The Green Stage
Above: Video of The Green Stage performance.
The final work created for the Yoshikaze Residency involves a live mixed reality, trans-locative performance before an audience in Second Life, in Umeå Sweden and streamed on the web.
An enclosed stage was constructed for the performance. This was populated with a set consisting of a green house, silhouettes of ‘real’ people and props of reclaimed and reworked Second Life marketplace items. Behind the house, through the trees, a live vista of a mountain range (the Rockies, Canada) can be seen. Next to the house is a floating Second Life client window.
Prior to the performance, the audience were required to wait outside the enclosed stage in the gallery. When ready my representation ascended to the gallery and instructed the audience to follow down the winding tunnel into the space. This ‘passage’ from outside to inside served to highlight the inner ‘virtual’ world to be created during the performance.
Above: The video stream broadcast live to the stage screen in Second Life.
During the performance, props within the space and client windows which appear and float through the space are timed to change colour periodically. My representations movements and direction of gaze is choreographed by a controller software external to Second Life and it is this gaze that is broadcast live to the Second Life client window (see video below). The audience simultaneously see the performers representation and through its point of view as my representation moves through the space panning, tilting and zooming.
The live broadcast however is manipulated. Green within the imagery has been keyed out and replaced by a video of the artist from the ‘real’ world. As my representation moves around the space, my photographic representation moves around its surfaces as they change to green, flattening the ‘virtual’ world, looking through its very window into another and breaking its stylised illusion. Sound heard is the artists heart beat from an ultrasound monitor reworked in a number of ways. Image and sound links the constructed space to the artist.
While the space of the performance as a whole exists as a combination of ‘real’ place, constructed ‘virtual’ representations of place(s) and physical personal data directly experienced by all present, the client window displays a unique vision of a multi-layered hybrid space, an inner ‘virtual’ world replete with representations, seen only first hand by my representation.
Above: The performance keying screen. Click to view more images of the performance.
To view more images of this work and others from the Yoshikaze “Up-In-The-Air” Second Life Residency please see the Yoshikaze Residency set on Flickr. An artists book has been published which documents all works produced during the Yoshikaze “Up-in-the-air” Second Life Residency. To purchase simply follow this link.