Australia’s first Second Life arts residency
In September, Australia Council for the Arts announced the recipients of its $20,000 artists residency in the 3-D online virtual world of Second Life.
Visual artist Christopher Dodds, musician/3-D real-time artist Adam Nash and writer Justin Clemens were awarded the grant to develop an inter-disciplinary artwork in Second Life, which explores the possibilities of literary, music/sound art and real-time 3-D arts practices within the virtual world.
The artwork, currently underway, is a simultaneous installation in Second Life and in a real world gallery, where gallery visitors can be directly involved in its creation via a computer interface.
The installation titled BabelSwarm, a metaphor for the Tower of Babel, uses voice recognition software that converts the spoken word of real and virtual world participants into 3-D letterform images in an evolving tower of words.
The letterforms generate relationships with each other through a combination of visual and sonic manifestations, fragments of narrative, environmental/user awareness capabilities and through interaction with existing data generated within Second Life itself such as the virtual winds, sunrises and sunsets.
According to Justin Clemens, Second Life is an already burgeoning platform for today’s art. ‘Every era has a form that exemplifies it: in Shakespeare's time, it was the theatre; today, it's Second Life. It's a question of trying to meet the new challenges of a new time - and the new spaces that it generates,’
‘Second Life epitomises the innovations of contemporary technology and culture: an entirely virtual world that has entirely real effects. Justin said.
According to artist Christopher Dodds, Second Life is a step in the right direction for Australia contemporary arts practice. ‘It is encouraging to see the Australia Council recognising virtual worlds as legitimate environments for artistic practice, and while we thought our idea was solid, we knew the grant would receive a lot of attention and some pretty spectacular applications,' Christopher said.
’It’s been an important step in recognising virtual worlds as legitimate creative spaces. We’re looking forward to continuing this recognition with BabelSwarm and thank Australia Council for supporting our efforts.’
More information on the Babelswarm project can be found at: http://babelswarm.blogspot.com/
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