Flexis divine: Proud Flesh

Sinuous, pink (my fave color), ALIVE, and hilarious, Adam Ramona's Proud Flesh installation at Burning Life 2009 is a triumph.

Kindly click the lower right hand corner to view this "Large"



Adam Ramona is the artist Adam Nash in Real Life, living in Melbourne, Australia. We've blogged about his work many times. His notecard at the installation reads:

This work is an attempt at a little evolving audiovisual environment. Each wind-responsive square tube fleshy flower will spawn a single seed when walked through by an avatar. The seed rises. If it collides with one of the geometric "clouds" randomly moving above, the cloud spawns a single shard. The shard releases a single raindrop. The raindrop falls. If it hits one of the square tube fleshy flowers, the square tube fleshy flower will spawn more seeds and so on. This symbiotic loop creates an ever-changing audiovisual environment. It's not really evolving, since evolution implies adaptation. In that sense, the failure of this work is perhaps a testament to the limited nature of the environment within which it exists, which itself is perhaps a testament to the failure of us all to comprehend evolution or its consequences.

What does it mean to be in the world? We are flesh, and we are proud. We name that which we do not understand. We are evolving, but judging by our current state, we have a very long way to go. As Alain Badiou puts it: "The contemporary world is thus doubly hostile to truth procedures. This hostility betrays itself through nominal occlusions: where the name of a truth procedure should obtain, another, which represses it, holds sway. The name 'culture' comes to obliterate that of 'art'. The word 'technology' obliterates the word 'science'. The word 'management' obliterates the word politics. The word 'sexuality' obliterates love. The 'culutre-technology-management-sexuality' system, which has the immense merit of being homogenous to the market, all of whose terms designate a category of commercial presentation, constitutes the modern nominal occlusion of the 'art-scinece-politics-love' system, which identifies truth procedures typologically."

Adam Nash (Adam Ramona), Melbourne, Australia, 2009.

http://squaretangle.com
http://www.acva.net.au

Reference: Alain Badiou, St Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford University Press, 2003. P.12.

Teleport directly from here.

Evo Szuyuan's video document of Adam Ramona's immersive installation "17 Unsung Songs"

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

A hermit by his own admission, Australian Adam Ramona (aka Adam Nash) makes translucent jeweled sculptures in virtual environments that interact with and whisper to their visitors, and sometimes even sing to them. The tunes are generally mellifluous, but occasionally they are sad or downright chilling. Some of his interactive mixed reality pieces occupy and depend on both Real and virtual spaces to fully blossom, such as Babelswarm, which he co-created with Mashup Islander and Justin Clemens and produced with a $20,000 (Aus Dollars) grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.

Adam has had me waiting with baited breath for months now to share a gorgeous new installation of his - and a favorite of mine - but in the meantime, I was happy to learn today that videographer and editer Evo Szuyuan (aka Brigit Lichtenegger) has created a machinima in which she has documented his Seventeen Unsung Songs, a sprawling installation curated by Sugar Seville that has endured for over a year on the East of Odyssey sim in Second Life®.

Here are parts 1 and 2 of Evo's video: 17 Unsung Songs, featuring cameo roles by a number of well-known Second Life artists and presented separately because of YouTube length limitations. The video was shown at the premiere of Queensland’s National New Media Art Award Exhibition.





You can still visit Seventeen Unsung Songs by teleporting directly from here.

The myth of Babel comes alive: Babelswarm

In September of 2007, the Australia Council for the Arts announced the winners of its $20,000 (Aus Dollars) - then the equivalent of $4 million Lindens - Second Life arts residency.

Now, Adam Ramona (aka Adam Nash), Mashup Islander (aka Christopher Dodds), and Justin Clemens (a senior lecturer at the School of Culture and Communications, Melbourne University) have just unveiled the fruit of that grant: BabelSwarm.

I contacted Adam, whom I've written about before, and asked him to explain the concepts and workings behind this new effort.

Adam Ramona: Babelswarm is an interactive audiovisual installation based on the myth of Babel and the principles of swarming. It is a mixed reality installation, with a Real Life installation at the Lismore Regional Gallery, New South Wales, Australia...



...and a Second Life installation at the ACVA sim - Australian Centre for Virtual Art, (teleport directly from here).



Adam Ramona: All chat in the sim is monitored and stored to an online database. Voice triggers in the Real Life gallery, or interaction within the Second Life sim, trigger the sky to rain down phrases from the database. These phrases fall apart upon spawning, and the individual letters are programmed to try to reform the word they came from. Unfortunately for them, all they know is their original position in their word. They don't know what the word is or what letters they are. An emergent tower of letters forms, constantly recombining upon interaction with avatars and other letterforms. It is an emergent audiovisual interactive sculpture constructed dynamically by the users themselves.



