LEA11 had a party today at Vaneesa Blaylock's spot where Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield are exhibiting DynaFleur for the next approx. 2 months. This is the immersive Dynafleur that first opened in 2007 on the Princeton sim and has been absent for approx. 8 months. Today was the re-opening party, and when I landed it appeared to be a fun grouping of all the usual Saturday art goers and some others including Harper, Ampel, Ush, naydee, Rave, Soni, and Bel were there as were Desdemona and of course Douglas and many others. Be sure to visit and experience this fun exhibit for yourself. For more info and pics check out their web site here: http://dynafleurreturns.blogspot.com/
I met Douglas when I entered today and he kindly provided me with additional information about the installation. Of course most of the details are provided on the note card upon entry or you can see from their web site, but a fun fact he disclosed to me about the giant pink cilia-like objects one passes through was that he asked Dizzy Banjo for a sound that was creepy and squishy like when the pods opened up the "Alien" movie. Dizzy had the current sounds ready by the next day. Douglas told me, " He made the sounds by recording the sound of ice cubes being crushed in a plastic bag and then slowed them way down!". Very creative! Douglas spoke highly of Dizzy's works.
This exhibit is fully immersive so dim your lights and follow the arrows through the tunnel. Be sure to have sounds up and enjoy the corresponding sounds of the exhibit as you move along. I cammed out to see that in the first section of the tube-like DynaFleur it appeared the wall pieces were bulging and moving along with me like when a snake eats and the food object moves along the length of his body. The pink cilia previously mentioned is very cool too. You see and hear and can almost feel them caressing you as you pass through. The dance floor is at the far end and is surrounded by giant curtained 2d art pictures on the giant "walls" that fully reveal themselves when you fly up to them.
Douglas advised me to check out the note card for the locations and links to their other in-world works including Ripple, Moons of Galileo, D. Construct, and Explore it!. These are some more fun exhibits to visit so be sure to accept the card upon landing.
And straight from their notecard I wanted to add their artist info., since they have all done some impressive things:
"Douglas Story is the Second Life avatar controlled by the Real Life persona of Dennis Schaefer. Douglas and his work partner Desdemona Enfield create large-scale interactive art installations in SL. These include the StormEye installation, which was part of a real life gallery show curated by the New Media Caucus. The pair has also done collaborations with noted RL and SL architect David Denton/DB Bailey, adding sound design and interactive elements to DB's structures, as well as taking part of group shows organized by Bryn Oh and Misprint Thursday. Douglas/Dennis photographs flowers at very close range in and around Los Angeles.
Desdemona Enfield is a master scriptrix and advanced builder in the Linden grid and various Open Simulator grids. She works with artists, mathematicians, physicists, architects, educators, and product developers. Her collaborations have included DynaFleur at Princeton, the Butterfly and Meteor Shower quest systems at Ode, an astrophysical visualization system at StellaNova, Pillflower and Dancing with Myself for Nar Duell, the Explore It career exposition for Santa Barbara City College, the Galilean Moons exhibit for the Visualizing Theorem project, D.construct for Splitscreen, stage 4 of the Path exhibit hosted by the Linden Endowment for the Arts, and the scripts which create visualization of the E8 Lie Group that underlays the unified field theory of the physicist R Garrett Lisi.
Dizzy Banjo ( Robert Thomas ) is a composer, music producer & music programmer based in London. He is best known for composing reactive music for mobile devices, video games and virtual worlds. His work explores many ways of tracking listener behaviour and making the music react to it, including voice, physical movement, activity patterns of individuals and groups, time of day or place, gestures and keystrokes.
He is currently CCO and lead composer at RjDj . RjDj create iOS applications which are innovative sonic experiences. He recently composed the music for RjDj's innovative iOS game Dimensions, which also featured music composed by oscar winner Hans Zimmer. In 2010 RjDj collaborated with Chris Nolan and Hans Zimmer to create Inception the App, which was no 1 app in many countries worldwide. In 2012 they collaborated once more on The Dark Knight Rises Z+ app.
Robert has worked with and remixed many artists including Hans Zimmer, Imogen Heap, AIR, Carl Craig, Little Boots, Console, Souldesigner, Bookashade, Jimmy Edgar, Sophie Barker (Zero 7) and Kirsty Hawkshaw (Opus III, Orbital, Tiesto). He has also composed bespoke music for Nintendo, Revlon, The Mexican Tourist Board, Czech National Radio, and Princeton University.
--About our host--
Vaneeesa Anne Blaylock is a performance artist whose work explores identity, individuality, and civil rights in cyberspace. Her current investigation "Alice in Cornelland" is part of the Linden Endowment for the Arts, Artist in Residence series. In this series of workshops, talks, and activities, Blaylock invites the virtual community to consider what aspects of immersive virtuality give rise to the experience of touch. As one of her favorite examples of a work that "feels" like you are bodily present in it, Blaylock invited Story & Enfield to install their Dyna Fleur at LEA11 as part of the Alice in Cornelland investigation."
