ASX_e_Dancer

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ASXeDancer is an online dynamic dance performance created within the Second Life (SL) online multi-user environment by artists John McCormick, Adam Nash and Nicole Lawther. ASXeDancer (ASX = Australian Securities Exchange) takes a look at the recent implosion of stock markets world-wide through an electronic media based dance work that ranges in emotion from humour through pathos to desperation. The work is a playful, affecting look at the social predicament brought about by the Global Financial Crisis. Though engaging on the surface, it is underpinned by the anxiety and insecurity experienced by millions of people world-wide due to this crisis.

Upon entering the performance area in Second Life, the participant will be able to choose a Stock Exchange and a particular stock from a menu. The participant's avatar will then be "taken over" in a "danse macabre" of movements that respond to the fluctuations in the price of the chosen stock. A library of hundreds of movements derived from common gestures of different countries will be used to construct the dance performance. The gestures will be arranged in emotional scale from the utterly ecstatic to the completely desperate. Different gestures will be linked together in real-time according to the share market fluctuations. The result will be a real-time visualisation, in dance, of the current state of the chosen element of the share market. The share market prices will be updated through the internet and relayed to Second Life via our server. The fluctuations in stock value will be scaled against the starting price at the time the stock was chosen by the participant. The ensuing dance will then follow the fluctuating fortune of the stock. Similarly, the sound and music, as well as the visual appearance of the virtual environment in which the dance is situated, will be composed dynamically in response to the same data that is driving the dance, creating an integrated environment unique to that particular 'moment in time and data'. The relationship between the dance and share price will not be completely linear, we will allow the system to inject surprising or humorous gestures, for example, if the price is not moving much or there are wild fluctuations in share price. Other factors that might affect the dance are movements in other Stock Exchanges around the world (Wall Street prices in particular might have pre-emptive effects on the dance), closing prices and announcements from exchanges. When the chosen stock exchange is closed for trading, the participant can choose to engage in a dance of anticipation until trading recommences, or to dabble in a foreign exchange. There will be a number of dances the participant can choose from depending on the stock exchange chosen such as the ASXeDance, slWallStreetShuffle, HangSengHop and the NikkeiRap. Each of the different share market dances will have their own style in the performance of the gestures that make up the dance, based on dance, movement and gesture intrinsic to that region. Along with the dynamic creation of online choreographic responses, ASXeDancer will also comprise a rich aural and visual environment surrounding the participating dancer.

Katherine Hayles says that "Far from being left behind when we enter cyberspace, our bodies are no less actively involved in the construction of virtuality than in the construction of real life" (Hayles, Embodied Virtuality, p.1). By being staged within the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life, the work is opened to the interaction and interpretation of a global audience, using dance as communal language to explore the impact of the global financial system on local circumstances. Second Life, which has a global user-base of millions, has often been characterised by its extremely limited approach to the gestural language of the humanoid 'avatars' that constitute digital representations of users. Gilles Deleuze talks of a "kinetic proposition" where a body is not defined by form or function, rather as a "complex relation between differential velocities" or a "composition of speeds and slownesses on a plane of immanence" (Deleuze, Spinoza, p.123). By combining atomistic libraries of motion-captured gestures, users will be exposed to another dimension of virtually embodied language that rises to the challenges presented by virtual communication whilst using such embodiment to explore local circumstances in a global arena. A work such as ASXeDancer is uniquely situated to explore the role of technology, human nature and artifice in the personal context of global citizens simultaneously subject to the empowering devices of global social networking tools and the disempowering contingencies of the global economy crisis.

Adam and John recently collaborated on an interactive Second Life work, Ways To Wave, for The 01SJ Biennial of Global Art on the Edge in San Jose, California. For Ways To Wave the artists created an interactive sculpture of perspex and aluminium in the form of a lotus flower, the shape of which could be altered by the gallery visitor to dynamically change the virtual audio and visual environment created in Second Life. Adam was also the lead artist in the creation of BabelSwarm, created for the Inaugural Australia Council Artist In Residence program. BabelSwarm was an extremely cutting edge 'mixed reality' installation that used voice activation to capture conversations in both real and virtual space, thereby triggering the creation of artificially intelligent virtual forms that swarmed and communicated with each other to build a gigantic, ever-changing audio-visual sculpture dynamically responding to, and created from, the chat input of visitors. In 2008, Adam was a finalist in the inaugural National Art Award in New Media at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art for his Second Life work Seventeen Unsung Songs. In 2009, Adam won the prestigious Ars Electronica Futurelab residency, where he will develop, with John McCormick, an evolving artificially intelligent virtual environment that responds to the motion captured movements and sounds of human visitors. John has had a decade of experience with motion capture, and has also investigated Second Life as a possible online platform for creation of performances using real-time motion capture. While Second Life proved to be unsuitable for real-time motion capture performance, due to the limitations on the amount and frequency of data that can be streamed into Second Life (once per second as opposed to the 30 times per second required for smooth motion data), it proved to be ideally suited for the type of work proposed here, triggering a library of recorded movements every few seconds in response to changes in an online source such as the ASX. This history of creating artworks within Second Life that also interact through Real Life has given the artists the skill required to sucessfully achieve this complex, challenging, online dance work.

ASXeDancer has already received pledges of support from Hidden Cove Solutions in the form of access to an advanced motion capture system with which to record the movement for the work. This in-kind contribution greatly enhances the feasibility of the work and as we have been granted multiple capture sessions for the work, meaning that we can continue to refine the movement during the course of the work's production, a luxury that would be extremely expensive if we were paying commercial rates. In addition, Hidden Cove Solutions has offered the services of an in-house technician to assist in operation of the motion capture system.

ASXeDancer will be developed from October 01 2009 and completed by March 01 2010. It will be primarily developed in North Melbourne at the artists' studio and Hidden Cove Solutions offices. ASXeDancer will be available for access and viewing through Second Life upon completion. John McCormick (Dancer, Choreographer, Programmer, Realtime 3D Performance) will be responsible for the dance, motion capture and programming aspects of the performance creation. Adam Nash (Virtual Artist, Composer, Sound Artist, Programmer, Realtime 3D Performance) will be responsible for the audio, visual and programming aspects of the performance creation. Nicole Lawther (User Experience Designer, Multimedia Designer, Researcher, Facilitator) will oversee the interface, fulfil the role of producer and be responsible for the research, administration and organisational aspects of the performance creation.

The previous work the artists have created within Second Life installations (along with other real-world, virtual-world and mixed-reality work) has given them a network of peers who will be extremely interested to participate in a further development of the artistic possibilities inherent in the medium. This group of peers, many of whom are artists or curators, will be able to engage with the work and provide critical feedback regarding their experience of the work. Combined with our own varied backgrounds in dance, virtual environments and user experience design, we are confident in being able to critically assess the work as it develops. The work will also be released into Second Life in stages, one exchange at a time. This will allow us to garner critical feedback during the development process and enable us to make changes in direction if deemed necessary. We believe that the rationale for ASXeDancer is very strong and it has been designed with the engagement of the participant at its core, giving us a clear direction for the ensuing creative process.

ASXeDancer is by its very nature set on an international or even post-national stage, both physically (or virtually) within Second Life and socio-economically through its current concerns. The work showcases continued Australian innovation in the areas of dance and electronic cultural diversity. While the work is engaged with as an online virtual environment, it is driven by real world information and pressing social concerns.

References:
Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights. 1988.
Hayles, N. Katherine. “Embodied Virtuality: Or How To Put Bodies Back Into The Picture.” Immersed In Technology: Art and Virtual Environments. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996