Adam Ramona: Each letter chooses one of a range of sounds upon birth. These sounds are sourced from many different Real Life people saying the phrase "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech," the first line of the Biblical story of Babel (Genesis 11), in their native language, including Cantonese, Greek, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Malay, Romanian, Singhalese and English. These sounds are harmonically effected using my rational scale. Each letter has two states: hibernation and seeking. When seeking, it is actively looking for other letters to reform its word with. When touched by an avatar in this state, the letter will die. When hibernating, it sits still waiting to be reactivated into a seeking state by either a touch/collision from an avatar or collision with a seeking letterform.



Now that BabelSwarm exists in both real and virtual form, the possibility of setting up that installation in other Real Life galleries and museums is entirely plausible. More information is available here.

Adam Ramona's "Basilica" - The sounds of (in)Justice

The "Visions of Global Justice" art show, which was to have closed last Sunday, has been extended until the end of March (teleport directly from here)


If all you do is gaze upon it, Australian Adam Ramona's (aka Adam Nash) installation for the "Visions of Global Justice" art show - is simply a pretty, translucent sculpture in purple and white. On the opening day of the show, and with 100 avatars in attendance, the lag was so severe that the scripts for this complex interactive piece were not at their best, so I went back at a less busy time.

I was to discover that "Basilica" is an auditory and emotional assault, and certainly one of the most challenging art pieces I have come across in my short Second Life. Like a powerful film that you must see, but cannot bare to watch again, Basilica touches on dark and difficult inner chords with its harrowing sounds.


Touch each of the pieces and the floor of the installation to provoke movement and sounds

Adam had this to say about the piece, which was curated by Delia Lake, "The sounds in the work are based upon the inversion of the connotations of global justice: that of global terror. Much violence and mass murder has been perpetrated, ostensibly in the name of justice, and such acts continue to occur globally to this day. Therefore, I have sourced the sounds of gunshots (in particular the AK47, a symbol to some of the global terror movement), bomb explosions and screams, manipulating the harmonics according to a rational scale of my own devising, to create a compellingly beautiful yet haunting sonic system. Some philosophers, such as Peter Singer, extend the notion of global justice to all sentient beings - not only humans - therefore, I have also used the sounds of animals being slaughtered."


I profiled Adam Ramona and his "Unsung Songs" show in October

Adam went on to explain, "White is seen in some cultures to represent innocence and purity, a state from which global justice can be conceived. White is also seen as the colour of hospitals, and therefore perhaps represents one of the aims of the contemporary global justice movement, that of universal access to health care. Purple is regarded in some cultures as symbolising power and nobility, reflecting the aim of universal empowerment through global justice. Purple is also reportedly favoured by young children, returning the cycle to innocence and purity. I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Nicole Lawther in the conceptualization and design of this work."

Many thanks to the MacArthur Foundation, Global Kids and the Justice Commons for hosting this event, together with the USC Network Culture project. In addition to Adam Ramona, as well as Tooter Claxton and Pavig Lok who's installations I have recently blogged about, the following artists created original art works for this show: Tuna Oddfellow, AM Radio, Juria Yoshikawa, Dancoyote Antonelli, Filthy Fluno, elros Tuominen, Chance Abattoir, Josina Burgess, Velazquez Bonetto, Junivers Stockholm.

Adam Ramona, his "Unsung Songs," and his color Blue

There's Tiffany Blue, Paloma Red and then there's Adam Ramona Blue. It's pure, it's primary, and as far as I'm concerned, it is his signature color.

This Aussie artist and musician - Adam Nash in real life - has been working in realtime 3D since 1997. In fact, all of Adam Ramona's first life work is in virtual environments, though not just in Second Life. He has several art installations throughout the SL grid, but his largest - and perhaps most celebrated - is sprinkled all over the greater part of the Odyssey sim: Seventeen Unsung Songs.

The Odyssey - affectionately referred to as "The Ody" - is the center of the metaverse where experimental art is concerned. The region is a hive of activity, featuring artists that appear to have one mission in common... to rethink everything and push the boundaries, and then push again. We have its benefactor, Pacino Hercules of the Dynamis Corporation, and its curator Sugar Seville, to thank for a number of recent shows that include Gazira Babeli's original "Collateral Damage," as well as performances by the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and Second Front.

Adam's latest show - this gentle, sensorial feast - may well be remembered as the beginning of a new period of interactive and immersive possibilities that involve us even emotionally, but more on that later.

Adam said the most incredibly liberating thing to me yesterday:
"I'm happy when people tell me about their experience (with my work), but it is not a priority of mine because I learned a long time ago that people have the most meaningful experience when they invent the narrative themselves".

Now wait just one NY minute!!! This Artist is not going to present me with a structure... with his framework from which I am supposed to see his stuff?

Adam Ramona... who's avatar conjures a jumble of images ranging from a bow-legged pot-bellied has-been Mexican lucha libre fighter to the brocade curtains in my auntie's bedroom...

