Mixed Reality Participatory Performances at InterACT! on LEA4

At SENSES PLACES a Mixed Reality Participatory Performance Environment by Butler2 Evelyn/Isabel Valverde & Toddles Lightworker/Todd Cochrane with Anisabel/Ana Moura, Lux Nix/Clara Gomes, In Yan/Keiji Mitsubuchi, Island Habana/Yukihiko Yoshida, Jun Makime, Yumi Sagara and others, you can always experiment with livestream video with your webcam, the HUD available at the environment at LEA4, and a wiimote, if you have one.

For pictures, see: http://ll2ndlife.blogspot.com/2011/11/interact-with-mixed-reality-at-lea4.html

And then there are performances with people in SL and streamed video of dancers in Portugal and other locations around the world, including Japan, scheduled for the duration of InterACT!, so between now and January 15, 2012.

EVERY TUESDAY, 3-5am and 6.30-8.30am (PST/GMT-8)
AND SATURDAY, November 26 5-7pm (SLT/GMT-8).


LEA4: InterACT!
A Linden Endowment for the Arts exhibition showcasing interactive virtual art
SLURL to go to LEA4

Curated by L1Aura Loire/Lori Landay, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Visual Culture & Interactive Media, Berklee College of Music

Virtual Permanence Dates/Times/Place:
OCTOBER 15 to JANUARY 15, 2012
LEA4 (52, 145, 301)

Physical Presence:
October 15
2-4pm (SLT/GMT-8), 9-11pm (PT/GMT)
Ler Devagar, Lx Factory, Alkantara, Portugal

November 26
5-7pm (SLT/GMT-8)
November 27
1-3am (PT/GMT)
9-11am (JPT/GMT+8)
Ler Devagar, Lx Factory, Alkantara, Lisboa, Portugal
Digital Hollywood Univ., Tokyo, Japan

Tuesdays, October 25, 2011 to January 14, 2012
3-5am and 6.30-8.30am (PST/GMT-8)
11am-1pm and 2.30-4.30pm (PT/GMT)
7-9pm and 10.30-12.30pm (JP/GMT+8)
Instituto Superior Técnico/Taguspark Campus, Oeiras, Portugal

Senses Places SL environment is always open and you can get the 3 desktop-free interfaces from the SENSES PLACES Giver. Just copy and follow the instructions.
You need to have a webcam, and for the wii mote, a mac computer. And an extra camera for the livestream video.
We would appreciate if you send some comment or feedback about your experience or contact us in case you have a problem running the interfaces at
http://sensesplaces.wordpress.com
or sensesplaces@gmail.com

Good Luck and HAVE FUN!!!

Description
Senses Places is a playful mixed reality performance environment for audience participation. An ongoing dance-technology collaboration generating whole body multimodal interfacings keen to a somatic cross-cultural approach; Senses Places stresses the awareness and integration of simultaneous perceptive, local-remote connections, where participants and environments meet and engage kinesthetic/synesthetically.

What emerging embodied realities and cultural specific exchanges will surface by the multi-participant varied involvement? Linked to avatars through the suggested interfaces: Livestream, webcam, Wiimote©, and soon Kinect©, it all depends on the participants’ attitude throughout the interactive experience through their own and each other’s physical bodies, video mediations, avatar moves, and/or environmental changes.

Tuning the audience participants into several whole body modes of physical-virtual body-body and body-environment interactions, within a physical and virtual environment (Second Life©), Senses Places re-purposes recent Web 2.0 enabled game devices with a synergetic/semantic approach to interface design. The interfaces include, video and avatar mediations via Webcam, Wiimote©, and Kinect©, plus a biometric device.

Through an inclusive process engaging kinesthetic empathy, Senses Places deepens contemporary dance practices, such as, Contact Improvisation and Butoh, interweaving Eastern-Western somatic based practices, like, Tai Chi, Yôga, Body-Mind Centering, Release, and Alexander Techniques. The improvisation evolves in a sharing of corporealized places, times, and energies, encouraging a fuller experience of the moment.

Senses Places wishes to contribute to enlarge the range and interconnectedness of sensory-perceptions within the already complex practice of group improvisation, proposing a constructive and transformative means of inter-subjective and collective socialization, reversing the dead end substitution, gender and movement cultural stereotypification, and instrumentalization of bodies by avatars in social networks, such as Second Life©.

We are interested in:
- How are we differently affected by interacting with our avatars while seated at the desktop, and/or by actually moving/dancing with them?
- How can body-avatar embodied experiences challenge subjective, inter-subjective/social and cultural mixed-reality presence and mobility, instead of substituting or instrumentalizing the physical by the virtual embodiment?
- How can a somatic cross-cultural dance approach allied to the new technological potential mean a overall mentality and paradigm shift?

Senses Places Blog: http://sensesplaces.wordpress.com

* * * * * * ANYONE IS WELCOME TO PARTICIPATE * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * COME ON IN * * * * * * * * * * * * * *