Ocean of Light was a joint research project with the IOCT , funded through two TSB grants. It was shown this year at Ars Electronica and then moved to an extended display at the centre until January 2011. This year’s Ars Electronica festival took place in a massive old tobacco factory, much of it with an art deco feel, and all of it with the strong smells of tobacco still lingering in the air. It made for an interesting event. The enormous available floor area meant that each project and event on show could live and breathe in its own space; projects were generally unencumbered by anything else nearby. This, combined with the labyrinthine structure of the layout and warehouses meant that the overall experience was more like a treasure hunt – you wander around, usually hopelessly lost, down long corridors and empty spaces and then suddenly come across an unexpected gleaming treasure of media art.
Images of some of the projects on show HERE
More images of Ocean of Light HERE Ocean of Light moves to the main gallery at the Ars Electronica Centre itself in the next week, where it will be on show until 9th January 2010.
The Ocean of Light project explores the creative and immersive possibilities of light-based visualisation in physical space. It uses bespoke hardware to create dynamic, interactive and three-dimensional sculptures from light.
Surface is the first artwork to be exhibited using the Ocean of Light hardware. It uses minimal visuals and sound to evoke the essence of character and movement. Autonomous entities engage in a playful dance, negotiating the material properties of a fluid surface.
Squidsoup is a digital arts group specialising in immersive interactive installations within physical 3D space. Their work combines sound, light, physical space and virtual worlds to produce immersive and emotive headspaces. They explore the modes and effects of interactivity, looking to make digital experiences where meaningful and creative interaction can occur.
Contributors: Anthony Rowe, Chris Bennewith, Gareth Bushell, Liam Birtles, Ollie Brown.
‘Inside Out – Sculpture in the Digital Age’ is a compelling international touring exhibition featuring 46 miniature sculptures produced in resin using 3D printing technologies, the title is also the theme for the exhibition which focuses on emerging digital design techniques - and features an exchange of objects with Australian artists via the internet. Co-curated by Professor Martin Rieserand Claire Smith (Melbourne University and Art Technology Coalition) , it is showing at Phoenix Square Leicester through September and October 2010. Rapid Prototype production by Guy Bingham
The exhibition is the result of collaboration between the Art Technology Coalition, the University of Technology Sydney and RMIT University in Australia along with De Montfort
University, Manchester Metropolitan University and University College Falmouth, (incorporating Dartington College of Arts) in the United Kingdom.
'Riverains' Martin Rieser with Collaborating artists Ximena Alarcon & Kasia Molga Programming in Layar: Gareth Howells Programming for Empedia locative system: Cuttlefish Multimedia, Phil Jones and Sean Clarke Riverains creates a story trail along Old Street and Shoreditch High Street, accessible through user's mobile phones. It maps both the imaginary underground world of the Riverains and London's history onto the urban landscape.
Notionally, Riverains are souls tied to watery energies, running under our cities in rivers, cables, sewers, tunnels and caves. They travel unseen by these invisible routes and cluster around sites of their past experience.
Through GPS location sensing and QR barcode code reading, participants can use their mobile phone to discover this hidden underground world, which will correspond to real locations in Shoreditch. These align with the sites of past events such as the Ripper murders. Participants can use the Riverains voices to find those sites and fully experience these narratives.
Two new applications were developed by the Pervasive group at the IOCT for this event including a Layer tour and an new iphone app: Empedia , which will soon have a specific Riverains tour.
Kasia Molga especially revised her Mirror of Infinity mobile texting installation (Pictured) to complement the project.
