Dance Exploration in Mixed Realities? Investigating Second Life as a virtual platform for duality within identity.

[Mike Baker]

Please see my Masters blogsite: http://hoststranger.blogspot.com

Also, the videos 'Inscribed Surfaces - In the Company of Strangers' and 'Shelter - In the Company of Strangers' in my videos on this site.

Wed 4 July 2007
One of the strands of my research for, In the Company of Strangers, is currently investigating the nature of 'virtual' or 'not-real' moments, how we perceive or witness them and move in and out of the real or virtual in both Real Life and in the virutal world of Second Life, ('Second Life. com'). At the moment I am experimenting with uploading real-life film of my dance work into Second Life and projecting this against selected surfaces in virtual urban environments and conversely, exporting footage of my dance work in Second Life to project onto selected surfaces in urban environments in real life.

Mark Hansen, in Bodies in Code, (2006) sees the embodiment of function manifesting through the human body, acting as a kind of seismographic wand - ‘ a vehicle of being in the world’ (Hansen, 2006:5-6 after Heidegger). He maintains that: ‘All virtual reality is mixed reality … all reality is mixed reality’, (Hansen, 2006:5-6) Hansen talks about the existence of the analogue as a transformative entity:

"Always on arrival a transformative feeling of the outside, a feeling of thought” sensation is the being of the analog. (sic) This is the analog in a sense close to the technical meaning, as a continuously variable impulse or momentum that can cross from one qualitatively different medium into another. Like electricity into sound waves. Or heat into pain, Or light waves into vision. Or vision into imagination. Or noise in the ear into music in the heart. Or outside coming in. Variable continuity across the qualitatively different: continuity of transformation.' (Massumi, 2000:135 in Hansen, Bodies in Code) Like Real into 'Second Life' and back and ...

Through our internal analogue therefore, we possess the innate capacity, to transform, continuously, the many real and virtual realities with which our existence is constructed and constantly deconstructed, reconstructed and re-affirmed.

The mixed-reality paradigm can shift the fields of 'orthodox' perceptions (has perception, in fact, ever been orthodox?) which have, in the past, established existing modes of seeing and understanding reality: Cinema has hitherto been granted the capacity to represent the world from a non-human (this is debatable in the sense that if the footage was the product of human creation, that is the unassailable baseline from which all the forms of expression within the presented film stem), perspective and so is properly mechanistically autonomous from direct human influence; in contrast to this, the process within us as humans which brings virtual reality technologies together with our natural perceptions, supports a function which expands the scope of our natural perception and integrates real-world and virtual realities to arrive at a more homogeneous, mixed reality. Rather than presenting the virtual as a completely technical simulacrum – a portal to a fully immersive, separate or fantasy world, the mixed-reality paradigm regards it as just one more realm among others which can be accessed through our already embodied perception or our ability to enact - or, in the case of both First and Second Life, role-play.

So there is less emphasis here on the content and more emphasis on the ways in which we access that content.

In the light of the above, I am interested in pursuing this definition of mixed-reality - a 'new' realization of the fluidity of experiencing simulacra: In the first instance, physically/perceptually moving in and out of real and virtual moments in Real Life (RL in Second Life speak) and in the second instance, physically/perceptually, in front of our computer, moving in and out of Real Life (one is tempted to use the term First Life ...) and Second Life. I am inclined to the feeling that there is little difference between these two scenarios. They are not so much distinct from one another as examples of layered mixed-reality encountered within the moment. I think that the two realities are actually 'one': they can be seen and experienced first- hand as mutually-dependent, opposing binaries and therefore as a linked whole or a single, layered experience. So for me, the virtual and real in our lives can be described, like so many aspects in our lives, as states of perceptual layering-in-flux.

It can be said perhaps, in part, that in urban environments these days we are, all of us, strangers or at least, that the stranger among us is alive and well. The mixed-reality platform of Second Life/Real Life as a 'place', lends itself constantly to the process of host and stranger interaction and the assuming of both roles. I am curious to see how I may be able to apply this to my dance movement in and out of Real and Second Life, using the process of activation to manipulate and modify partially-peopled 'non/places'.

