and had a physical meet up. It happened today at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Michael Masucci, Kate Johnson and I — Christa Forster — lunched at the outdoor cafe and loitered in the “Becoming Los Angeles” exhibit.
Michael Masucci, Christa Forster, Kate Johnson, July 13, 2014, Los Angeles
Michael just sent over a video from our mixed reality collaboration with EZTV & Donna Sternberg & Dancers. TY!!
Wow! The live dancers were wonderful. And they had a freaking drone flying around! How cool is that!?! Congrats to everyone involved in the production!
Yessy! Which color were you?? 🙂
Hello lovely people! I find amazing things. Can I interest you in some curies?
Drawing of me with a “Croc” (they didn’t know that animals went extinct, so when I found a new skeleton on the beach they always used to claim it was an existing animal, like a croc)
Good day dear people.
I have been given to understand that Mr. Nostradamus may be found in this vicinity. Can anyone please direct me to him? I have had the most extraordinary vision and wish to discuss it with him. I am hopeful that he might help me to construct an interpretation of the vision.
Your assistance in locating Nostradamus is most appreciated.
Rock musician Al Stewart, who recorded Love Chronicles, Past Present and Future, The Early Years, Modern Times, and Year of the Cat is the only known person to have contacted Nostradamus. There are rumors that Mr. Stewart now teaches poetry.
Hello Mr. Lord. Thank you for this valuable information. Do you know where I can find Mr. Stewart?
I’m in the middle of reading Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H.G Welles, which I put down to try four online MOOCs. When in church, I’ve been reading a novel entitled The 39 Steps, by John Buchan. Well, you’ll appreciate this, I walked out with it. I suppose i could bring it back, but after last summer, during which i read ten novels by the author E. Phillips Oppenheim, I can barely stand the thrill of making love to a church librarian and inadvertedly tucking away a copy of the novel. I have it right here. Think of what will happen next!!! I literally forgot I had the book on my person and brought it home. Today is my 52nd birthday.
No, I don’t know where he is right now.
With MOOC Magazine / Warhol coming out Saturday morning, 00:01am BST, now’s a great time to “like” MU on FB!
https://www.facebook.com/medici.university
I was forwarded a message from Hugh about helping out with a VR Construction project. (awesome! 🙂
Hugh had heard about a VR Medici University Campus, which Izzy has graciously pushed back to 2015 so that we can focus on creating Edie’s Farm starting on 1 August 2014. The website doesn’t currently have information on the VR Project, but here it is:
http://edies.farm
I’m applying for an “LEA AIR” or Linden Endowment for the Arts, Artist in Residence Land Grant. If Edie’s Farm is selected as one of their Land Grant Recipients (gosh Ysidora, nobody deserves a compensatory land grant more than you!) then Edie’s Farm will begin on a generous 6.5 hectare plot of virtual land. Much like Warhol’s Factory this will be a collaborative place for experiments and activities. We may put some elements up to make it cozy, but the focus will be less on construction goals and more on inspired activities.
I hope everyone will come visit, participate, and play!
Good luck with the application. Let me know if I can help you. Ysidora and I will participate, no doubt!!
Makin stuff in SL Sandbox with Hugh
Hugh came to visit today. We made some stuff in a sandbox and looked at some art installations. It went pretty well but after a while he had some sort of graphics lag or freeze.
Hugh, here’s some thoughts on that:
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Good luck with your course on Research Papers, Hugh. I opted for British Literature, Communication Science and The Resurrection of Richard III (not Richard II) instead.
Sorry for any investigation into the world of college pranks and artistic deceptions that may have crossed your path, I’m actually a serious writer.
You may have heard that Edie and I have started MOOC Magazine. Gary Needham from U of Nottingham Trent has written a wonderful intro article for us:
http://mooc.mediciuniversity.co.uk/warhols-childhood-scrapbook/
Just realized we started PBR 8 months ago this week! Fast creeping up on a year. Whether it’s Medici assassination attempts, or Warhol confidantes trying to trash his legacy, we continue to live in such a divisive world. It was truly a special opportunity to meet so many generous peeps in PBR and to share ideas about art & culture with you all.
Thanks everyone!
xoxo
Crikey! Eight months! It’s an almost-birthday 😉
Yes! Crikey! (did you get that word from Oscar?)
