Tuesday 11 March 2008

Micheál's Feedback Loop

I went twice to Micheál's piece 'Feedback Loop' as part of the Digiville, once to the lighthouse venue in the real world, and once to the digital plot in Second Life. I've only a limited experience of Second Life, past attempts have been hampered by technical problems, and it was the first time id ever been to an organised event in LindenLand. It was a strange experience really, going somewhere where the other participants were potentially people i knew, and i spent some time seeing if there were any clues in the avatars that might reveal who was controlling them in the real world. It felt in some small way like some kind of freaky masquerade party, lots of outlandish attired folk who could be strangers or could be friends, your were never really sure. The two identical avatars of Micheál only added to the confusion, does Micheál have an identical twin in the real world he's not mentioned? or was it an obsessed fan?
One of them was talking (typing) seemingly random statements that was even more confusing, without the visual clues of real conversation with real people it was unclear who was talking to who, and as the digital audience posted comments, it seemed like there was several conversations going on at once, none of them making much sense. This talking virtual Micheál turned out to be controlled by Dan, who was at the lighthouse reporting snippets of the goings on in the real world.
The Lighthouse was dominated by a huge screen in the middle of the room showing the virtual Micheál in SL, with a clown repeating the movements of the avatar on screen -Dan controlling the avatar, the avatar controlling the clown while the audience looked on. It seemed as random in the real world as it did in the digital, except this time the audience didn't consist of people with the heads of bunny rabbits, or nor was anyone dressed as if they were off to a fetish party afterwards, which was a shame. The two other video installations were somehow lost in the room, the main screen so dominated the room that the other work soon was obscured by the audience, and unfortunately lost some of their impact.
The discussion afterwards was also interesting, some of the comments from the audience seemed to be getting a little heated - i wonder if Micheál hadn't have finished when he did whether it would have kicked off! Its interesting to see such strong opinions, we are only just beginning to explore virtual life, and as it becomes more a part of our everyday life it will certainly raise important issues of our relationship with technology, and with each other.
I'm interested to know what Micheáls conclusion is after the work, as he seemed to approach the project without a fixed agenda of what would take place, to see where it went of its own accord. I'm not sure what conclusions i drew from the evening, but it was certainly good food for thought.


1 comment:

Mocksim said...

Thanks for these comments