[Johannes Birringer]

hallo Mike

i am just finding your postings here, and will read them carefully (also the fascinating questions you raise about avatar-otherness/acceptance) before beginning dialogue.
i would be much interested in an exchange, and will also tell my lab members about your posts.

our discussion group on current production and research E-UKIYO needs to pick up speed too. most of the ideas we have been reviewing, since we performed the first version of our mixed reality choreographic installation (in June 2009) were ciruclated internally, as we are only in the process of moving forward to stage 2 and 3 of this production. i have completed a 20 minute documentation film of the live installation/SL-performance, but it is a diptych film, and i cannot upload it as it is , at the minute. can only show it side by side, projected.

is your posting an older or a newer posting? I need to see your videos, 'Inscribed Surfaces - In the Company of Strangers' and 'Shelter - In the Company of Strangers' , and then get back to a , hopefully, fruitful discussion.

have you seen the work of Alan Sondheim in Second Life?
i will try to collect some references and links to their work.

i felt inspired by some of the writings on avatar performance by Sondheim, and when i saw his stuff at Subtle Technologies, in June 2009, it was quite mindblowing.

i have also collected the very very complex "EMPYRE" soft_skinned debate of the month of May, 2009, which was about "critical motion practices" and included practitioners and philosophers, and there were also some very interesting points made. i could re-trace this debate, but on my word-file it is almost 200 pages long. the ideas from this debate were very powerful.

more soon, with regards,. Johannes

[Mike Baker]

Hello Johannes, I am delighted to make contact with you. Coincidentally, I have been following your contributions recently on empyre soft_skinned_space and thoroughly enjoyed the forum discussions. I have saved several months of discussions from the empyre forum and find it fascinating, not to mention relevant to my own work. I did catch the edge of the 'critical motion practices' and found this particularly interesting. I have just changed my email address and ever since, even though I have re-subscribed, I have not been able to receive updates from empyre, but I am working on it.

I am reaching the end of three years of Masters study in dance and video and predictably, find myself with a world of questions and further enquiry. I never intended to work towards so-called resolutions in the first place so what can I expect? I would very much like to follow up the links to your mixed-reality choreographic installation and eagerly await your 20 minute film when this is available.

Yes, I have heard of Alan Sondheim and will follow this up. Second Life remains a major area of lived-debate for me and I still have much work to do in my Second Life Wellington Railway Station build through investigations into transformative embodiment in immersive mixed-reality world-surfaces. So are you in Second Life and working in there?

I appreciate your interest in my explorations Johannes! If you have time/energy my Masters site is:
http://hoststranger.blogspot.com

Here you will find two and a half years of research/practice with images and video footage. I posted again just a few days ago, continuing with my concepts questioning the dynamics of Heidegger`s/Zimmerman`s human as the clearing where entities may appear. My new urban myth of the Roaming Body is joined by Candice Carpenter`s 'Swift Selves' in the pursuit of those kinds of entities within us which lend themselves particularly to transformative embodiment.

I went into your site, 'danssansjoux.org' and I have added this to my site references. I really love the imagery on the your site. I only had a brief look but I still have it up and will return to it tomorrow. It is late here in New Zealand Aotearoa and I have to lecture tomorrow, so I bid you a very good night. I would be very interested for your lab members to see my posts and my Masters site.

Kind Regards, Ka Kite Ano,
Mike

[Johannes Birringer]

hallo Mike:

good to read your kind response, and so i am getting to know you, just went to your blogsite (your are completing an MA on "In the Company of Strangers - Negotiating the parameters of Indeterminacy; a study of the Roaming Body and Departure in Urban Spaces" ---- this is a wonderful project title), and i see there is much to read about your research, thank you for sharing, and i will also , with your permission, share this with my forthcoming MA seminar on "Approaching Performance/Mise en Scène Making" - the new MA students are arriving, in September, and i will have a few amongst the group who seem to be into dance/movement studies and video/media.