...this lecturer and researcher in Games and Digital Art at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia... the man whose work is one of the four finalists of the "1st Annual Architecture and Design Competition in Second Life," this very same man whose collaborative team - BabelSwarm - just won the largest grant to be awarded for Second Life work... is not going to tell me what I should be thinking and feeling as I flit about, first here, now there, moving within these living sculptures that move and talk (and sing) back to me?

Actually, he did guide me a tad. But first I had to get the skinny on his avatar. "(It) is a tribute to the great Australian identity artist Leigh Bowery, one of the greatest artists in history," said Adam.

Oh... my... stars... I started researching Adam's muse, and I just couldn't stop.


Want more?


Apologies for going off on such a tangent, but can you blame me? I will get back to telling you about Adam... but first I have to share that the day before meeting with him, I dropped by Unsung Songs to play a bit, and while checking out the Moaning Columns of Longing piece, generated my very own brilliant white shiny column. It talked to me!

[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: Bettina Tizzy loves me!
[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: And I love Bettina Tizzy !
[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: My existence has meaning!
[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: I am no longer just a Second Life prim
[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: Because Bettina Tizzy loves me and will visit me again soon!
[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: Thank you for loving me, Bettina Tizzy. Without you, I am nothing. Come back and touch me within 24 hours, or I will die.

Sure enough, right next to my gorgeous particle-enhanced column of goodness, columns that others had generated stood in varying stages of decline... one little grey one about to call it quits. I resolved not to be like those other people, leaving their creations to die.

But my column didn't know that I had every intention of returning to it, so it whimpered and whined at me via IM every hour on the hour, begging me to come and touch it, until finally last night I got this terrible message:
[21:04] Bettina Tizzy's Column: Bettina Tizzy, I have died of loneliness and a broken heart.

:o

Adam's incursion in 3D/virtual art dates back to 1997, when he was in the (RL) precision absurdist performance group The Men Who Knew Too Much.

Using VRML with an open source client/server java package called VNet to enable multi-user functionality, The Men began mounting performances in virtual space, as well as real space. In 2000, for their Virtual Humanoids show, they captured, textured and uploaded audience members in realtime into their virtual world and then made them run around chasing their hero. "It was funny, and very silly. We took a very un-serious approach to technology which was kind of rare at the time," says Adam.

By 2002, Adam had begun to see virtual environments as the performance medium, so he left the group and began to do solo work, while sometimes collaborating with the UK group Igloo and the Australian group Company In Space, though they've dissolved now. He continues to collaborate with one of their founding members, John McCormick - a pioneer in the field of telematic performance and motion capture - and the two are now preparing a work called Ways To Wave, which will premiere in San Jose next June, at 01SJ, the second Biennial of Global Art on the Edge.

Regarding collaborators, Adam said, "It's funny, I'm really a very moody, hermit-ish kind of person, but I always end up working with people!"
He is also working with fellow Aussies Christopher Dodds (Mashup Islander) and Justin Clemens (S1 Gausman) on BabelSwarm, a simultaneous installation in Second Life and in a real world gallery which explores the possibilities of literary, music/sound art and real-time 3D arts practices.

Importantly, Adam doesn't see any meaningful distinction between SL and RL. "It's not possible for SL to be a separate reality any more than music is a separate reality. Certainly, it can transport one's consciousness, and many people have transformative or transcendant experiences inworld, but this is also very true of all art and media," he says.
Adam uses a range of environments including VRML/X3D, Quest 3D, Multiverse, Torque, Unreal and Pure Data with GEM. He told me, "I do a lot of sound work for other artists, but that is another virtual environment really. In fact, the first thing that attracted me to realtime 3D was that it seemed to similar to the inside of my mind when composing music."

"SL is very limited, but technical limitations are exciting for an artist, and they make many formal decisions automatic. There is the huge advantage of virtuality, meaning that there are no physical constraints. An artist can fill a space with lots of invisible sensors, place sounds anywhere in the space, and have limitless triggers for sounds and vision, without having to worry about physical possibilities.

Of course, this freedom is countered by the many, many technical limitations in-world. The one I find the most limiting is the inability to play more than 40 sounds simultaneously, and of course the 10-second sound limit, although in many ways I enjoy that particular limitation," he added.

Perhaps the most complex of the Songs is "Mitosis." Adam stimulated the pistil...



Whereupon it expelled pollen, which then became larvae...

... which sometimes - not always - produce insects. We got lucky! We chased after the five flying critters...

...that when touched, turn into blue blocks, that grow musical branches every 24 hours: blue musical trees.

Teleport directly to Unsung Songs from here.

For a fantabulous blow-by-blow analysis of several Unsung Songs, you might also want to refer to Dr. Lisa Dethridge's superb piece in the SLART magazine, including a reference to "Yves Klein blue." ;-) That was then... today it is Adam Ramona Blue.

January 10, 2008 addendum: A more recent but equally interesting review on Adam by Helen Thorington of Networked Music Review delves into his work with sound.