O Machinima é um novo gênero cinematográfico que resulta da gama cultura. Surgidos no fim dos anos 90, os Machinimas têm agora seus festivais e a criação de filmes a partir das ferramentas de jogos World of Warcraft, The Sims ou ainda Second Life é cada vez mais prolífico.

Concebido por Isabelle Arvers, coordenadora de exposição especializada na relação entre arte e jogos de videogame, este programa mistura filmes experimentais com Among Fables and Men, criado no WOW, ou filmes narrativos como Snow Witch de Michelle Pettit-Mee, que relata ume lenda japonesa.

O Machinima se torna igualmente um meio de expressão reconhecido pelo mundo da arte; I-Mirror, um vídeo da artista chinesa China Tracy rodado dentro do Second Life, foi de fato apresentado na última Bienal de Veneza. Num outro estilo, Watch the World(s), de Robbie Dingo, reinterpreta a criação de um quadro de Van Gogh servindo-se das ferramentas de criação de mundos virtuais de Second Life. Realizado com Xstorm, What I Love about Xmas de Phil Rice ou Wild Poker (Sims2) do alemão David Riedel, retomam a grande tradição dos filmes de curta metragem humorísticos que fizeram o sucesso das primeiras séries Machinimas.

Isabelle Arvers

“Better Life” è il titolo del video machinima di Robbie Dingo, l’alter ego digitale di Robbie Wright. L’artista digitale nella vita vera è un commerciante di strumenti musicali, mentre nella seconda vita è un creatore di contenuti dentro il mondo virtuale di Second Life.

Una cosa interessante di Robbie Dingo è il suo video (sarebbe meglio chiamarli Machinima, questi video girati dentro Second Life, Machinima come l’unione dei due termini Machine + Cinema … i video prodotti usando un motore di rendering tridimensionale, quale appunto quello di Second life) interessante, dicevamo, il suo primo video in assoluto, “Better Life”, che pone un quesito piuttosto interessante: dopo la diatriba dei più restii alle comunicazioni virtuali (eppure anche loro hanno il telefono cellulare o si tengono in contatto con amici e parenti tramite email o skype o facebook) che sono ostinatamente c onvinti che ci sia del mavagio o vizioso entro una comunità online virtuale fatta di avatar (avatar=alter ego digitale di te stesso, il classico “omino” che muovi con le frecce della tastiera, per intendersi), il video rappresenta un ragazzo in carrozzina a rotelle che si addormenta davanti al suo monitor e sogna di essere dentro un mondo nuovo, dove egli può addirittura volare e rappresentarsi con tutto ciò che la vita gli ha negato.

Il video è stato selezionato per il 2006 New York Machinima Festival (Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences)

questo il link al blog dell’artista coi suoi commenti in merito: http://digitaldouble.blogspot.com/2006/05/better-life-machinima-film-1.html

Qui sotto il video, buona visione.

Pier Giorgio Provenzano

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“Better Life” is the title of a Machinima Video from Robbie Dingo, the digital alter ego of Robbie Wright. The digital artist is a musical instruments dealer in real life, while a content creator inside the virtual world of Second Life.

An interesting thing from Robbie Dingo is its video (it would be more exact to call them Machinima, these videos shot inside Second life, Machinima as the junction of two terms Machine + Cinema… videos produced using the 3D rendering engine of a video game or, in this case, of a virtual world like Second Life) interesting, we were saying, is his very first video, “Better life”, that brings up an important question: after the quarrel from the people who firmly fight virtual communication (though everybody uses cellphones, or have their brand new page on facebook…) and are convinced that Evil resides inside online virtual communities, made of avatars (avatar=digital alter ego of yourself, the classic “man” that you move with keyboard arrows, just to understand each other), the video represents a boy on a wheelchair falling asleep in front of his monitor and dreaming to be inside a new world with new rules, where he could actually fly and picture himself as the guy that life has denied him.

The video has been selected for the  2006 New York Machinima Festival

(Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences)

This is th link to the artist’s blog with his comments on this matter: http://digitaldouble.blogspot.com/2006/05/better-life-machinima-film-1.htm

Below, the video. Enjoy the show.