Er…maybe…(He’s got a knack of putting words in my mouth!)
IKR! (he’s no dummy!)
He’s with me at the moment. We’re trying to knock our heads together for something for the July PBR MM issue…
Oh cool! It could be something new… or any of the work you created back then (assuming we can still find stuff from ’13! 😛
My Dear friend, Professor Talbot Rice is very impressed with your efforts. Now that you mention it, someone at a Boston University wrote a monograph that it was glaring that there were attempts upon the life of Queen Victoria Regina and that Sherlock Holmes was absolutely mum on the subject. Talbot has a buggieboo about historical artifacts- there’s a shoe on a statue he thinks is priceless as pieces of some historical art-what-objects-are-used-for before they become what we call ready-made. Like culture or society revolved around the manufacturing of slippers in Persia. No theories on whether the real Queen Victoria was left handed and her twin sister was righthanded and converted to Communism and then Hinduism, more that it was just her liver.
To help our global colleagues meetup at the same time, here’s a little conversion chart for a city near you!
That’s great thanks Vanessa. I am California +11 GMT+4
Hello. Just met up with the Mixed Berry Shake team for our June hangout, and Hugh and I (he showed up late Ciara!) promised to post here on .Re/act what we’re up to in a the six-week summer MOOC we’re undertaking: Understanding Research Methods via Coursera.
Here is a link to the question Hugh is developing and some discussion around it: How do Arabian women artists view the status of women within the Middle East?
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Monerda Skute (pink) & Trilby Minotaur (blue) VR dancing on the side of a building as LED illuminated dancers perform on the ground.
Oh wow! We never knew we were on! We waited from 8-11pm waiting for our cue, and were told a few times, You’re on in 5 minutes, but we thought we’d never been cued. Apparently, we were on! For about 1/2 hour they tell me. We never were cued to do Section 3, the most animated and live portion of the performance, but as you see here, Monerda, Trilby, Harmony & Scarlett were projected in gigantic splendor in the outdoor performance in Los Angeles celebrating the anniversary of EZTV.
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I apologize for duplicating my comments, just realized I wanted to say congrats here. Not enough caffeine yet 😀 “Michael, Van and fellow cast: It is so cool that your dance performance was a success and congrats about LA Weekly giving it Top 5 honors! We avatars had fun despite anxiously awaiting our cue 🙂 The projection photos look great and I can’t wait to see video. I bet the RL dancers were super!”
duplicate comments? Can you have too much of a good thing? 😀
Dear anyone reading – I’d love your thoughts!
The projection you see is avatars on a “white” background. Technically an SL “white” but not “full bright” white. I thought “full bright” might cause gamma issues with the on-site projector.
I thought about a Black background – this would have been cool in that instead of illuminating the whole side of the building, we’d only have avatars up there dancing. My fear was that the dancer’s bodies tend to roll into shadow, so with a black background you’d only get 2/3 of a body or so with the rest disappearing into shadow.
So, the white background felt, all things considered, aesthetically preferable.
What do you think?
i think its pretty cool either way good job us!
Thanks again Scar! And Harm, Moni & Trilby! Haha, I didn’t realize we were on… but hey… you guys look great! 😀
I liked what Kate Johnson had to say today in the Mixed Berry Shake hangout: they both worked in different ways — the black background featured the dancers as floating on the surface; the white background highlighted the dancers beautifully.
This Monday, 9 June ’14
9-10am California Time
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
Got a topic for discussion? Add it as a comment to this post and I’ll put it on the agenda!
Well… the cameraperson just disappeared without a word… so it would seem that we’re not going on…
Oh, no! Want update soon….
The event actually went very well! The audeince loved it and the city has asked us to make it an annual event if we’d like.
Turns out the delays in Fly By going on had to do with Donna’s costumer accidentally cutting the wire on one of the illuminayed costumes. This actually made time for the volunteer Jackie to arrive and set-up the SL laptop. She was very nervous and that may have translatted overseas to Van and her group.
I sent Van some images of her dancers both being projected 45′ wide to the audience as well as onto the aerial balloon which was not originally expected. But sincve the tech team was waiting for costumes to get fixed, they made additional switching sp that Van could swicth back from the balloon to the Library wall.
The event was named one of the 5 top dance picks for that weekend by the LA Weekly, in a townj where an awful lot of dance takes place each week.