The IOCT was a strong presence at Digital Arts Weeks in Xian, China in early July 2010 . Dr Steve Gibson, Senior Research Fellow was a key organiser, presenter, educational chair, workshop presenter and also exhibitor with his interactive bicycle spoof. 'Grand Theft Bicycle' http://grandtheftbicycle.com/. Professor Andrew Hugill presented the transdisciplinary work of the IOCT at the symposium at the Fine Art Academy and also gave a pre-concert talk at the prestigious Music Conservatory on Piano Pataphysics and an open air concert in Jade valley http://vimeo.com/13224371 attended both by participants and village locals. Professor Sue Thomas gave a conference keynote on Transliteracy research practice at the conference and Professor Martin Rieser mounted the Third Woman interactive mobile film http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/Third_Woman and an opening performance intervention with workshop students directed by collaborators Anna Dumitriu and Margarete Jahrmann in the great hall of the Fine Art Academy and gave a conference talk on the Art of Mobility. Brett Battey showed his piece Sinus Aestum in the Trans-Art exhibition and Honji Yang gave a talk at Xi'an Jiaotong University on Prolonging Software Life for Digital Art Systems and moderated the Future Cities forum.
The first event across the dedicated fibre-optic network
that connects the DMU Cube at Phoenix Square with the
Institute Of Creative Technologies and buildings across
De Montfort University took place today. Four musicians
gathered at three separate locations under the direction of
Professor Andrew Hugill and performed a series of
improvised pieces. The performers were:
Andrew Hugill (harmonium, mbira (thumb piano), mouth organ)
Technical support was provided by Adam Weikert (DMU)
and Chris Tyrer (Phoenix Square) and the system comprised
the low latency lan chat utility 'mumble' mixed with the
multi-user video conferencing tool 'Vsee', but after this
session will soon be configured using the 16-bit audio
LAN client Jacktrip. This was the first of many such
sessions planned for the future.
Presenters: Dr Tracy Harwood Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Creative Technologies (real life) – Twitter @tgharwood | Email tharwood@dmu.ac.uk Ms Chantal Harvey (aka Mamachinima) Independent Film Producer, Amsterdam, NL (live from Second Life) – Twitter @mamachinima | Web www.mamachinima.eu
The evening showcased a range of films that sought to explain and expand upon the traditional definition of Machinima as the ‘creation of original films using 3D computer games engines’, combining artistic skills of storytelling, scenes and scripts with deep knowledge of computer games engines. Harwood explained an evolution that expands in-game modding to mashups and anymation (illustrating with Blackshark’s The 1K Project 2, Lagspike Films’ World of Workcraft and Tom Jantol’s Cirque du Machinima: Cuckoo Clock).
Whilst some Machinima is recognizable as fan fiction and even in-game ‘promotionals’ aimed at other gamers within the same engine, the Machinimas presented also highlighted how it is used as a video response to targeted third parties and for artistic expression (illustrated with Oxhorn’s Behind the Scenes, Pengin’s Jabberwocky and Lainy Voom’s Push).
Sources of inspiration considered the role of mashups, user-generated content and impact of legal constraints upon creative works. Dissemination was also highlighted as a particular focused strategy for some Machinimators (films illustrating these points were Phaylen Fairchild’s DiVAS and Tom Jantol’s The REMAKE – a world premiere for the big screen in Leicester).
Finally, tools and techniques were discussed with emphasis on how Machinimators may take greater control over their creative vision by using tools such as Moviestorm and iClone (IceAxe Productions’ Clockwork illustrated the medium). Chantal Harvey (aka MaMachinima), talking live from her film studio in Second Life, discussed her creative use of Second Life and presented a director’s view of a selection of her films shot on various locations: I Don’t Like the Dark (Liverpool), A Woman’s Trial (Paris) and Joy of Music.
It was especially good to see a number of machinimators in the audience, including Iain Fryer (aka IceAxe Productions) and Roger Strange-Burlong, the presenter of TMUnderground’s Friday Night Rock [Machinima] Show, both whom had traveled for more than 3 hours to get over to Leicester.
An early machinima made using the in-game shadow tool. Blackshark was a French machinimator who has long since moved on to different things and is no longer part of the community. This piece has, however, been the inspiration for many other films using a similar approach. The film is a visual extravaganza of cars that appear to flow like a waterfall over the race track and uses Moby’s Flower to maintain the tempo.
