:
ARQuake
Human PacMan
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/
Augmented reality
GPS-based gaming
You probably remember most of that but hey, can’t hurt. That’s all I can think of off the top of my head… Hope it helps!
Atom Leonhart
10.09.08 @ 5:45am
oh right and that whole WHY thing UCSD loves to ask for…
If someone held a gun to my head and asked me why I did shit, I guess I’d say the purpose is due to the fact that history and technology are an ever-evolving process. Everything we make has to be pushed to its limits in every direction in hopes that one will warp off and become the new ‘norm.’ (Did Xerox have any idea what they were getting into when they built that WYSIWYG printing computer piece of crap? Idontthinkso.) Anyway, what you’re doing here with this project is taking the next step in merging our physical lives with the digital. Just as our grandparents aren’t comfortable in a world where they can’t physically hold a piece of data, our generation is reluctant to move into a reality where we can’t click and drag. But that’s the direction we’re moving in. The barrier between us and the digital (essentially, the physical computer itself) is, to be quite honest, an unnecessary middle man that’s finally being phased out.
…more to come
Angela Black
10.09.09 @ 12:30pm
The only problem I have with the helmet is I feel like it almost gives away what is going to happen, and also forces people to interact more consciously with equipment. Which is why I dug the more open space freedom, even though… walls are lame too…
…a hologram would be uber sweeter.
This is what I picture:
Person walking by: “What the fuck is this… a projection of a game? LAME”
Your avatar in SL, wearing it’s giant newb penis: “Well, you’re fat!”
Person: “How the fuck does this lame video know I’m fat??? That’s AMAZING!”
Yeah, I agree with you about how I’m trying to PUSH people away from click and drag, and I alluded to that in my proposal, but I don’t think I specifically stated that was my “goal.”
Atom Leonhart
10.10.08 @ 2:37am
Yeah. I’m not sure how to get people integrated into that space… I agree that helmets are irritating. I wish there was a more “Star Trek Holodeck” way of looking at it, you know? Essentially, we need to build The Cave… but bigger and better and more discreet.
Listen, just fill the whole room with fog, and then you can project shit onto the particles and the digital world will be everywhere. haha.
or… uhh… hmmm… or glass panels? You could have clear glass sheets everywhere, and then people could only see the digital things projected on those? (You can project light up through glass from the bottom, so it shows up on the panel.) OR you could just have one large piece of glass that acts as the wall… that way the barrier is at least transparent and in the center of the room.
or… hmm, thinking outside of the box brainstorm… we’re thinking about things we can see, things we can hear… is there a way to think beyond experiencing things that way? I dunno, Janet Cardiff comes to mind, with her walk experience things. But that required a headset…
Angela Black
10.11.08 at 11:20pm
Yesssssss, Clear glass panels…..and we could turn the projection on just in time to see their faces smash into them!
My favorite kind of interactive art.
I actually like the fog idea, if only there was a way to make everyone not suffocate?
Maybe we could like create two clear glass panels, and channel smoke/fog in-between the glass… Well, maybe that would require four to make a rectangle to channel glass through.
That makes me wonder if you can project onto heat waves, and what that would look like? Anyways…
Then it would have that gnarly Illusionist(the movie) effect.
In that case I could even re-design the Second Life atmosphere to become “otherworldly” or something like that, and not look so predictably “Second Life.”
It’d actually be really cool to make it NOT look like SL, since SL has this type of aesthetic that anyone can see coming from a MILE away. With a little effort it’s not THAT hard to hide–especially if you aren’t actually moving the view.
If I had no job and unlimited funding, I would have four projectors for four walls… and experiment with stereoscopic imaging more. Then I would need as many laptops as projectors.
…but I figure getting one side to work first would be best, and if it works it won’t be that hard to repeat it 5,000 times, and maybe even get the funding to do so.
P.S.S.
Visual Arts Dept. said they would try to get me a video streaming server (for the web feed), and also I get to take the projector for the QUARTER! woot!
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