Update

I have everything set up and decided to go with speakers instead of headsets for the participants. Below are some pictures of all my equipment set up in the basement of my house. Decided the white box will not be big enough to shelve the laptop and the projector. I want to be able to put the microphone on top of the box so people can walk up and grab it and sit down and talk. So this weekend I am going to build my own.


Here is a run down of how this works:

• I have two second life accounts:
• I will be logged in at the local location: Just an avatar that will be used as a watcher.
• I will be logged in at the remote location, which will be my main character that will be doing the talking on screen.
• I will be at the remote location logged into the local location via skype for video and Second Life for visuals and audio.
• I turned all audio off on skype so I only have a web cam shot of who is sitting and talking to my character. This will allow me to get a better view of who it is that is hanging around the exhibit and it just feels better to be able to look at who you are talking to instead of guess who may be standing there. So Skype is taking care of the video aspect.
• On the Second Life side I have my speakers, projector and laptop set up. I also have a webcam set up on the laptop as well as two skype counts connected so I can communicate with the local machine while I am in my remote location via the video feed.
• In the pictures below it will make more sense.
• The only thing now that I need to do is really figure out how I am going to clean this up and go about tucking wires, taping wires etc. and get my box built this weekend. Other than that it's ready to roll.

This is how I set it up for the time being because the white box did not provide sufficient room to house all the equipment. Thus I am building my own. I need to figure out how to set this up so it doesn't look this messy when it goes into the final installation space.

This is about the right space and height I want for the final installation. I think the lower the projection is the more people will feel that it is at their eye level and communication will be easier.

This is a shot of my remote location set up. I have dual screens, the one on the right is the one that will be monitoring the local location via Skype and the webcam. On my side will be the left screen where I will be logged in as my character and be able to watch myself as my character talks and monitor everything to make sure it goes smoothly.

Set up tested and finalized for Second Life Exhibit

I went back to Holland Project again this time for Friday night's show Who Cares With the Spitting Image and Octophonix. I was able to get a feel of how many people could be crammed into that small gallery space and it was more than I expected. Only problem I noticed is that if it gets too crammed with individuals there is virtually no room to leave empty or spare, and I do require a bit of room for the space between my projector and the wall.

I stood in my gallery space for a while and watched how people interacted with the art on the walls. To my surprise the food and beverage people had taken up the entire space where I am scheduled to install. I'm wondering if we will have a food and beverage place set up?

To sum it up it's a small space and the level of noise was very high which made me definitely decide to use headphones for my installation.

Below are two mock ups I did in Google SketchUp. The way in which I want my project to be installed is not going to guarantee that anyone will not stand in the way of my projector and block my installation, but it all boiled down to a matter of making it apparent to people. I decided the best way to go about this was to put down thin red pieces of tape on the ground in the shape of a square so people would notice that if they stood there they would be disrupting the projector display. I think this will work.

In the picture above I thought about just one set of headphones to allow a person to interact with my display one and a time. Then I thought about putting a few chairs, that way maybe another person could listen in or interact as well while sitting down. If they were sitting down maybe that would again reduce the amount of traffic in front of the projector.

So the mock up above is my final idea that I will materialize. I am going to design a kind of wooden frame with black cloth hanging around my projector and laptop. That will kind of act as a shelf in which on the top I will place the headphones for people to use at their leisure and I was thinking two chairs, again the space is incredibly small.

I have tested out the necessary projectors and equipment at my house from various distances and I found a distance of about 8 feet to be sufficient. Also I am still determining where my remote location will be on my end. Everything has been tested and finalized as far as installation ideas and procedures. Now I am going to focus the rest of my time on a script for my character and also dressing up the SL environment around him to prepare for when he is in the lime light (on gallery showing night).

Gal's Story Time Second Life Simulation Update

Apologies on such a late update. Pretty much have everything good to go, except now I need to test my web camera and it's speaker capabilities out in our new space. I don't know if it will be able to capture the sound from a wide audience in a bigger space, really would like to test that out. Tested it out in my own apartment and it works fine for a small room from about 6-8 feet away from the actual speaker itself.

Below is a mock up I designed in illustrator of how I hope this can be set up in our new space.

I'd like the cam mounted above the projected space so that I can have a kind of semi-birds view of the audience, it doesn't really matter if I can see who is asking a question or interacting with the avatar, the most important thing is that I can hear them from that distance.

