ArtSynergy_prg12 description

The project has 5 collaborators, Annette Barbier (electronic media artist), Drew Browning (electronic media artist and designer), Leif Krinkle (electronic sound and interaction designer), Quoc Thao (director, actor), Nyuyen Thi Minh Ngoc (writer, director, actor). We will create a virtual environment which brings people together in networked contexts and which provides a context for performance as well as the occasion for individual exploration. It will address ideas of conflict and cooperation, powerful complementary forces in our culture at large and in the life of the individual.

In the proposed project, we will create a virtual environment for a staged performance, and a modified version of that environment for a web site.

The project uses virtual space but is tied to real space. The artists will visit one another’s countries and will experience each other’s cultures and natural environments. Investigating significant geographical features will be an important part of our preparation for the work, including those features of the landscape which were invented or imposed (such as the division of Vietnam into North and South at the 17th parallel). Among important natural features is the river.

In Vietnam, we will explore the Mekong river which feeds the Mekong Delta, and in the US, we will focus on the Chicago River. “River” as an idea is important for its metaphorical as well as practical value. Rivers both divide (when they define boundaries) and connect (when they traverse political boundaries).

They are emblematic of the connections among areas and peoples in that they carry things – debris, pollutants, vessels - from one area to another. Someone is always upstream, and someone else downstream. Rivers have margins, and marginal plants, animals, people, enterprises exist and flourish along their banks.

The river is both a stable entity and a flow, both static and in flux. The river is a metaphor for time. It is also a vehicle for transformation: witness the numerous works of fiction built on the river journey: The African Queen, Huckleberry Finn, Deliverance, Apocalypse Now, etc. Like a river, the technology we are employing is a flow. It carries information, crosses boundaries, connects distant places, circumvents attempts at human control.

Our Vietnamese collaborators are interested in narrative, in the ways in which stories about the lives of individuals reflect the larger conflicts and changes in society. We plan to create two fictional characters who, although inhabiting different worlds, travel together and learn from one another.

Our contemporary Huck and Jim will share experiences in our virtual world which will test the limits of their friendship. They will experience conflict, they will cooperate in achieving their goals, they will come to know one another and through their relationship, themselves.

Our virtual world will be composed of actual footage recorded in both locations, as well as imagined landscapes built in the computer. It will use water imagery, the movement of the individual through these landscapes, the ability at some times and the inability at others to disembark as emblematic of our voyage through our mutual history.

The actors (in the performance) and the viewer/participant (in the navigable web world) will encounter danger, hospitality, hostility, and friendship along the way.

Our belief that this is a fruitful medium and direction for creative activity is based on previous experience in creating HOME for a networked environment1 in Linz, Austria for Ars Electronica 2001. This event, called “Alive on the Grid”, provided the opportunity to see first hand that virtual exchanges can transcend language, distance, and national borders. In this particular work, a CAVE2 virtual environment served as the display system and interactive interface. A 10’ x 10’ x 10’ cube in which three walls and the floor served as projection surfaces accommodated up to 10 immersants in the experience of exploring a virtual, 3D environment. One person navigated through the space, interacting with objects, animations and participants from other locations. The navigator in each location was represented by an avatar, a virtual depiction of one’s person, gestures, and location in space. A live microphone allowed for voice communication. The excitement of encountering a stranger in another land, the thrill of exploring worlds and sometimes building them together, and the experience of interacting with others “clothed” as someone else (having chosen an avatar or representation in the virtual space) were intriguing demonstrations of the power and potential of the medium.

Virtual environments are frequently used for conflict – we want to both interrogate these uses and to explore the possibility of a broader range of uses and meanings. From first -person shooter video games like Quake to military defense training, computer simulations are a way to engage in conflict without incurring consequences.

The opportunity to work with Vietnamese artists gives the project a particular power, and the idea a particular relevance, since the history of US/Vietnamese relations is colored by military hostilities and much loss of life. We intend to investigate a metaphor created by the use of our technologies as instruments both of war and of entertainment, to raise questions, and to demonstrate alternatives.

•the interdisciplinary, collaborative nature of the project

Our methodology, collaboration, is particularly appropriate for this project for a number of reasons. Most importantly, we resist the idea of an "exchange" which simply transplants work from one part of the world to another. This may indeed be valuable in certain circumstances, but it does not encourage the deeper work of engaging both artists and audience in an ongoing transformative dialogue.

Observing popular culture phenomena such as on line gaming has led us to a medium which has a power which defies location, which makes possible a range of relationships from competitive to cooperative, and which speaks to artist and non-artist alike.

The project involves the collaboration of artists from theatre, music, and computer arts.

Collaborators will work together to realize various aspects of the project.

Drew Browning, Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is an artist who works with virtual environments in the Electronic Visualization Lab.

Leif Mangelsen is a musician and creator of interactive environments who works and teaches at Columbia College.

In her stage work and writing, Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc has been very concerned about human rights. She is well known and widely produced in Vietnam as a playwright, performer, and novelist.

Quoc Thao, actor and director in the theatre, focuses on helping young people articulate their experiences. Artists bios are on line at: http://www.omik.com/as/prg12/virtual.html, and below in abbreviated form.

In our collaboration, separated by two continents, we will rely upon networking technologies to help us communicate and formulate ideas and plans. Thus, in the very process of creating the work, we employ the medium which we interrogate, and which will embody our eventual work.

Additional Concepts:

The work uses objects commonly available in everyday life in Vietnam as symbols whose meaning may vary throughout the work. These include the Vietnamese conical hat, which is used to represent the lotus flower, the planting of rice, fish, those killed in war, building blocks for restoring bridges, etc. Chopsticks are used by the audience to make noises which contribute to the chaos of war sounds. Paper cranes, symbolizing peace, are offered to the audience at the conclusion of the work to place in the memorial created onstage to those who died in the conflict. A large, white parachute is used as water, wind, fishing net, boat, cloud and shroud.

The work is in three acts :

Act I opens with the birth of the day, and depicts the joys and struggles of people living close to the land.

To Live : express the struggle to exist , to live with the river symbolizing proliferation .