Pier Giorgio Provenzano

RobbieDingo avait introduit une nouvelle dimension dans l’œuvre de Vincent van Gogh en utilisant la toile “Nuit étoilée”, voici un nouvel opus de virtualisation d’une œuvre au travers d’un film animant le tableau le plus connus d’Edward Hopper : Nighthawks. On reste dans l’ambiance mais j’aurais aimé un peu de dialogue et une interprétation originale du concept des deux tueurs attendant leur victime dans un bar.

Nighthawks d’Edward Hopper

Watch the World(s). Nuit étoilée

A voir aussi : SL cover

Mask, by Robbie Dingo

Thanks as always, Robbie.

I’ve been scrounging around, waiting for the Grid to come back up today from scheduled maintenance, and I stumbled across this. Robbie Dingo is already well known, I believe, as one of the leading machinima filmmakers in Second Life, but his work is worth a revisit even if you’ve already seen it. (And Don McLean’s “Vincent” has always been a favorite of mine.)

Watch the World(s)

It’s refreshing to see new artwork like “Meteors” by Rob Wright aka Robbie Dingo and Kirsty Hawkshaw created for the Millions of Us artist in residence program.

Pixels, art, music and storytelling transporting us to the sublime, creative and emotional psyche.

Whislt it would always be great to develop the ability of virtual environments to use of sound and music, Second Life offers such huge potential as it is. Indeed, Adam Ramona often tells me how he enjoys working within the creative contraints of the Second Life medium and how it spurs him to be more creative.

A number of interesting exhibits have opened across the grid recently so I thought I’d quickly document my experiences of them. Firstly metamusic member Da5id Zsigmond has created his “Loop Machine” installation. Da5id is working this up to be a collaborative interactive jamming exhibit. I popped over there recently and tried it out. Whilst still in development – it was definitly interesting. The machine controls numerous loops which are all synced and volume controllable – which are also synced to a series of changing images across a deck infront of the “players”.

There are many people experimenting in the field of synced looped devices, including Octal Kahn and Robbie Dingo. Recently Billy Trenton ( who makes a lot of nice replica studio gear in Second Life) demo’d a prototype after the last metamusic event.

Above is another interesting project that opened this week is Daruma Picnic’s “Force Sun to Midnight”. This is a sound art installation over at Infotainment Sim. Its interactive visually as well as audibly and allows avatars to control sound playback in objects by walking through them with collision scripts. The object size scripts were developed from Keystone Bouchards open source reflexive architecture scripts and Daruma aslo had some guidance from Adam Ramona, an artist who has been experimenting in this field for some time.

I caught up with Daruma over at the installation and did a quick interview :

Dizzy Banjo: why did you create it ? and what inspired you ?

Daruma Picnic :I am interested in interactive work and this is my second experiment using sound. I was inspired musically by Ravi Shankar Peace Mantra. Listen carefully and you can hear a whale and sea lion.

Dizzy Banjo: How do you find working with sound in second life ? was it frustrating for you working with the preloading issues etc ? did you find the 10s limit a limitation or a creative framework ?

Daruma Picnic: Yes well i have lots of lag because i work on an old machine- so i am not sure how other people experience it. Most of the sound is composed off line of course using garage band and further edited in audacity. That is the most time consuming aspect of working with sound and music.

Dizzy Banjo : Did you work with a scripter on the properties of how the objects expand / contract / change colour etc ? or did you do the whole thing yourself ?

Daruma Picnic: the change color and the sound script i wrote myself with the guidance of Adam Ramona. The prim movement scripts are free to copy from Keystone Bouchard via his reflexive architecture. He encouraged me to experiment with his scripts and loves this piece.

Dizzy Banjo : Are you going to work on another sound based installtion ? Whats next for you ?

Daruma Picnic : Yes i have several in the works another singing sculpture, and a spoken word sculpture

Keystone Bouchard has himself also been creating a very interesting musical installation in Second Life. However this time, the emphasis is more compositional. ‘Wikisonic’ is an experiment in collaborative composition, in many ways similar to the architectural equivalent currently underway in Second Life – “Wikitecture”. This is a really interesting project and I’m going to investigate it much further with an interview with Keystone ( coming soon! ) .