Sorry if there was any confusion. I was stuck waiting in the wings to perfoam live music for Fly By, so was not in the loop, and Kate was dealing with re-programming the evening to keep the event running smoothly for the crowd while waiting for Donna to fix her outfilt.
The audience of course never suspected anything was ever wrong and everyone appreciated what went down.
Thanks Van!
P.S. now that this three-month long series oif evenst is over I plan to resume contributing to PBR.
So happy it all worked out! When Van posted her comment above, I mused on how many things can “go wrong” or — more accurately — cause stress when technology is a component in performance, which is amazing, because performance is already stressful enough (but in a good way, of course). 🙂
Michael, Van and fellow cast: It is so cool that your dance performance was a success and congrats about LA Weekly giving it Top 5 honors! We avatars had fun despite anxiously awaiting our cue 🙂 The projection photos look great and I can’t wait to see video. I bet the RL dancers were super!
OMG Still waiting to go on!!!
You can cut the tension with a knife!!
Trilby, in the wardrobe, with ponytail, and optional stars
Our VR Costumer Trilby found some stars that can go with the wardrobe.
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So lovely!
It’s finally in print! The “Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance” has a section on Digital Puppets that will be of interest to many of you! It’s very $$$$$$$ so get a librarian to order a copy you can check out. The more books that sell now the more likely it will get printed in a more reasonable paperback version for the layperson.
http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415705400/
Thanks for the info Molly! Sounds fantastic! And yes, OUCH! not exactly priced to sell!
ONE Night Costumes, front
Hi Trilby, here’s what the RL costumes are going to look like. They’re not completely done yet, and the dancer in turquoise doesn’t have her LED lights on, but you can get an idea of what they are like.
Hello! Is there a portal for the virtual audience today/tonight? Break a leg!!
It appears that then don’t have any broadband internet at the venue and are doing it all by WiFi connection. They don’t think they have enough bandwidth to stream our avatars IN to the venue and also stream the event OUT on Ustream, so, sadly, neither you nor the VR dancers will be able to see what’s going on! 😛
However Michael does say they’ll record video of the event and have it online some days later.
Happy June!
Best of luck to the performers in both locations! I look forward to seeing Michael’s documentation.
As do I!!
.Re/act is the place to take the great connections you’ve made in a MOOC and keep the conversation & collaboration going!
And now… MOOC Magazine! is the place to collect the great essays, videos, performance works that you’ve created in a MOOC and present them in a focused magazine!
Contribute today!
http://MOOC.MediciUniversity.co.uk
Jean-François Millet. The Gleaners. 1857
You’ve reminded me of Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth. There’s tone in the Millet, an oval shadow, light on their shoulders and backs, but the isolation is from a vast expanse where the estate can be found. Its interesting that he uses perspective to show the depth of the background and size in the foreground; I’m not sure how he did
I’m wondering how Dave Hickey’s book Pirates and Farmers might resonate with Vanessa’s Edie’s Farm.
http://www.texasobserver.org/art-critic-dave-hickey-calls-it-quits-again-with-pirates-and-farmers/
Also, Is Edie’s Farm anything like Ant Farm (the 70s underground architecture and arts collective)?
Oh hi Ciara! haha, you’re right, I don’t iron! But I hired Ondine to be my French Maid! But he mostly woke me up and set out makeup and drugs, I don’t think he ever ironed anything?
Yes, I think I know what you mean. Being in the spotlight is great. haha, really great! Did I mention I love cameras! (and they seem to love me!)
But if you think about blogs, well, nobody actually reads my blog, but it’s new, so maybe I’ll get readers one day. So far I’d say it’s easier to be the life of the party! 🙂
But Vanessa’s blog iRez gets quite a bit of traffic. And I guess Facebook sends quite a lot of that traffic. But those peeps never leave comments. Or mostly they don’t even go to the blog, they just “like” the link on FB.
So FB’s kind of like your mid-city gallery. A lot of traffic. But mostly all those eyeballs turn into “Likes” and other minimal engagement comments on Facebook. The peeps not from there are like your lower traffic zone, but they’re more likely to have something to say.
The real trick I think is to make your party the one everybody wants to be at! I was pretty good at that IRL, but this cyberspace thingy is pretty new to me, so I’m not so sure about that. And my blouse is wrinkled. Guess I’ll have to go buy a new one.
