In 2019 a team of multi-disciplinary researchers undertook a research project entitled Identifyin... more In 2019 a team of multi-disciplinary researchers undertook a research project entitled Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (ISSM) (2019-2021) in order to analyze the innovative and collaborative strategies utilized by the global Science, Technology and Arts (STARTS) Prize Winners and nominees. The aim was to identify and articulate successful STARTS Methodologies through a series of interviews and in-depth case studies of the recognized projects. The project culminated in a series of case studies and an exhibition at the Made in Wolves Gallery at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, and further presented at the UK Garden of Earthly Delights at Ars Electronica in 2020. The project identified three emerging themes: the significance of building a new language of art and science through a third space, the process of anti-disciplinarity as an emergent form of practice, and the importance of different ways of knowing through art and science. A number of the case studies and themes...
During a series of interviews undertaken in Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (2019–202... more During a series of interviews undertaken in Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (2019–2021), a research project that analyzed strategies utilized by recent STARTS Prize winners and nominees, a number of the artists and scientists described having needed to build a “third space,” or to meet on “another plane,” in order to communicate and find a common language for art-science collaborations. The project team, from University of Wolverhampton (U.K.), collaborated with Ars Electronica and STARTS on the research and found ways to explore the third space concept in three collaborative art-science projects.
This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imagin... more This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and decodes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles [10: 39] explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is 'metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov's movement through it'. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human.
The experience of creating in technology-mediated spaces through an avatar form brings the phenom... more The experience of creating in technology-mediated spaces through an avatar form brings the phenomenological experience of the body into the act of creating itself. Ways of explaining this creative process and its relationship to imaginative experience highlights a phenomenology of virtual practice of artists working in this realm. This chapter explores the phenomenology of the imagination in relation to embodied experience and considers the implications of phenomenology as a methodological approach and presents the case for investigating artistic and imaginative experience through adapting phenomenological research methods.
As the title of this article suggests, there appears to be two distinct waves of artistic engagem... more As the title of this article suggests, there appears to be two distinct waves of artistic engagement with virtual reality (VR) in artistic practice: the first during the initial technological development in the 1990s that enabled VR to become accessible to artists such as Char Davies and Toni Dove among others and the current second wave that has been based on a much greater accessibility of immersive headsets for artists and a wider general public, driven by both market forces and technological development. The term ‘virtual reality’ has been interchangeably used to mean virtual environments and virtual worlds, but here the aim is to solely examine the use of VR in artistic practices, where the intention is for the participant to largely experience the virtual space through total immersion, reserving the analysis of the mixed use of VR within mixed-reality environments to another study. The article begins with a brief history of the development of VR and an analysis of the key work...
This research investigates the artistic practice in Second Life that builds upon existing practic... more This research investigates the artistic practice in Second Life that builds upon existing practices developed in virtual environments, and other forms of technology-mediated spaces; and sits within the field of knowledge of art and technology, and the emerging field of virtual worlds research. In the wider field of media arts practice engagement with virtual worlds as spaces for artistic practice (and protest), challenges and enhances our experience of the phenomena of imagining. Artists working in the Second Life space are exploring the potentials of this unique combination of the user-created, and the avatar mediated space. The research presents Kriti Island, the laboratory space for the ongoing artistic and imaginative practice research, but in particular presents, discusses and analyses, the participating artist interviews that were undertaken following the Kritical Works in SL exhibitions that the Island hosted in 2008 and 2009. Casey suggests that ‘imagination (in Western thou...
Kritical Works in SL is an inWorld exhibition hosted on Kriti Island on the Second Life (SL) grid... more Kritical Works in SL is an inWorld exhibition hosted on Kriti Island on the Second Life (SL) grid, curated by Wanderingfictions Story, my virtual counterpart, and includes work by ten international artists produced in and for SL. The project was launched at ISEA2008 in Singapore. The artists invited to contribute to Kritical Works in SL were selected because they were already exploring the SL platform in some way in their creative practice. Many of the contributors were already well known within SL for their virtual arts practice through their virtual personas and avatars. Under the theme of Reality Jam, the work produced explored the relationship between the virtual and the real within the SL environment. This is the discursive space, described by Jones as the struggle between the real and the virtual, ‘that makes virtual reality and virtual worlds so compelling to the contemporary imagination’ (2006: 15). This paper will reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of inWorld spa...
A 2013 UK study forecasting how our identities will change in the following decade noted that unt... more A 2013 UK study forecasting how our identities will change in the following decade noted that until now, a kind of inner narrative has provided individuals with an ongoing subjective, internal commentary, but through the growth of online social media, identity is “no longer an internal, subjective experience, but is constructed externally and therefore is much less robust and more volatile” ( Foresight, 2013 ). Arguing from the fields of literature and feminist science studies, Susan Merrill Squier observes that “no longer stable, the boundaries of our human existence have become imprecise at best, contested at worst” ( Squier, 2004, p. 7 ). This chapter concerns itself with digital embodiment and the construction of the self as avatar, and the ways in which contemporary arts practices are emerging through the exploration of digitally constructed realities on new technological platforms. This chapter argues that access to the experience of digitally constructed realities enables us ...
This research has previously used the term ‘embodied narrative’ to explore the imaginary in virtu... more This research has previously used the term ‘embodied narrative’ to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and de-codes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is ‘metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov’s movement through it’. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human.
