DAY ONE

One day into the Australian Centre for Virtual Art's lab/workshop at ACMI. I'm here to meet other artists, share ideas and experience, and have a good think about what it is I do. I've only recently begun framing some of my R&D as art so a lot of the language at the workshop is unfamiliar. Fascinating to see how artists frame their work and hear how their intentions are described.

Melinda Rackham took us on a whistlestop tour through the history of virtual reality starting with The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace (1851). Other cool stops included Star Trek The Experience, complete with water and anal probing (Las Vegas Hilton), The Waiting Room (Mark Napier's virtual world available to 50 shareholders at $1000/share), Blast Theory's Kidnap (1998) and Feed (Kurt Hentschläger). Too many to list. Ars Electronica remains a great starting point.

Place, illusion, effects. Mechanised mobility. These are the hooks that we're all going to be thinking about this week

An interesting bunch of people here. I'm not going to draw any distinction between facilitators, mentors and artists. A creative bunch all in all. Impossible to sum up these folks in one liners but here's my first impressions. Kit Webster builds audio reactive installations. Adam Nash and Jon McCormick create performance-led video work using motion capture. Gillian Raymond curates virtual portrait exhibitions. Nancy Mauro-Flude combines a DIY low-res aesthetic, text and performance art. Andrew Burrell makes interactive audio and time-based installations. 

Glyph Graves uses genetic algorithms to grow plants in Second Life. Aroha Groves crafts landscapes in Second Life reflecting Aboriginal culture. Julien Stadon is working on mixed reality data transfer between online worlds. John Power creates collaborative real-time 3D art using game engines. Bong Ramillo creates open community arts projects. Kate Richards makes mixed media work using her film and TV background. Justin Clemens, Adam Nash and Christopher Dodds create participatory installations using virtual worlds. Lots of food for inspiration here.

DAY TWO

Greg More talked about offering people a space instead of destinations. He showed a rendering of two years of RMIT' student work in Second Life to create a dense sculptural image. He advocated a lighter approach to creating virtual cities, as opposed to mimicking the real world.

DAY THREE

I've been thinking about Justin Clemen's lecture from day one where he questioned why anyone would bother calling themselves an artist these days. A good question I thought. One clear benefit is community. I've been making interactive artworks for a number of years but rarely do I come into contact with other people doing the same. I'm claiming the term in 2010 as one way to keep the lines of communications open. I find it amusing how so many of the people here assume we share the same points of reference, whereas coming from a non-academic arts background there are huge gaps in my knowledge of what's been and gone, just as I'm sure there are others here that have missed potential seminal activities in their field. Why call yourself an artist? Because in an age where interpersonal real-world real-time communication has never been less in vogue, you might just pick up some new ideas from rubbing up against other peoples.

It was interesting to hear from Troy Innocent, a Melbourne-based cyberart pioneer who describes himself now as a reality newb (n00b?). Troy has been developing a rather intriguing game called Ludea in which three warring tribes struggle for terroritory using non-verbal exchanges of three styles of iconography. The kind of thing that looks very cool as an art project and sends shivers down my spine when I think about how advertising will probably work like this down the line. Troy's artistic voyage has gone from user interface design to interactive design to experience design.

The National Portrait Gallery's online manager Gillian Raymond presented the doppelganger exhibition on the Gallery's Portrait Island in Second Life. Several of the workshop participants are exhibiting there. Gillian made an interesting observation on about how the blockbuster gallery exhibition format appears to be largely as response to digi-art. In promoting the cult of the object, virtual art is effectively shut out of the old system but whether that is ultimately unhelpful remains to be seen.  I haven't spent much time in Second Life so the weekend was a good catch-up of what is achieveable. One of the doppelganger artists, Gazira Babeli, produced a work where the audience's avatar is cloned by the exhibit as s/he approaches. Apparently at least one punter was incensed enough by this 'copyright violation' enough to complain.

A few quick sessions with facilitators and a fly-through two remaining workshops. John McCormick gave a rapid fire demo of how to apply motion capture (mocap) data to a Second Life Avatar. Adam Nash hosted a session on working with sound in 3D environments. And then, the weekend was over for me, having to duck out a little early.

Congrats to the ACVA mob for putting on such a resource-full event. Looking forward to see what work comes out of the class of 2010.