The way I'll be setting this up is with my Mac Mini and a laptop. Laptop will go out in the exhibit section so that the projector can be hooked up and display what is going to be shown on the wall. My Mac Mini will be with me behind the scenes equipped with microphone and feedback from webcam.

Also, I am going to start making "flash backs" in which at certain intervals in second life movies will come up that show footage of what my character is discussing as if he recreated the scenes from his days being kidnapped by gold farmers. I will dedicate the time up until our next meeting to finish a few of these so that I can present them by our next class meeting in two weeks.
Below is a recreation of my character from World of Warcraft brought into Second Life, Armor and all.
(Actually was able to find World of Warcraft armor in SL).

Already have arranged two separate times to rent out a projector. Good news is they rent the projectors out for 48 hours so I'm good.

Also working on a basic story line script for my character. Here it is below.

Name: Story Time With Gal

Location: Second Life studio house with medieval motif.

Plot: Paladin Galashton from World of Warcraft has escaped the virtual world of Warcraft and traveled over into the safer realm of Second Life where he has settled down as a law abiding citizen and started his own talk show about his kidnapping and how the Chinese Gold Farmers took everything from him that he owned.

Elements: This will be a Q&A story time environment focusing on one character who will interact with an audience of real people and engage in conversation with them.

This will also be embedded with commercials and "flash backs" or "re-creations" of his time in World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft Machinima Update

Within the last two weeks I have modified my project drastically. I have decided that this machinima will be in the form of a talk show. My World of Warcraft character will be the one under the spotlight.

My idea is this:

Character name: Galashton
Profession: Online Character

Setting: A talk show stage setting, chairs, people watching etc.

Idea: My character will be animated to speak into a microphone onstage and respond to people's questions about his time as he was taken into "custody" in the virtual world when the Chinese gold farmers hacked my WOW account.

That will be the main focus of this talk, but he will also answer any other questions asked of him.

Focus: To create some kind of feeling and human expression within a digital binary character.

Problems: What I really would like to do is have the actual audience be able to pick up a microphone in the California Building and ask my character questions and he responds from the screen. I believe this is doable but will take some more live performance methods from me. I am still discovering and researching how I could make this possible. This would be my most favored approach, as it lets the audience interact with the setting more.

Other thoughts: If my idea above cannot be executed then I would like to use real people in my video, as my character will be the only digital person in the video, but will be on a talk show being asked by the audience and the host questions about his life in World of Warcraft. This is a little bit more doable as I don't have to figure out how to make my character respond to unexpected questions in a reasonable amount of time to make it look authentic.

Right now I have found some amazing third party tools that are helping me with learning about how to extract my character out of WOW as a wire frame and apply skins to the wire frame. Below is an application I was able to download, its a third party tool called WOW Model Viewer where you can specifically work directly with characters and animate, cloth, customize, and even change backgrounds with this tool. Below is the process I used to take my actual character out of WOW and dress him in appropriate clothes.

Playing around with this application has really opened my eyes to how I can totally customize my character outside of the game yet with video editing I can green screen him right back into the game environment and make him do things he couldn't normally do just playing in the game.
I also found what is called Wow Map Viewer. It is another third party tool that allows me access to all of the 3D rendered areas in the WOW world. I have totally customize these areas with fog, water, tabards, weaponry racks, etc. Below are a few screen shots of this program. Currently I am researching an area in wow that could potentially play a role as the stage for a talk show.

My other idea was to have my character actually in the real world, his background is that of the real world and he is the only digital thing in it. See below for some pictures of this.

Animated Stills

Here are a few videoes I recorded using Fraps.
Fraps will be used to capture green screen footage of my character and then I will use Adobe Premiere Pro to do the final editing of sound and video layers.
These videos just show me messing around with the new software and trying to get a feel with what it is capable of doing.

World of Warcraft Performance Art ideas and subjects of interest

Upon my research of performance art I came across many machinima and anime films that I feel are very similar to how I envision using the virtual world inside World of Warcraft to create my very own performance piece or documentary about my feelings and thoughts in regards to spending a portion of my life inside a virtual world.

