OneAvatar installation

You get to see more of the OneAvatar performance. If you want to read more about the OneAvatar project read here.

by the way, thanks to everyone that contacted me about the performance and the project, your comments have been really interesting and useful. We will have a couple of surprises coming up in the next few months, as the OneAvatar will probabily become a product that you will find in the stores, next to the Playstation3 or the XBoX. Critical performative consumism?  ;)

keep in touch!

Here they are, with little old me getting electrified in much higher visual quality :)

OneAvatar - the Game and the packaging

The third edition of the Milano in Digitale competition was held at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, an industrial complex restored by Milan’s public administration to host artistic and cultural projects. Organized by the Fondazione D’Ars Oscar Signorini onlus, it is a competition created to investigate the evolution of the artistic research performed by young artists in the fields of digital and new media arts.

The competition is really interesting as it features a great level of openness towards the proposed works: both the organizing team (composed by Cristina Trivellin, Morena Ghilardi and Martina Coletti) and the jury (Paolo Rosa, Pier Luigi Capucci, Antonio Caronia, Francesco Monico, Domenico Quaranta and Franco Torriani) carefully analze all of the works selecting the ones that use digital technologies in the most significant ways.

It was, thus, a pleasure to be selected.

Me and penelope.di.pixel chose a hardcore approach to present OneAvatar in this occasion.

I designed a multi player game using IDSoft’s Quake 3 3D engine that allowed the players to hunt the avatar of the person (me! :)  ) wearing the OneAvatar suit through a three dimensional environment. [Note: look at the end of the post for the links to download the source code of the game]

When the players eventually hit the OneAvatar character, the software activated the circuit connected to the game server’s serial port (I connected through a simple circuit to the USB port of one of the laptops) sending the electric signals used to flash all the LED lights that were placed all over the suit and to send a stronger electric shock to a voltage multiplier circuit that was taped to the hands of the performer, actually hurting (a bit ;) ) him.

the installation before I started to get electrocuted

The installation features the results of the research coming from the OneAvatar project: technology, emotion, identity, relational dimensions in the digital domains are ome of the fundamental topics analyzed.

In this research we focus on the re-connection of the physical body to the digital identities of the persons using digital technologies and networks. In the OneAvatar project this approach produces a short circuit between the physical and immaterial dimensions, forcing the former to interact with the latter.

What results is an explicit layering of realities, entangling material and immaterial domains together. Game players are forced to thing about the physical effects of their actions when they shoot the game characters, ad the other players get physically hurt by the electric shocks.

A narrative metaphor for immaterial economies, cognitive capitalism, for the relationships established in social networks.

This is the approach that we are calling Neo Realismo Virtuale ( NeRVi )

penelope.di.pixel finishing up the packaging

For the event a complete marketing and communication strategy was produced to create a fictional, but realistic and produceable, product to establish the narrative level of the performance: the performer was displayed as in a shopping center showcase, with the product and the related gadgets available for sale. A further analysis on the evolution of art in the contemporary era, in its hybridization wth communication, marketing and ethnographical practices.

The results were amazing, with people happily embracing thei sadistic roles, and merrily torturing me for several hours on the first day of the show.

The other works at the exhibition were quite interesting.

IO Cose Yes we Spam

IO Cose’s Yes We Spam featuring a massive spam action in the occasion of Italy’s elections.

nOne and three chairs

nOne and three chairs

nOne and three chairs, by Alessio Chierico, featuring a beautiful metaphor on an old game and on a symbol.

To-gather together n.11

To-gather together n.11, by Cosimo Cappagli, Daniele Grosso and Lea Landucci, where Maestro Daniele Lombardi‘s music and artistic practices come to a new life with the help of a Wii remote.

Poetry Machine - Change, Daniela Calisi, Shadi Lahham

Poetry Machine – Change, by Daniela Calisi, Shadi Lahham, featuring an analysis of the process of writing.

this message will self destruct

This message will self destruct, by Marco Brianza, researching on the replicability of digital contents.

SpaceWindows

spacewindows.com, by domenico rubino, where a random picture browser becomes a tool for an interaction and aesthetics analisys.

Dancing with my Tuzki

the lovely Dancing with my Tuzki, by Valeria Ferrari, where a MSN chat becomes the occasion for a reflection on digital iconographies.

Flight SynEp

Flight SynEp, by OtherehtO, featuring a suggestive clash/encounter between Wetecho, the moist bio/technologic world, and Virtù-algorhythm the dry virtual reality.

Lacuna

Lacuna, by Marta Roberti, a non linear narrative exploring the concept of the double.

Non io

Non io, by Matilde De Feo, a nevrotic and torrential monologue by S.Beckett, reinterpreted through digital media

Alter Ego

Alter ego, by Roberta Peveri, analyzing the concept of the alter ego through the use of digitally produced perspectives.