Your theoretical framework (in your posting on mixed reality) is complex, here i have questions, and need to probably go slow, if we can start this dialogue, perhaps even have this as a forum discussion. I will question the in and out, the easy transfluency,. it does not exist for me, or it does not exist in the ways it is implied by the theoretical claims made (by Hansen, Munster, et atl). You cite a very interersting passage, and then you extrapolate and say, hmm, perhaps like real life/second life and back and forth, if i understand you correctly, and you pose that question of the spaces / realities explicitly in your posting:

a) rather than presenting the virtual as a completely technical simulacrum – a portal to a fully immersive, separate or fantasy world, the mixed-reality paradigm regards it as just one more realm among others which can be accessed through our already embodied perception or our ability to enact - or, in the case of both First and Second Life, role-play.>>


you then say:
b) I am interested in pursuing this definition of mixed-reality - a 'new' realization of the fluidity of experiencing simulacra: In the first instance, physically/perceptually moving in and out of real and virtual moments in Real Life (RL in Second Life speak) and in the second instance, physically/perceptually, in front of our computer, moving in and out of Real Life (one is tempted to use the term First Life ...) and Second Life. I am inclined to the feeling that there is little difference between these two scenarios. >>

i would like us to discuss this, if you wish. Why would there not be some crucial differences (materially, physiologically, psychologically, cognitively - what sort of consciousness do you assume into SL? what kind of artificial intelligence do you see operating there, and who makes the dances/dancing, the architectures there? how is perception define din Second Life, who is doing any perceiving? cameras? your avatar? what consciousness does your avatar possibly have [I have not studied your post on avatar and species relationships yet]?

well, let me begin today first by giving you feedback to your video "Inscribed Surfaces - In the Company of Strangers"

(and thanks by the way for visiting our label website, the investigatory questions and lab research questions on the UKYO project are on my DAP website, under the branch for wearables/intelligent clothing (hmmm, i should probably expand this a little, and obviously, i am trying to get closed, like you, to a better understanding of how i define and compose with "mixed realities" in my work): Ukioyo-e

Your video impressed me with its quiet, and gently hypnotic quality. I could not immediately understand the space, and yet, intrigued and carried by the beautiful soundtrack, i get a sensation of the public space we are in [I liked "Rolling Triptych" also, in your blogsite, here i gather we are literally in some kind of Grand Central, where is Wellington Station in NZ?) - the overlaid and somewhat blurred faces of the background (is this background or is there no distinction any more) are like mirrors, camera looking into facades and seeing reflections, of facades and people moving across, i canniot make out the people, not the urban facades, until the end, and so architecturally you leave thje viewer puzzled, in limbo, hmmm, not sure where i would go here, where i and whether i would stay. so my eyes or my kinetic sensibilities then hook into the duet , the two dancing, these, i figure quickly, are avatars, you choreographed their movement (why this movement, here/there?) and they repeat it more or less throughout, that is the little trance, the loop and the zoom (the way the canera moves the dancers forward and backward). i am not really up to speek with designing in SL or virtual game environments, this is new to me. So i have reservations about the "choreography" of these avatars and why they are dancing within layered surfaces of a public train station (at some point i am on a train, i hear train motion) and to what end. But as a dance video, at this moment in time, it is of course fascinating.

Hmmm, i remember- naturally- when videodance began to increase its visibility and popularity, i was very excited back then in the 80s, and did not have much capabilities, technically speaking, i bought my first second hand SVHS camera in 1989. By 1992, i started to make videodance works, or dance films, and entered them into DanceScreen, the festival arranged by IMZ (Vienna). There at one of these festivals i saw a 1986 videodance by Jean Claude Galotta, "Un chant presque éteint" which was films and choreographed in a train station, and it had such a darkly melancholic and poetic mood, it kep languishing in my memory for a long time, probably will never be forgotten. Now we are in the 21st century, and video dance (in site specific locations) oftem looks very dated and hamstrung by the ever repeated modern dance movement in urban locations, on the beach, in the forest, in the mountain and in the water. what do you think?

the dislocation of dance (real dancer) into a virtual or mixed reality environment is a different matter, in your digital video, is the entire space SL? is the "footage" (representational, to an extent, as is the diegetic audio) from "Wellington" imported and implanted into Second Life? and then why is it mixed reality, and not a wholly synthetic environment, as you cannot move into our out of your SLWELLINGTON, it is not a real space and does not exist, for your material body and consciousness to enter, you can only enter it in a surrogate manner....? so the avatar is a surrogate experience perhaps, how would you say?

