Mixed Realities: An International Networked Art Exhibition and Symposium :: Opening Reception and Performance: February 7, 2008; 5-7 pm :: Huret & Spector Gallery, 10 Boylston Place, 6th Floor (Tufte Center), Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts; Turbulence.org, and Ars Virtua (Second Life: Teleport) :: Floating Points 5: Mixed Realities Symposium - February 8-9, 2008 :: Bordy Theater, 216 Tremont St., Emerson College; Emerson Island (Second Life: Teleport); or watch the webcast.

Participants include: Burak Arikan, Drew Baker, John (Craig) Freeman, Eric Gordon, Usman Haque, Drew Harry, Scott Kildall, Gene Koo, Pierre Proske, Michael Takeo Magruder, Victoria Scott, and David Steele.

Mixed Reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments where physical and digital objects can co-exist and interact in real-time.

Mixed Realities is an exhibition and symposium that explores the convergence—through cyberspace—of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks. Mixed Realities links and overlays the Huret & Spector Gallery (Boston), Turbulence.org, and Ars Virtua (Second Life). Second Life is a shared, synthetic, 3-D environment through which people can interact in real-time by means of a virtual self or avatar. Although it’s an imaginary place, it is often able to “masquerade as real” (Richard Bartle) because it approximates reality persuasively enough to facilitate player immersion. Audience members – who will be embodied as avatars in Second Life, browsing the works at http://turbulence.org, and/or be physically present in the gallery – will interact with the works and with one another. Thus, Mixed Realities will enable people who are distributed across multiple physical and virtual spaces to communicate with one another and share experiences in real time.

Five works were commissioned by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. specifically for the Mixed Realities exhibition (February 7 – April 15, 2007). Collectively, they combine sensor, video, sound, streaming, webcam, projection, processing, world wide web, and 3-D technologies to produce immersive, interactive and participatory performances and installations. They allow audiences to experience real and fictional places simultaneously in Imaging Beijing and The Vitruvian World; debate the value of virtual labor and currency in No Matter; communicate physical data from multiple sources through Remote; and question mediated communication itself in Caterwaul.