World of Workcraft by Lagspike Films World of Warcraft
A collaboration by some well-known WOW film makers, including Oxhorn. The film brings the guild warfare concept to the office with some clever in-jokes for both World of Warcraft and office life in general – how can we achieve 30% more boss satisfaction… lets nerf accountants!
“The writing was done by myself and a long time friend who had played a lot of WoW and knew the game well. The idea started with my observation of the WoW player base. I found watching people play to be more entertaining than the game itself. Many of them had a very strict routine for how they would spend their time. They would log on at a set time, proceed to do a number of tasks, and then repeat everything the following day. The parallels to real employment seemed to grow as people spent more and more of their time on the game. From there I made a big list of office stereotypes and WoW stereotypes and ways to combine them. The best ideas were formed into a short script showing a group of characters going about their typical day. From start to finish it took right around two weeks to make.” Stephen Mullane, Director.
2008 Machinima FIlmfest best writing and best short film
Cirque du Machinima: Cuckoo Clock by Tom Jantol Motionbuilder
Cirque du Machinima: Cuckoo Clock is a unique twist on a classic love-conquers-time story: the main characters are presented as falling through multiple dimensions of time to be together.
2009 Animatu Festival Machinima category 2008 Dragon*Con Machinima section finalist 2007 Machinima Europe Best Experimental Film
Behind the Scenes by Oxhorn Productions World of Warcraft
A short sketch produced for the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences’ annual Machinima Filmfest 2008 awards ceremony. Oxhorn is at his best here, poking fun at the US election process. The film was released the evening before the election result was announced.
Jabberwocky by Pengin Second Life
Machinima tale using the classic Louis Carroll poem. The film was created by Stephen Bentham. A digital animation student, Bentham was assigned a poem adaptation for his film editing class: "What you see here was conceptualized and shot in about six hours, with almost literally no planning, and for under L$1500." His partner Caliah Lyon helped assemble costumes and locations, and also helped prepare several WindLight presets for different locations. Footage was shot with a SpaceNavigator 3D mouse in the sims of REZ, Templum Ex Obscurum, Quaddryl, Chakryn Forest and Barad Caristar (locations in Second Life). "No post-processing was used and editing was kept to simple timing and fades." The hero was based on a freebie avatar from Boxed Heroes. The great audio reading was taken from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org/wiki). The Jabberwocky and the other fantastical creatures were all brought to life with avatars from Grendel's Children (SL location). After completing "Jabberwocky", Bentham exited SL indefinitely. Excerpt from blog posting by James Wagner Au, SL Reporter (http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/03/jabberwocky-machinima.html) Push by Lainy Voom Second Life
“This film is a little bit of an experiment - what would happen if I gave myself 1 week to film, $50 and made the very first thing that popped into my head, no matter how ridiculous the idea, trying to go with the flow, being productive rather than procrastinating, and not over thinking anything (having previously felt constrained through creating a poem in a very strict style, this was a way of trying to clear out the cobwebs). The result is difficult to explain and quite stream of consciousness like. It loosely represents how humans are tied to the mechanics of time. We can relive the past through memories, or imagine the future, but our physical bodies cannot stop being a part of the process of time, evolutionary time.” Lainy Voom
Festivals and awards FILE - Electronic Language Festival, Sesi Art Gallery, Sau Paulo, Brazil (future) 2010 MMIF, PlanetArt, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2010 Atopic Media Festival, Paris, France, 2009 Miami Mini Animation Festival, Miami, USA, 2009 Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2009 Cambridge Film Festival 2009, Cambridge, UK, 2009 Time, Transcendence, Performance Conference, Monash University, Australia, 2009 Jury award winner at Machinexpo 2009
DiVAS Series 2 Episode 1 by Phaylen Fairchild World of Warcraft and Second Life
