The Reflected (Un)Real: Space in Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Probleme Probleme”

In her 1977 short story “Probleme Probleme,” Ingeborg Bachmann plays with space and representations of reality in a way that reflects the disillusionment of Austria’s post-war generation. Beatrix’s two desires in the short story – to look at herself in the mirror and to sleep – both suggest a resistance to living in the real world and a dependence on the illusions of her dreams, mirrors, and the beauty salon. Although the older patrons of the salon and Beatrix try to hide from the responsibility for the past and present, the mirrors and the salon prove to be temporary illusions that are unsustainable. Sleep and mirrors become ways to avoid reality rather than coming to terms with it, which, for Bachmann, is ultimately unproductive and naïve

Listening mirrors: prototyping for a hybrid audio augmented reality installation

We introduce ongoing developments of Listening Mirrors, a sound art installation and live interface for musician and non-musician alike. The piece, in its construction and interaction design, investigates ways in which collective sonic expression can be made possible using Audio Augmented Reality technology (AAR) and acoustic mirrors, whilst asking how such environments promote collective sonic expression

Computer Mediated Communication and the Connection between Virtual Utopias and Actual Realities

People have generally been very ambivalent about the potential future roles of new technologies (and the internet specifically) and their possible effects on human society. Indeed, there has been a tendency for polarization between attitudes or perceptions of naive enthusiasm and cynical resistance towards the use of computers and computer networks, and for such related concepts as ‘the information superhighway’ and ‘cyberspace’. The projection of such ambivalent perceptions into naively utopian (or even ironically dystopian) images and narratives might be seen as the latest and uniquely global permutation of a basic function of human culture - that is, to imagine ‘a better future’ or represent ‘an ideal past’. This paper will consider the extent to which the kinds of virtual utopias made possible by computer-mediated communications are\ud ‘connected’ to the actual individual and social realities of human participants. In other words, how important might it be to recognise a distinction between the use of virtual utopias (and utopian representations in any culture) as merely escapist, self-indulgent fantasy on one hand, and\ud as a useful, transformative media for reinventing the human condition on the other? Whether we live in a Panoptic or democratic Net ten years from now depends, in no small measure, on what you and I know and do now. Howard Rheingold, Afterword to The Virtual Community (1994, p. 310

The Fractured Memory of a Mind’s Eye

The work I create is informed by questioning reality/identity, the fractalizing planes of existence our essence occupies, and the artifacts of memory experience navigating through space time. While existing in this realm of oversaturated media and neon glow, I question the effects of pervasive data systems overloading or programming the mental software we possess. My work includes humor as a means of exploring these conventions while also displaying psychedelic surrealist imagery to help break away from the conscious prison this existence births our concept apparatuses within

Analyses of a Virtual World

We present an overview of a series of results obtained from the analysis of human behavior in a virtual environment. We focus on the massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) Pardus which has a worldwide participant base of more than 400,000 registered players. We provide evidence for striking statistical similarities between social structures and human-action dynamics in the real and virtual worlds. In this sense MMOGs provide an extraordinary way for accurate and falsifiable studies of social phenomena. We further discuss possibilities to apply methods and concepts developed in the course of these studies to analyse oral and written narratives.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. To appear in: "Maths Meets Myths: Complexity-science approaches to folktales, myths, sagas, and histories." Editors: R. Kenna, M. Mac Carron, P. Mac Carron. (Springer, 2016

Inchcolm project

Inchcolm Project is part of an interdisciplinary research project which develops new ways of designing for the moving body across media, by combining aesthetics and design methods from contemporary performance practice and video games. As such, it brought a video game (Dear Esther, The Chinese Room, 2012) to life on a Scottish island (Inchcolm island in the Firth of Forth). During the two hour experience on Inchcolm the audience/players wander freely on the island encountering geo-tagged audio, live music, performers and installation spaces evocative of the game world, a playthrough of the game projected in the 12th century Inchcolm abbey, and an orchestral performance of the video game’s soundtrack (composed by Jessica Curry, arranged by Luci Holland and David Jamieson, performed by Mantra Collective)

Mind-Body Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

The wave-particle duality is a mind-body one. In the real 3D-space there exists only the particle, the wave exists in its consciousness. If there are many particles, their distribution in accordance with the wave function represents a real wave in real space. Many worlds, Schroedinger cat, etc., exist only as mental constructions. The "waves of matter" are non-material. Feynman et al. taught quantum world "is like neither". Alas, they forgot living matter.Comment: 7 pages including 5 figures and 6 references. The shortened version of a report in IV Edition Workshop on Mysteries, Puzzles, and Paradoxes in Quantum Mechanics, 31.08.2001, Gargnano, Ital

Intermedia Remediated & the Question of Designing Discourse

New “engines of discourse” (neural networks, algorithms and other forms of artificial intelligence, combined with the devices that record and interpret viewer actions) bring to the fore rhetorical concerns that challenge discipline-based notions of process and form. We shall focus here on the tradition of intermedial art practices to better understand the ever more complex question of how to inter-relate three aspects of digital communication: authorial “intent”, the digital sign and its interactive exploration by a “spect-actor”. We shall argue that the digital sign is an extension of intermedial thinking rooted in a pre-digital, photographic practice and esthetic. The writings of several French theorists on the subject of interactive digital design will provide a context for understanding examples of “virtual art-realities”, whose specificity is staging relationships between objects and people. Keywords: Rhetoric; Discourse; Intermedia; Interactivity; Digital Sign; Esthetics; Artificial Intelligence; Behavior-based Art.</p

Seeing nothing

[article extract] Magic shows used to attract enthusiastic audiences to theatres and music halls. The simultaneous decline in their popularity and the expansion of cinema are well documented. Trick photography and later the movie camera were able to recreate visual illusions by manipulating time, and the editing process made the magician&#039;s techniques redundant. Magical performances themselves had no magic when captured on film, which by itself could fill the air with illusive thickenings and gatherings of matter. But one part of the spatial disturbance &#039;the magic that is lost by film&#039; still lingers very close to us, for its cultural significance extends far before and beyond its manipulation in Victorian magic shows. It is the brief ecstatic (and possibly erroneous) sensation of lucidity that we feel when something draws our attention to thin air