conSolation

Summary

Medium: Writing3D project for immersive 3D with accompanying physical performance

Status: Complete (2014)

Presentation/Publication history: Presented at Brown University “From CAVE to YURT” Symposium (2015)

Description

conSolation is a VR-based digital performance piece that explores themes of isolation through (and as a result of) hidden knowledge. Situated as it is in a medium which provides a near limitless potential for spectacle, conSolation works in a conscientiously restrained mode. In the first section of the piece, a performer uses dance-based gestures to present a series of three-dimensional texts. These texts consist of individual words hanging at the vertices of Platonic solids on a uniform black background. The piece proceeds in silence, but the performer wears headphones, which clearly provide some sort of audio to choreograph his performance. Eventually, the performer exits the CAVE, and audience members are allowed to enter it and interact with the piece if they so choose.

At this point, the piece becomes far less tightly determined. Depending on the choices audience members make, they may find their way to huge, sprawling architectures built out of language, or the virtual world may slowly dissolve, leaving them alone in empty space.

conSolation makes deliberative use of the specific affordances of the CAVE as a medium to accentuate its themes and reverent mood. One of the more artistically interesting features of CAVE performances is that just one person controls the perspective and point-of-view for the entire audience. If the person in this privileged position kneels to look underneath something, the entire audience will see the underside of that object, even if they remain standing. Furthermore, the entire view offered by the CAVE appears slightly skewed for everyone except this privileged viewer.

Since the performer initially occupies this privileged position, only he can see the perfect geometric forms of the presented Platonic solids; the audience sees only a skewed, imperfect version. Moreover, the details of the performer’s dance determine exactly what the audience is and is not allowed to see at all. If the performer chooses not to stand in a position where the entire piece can be seen, parts of it will be hidden from the entire audience.

Though the audience depends on the performer to show them conSolation, he is isolated from them in every way- literally moving to a music they cannot hear and seeing an ideal they cannot see. Furthermore, both during and around the performance, the artist has been careful to keep the technical details of this project a secret, ensuring that no one but the performer knows exactly how his gestures influence and manipulate the work. Thus, when the audience is eventually offered control of the piece, they themselves are utterly adrift, working alone in an alien space.

As Kristin Hayter describes it:

conSolation could not be experienced without the participation of the artist who constructed it, and conSolation could not exist as a poetic artifact without the medium which houses it. conSolation directly confronts the problems and possibilities that arise with digitally represented language.

The artist alone is aware of how to interact with his work, and takes to the Cave’s ‘stage’ to summon words from the darkness with predetermined gestures. The words assume positions at the vertices of Platonic solids and then are swept away with more gestures. All the while, the artist is kneeling as if in silent devotion and reverence for the forms he has created.

With its emphasis on Greek cosmology while using a complex arrangement of voice recognition software, gesture-controlled interfaces, and the Cave ‘stage’, conSolation seamlessly intertwines traditional forms and new media in a breathtaking and performative display.

To View

conSolation is somewhat difficult to capture in any archival format. Filming of pieces in CAVEs invariably produces lackluster results, and this problem is compounded by the performative component of this particular piece. As something of a compromise, the following footage is presented which shows one example of the linguistic “architecture” which may be explored or revealed as part of a performance of conSolation. For those who wish to see a full performance and have access to Brown University campus, please feel free to contact me.