[-empyre-] Memory Errors intheTechnosphere: Art, Accident, Archive

Fri Nov 23 05:43:06 EST 2007

hello all:

very interesting discussions seem to be going on, i could glance and wish not to interrupt debate.
but the reference to "avatar nostalgia" and voice/voice experience in digtital or virtual environments is
so fascinating. 

i want to mention that we have festival going on at Dresden Hellerau at the moment (CYNETart_07encounter) 

(http://www.cynetart.de)

which is particularly invested in setting up shareable virtual environments that are explored physically as well as through real-time
compositions and recompositions of voice.  

More convoluted, even, were the experiments last weekend to create a live performance
with remote partners inside a "stage set" created in Second Life adapted from real historial (re-membered) "sets" drawn by Adolphe
Appia but not realized, except that the rhythmic movement vocabularies by Dalcroze were recorded or re-drawn in a book by Dalcroze.
Young music artists from the Dresden music academy then constructed/improvised a 1912 performance ("Oprheus")  as if they could reconstruct
it, although there are no filmic documents or notations,  and the live performance was shown here Sunday on a real set with the projected digitally 
re-created animations (Vrml) inside a SIM of the Second Life tele-plateau (programmed/created by Michael Takeo Magruder). 

If someone is interested ---   i have been keeping a diary of the festival performances at the website here, especially, also,
of the "Tele-Plateau" experiments last weekend with real-time interaction and the use of voice.

there was one other performance, by Igor Stromajer, networked live from Hong Kong, which perhaps addressed the issue of "avatar nostalgia" or loneliness.
it is also described and recorded on our website, as well as on Stromajer's "intima" website (http://www.intima.org/bi/stattikka)

http://body-bytes.de/02/?cat=53&language=en

with regards
Johannes Birringer

c/o Dresden, Germany

> wow, fascinating... btw, any other ways they use sound and  
> particularly voice?

in my experience voice tends to be used mostly in game cinematics and  
player to player communication. language based narrative tends to be  
driven through on screen text based dialogue boxes. however if anybody  
is playing or aware of a mmorpg whose narrative is driven primarily  
through spoken voice i would be very interested to know.. i believe  
that (implemented well) this could only add to the strength of the  
mnemonics of the game?

(as an aside) with the advent of the spatialised audio voice chat  
channel in SL a whole new set of possibilities for creative audio have  
been made available...

> and how does this affect your desire to come back or the way you  
> engage?

i started thinking about this very point the moment i sent off my  
post.. what i have found with 'eve online' is that without the  
personal historical investment (or the ability to invest the game  
environment with distinguishable external memory traces) it becomes a  
mediative and relaxing process, a place to return to where one can  
'switch off'. this relates back the earlier conversation regarding  
"the perfect Zen dream of be-here-now" and while i am unqualified to  
discuss this in relation to eastern philosophy, i would say that this  
state is not reached when "all memory is external" but when you find a  
'place' (internal or external) that does not enable or encourage  
recall. (but then of course imagination comes further into play - the  
self is not so easily dismissed!)

> I'm just getting into SL... and agree with what you say! i'm  
> wondering, where are these blogs and photo albums available --  
> linked to SL in someway or not? btw, what's your avatar called, when  
> do you hang out there? (hope that doesn't go against netiquette to  
> ask... if so, apologies,  and see ya offline)

a good place to start is the secondlife.com forums. there is a forum  
SL Forums > Resident Forums  > Resident Conversation  > Resident-Run  
Websites. (i have included my second life details in my signature of  
this post.)

cheers
andrew

andrew  burrell
http://www.miscellanea.com

nonnatus korhonen
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Escanes/34/180/46
http://palace-of-memory.net

On 21/11/2007, at 11:02 AM, Norie Neumark wrote:

> hi andrew and all,
> On 20/11/2007, at 7:43 PM, andrew burrell wrote:
>
>> hi mickey and all,
>>
>> avatar nostalgia is built right into games such as World of Warcraft,
>> and i think the clever (and intentional) manipulation of a players
>> sense of nostalgia for their own in game experiences (mediated  
>> through
>> their avatar and user interface) is one of the reasons for the  
>> success
>> of these games. in many ways WoW is a well structured mnemonic
>> environment firmly situated in  the the lineage of the classical Art
>> of Memory (as outlined in the rhetorical guides of Cicero, Quintilian
>> et.al. and 'externalised' by Camillo in his theatre of memory).
>>
>> WoW follows all of the rules for creating an 'artificial' environment
>> upon which one can construct - as an active rather than passive
>> memorisation - an external and navigable system of memory. every
>> 'region' in the game is distinguishable visibly and aurally from one
>> another. there are well defined paths that move from major site to
>> major site (each distinctive in its own way) and a separate piece of
>> music plays in, and represents each, definable area. memories of not
>> only in game experience but also 'real life' experience (as in
>> emotions or experiences or mind-space etc. that a player comes to the
>> game with) are then encoded into areas of the games mnemonic  
>> landscape
>> that are then triggered, as one revisits these sites at a later time.
> wow, fascinating... btw, any other ways they use sound and  
> particularly voice?
>>
>> in order to test this theory i have recently been playing a mmorpg
>> called 'eve online'. the avatar in this game is a faceless spaceship
>> and the navigable landscape is the vastness of the universe which is
>> astoundingly homogenous and despite the game boasting a universe of
>> thousands of star systems to explore, the only real difference
>> (besides are nebular here, a gas cloud  there) is the narrative that
>> is created through interacting with npc's and  other 'real life'
>> players - but i find that this narrative seems to float, aimlessly
>> unattached to anything 'physical', until it becomes irretrievable.  
>> and
>> as if the makers of this game were doing their own experiments in the
>> Art of Memory, music plays from a playlist and is not site specific  
>> so
>> it can never be tied to a memory in space. in opposition to many of
>> the other successful mmorpg 'eve online' seems to break every rule of
>> the classical Art, and as a consequence i have found that memories  
>> are
>> NOT encoded in its persistent world and that this game cannot act as
>> an environment of 'externalised'  or 'artificial' memory - perhaps  
>> its
>> persistence breaks down through sameness...
> and how does this affect your desire to come back or the way you  
> engage?
>>
>> a similar thing could be said of second life. while i have spent many
>> many hours building, creating and exploring SL, i find it very
>> difficult to maintain a personal history within the SL world itself.
>> not only does much of its vast expanse look incredible similar, it is
>> also constantly changing, visual landmarks come and go and navigation
>> becomes a matter of 'teleporting' from bookmark (co-ordinate based
>> landmark) to bookmark. AND this brings me back to the archive and
>> documentation. to overcome the constantly shifting and impermanent
>> nature of SL many people have began to create blogs, photo albums or
>> other such archives of their experiences in SL in order to create
>> their own personally defined and navigable
>> memory-scapes/theatres/palaces/artifices..... remind anyone of 'real
>> life'?
> I'm just getting into SL... and agree with what you say! i'm  
> wondering, where are these blogs and photo albums available --  
> linked to SL in someway or not? btw, what's your avatar called, when  
> do you hang out there? (hope that doesn't go against netiquette to  
> ask... if so, apologies,  and see ya offline)
> best
> norie
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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