I have thought a lot about the focus of my project and have decided that it will not focus on World of Warcraft, or it's lore, or history. Instead, World of Warcraft is my digital medium that I have spent enough time inside of, met enough people, and know the mechanics of the virtual world in the sense that I feel comfortable in being able to express myself through such a digital world. It will be my medium, my virtual world, like some use Second Life, Eve, Rift, or other online virtual games to explore, to focus in on and really dissect and display my relationship with a virtual world and how these relationships are often hidden behind the bedroom door or looked upon as maybe a waste of time, or unproductive. Instead I want to reflect myself through my virtual character whom I have spent countless hours and years building up and participating in many online events with.

To really narrow my ideas down in a nutshell I will be doing a performance piece, this piece does not necessarily have to have me physically present. This piece will have to do with my relationship with my online virtual playground, and in this piece my character will be a reflection of my thoughts and feelings. We will be questioning each other, and philosophizing about deep feelings in regards to a game like World of Warcraft, why do I play? When do I play? Why do I feel more safe in a digital world? Is it possible for an economy and a community to survive in a digital world easier than in a real world? All the while my character will be reflecting his feelings and thoughts about the physical world.

Instead of just focusing on me wanting to be in the virtual world only, my virtual character is going to try and convince me to let him join the real world, because he doesn't want to be in the virtual world anymore, unlike myself, the machinima will end with my character emerging as a real person and I as a virtual person.

Below are some machinima videos that I watched from various websites that are on the same kind of lines as I want my machinima to be. Below is a rather dark machinima about a frenchman's take on the "other side" of virtual worlds and the extension of our consciousness in our avatars. The video has to do with sex, money, and power but that is all still very real in a virtual world.






Another interesting story, which is an Anime series I have watched, focuses in on some of the questions I want to address about my relationship with a virtual world. The series is called Serial Experiment Lain.

This anime focuses on identity, reality, and communication. It's about a girl who eventually becomes so deeply involved in the virtual world she cannot differentiate reality from a virtual world anymore.

So I have decided to use my character that I have played now for 3 years. This character (below) has been through a lot, last year my account was hacked and he was used to gold farm by the Chinese for 3 months, I got him back and had some interesting things sitting in my account that the thieves left behind. I am going to incorporate what I believe to be his view on another player using him to farm gold, although I don't know exactly what happened because I wasn't there it would be nice to recreate it in the eyes of my virtual character (A reason he wants to leave the virtual world so badly, because of identity theft, but wait he doesn't realize that is in the real world too...)

I've always been into pondering and questioning the dark side of the world, as I have always been a huge fan of Silent Hill too. These kinds of games that I played as a kid really make me think about the human psyche and how so many games and virtual worlds are deep reflections of things going on under the surface of society.
One of my favorite quotes from Silent Hill Origins:


"Silent Hill Origins is an exploration of the darkness behind our everyday society."


In creating a machinima about swapping roles with a virtual character is my idea of actually being able to express my feelings about the kinds of movies, comic books, video games and MMORGPS that make me question society's need to escape reality. This is my chance to create my own interpretation on how I feel about virtual worlds and what my character should expect when he becomes part of the physical world, plus I have never edited and created my very own machinima all by myself and I really would like to try. So I am accomplishing two things with one assignment.

I will be posting more references and pieces from other artists I find have an influential impact on the direction I have chosen to take my machinima. I have more to post, stay tuned.

My artwork

Here are some samples of artwork I have done for the Nevada Sagebrush. I worked for them for about 3 years, if you want to check out more you can see my full archive at www.nevadasagebrush.com. Just search Jett Chapman in the search box. Below are a few samples of cartoons as well as some of my more serious work. I am also very good with Photoshop and photo editing.

Suzanne Joelson Artist Lecture

Suzanne Joelson's art is definitely not digital but her methods and patterns were quite interesting to me. I thought a lot of her work could be digitally printed on tiles or wallpaper. She has that very pattern like style to her work.
Joelson talked a lot about working with different mediums like wood, tile, and ceramics. Now that I saw that lecture it makes me want to tell her about Pepakura because she could come up with some awesome designs in the 3D world using the Pepakura application.
I also felt like some of her work could have been done digitally but would lose that raw original feel that shows her brush strokes and her overlapping of paint daubs and colors. Her work is definitely very bizarre and can be read in a lot of different ways.

Some of my questions for her would be:
1. Would you ever shift towards a more digital approach? Maybe try your hand at a wacom tablet using photoshop and see what kind of inspiration or feeling you get from doing your artwork a different way?
2. Does your use of repetition give your work a more straight forward message or do you think it adds to the element of surprise?
3. How would you feel about using a 3D modeling application to print out paper objects and then use your designs on them?