Then what is the "affect" of the video in terms of my spatial or kinetic expertience? i cannot enter it myself, this virtual (image) space, and the point of view from the front is static (the camera POV), as it is in your triptych video. what is the entry point? there is spatial disorientation, loss of context, proportion, volume..... i glance at blurred space in this digital production of a "reality" which is not a representation of the real. Of course it need not be, as long as it produces a kinesthetic response or a sensory relation, but i think i want to ask what kind of relation you intend to generate to the dance, or the movement in/of this space (which is supposedly virtual, liquid?).

with regards
Johannes Birringer

[Johannes Birringer]

hallo Mike

your second video posted/included in your posting on "Dance Exploration in Mixed Realities? Investigating Second Life as a virtual platform for duality within identity."

Shelter - In the Company of Strangers


I watched it with great interest, as here there is a different structure for the viewer, i think, a relationality (between the avatar as virtual figure - not sure whether posthuman here is what we might want to call an animation - and the real persons in the train station space, refered to you as "Rollo Kohime, Mike Baker and Fiona Baker ") reflected in this composited space inside SL. I assume it is inside SL, and you mentioned to me that you are designing or modelling a "Wellington" inside the virtial environment of SL. Now, the representations of the real (video) are here more clearly articulated than in "Inscribed Surfaces", and we , along with the avatar on the left (how do we look in SL, is is "stage right"?), become a kind of voyeur or observer of the people that mill through and across the station and station doors... and, for a second i thought, hmm, a transit space also like an airport, there are security gates perhaps, where the passer-through is scanned..... the action on the right side, limited to a "slice of life" in this "split screen" was not always clear, a woman arrives, stops, and receives coat to wear? and then also it, this encounter, came to look not real-real (that is to say, a witnessed event of a mundane everyday nature) but staged-real/danced, perhaps, making the side ways glancing of the gendered avatar (a female avatar) an interesting narrative device. the avatar does not look out to the viewer, and are SL or , as you intimate, "mixed reality" spaces similar to cinematic or not? are they viewable space, or are the composed (as in games/virtual landscapes) to be traversed, acted upon, navigated?

what is the production of time in such works (mixed reality)?

how do they work in real space ( have you tried to create a choreoraphy or installation for a physically present audience, and then sought to include 3d graphic environments like SL? here it becomes very tricky, as you have to project it somewhere, and this is where all our interesting problems with UKIYO started. we had to project the SL scenes, the virtual dancers, onto screens.

what do you think of idea of a screen as a skin ( as in the Medienhaut, media skin -- is this how you see the 'inscribed surfaces in urban architectures, are these soft technology environments?), and how would you project your avatar, for example, into a real space, and then have a communion between the real and the virtual?

what would be role of the auditory? this interests me a great deal.

Our summer workshop in the Interaktionslabor was not related to UKIYO, in a direct sense, the summer lab had a focus on sound, and if you are interested, i posted the "documentation" of sound installation: Auf der anderen Seite des Spiegels.

the initial sound research involved recording and then processing found sound. Musique concrète. We also re-imagined an experiment Alvin Lucier made in the 70s, with regenerative/reverberations.

Later, when i realized one cannot make a video of this, it was already to late, i had posted this video, But video of course makes nonsense of our discussions on the virtual or on "digital embodiment" (?), liquid and porous spaces, navigable metaverses, and the algorithmic, does it not, and it also stands in a weak relationship to sound.

now i will try and read your blog site and get a better sense of your research approach, and what you mean by company of strangers.

(Alan Sondheim's website is a data jungle: Aland Sondheim
the piece he performed live in SL on Toronto was called "Mess", and i am not sure there is a link to it. But here is the ST(Subtle Technologies link)

with regards
Johannes

[Johannes Birringer]

I did find a piece by Sondheim, called "VirtualBody", and it will interest you, i think.

VirtualBody"

I was sent to this link by a website which is apparently made to honor/collect Sondheim's writings, e-publications, audio, video- and filmworks. You can find it here

regards
Johannes

[Mike Baker]

Kia ora, Johannes, Thank you so much for your long and extremely useful posts! I would like to apologise for my seeming reticence in replying at this point. I am right now, endeavouring to pull together my final exegesis for the Thesis year of my Masters. I am aiming for approx 15,000 words and it is currently sitting on 25,000, so I have work to do! The draft has to be in for Monday next week and then dialoguing with my supervisor so any sensible response from me to your wonderful posts will need to wait about a week I am afraid. Very frustrating for me because I am very enthusiastic to enter into discussion with you and deeply interested in the points you raise.

