Babelswarm — by Justin Clemens (Writer), Christopher Dodds (Artist/Designer), and Adam Nash (Musician/3-D Real-Time Artist) :: Opened April 11, 2008 :: Lismore Regional Gallery, 131 Molesworth Street, Lismore NSW 2480 + Second Life.

Socrates: What a lucky morning this is turning out to be! I was looking for one virtue and have found a whole swarm of them. — Plato, Meno

In September 2007, the Australia Council for the Arts announced the recipients of its $20,000 artists residency in the 3-D online virtual world of Second Life. Dodds, Nash, and Clemens were awarded the grant to develop an inter-disciplinary artwork which explores the possibilities of literary, music / sound art and real-time 3-D arts practices within the virtual world. Continue reading

Cantata Park 1 (2006) [Teleport to Mashup Park, Marni (206, 35, 23)] — by Metamatic (Christopher Dodds and Adam Nash) — is an interactive, spatialised sound sculpture built in the virtual world Second Life. The sculpture is made from 256 individual nodes in a 16 x 16 grid. Each node is embedded with a single word, triggered by a participant’s movement through the work. Each participant creates a random narrative, assembled on-the-fly, and in real-time.

Cantata Park explores the notion of a “cut-up narrative”. By disassembling and reassembling a passage of text, the participant is free to extract unseen meaning from an existing text. Continue reading

Speaking at the wall - interactive video installation by Chiara Passa (2008) - This interactive video installation synthesises the voice into virtual architecture. The spectator’s voice is recorded from a microphone and live time audio-video processed through the software Quartz Composer. Speaking at the wall develops itself on two walls and the floor. The three screenings around the corner of the three Cartesian axes reconstructs one central illusory perspective. [Quicktime Video]

While the spectator is inside the room and speaks close to the walls, he modifies with his voice (volume and spectrum) the whole environment around him. The words he pronounces draw a new atmosphere… a virtual desert. Continue reading

Halsey Burgund: ROUND :: March 9 - July 27, 2008 :: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, Connecticut :: Exhibition Reception: March 9, 2008; 3 - 5 pm.

ROUND is an audio installation that will solicit spoken voice contributions from visitors and use them as part of a musical composition intended to be listened to while viewing the work on view in the galleries. The interactive audio experience will allow visitors to hear a diverse range of voices — including artists, curators, and visitors — sharing their perspectives about the exhibitions and to add their responses. Continue reading

Bodycoder - Voice :: November 22, 2007; 7.45 pm :: Watermans, 40 High Street, Brentford, London.

This unique solo-show is a multi-media revelation of the human voice and its unimaginable intensity. Ten years research into human body movement, multi-sensory perception environments and digital processing has brought about this exceptional show performed by Julie Wilson-Bokowiec. Bodycoder - Voice is part of an ongoing experiment in connecting body movements with sound, intertwining the sensual with the sonic. The experiments render the voice multidimensional and examine how the natural movement vocabulary of the body can become an expressive medium and create and manipulate sound. Continue reading

An Evening of Multimedia Performance Art Featuring: Nerve Theory a.k.a. Bernhard Loibner and Tom Sherman :: With an opening video-set of Untitled Landscapes provided by Ecoarttech :: November 2, 2007; 9 pm :: The Palace Theater, Hamilton, NY :: Free admission & open to the public.

Nerve Theory will perform H5N1, a live multimedia performance blending video, music, voice and some very nasty dark humor. This transcontinental duo (Austria, Canada, USA) jumps on the mutating, evolving H5N1 virus, using the very real threat of a global pandemic as a launching pad for a series of bone-chilling statements about the world we live in. Continue reading

Usman Haque has been commissioned to create Evoke for the Illuminating York festival. You can see the work from Fri 26 Oct until Sat 3 Nov, from 6-11pm. From the website…

“Evoke is a massive animated 80,000 lumen projection, which will light up the facade of York Minster. The facade is brought to life by members of the public, who use their own voices to “evoke” colourful light patterns that emerge at the building’s foundations and soar up towards the sky, giving the surface a magical feeling as it melts with colour. The cathedral, built to link conceptually earth to the heavens, has been a site for the conveyance of words, dreams and aspirations for hundreds of years. Continue reading

Sounding the Subject and Video Trajectories :: until December 30, 2007 :: The List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames Street Building E15, Atrium level, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sounding the Subject considers the use of sound, the human voice, and theatrical performance by five artists in major pieces that are drawn from the collections of Pamela and Richard Kramlich and the New Art Trust. The artists featured in the exhibition are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Stan Douglas, David Hammons, Nam June Paik, and Pipilotti Rist. Continue reading

Reset by Christine de la Garenne. “The viewers of this 24 hour exhibition describe the room where the exhibition takes place. A dictating machine records what they see. On the computer I wrote the different statements of the spectators. As a video loop these sentences followed each other. They were projected on the opposite wall in the exhibition space, passing from the right edge of the room to the left . By reading the description of the room the visitor develops his own visualisation.

By moving into the exhibition room the visualized image becomes “real” because the described space is equal to the room the people move in. Different statements of all the viewers visiting the exhibition were projected on the wall. Continue reading

Recipients of the Inaugural Australia Council Second Life Artists Residency: We are proud to announce that we have been awarded the inaugural Australia Council Second Life Artists Residency. A project-based grant, at AUD $20,000, it is the biggest grant to be awarded for Second Life work.

We’d like to thank the Australia Council for recognising 3D Multi-user Virtual Environments (MUVEs) as a medium for serious art. For a public funding body to give such significant support shows vision and commitment to innovative post-convergent practice. We will collaborate to develop an inter-disciplinary artwork in Second Life, which converges possibilities of literary, music / sound art and real-time 3D arts practices within the virtual world. Continue reading