Just a few days left! "Mixed Realities"

Turbulence - a project of New Radio and Performing Arts, has commissioned over 150 net-based works, and helped to pioneer Real Life's exploration of virtual worlds via its Mixed Realities, an exhibition and symposium, which ends on April 15th and explores the convergence - through cyberspace - of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks.

The funding for Mixed Realities was made possible thanks to a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and links and overlays the Huret & Spector Gallery at Boston's Emerson College, Turbulence.org, and the new media center and gallery Ars Virtua in Second Life (teleport directly from here, headed by Rubaiyat Shatner (aka James Morgan).

The commissioned works allow audiences to experience both real and fictional places simultaneously in John (Craig) Freeman's Imaging Beijing , which combines panoramic photography, digital video, and a virtual installation, to investigate and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities.


Imaging Beijing (teleport directly from here)

In The Vitruvian World, by Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker and David Steele, an immersive installation has been created that embodies the principles of Vitruvius, a 1st century BC, Roman writer, architect and engineer who authored specific building formulae based on the guiding principles of strength, utility and beauty.


Vitruvian World (teleport directly from here)

Then there's the debate regarding the value of virtual labor and currency in No Matter, by Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott. According to them, their replicas of famous buildings, luxury goods and custom-designed objects in Second life simultaneously disappoint and fascinate, whereas in Real Life, consumer items and imaginary objects serve as forms of emotional attachment — projection screens for desire, fear and love.


No Matter (teleport directly from here)

Neill Donaldson, Usman Haque, Ai Hasegawa , and Georg Tremmel, explore the communication of physical data from multiple sources through Remote. Remote connects together two spaces, one in Boston the other in Second Life, and treats them as a single contiguous environment, bound together by the internet so that things that occur in one space affect things that happen in the other and vice versa -- remotely controlling each other.


Remote (teleport directly from here)

Caterwaul is an interactive sound installation that operates as a one way “portal” to Second Life via the Internet. A physical wall in Boston operates as a totemic locus of grief. People approach it with intent to wail and mourn. The mourners grieve their lost loved ones who spend more time in virtual and on-line worlds (this sounds familiar) than they do communicating in Real Life. The resulting cacophony of the lamentation is recorded by hidden microphones in the wall, and piped out of an "identical" wall in Second Life.

Caterwaul is by Australian Pierre Proske, with technical assistance from Artem Baguinski and Brigit Lichtenegger.


The very noisy Caterwaul (teleport directly from here)

Mixed Realities ends April 15th.