I will follow up the links you have given me and reply to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, do explore any and all material on my blog and feel free to quote me in any sessions you may be running. I am defintely a supporter of interactive discourse!

Thanks again and talk soon!

Ka Kite Ano,
Mike

[Johannes Birringer]

hallo

no worry, you need to do your things there (cut words? oh, too bad). ...aim at beautiful minimalism then, and good luck with everything.

i will read your blog and begin to think about more things to say soon, i am preparing a trip to Austria next week to the "Choreolab", and yes, with your permission then, i might also reference your blogsite and videos and mention your work, as i will probably (in a workshop/talk i am giving on dance and new media) want to dwell a bit in the various realities with which we work (and i wonder how this artistic work, of media work, or research work, relates to what political commentator Marina Hyde (The Guardian) refers to as the new "security culture" in the aftermath of Big Brother Reality (TV), the culture of the neighbors & common people watching each other (the real, not the avatars) and filming/recording you, and posting you on the social network/internet.

Unbelievably, but why not, someone already coined the notion of a "security aesthetics." I saw an essay (in rhizome) on this: SECURITY AESTHETIC = SYSTEMS PANIC.

regards
Johannes

[Mike Baker]

Thanks Johannes, Yes, please feel free to reference any of my material that seems to be appropriate. The whole issue of the Security Aesthetic is fascinating I feel, with regard to the ethical considerations of public/private spaces in which we operate. I had to secure strict permissions to dance and film in Wellington Railway Station, (the Capital City of NZ) and was still told on various occasions that I could not 'get in the way' (when that was partly my aim, with interventionist strategies) and met various interesting asides while dancing down back-alleys and on the edge of thoroughfares - ownership of 'personal' and interpersonal spaces, which is again, partly what my work is about - bringing out the Duende, the micro-dramas inherent in personal dialogue between people in public spaces - who decides now? How do we determine the parameters now? Last year I began a process of filming myself dancing in supermarkets (with permission - some of this footage is on my blog and Youtube - I have 28 vids on Youtube under In the Company of Strangers and Departed ... because it is the server to bring movies into Second Life) and then using miniature DVD players placed on shelves to show that footage and then using the security camera system to observe reactions/myself/interventionist threads. Good luck with your sessions in Choreolab! I am familiar with the site. I will keen to find out how you get on!

Best,
Mike

[Mike Baker]

Hi again Johannes, as an adjunct to the above, would you mind if I quoted your questions to me in the above posts in my Masters exegesis? It would be most instructive as part of the ongoing critical discourse I have had with others on my research practice.

Best,
Mike

[Johannes Birringer]

yes of course, Mike, you can include anything you wish.
and thanks for your comment/response above, about the Wellington (piblic) train station, that again is fascinating, and those of us having worked in public spaces know these innuendos and policing issues only too well.

i remember a slightly extravagant feat, back in the limbo time of the former DDR (after the Wall fell, and the Germanys united), sort of early 90s, 1995 I believe, and we "occupied" a vacant former socialist cultural center that was sitting there unused (as real-estate speculation object) -- well, we treated it as a "choreographic object", to use the Forsythe terminology (I justy added a brief brief on this, relating it to the "post choreography debate"). and we figured that the new police in the new Germany of the East would not know how far their authority might stretch regarding property laws or real estate, and such seemingly peaceful artistic action for the common wealth of the community (we "re-opened" the cultural center for a weekend and arranged music, dance and film and sausages with juices). so the police guarded us as made sure we had a good time, and it was all very bizarre, since the "success" of our squat made me become more adventurous, demanding (via media /radio) a session / hearing with the mayoral office to submit our manifesto and demands for the return of the cultural center to the cultural center of the former industrial town, now langishing after closure of steel factory, facing increased unemployment, and la douleur. We did not have a manifetso yet, but quickly wrote one. ah well, long story. a train station i have not worked in, in Texas there were no trains no more.
dancing on streets I avoid if possible, unless it rains.

regards
Johannes