Image from Insomnia

Pillflower World, 2009virtual reality installation, interactive performance, machinima, comic book documentation

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Pillflower World, a mixed reality exhibition, is a ‘Russian doll’ experience. The piece was shown at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, in a ‘real-life’ gallery. Within the ANU gallery, the online, 3D world, Second Life was projected. Within that space, there was a giant snow globe environment—worlds nested inside each other. Snow globes, universal signifiers of all things kitsch, are trusty souvenirs of travel and exotica. In Pillflower World the snow globe becomes a metaphor for the conflation of locale, space, culture and even time. Snow globes are ubiquitous and generic. Tropical scenes share cold-weather precipitation right along with the North Pole. This was a place of seemingly happy, jolly flowers and snow play, all encased in a sim-spanning, dynamic, swirling snow globe, a whimsical overlay to a dark undercurrent in that the pretty flowers are made of pills,  imagery that conjures up so many associations with unhappiness and illness. Soothing pastel shades of the medicinals belie their power and effect on the human body and our drug dependant culture. Alluring and candy-like, the pillflowers visually signify that ‘all is right’ with the world, or at the very least, can be made so instantaneously.

Special thanks to Desdemona Enfield for her scripting genius and Larry Pixel of the New Media Consortium for the generous loan of the sim on which the art was displayed.

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Image from Insomnia

Insomnia, 2009photographic series, variable size, archival inkjet print on photographic paper, edition of ten

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The Insomnia series is a combination of hyper realistic photography and digital collage. The subject matter echoes that of 16th century Vanitas paintings—the celebration of life and death.

 

Dancing With Myself, 2009three projector, hybrid reality interactive, immersive and performative installation, comic book documentation

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In Dancing With Myself my avatar, Nar Duell, has been scripted to perform a choreography. I respond to Nar Duell, attempting to create a duet with her, thereby inverting the person/avatar paradigm, as Nar Duell controls me. In real-time performance, she moves in an immersive environment projected onto three walls. Her world is expansive and infinite. The real-world space where I respond and dance is boxed in and confined, once again reversing the usual view of space through a computer screen.

Dancing with Myself finds expression through choreographic interaction for the narcissistic relationship that people often develop with the portraits they create or commission of themselves, whether as static photographs or scripted avatars. The creation and relationship to one’s avatar portrait in virtual worlds are all-encompassing. People lavish time and money in order to represent themselves. But the disconnect from reality is unavoidable as one interacts with this virtual space. The physical distancing of flying through space by using your fingertips on a keyboard is hard to ignore. The piece navigates divisions — self/avatar, flat/3D, real/perceived.

Credits:

Second Life programming: Desdemona Enfield

Choreographic coach: Karen Kaeja

Director of photography: Ben Matilainen

Video editing: John Watson

Sound editing: Dennis Schaefer (Douglas Story in Second Life)
Installation and Performance assistance: Sean Procyk, Nic Thirlwall, Yoanna Terziyska, Laure Mitchell

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