In 2019 a team of multi-disciplinary researchers undertook a research project entitled Identifyin... more In 2019 a team of multi-disciplinary researchers undertook a research project entitled Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (ISSM) (2019-2021) in order to analyze the innovative and collaborative strategies utilized by the global Science, Technology and Arts (STARTS) Prize Winners and nominees. The aim was to identify and articulate successful STARTS Methodologies through a series of interviews and in-depth case studies of the recognized projects. The project culminated in a series of case studies and an exhibition at the Made in Wolves Gallery at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, and further presented at the UK Garden of Earthly Delights at Ars Electronica in 2020. The project identified three emerging themes: the significance of building a new language of art and science through a third space, the process of anti-disciplinarity as an emergent form of practice, and the importance of different ways of knowing through art and science. A number of the case studies and themes...
During a series of interviews undertaken in Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (2019–202... more During a series of interviews undertaken in Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (2019–2021), a research project that analyzed strategies utilized by recent STARTS Prize winners and nominees, a number of the artists and scientists described having needed to build a “third space,” or to meet on “another plane,” in order to communicate and find a common language for art-science collaborations. The project team, from University of Wolverhampton (U.K.), collaborated with Ars Electronica and STARTS on the research and found ways to explore the third space concept in three collaborative art-science projects.
This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imagin... more This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and decodes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles [10: 39] explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is 'metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov's movement through it'. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human.
The experience of creating in technology-mediated spaces through an avatar form brings the phenom... more The experience of creating in technology-mediated spaces through an avatar form brings the phenomenological experience of the body into the act of creating itself. Ways of explaining this creative process and its relationship to imaginative experience highlights a phenomenology of virtual practice of artists working in this realm. This chapter explores the phenomenology of the imagination in relation to embodied experience and considers the implications of phenomenology as a methodological approach and presents the case for investigating artistic and imaginative experience through adapting phenomenological research methods.
As the title of this article suggests, there appears to be two distinct waves of artistic engagem... more As the title of this article suggests, there appears to be two distinct waves of artistic engagement with virtual reality (VR) in artistic practice: the first during the initial technological development in the 1990s that enabled VR to become accessible to artists such as Char Davies and Toni Dove among others and the current second wave that has been based on a much greater accessibility of immersive headsets for artists and a wider general public, driven by both market forces and technological development. The term ‘virtual reality’ has been interchangeably used to mean virtual environments and virtual worlds, but here the aim is to solely examine the use of VR in artistic practices, where the intention is for the participant to largely experience the virtual space through total immersion, reserving the analysis of the mixed use of VR within mixed-reality environments to another study. The article begins with a brief history of the development of VR and an analysis of the key work...
This research investigates the artistic practice in Second Life that builds upon existing practic... more This research investigates the artistic practice in Second Life that builds upon existing practices developed in virtual environments, and other forms of technology-mediated spaces; and sits within the field of knowledge of art and technology, and the emerging field of virtual worlds research. In the wider field of media arts practice engagement with virtual worlds as spaces for artistic practice (and protest), challenges and enhances our experience of the phenomena of imagining. Artists working in the Second Life space are exploring the potentials of this unique combination of the user-created, and the avatar mediated space. The research presents Kriti Island, the laboratory space for the ongoing artistic and imaginative practice research, but in particular presents, discusses and analyses, the participating artist interviews that were undertaken following the Kritical Works in SL exhibitions that the Island hosted in 2008 and 2009. Casey suggests that ‘imagination (in Western thou...
Kritical Works in SL is an inWorld exhibition hosted on Kriti Island on the Second Life (SL) grid... more Kritical Works in SL is an inWorld exhibition hosted on Kriti Island on the Second Life (SL) grid, curated by Wanderingfictions Story, my virtual counterpart, and includes work by ten international artists produced in and for SL. The project was launched at ISEA2008 in Singapore. The artists invited to contribute to Kritical Works in SL were selected because they were already exploring the SL platform in some way in their creative practice. Many of the contributors were already well known within SL for their virtual arts practice through their virtual personas and avatars. Under the theme of Reality Jam, the work produced explored the relationship between the virtual and the real within the SL environment. This is the discursive space, described by Jones as the struggle between the real and the virtual, ‘that makes virtual reality and virtual worlds so compelling to the contemporary imagination’ (2006: 15). This paper will reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of inWorld spa...
A 2013 UK study forecasting how our identities will change in the following decade noted that unt... more A 2013 UK study forecasting how our identities will change in the following decade noted that until now, a kind of inner narrative has provided individuals with an ongoing subjective, internal commentary, but through the growth of online social media, identity is “no longer an internal, subjective experience, but is constructed externally and therefore is much less robust and more volatile” ( Foresight, 2013 ). Arguing from the fields of literature and feminist science studies, Susan Merrill Squier observes that “no longer stable, the boundaries of our human existence have become imprecise at best, contested at worst” ( Squier, 2004, p. 7 ). This chapter concerns itself with digital embodiment and the construction of the self as avatar, and the ways in which contemporary arts practices are emerging through the exploration of digitally constructed realities on new technological platforms. This chapter argues that access to the experience of digitally constructed realities enables us ...
This research has previously used the term ‘embodied narrative’ to explore the imaginary in virtu... more This research has previously used the term ‘embodied narrative’ to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and de-codes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is ‘metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov’s movement through it’. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human.
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