Compound Field

Compound Field, by Patrick Tabarelli, a sythtetic video discussing the relationships running between nature and artifact.

An incredibly BIG thank you to all of the organization and to all of the incredible friends that we found/re-found at the event.

Read below for the details of the software used in the OneAvatar installation.

The OneAvatar Game

The game uses the IRRLICHT C++ libraries and the FMOD C++ libraries to handle the 3D sound effects and music.

Click this link (below) to download the game sources (only .h and .cpp files included: you do need to link the other libraries; also check inside the source code for the names of the required sound and graphic files)

OneAvatar 3D game sources

Here is a gallery of the pictures:

Here are some links:

Milano in Digitale

Fondazione D’Ars Oscar Signorini onlus

Fabbrica del Vapore

Some pictures by Cecilia Brianza

review on VideoLudica

review on ArtsBlog

angel_f

SuperAvatar

here is a report on ArtsBlog

here is the story on NeRVi

NoemaLabs published some info

here are the pictures:

Angel_F and SuperAvatar

Angel_F and SuperAvatar are scared.

The lives of the young artificial intelligence and of the  avatar who escaped from virtual worlds have been endangered  more than once by the control, that is constantly perpetrated on people’s information, habits and identities.

Forms of surveillance that are progressively and obsessively  expanding through continuous control of our lives (and not  only of the ones of our beloved digital beings). Along the streets, in supermarkets, in public spaces, and even in our homes, through telephones and internet connectivity.  An enormous amount of resources are wasted to control people’s  lives in multiple ways: from cameras to armed forces, passing  through data retention systems spying on people’s personal  information.

Angel_F e SuperAvatar are feeling annoyed, alarmed and outraged by all of that and, therefore, decided to publicly show their dissent, together with their human friends.

The two digital beings will join the “Freedom not Fear“  event, and they will attend the conference that will take  place at the “Provincia di Roma” building on saturday,  starting at 9:30am.

Who: Angel_F and SuperAvatar
When: Saturday, October 11th 2008, from 9:30am to 13:30am
Where: “Freedom not Fear”, palazzo Valentini (Palazzo della  Provincia di Roma, via IV Novembre n. 119/a, Roma

_________________________________________________________________

“Freedom not Fear“: International action day for democracy, free speech, human rights, civil liberties; against censorship, mass-surveillance, mass-data retention.

http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Fnf08

Angel_F is the young artificial intelligence son of Derrick  de Kerckhove and the Biodoll.
It was born on February 2007. Since it started interacting with humans’ physical world it has been deeply interested about the international dialogue on digital rights. After a peculiar case of censorship, little Angel_F managed to attend the UN’s Internet  Governance Forum held in Rio de Janeiro all by itself.

Angel_F is a project by xDxD.vs.xDxD and penelope.di.pixel
http://www.artisopensource.net/2007/12/10/angel_f/

Fatherboard - the SuperAvatar - is an avatar that escaped  from virtual worlds when its owner’s computer exploded in  a short circuit.  It looks like a cyborg, but it isn’t, as its body is built from the hardware parts of the computer from where it materialized.
Its relations with human beings are contradictory and intermittent: the SuperAvatar is a fugitive living a constant conflict with institutional control, either the virtual and the real ones!

Fatherboard is a project by Luigi Pagliarini
http://www.artificialia.com/Fatherboard/

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OneAvatar connects your body to your Avatar in virtual worlds.

You and your Avatar will be finally one, sharing the same experiences even at physical level.
You get hurt, you Avatar gets hurt.

Your Avatar dies, you die.

Connect to your avatar and watch out for yourself at

> at NeRVi website

> videos on Youtube

also spotted at:

> Twitter

> Art Feed

> Archive.org

> Turbulence.org

2 part article on DigiCult Magazine, written together with my beloved mademoiselle

penelope.di.pixel

We speak about identity, body, artificial intelligence, avatars, cyborgs, and digital ecosystems.

It’s the first article in which we spoke about NeoRealismo Virtuale [NeRVi]

feel a bit less alone by reading our article at DigiCult magazine:

> Part 1

> Part 2

Famous people come back to life in the Online Virtual World of Second life, in the form of autonomous avatars conducted by artificial intelligence.

A research on identity and on how people relate in the virtual environments that we find online and offline.

Karl Marx, Coco Chanel and Franz Kafka come back to life as autonomous avatars on Second Life. An artificial intelligence software uses their texts and interviews to generate the way they talk to other avatars, giving them a “soul” that is inherited from the mind expression of the famous characters. Their movement in the virtual world, their actions and interactions with other avatars, and their gestures and movements are completely autonomous, making them a digital form of life.

Dead on Second Life

check them out at

> website

> Youtube videos

> PDF Presentation

also seen at:

> Wikipedia

> Played in Italy

> the Grid Live

> Art of the Net

> Weblog Art

> Massively