“@” Concurrent with the New Media Caucus panel Space: The New Frontier at the National CAA 2009, “@” is an exhibition that examines space and site. With simultaneous locations in Los Angeles and Second Life (SL), “@”challenges artists to consider place & placelessness from within the context of networked culture. The physical gallery space will be replicated within SL, featuring an actual window between the virtual and real worlds to observe and be observed. The exhibition space will feature a floor-to-ceiling projection and a streaming video camera.  This wall will serve as the interface between the Real Life (RL) in the gallery and its replication in Second Life. The intent for “@” is to exploit the philosophically rich mirroring between RL and SL, as well as the paradoxical condition of being the observer and observed. SLURL Flickr Gettr installed at Aho Museum – New Media Constortium http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Campus%20West/136/120/2 Live Flickr photo sharing search from recent users' public photo folders Sorts meta data tagged from user uploads via a custom webserver Rezzed prims resize to match aspect ratio of each unique image Music emits from each generating prim as they rez and derez Notecard with viewing suggestions on touch in outer console rim – please play media Fillwalk and Allison

Virtual worlds provide a platform in which to construct compelling experiences not possible within the material and temporal constraints of the physical world.  The virtual realm has the potential to be united and engaged by physicality - informing and transforming the audience’s experience of performance and installations in a profoundly transformative nature.  John Fillwalk (Mencius Watts) and Jesse Allison (Taggert Alsop) have been incorporating mixed-reality approaches into musical performances, installations, interfaces, and performance art over the last several years, including explorations of the opportunities of the Second Life environment for mixed-reality experiences - analyzing approaches to bridging the worlds such as media streaming, client-side interaction, an external web server communication hub, as well as opportunities for human/computer interaction.

In Flickr Gettr, the external web service was used as an intermediary to query Flickr, receive images and format them for delivery as a second life texture.  It then passed the aspect ratios in a second query to be able to map the textures properly.  To make these interactions more flexible, an intermediary web server can be employed to collate and prepare information for Second Life and retain states that can be queried from external applications.  The web application effectively serves as an intermediary between Second Life and outside environments, providing the communications link and logic to assimilate the information.  This can make the creation of Web 2.0 mash-ups much simpler as the code for doing these sorts of queries and logic is already highly developed in Java, Ruby, and Perl for example, and would be difficult or impossible to accomplish with the in-world scripting language of LSL.  Flickr Gettr also triggered music files upon the rapid rezzing of objects to create a cumulative ambient effect.

Virtual Artwork at the New Media Caucus panel Space: The New Frontier at the National College Art Association Conference 2009, “@”

Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, CA Wed Feb 25 12:15:19 2009 Reception Thursday evening Feb 26th at 9:30PM SLT/PST

@ Exhibition in SL SLURL

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Seventh%20Eye/58/74/2

Title: Flickr Gettr v5 Year: 2008-2009 Artists: Mencius Watts and Taggert Alsop 
http://www.nmc.org/news/nmc/ball-state-digital-artists
http://npirl.blogspot.com/search/label/Mencius%20Watts 
http://www.idiarts.org/