Photo by Nimbin Mardi Grasses
For the video feed TO your giant projector, it should definitely be a laptop running Second Life. This will be vastly higher quality than any sort of external live stream. For the video feed FROM ONE Night, it’s less critical for us, anything will let us see what’s going on and help cue. A better image is nice of course, and it’d let some remote viewers join in.
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Wow! This sounds like a really fantastic collaboration! I’m looking forward to 31st:-)
Thanks so much! Very helpful. I will share all this with the tech team and will get back to you next week with any questoins. We are so happy that you are going to be a BIG (pun intended) part of ONE Night and Fly-By.
Great Michael!
Just realized I made one mistake: the VR Cinematographer, can’t be the VR Stage Manager – or at least can’t be on the same laptop – whatever’s on their laptop screen will be the live projection, therefore they can’t open a chat window to talk to us, or it would project on the building. So we’ll need to be cued in some other way.
ONE Night, 31 May 2014
ONE Night: EZTV, LA ACM SIGGRAPH, and Digital Art in West Hollywood
is coming up on Saturday 31 May! Vanessa Blaylock Company is collaborating with EZTV & Donna Sternberg, et al on a Mixed Reality component to the evenings activities. Our avatars will be projected outdoors on an inflatable balloon or the side of a building.
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Your avatars will definately be projected on a building, not nthe ballon, which will project the drone camera’s transmission. The buildin will be a library, your image will be 45′ wide and projected using a 18,000 lumen Barco projector
Hey Van,
Any chance you could do a test of our Wi-Fi connection today between noon and 3 or 4Pm? I will be at the location and want to do asimple test with just Google Hangout+ nto make sure we have an adequate connection on site. Thingsa re really progressing and we are so happy that you are a very BIG part of this!
Nice hangout today with Christa, Ciara, Kate, Michael, Rebecca N., Hugh, and myself. More great topics than we had time for. Here’s a few snips from my typing in response to compelling ideas from the other participants:
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Hi Rebecca! I know of 3 of the Kickstarter type funding sites. There’s no doubt plenty of others.
As far as I know the oldest and sort of most established / respected of the platforms. You cannot fund things like “school,” but you can fund a specific project, so you could write that you need €4,000 to produce 1 or a series of dance pieces to be performed at various venues at various times. With Kickstarter it’s all or nothing. If you don’t make your goal nobody pays and you get no money. Their theory is that if you don’t have enough you can’t do the project and it’s not fair to the investors to have 1/2 a project.
Similar to kickstarter with the big difference that you get the money even if you don’t make the goal. Some people think it’s flakier for that reason, but others who aren’t sure about their level of support like the flexibility.
Different in that it IS for funding your activities like school. So it might be ideal for your situation. Although I do like the opportunity Kickstarter offers to focus on specific “deliverable” works. Some might be happy to help out with your school costs, but others might feel like more of an arts philanthropist if they know their money is helping to produce 6 new choreographic works presented in 3 cities in 2014 – 2015 and that for their contribution they’ll have access to exclusive video previews and video chats with you and some of your team. It seems like a nice “excuse” to build out your network of colleagues and audience members.
Best wishes on your exciting project Rebecca!
Hi guys, me again! I was just looking at all the cultural institutions tweeting come see our X, Y, Z… seems like they’re always trolling for F2F visitors. And I found myself tweeting:
Christa Forster and 
Ciara are discussing. 
Teresa of Avila are discussing. 
Michael Masucci are discussing. 
The Net is not merely a place to pimp your RL stuff. It is a place in its own right. It is a place to live and work.— Edie M. Sedgwick (@EDiEMONSTA) May 14, 2014
Which I think is kind of what Ciara was saying about .Re/act. It is interesting how many peeps instinctively use new media in the most simple, banal ways! Or perhaps by following Cultural Institutions instead of Individual Artists I’m making that more likely.
Monday 9-10am California Time / Noon-1pm New York / 18:00 – 19:00 CEST
Facilitator: Rebecca L.
.Re/act & Online Collaboration – Ciara
Computer Love & Hacking the Timeline v3.0 – Michael, Kate
Funding Art – Rebecca N.