Fundamentally it allows people to key in note values into a “stave” which is played in a rotating manner – kind of like the virtual equivalent of the brass cylinder in a music box. The composition can be continually altered and changed by multiple users simultaneously.

All these projects ( and the multitude of others out there ) show how the medium of user generated content within Second Life is in itself incredible expansive creatively and allows for many possibilities. This is especially true with the collaborative possibilities they enable. It’s exciting to think of the ways people will use the social medium of Second Life in the future as more tools come into play.

J’ai été interviewé en ligne, il y a quelques jours, en tant qu’expert par Anne-Cécile Meurisse, étudiante en Master 2 IDEMM à Lille 3 et qui travaille sur la promotion et la communication en ligne du Congrès Net 2007 qui aura lieu le 29 Novembre 2007 à Lille Grand Palais. Dans ce cadre là, elle s’intéresse aux univers persistants tel que Second Life et plus particulièrement à ce qui se fait dessus et envisage d’écrire un article sur l’Art Numérique dans ce monde virtuel.

Que pensez vous du développement des mondes virtuels tel que second life ?

Les mondes virtuels ne datent pas d’hier, il suffit de se rappeler du deuxième monde de canal plus sorti en 1997. Avec le haut débit et de la puissance des ordinateurs actuels, on en a vu apparaitre de nombreux.

C’est vrai que ces derniers temps, second life bénéficie d’un formidable buzz dans les médias, ce qui à amener des grandes marques, firmes et institutions à s’y installer pour bénéficier d’un éclairage médiatique. Ce monde virtuel combine finalement le principe de réseau social et surtout l’immersion dans un contenu 3D.

Bien qu’il reste un espace très spéculatif et peu accessible du grand public, pour l’instant, ce qui est intéressant c’est que chaque internaute à la possibilité de créer des territoires, d’interagir et d’enrichir son environnement. Ce qui laisse entrevoir de nouvelle forme de communication, de travail collaboratif et d’aide à la personne.

Que pensez vous du développement de l’art numérique sur second life ?

C’est assez naturel que des artistes numériques investissent un univers numérique. Je pense notamment à l’artiste anglais Robbie Dingo qui compose de la musique, crée des performances artistiques en mettant en scène des machines et qui construit des bâtiments virtuels.

L’une de ses créations la plus marquante est la reproduction en 3D d’une œuvre de Vincent Van Gogh : « La Nuit étoilée »

Mais aussi au français Patrick Moya qui est un artiste numérique, peintre, sculpteur et performer et qui sous le nom de Moya Janus, a réalisé dans Second Life, un espace d’exposition : Le Moya Museum.

Comme dans Second Life, on peut se retrouver comme dans la vie réelle avec ses commerces, ses solitudes, ses manifestations et même ses attaques terroristes (!) alors les artistes, par leur capacité créative, donnent du sens à cet univers.
Selon vous y aura t-il un impact sur l’évolution de cet art ? Ou est ce uniquement une façon de le promouvoir un peu plus ?

Oui, pour parler précisément de certaines tendances de l’art numérique, à savoir le net art ou l’hypermédia qui entraînent une interactivité avec le spectateur, je pense que les évolutions technologies associées aux univers virtuels feront évoluer, de fait, leurs productions artistiques.Les univers virtuels sont à la fois une finalité artistique et un moyen de diffusion pour certains artistes numériques. Il existe déjà des évènements artistiques qui n’existent que sur le web comme ceux initiés par l’artiste numérique français Fred Forest qui fut l’un des pionners du Net Art et qui crée des happening dans le cyberespace.

Découvrir le blog de Net Lille 2007

Pour compléter mes propos au delà du cadre de cette interview, bien que cela soit un corrolaire.

Au delà de l’art numérique ou numérisé, puisque le Louvre existe aussi sur Second Life, la question est également de savoir si le web, par le truchement ou non des mondes virtuels, améliore la visibilité des artistes, dits émergents, et si, de manière générale, il permet véritablement un meilleur accès à la culture ou, pour le moins, une meilleure sensibilisation, notamment au travers de contenus multimédias, voire interactifs ?

Le débat est lancé … Qu’en pensez vous ?