Phaylen Fairchild is the quintessential DiVA. At least in her own mind. And we let her think that. We simply don’t have time or the energy to argue with her. Granted she’s incredibly wealthy, but any woman with more ex-husbands than hair follicles would be. Most of it she blew on face lifts and botox but we love this daffy broad anyway. Phaylen is the brainchild of DiVAS, which has been in development for more than three years and appeared, albeit roughly, in several incarnations prior to this. After teaching herself the technical aspects of filming, editing and storytelling in a virtual medium, she became a powerhouse behind the scenes. Atop her big pastel colored beehive, she wears many hats including producing, writing, directing, editing, score sequencing and starring in each episode. She is one of the original pioneers of Second life, arriving at the end of its Alpha Phase of development. She was one of the first virtual fashion designers, the first to host an immersive role playing event, she was a house member in the first ever virtual Big Brother from CBS and Endemol entertainment and hosted the Annual Metaverse Awards show which honored excellence in virtual content creation. In this film, DiVA continues her search for a guild that will let her join in the fun. It is filmed in World of Warcraft and SL. Showcased at Museum of Natural History in Florence Italy
The REMAKE by Tom Jantol Motionbuilder and The Kid
“My sympathy for Machinima is shrinking over the years. Especially for games based Machinima. There is one ultimate monster called Copyrights. The movie "Remake" is experiment designed to offer a new engine for authors to game with: public domain movies. This ‘engine’ has endless potential. (Nothing new, I know, but I very rarely saw public domain materials, movies, or sound, or anything, used as it can or should or could be used.) In this movie I used Chaplin's movie "The Kid". A lot. Some other author need medieval battle? Somebody made that. Car chase? Of course. With some cheap or free software available today, it is not big deal to alter a face of actor, color of armor or change the license plate. That is, in many cases, all that authors do when altering a game engine. Of course, there are many drawbacks [with the new ‘engine] as films are already made, but there are many drawbacks in game engines as well. A smart author can overcame anything, with priceless award in form of having Chaplin or Cary Grant as a main actor without problems of copyrights or overused game characters, plus sounds, costumes, scenery, everything. Not to mention the learning and good feelings of knowing that you make alive something or somebody that has already been forgotten in some video archive. I am sure that old Charlie will be happy knowing that he is main role in short movie of some grateful thief on the other side of space and time.” Tom Jantol
World Premiere at Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre
Clockwork by IceAxe Pictures Moviestorm
Clockwork was inspired by A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (filmed by Stanley Kubrick), but is not intended to be a retelling of that story. Rather, some of the ideas from ACO have been used to construct a new story.
The footage was originally shot using Moviestorm software, then edited using Sony Vegas Studio – which is an easy-to-use video editor. While shooting in Moviestorm, a lot of customised props were imported from Google 3Dwarehouse. These included the gramophone, the old IBM computers, and some of the buildings. Other props, such as the propoganda posters were created in Adobe Photoshop and imported directly into Moviestorm. Lighting was key. In many scenes, only a strong directional light was used, which was ideal for casting shadows on walls. A number of invisible light sources helped fill in some foreground detail when needed. It was in Vegas that the cel-shading effect was applied to try and give the movie a graphic novel feel. The effect was added to each scene individually then all the scenes were brought together to make the final movie. The most complex scene was with the gang walking by the canal. This was constructed in a number of layers which were combined using “greenscreening” or “chromakeying” to make the different layers appear as one. The water effect was created using another piece of software called Squirlz.
For realism, IceAxe wanted all the actors to have native British accents (as the movie is set in the Republik of Britain) - he asked friends if they would be prepared to act and fortunately no one declined. All the voices were recorded into a standalone condenser mike which records onto an SD card (same type as a digital camera). The files are then easily transferred to PC for manipulation. The only exception was the voice of the narrator who was working remotely and used his own PC to record the audio. Effects were added using Audacity sound editor. Finally, the music was sourced from Jamendo.com which is a website that unsigned artists can upload their music to. IceAxe found some dark industrial music by a French artist called A.n.K.h who was delighted to see how he fitted the music to the movie.
Grand Prize at Machinexpo 2009 Audience Award at the Atopic Festival 2009 Finalist at BitFilm 2009 Winner Ollie awards for Best Short and Best Art House 2009 Runner-up Moviestorm Surprise Ending competition 2009 Shown at Cambridge Film Festival and Mamachinima 2010