Guerilla Drive-Ins – Hugh
Oh BTW, as previous Shakers know, and new ones will see, you might have to “Pin” me to read my typed blabbing. But it’s no fun to stare at meee the whole time! So just pin & unpin as you like. You can read for a minute, but then go back to letting Google Hangout direct the stream. As I understand it, if you don’t pin someone, then it switches to whichever participant is making the most noise, which is generally the person talking. (unless, of course, Xta’s hubby is typing loudly! 😀
Happy Mother’s Day!
(USA, Germany)
I think a lot about the space .re/act provides and about the value of this space. I was hoping that, perhaps, we could talk a little about what .re/act and spaces like it (do we know of any others?) mean to the artists engaging with this platform and how do we perceive this space relative to the real-world institutional spaces we are familiar with within our respective practices.
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I find this very interesting:
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/our-history-approach/
Our next monthly hangout is Monday 12 May. Click the read more tag for agenda & full details!
Hi All! I noticed that in addition to hangouts we have salons, mixed reality events, etc going on. So I created a “Berry Shake” Google Calendar and added the 10 of us addressed on this message with Read & Write permissions. Hopefully GCal sends you an email about it… if not… LMK!
Feel free to add anything relevant… whether it’s an event including several of us, or just your own solo activity. Hopefully a Google Calendar is the easiest way to do this, LMK if it isn’t. I thought about making another .Re site for the calender, but I .Re/sisted that temptation! I hope GCal will be easiest…
Hello all!
I haven’t been extremely present on the website, so some of you may not know or recognize me. But I met Vanessa through the online NovoEd course, “Performance Based Research” and she invited me to join the group as the class came to a close. Life has been a bit hectic and full of a lot of soul searching in the past months as I am trying to decide what my next step. But, as things are becoming more clear, and as I am heading into more of the action stage of my ‘project’ rather than the processing stage I reached out to Vanessa looking for some input on how to make it happen. She recommended I post something on .Re/act to see if any of you had ideas.
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Hi Rebecca! We’ve put you on the agenda for the Hangout on Monday 12 May! Hopefully our bunch of smart berries can help brainstorm some helpful ideas! I’m so excited about your new program – best wishes!!
Irony.Lee, Ravanel, Hazelaartje, Skygirl.Kline & Ulaval (me) during today’s field trip to the virtual world of Tera
Field trip to the Virtual World of Tera today. I was very clueless. But it was a very fun space. And nice to go discover it with a group of friends.
Aero Bigboots
AlexandreLois1
Ananda Crystal
Andrea Foenander
astrid
Aunt Renie
Aurelia Scheppers
Christa Forster
Ciara Finnegan
Bird on a Cyber Twig
Diptheria
Donnie Archer
Edie
Elle
Emma
Elizabeth Taylor Swift
Fanny
FeelsEmpty
Glad Kidd
Izzy
Jade Ravenheart
Kate Nova
Ken Doll
Mary Anning
Meg O'Ryan
Michael Masucci
Mireille
Molly Ross
Monerda Skute
Myra
Neeva
Newton
Michel Nostradamus
Oona
Oscar
Owen
Patrick J. Sweetman
Paypabak Writer
Pearl Grey
Rebecca Narum
rmarie
Ryan
Scarlett Luv
Sello Tape
Serra Qendra
Teresa of Avila
The Knight
Tiffany Mosienko
TrilbyM
Tullia Aragona
Vanessa
veyot
wendz tempest
Xue
Yellow Fever
Ysidora Pico
Yves
Zsophia
Ciara 01:00 on 14/07/2014 Permalink |
Ah, Christa, what a good idea to point one another toward residencies in our respective “hometowns”…
This Dutch website offers a fairly comprehensive list of residency opportunities in Europe and beyond:
http://www.transartists.org/
And, off the top of my head, a few others that spring to mind:
In Amsterdam:
http://www.de-ateliers.nl/en/
and a super one here:
http://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/residency/
another great one in the southern part of the Netherlands:
http://www.janvaneyck.nl/en/home/
A really nice one in Belfast, N. Ireland:
http://flaxartstudios.com/international-residency/
and one in Dubin, Ireland:
http://www.imma.ie/en/subnav_13.htm
Christa Forster 10:30 on 14/07/2014 Permalink |
Thanks, Ciara! Great to have these resource links. xo