Friday, March 19, 2010

A Taste of Second Life comes to the Cahners ComputerPlace at the Museum of Science, Boston

I am pleased to announce my latest project - to design a digital/virtual art exhibit for the Cahners Computer Place at the Museum of Science, Boston . The exhibit will further visitors' understanding of digital image creation and manipulation (http://www.marthavista.com/). It will also introduce people to the idea of making virtual art. The physical design of the exhibit will be an immersive installation employing sound and video projection to simulate the experience of being inside one of the immersive art environments that I create as an avatar named Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life (R), a virtual reality platform.

The Museum is currently accepting applications for a Technical Designer Internship for this exhibit: http://www.mos.org/visitor_info/about_the_museum/internships&d=4367. The designer will research the technology and equipment best suited to realize the artist's vision, culminating in a technical design for the project.




The picture above shows the latest SL mock-up of the design for the exhibit's visitor-interaction area. The kiosk in the center is an easy interactive - it allows the visitor to select various colored underpaintings for an upper layer containing a black-and-transparent digital drawing comprised of lines and tones.



The kiosk on the left provides the visitor with graphic elements to assemble into a finished digital collage, introducing the aesthetic decision-making process.



The most difficult interactive on the right will allow the visitor to experiment with a digital drawing program and with a virtual reality environment, using Open Sim local.



The backdrop to the kiosks is a video of Alizarin's SL immersive art, "The Maze," and it is framed by panels displaying two of her digital collages. The mock-up of this proposed visitor-interaction area can be found in Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/205/175/1201



The overall proposed exhibit, “Digital Art – Martha Jane Bradford,” may also include some or all of the following: a display of framed digital drawings with wall text explaining various aspects of creating digital drawings and collages, framed SL photos of Alizarin's immersive art, LCD screen presentations, videos of virtual art displays in Alizarin's SL studio, pod casts, video casts, and live demonstrations. An introduction to virtual reality via Open Sim is also being considered.

About the Cahners ComputerPlace: "Glimpse the Future; Encounter Cool Stuff; Engage Computers, Robots, Communications; Inspire Active Learning; Talk Tech with People." Here teachers, students, and visitors explore many aspects of computer science, technology, engineering and math via personal hands-on learning experiences. The exhibit space receives over 350,000 visits annually.

A brief video of the visitor-interaction area can be seen below:


Links:
DIGITAL ART: Martha Jane Bradford
Web Site: http://www.marthavista.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
MJB Blog: http://marthajanebradford.blogspot.com/

VIRTUAL ART: Alizarin Goldflake, Second Life avatar of Martha Jane Bradford
Atelier Alizarin (Second Life studio): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/222/189/35
AG Blog: http://alizaringoldflake.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alizaringoldflake/

YOUTUBE VIDEOS:
Acquarella: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-lo6JosN0M
Anza-Borrego Oak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_KRMi55v8
Metempsyche's Garden: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfQGuNXWvLo
The Maze: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEa9rtEiINE
Atelier Alizarin Studio Tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDjrLmPpopA
The Mysterious Forest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Xv_pAf0Qc
Museum of Science Project Concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93YYMJANpZs

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

New Video Up on Youtube!

"The Mysterious Forest" documents my contribution to the Interactive Collaboration of the Caerleon Artists Collective. Artistide Despres was the project leader, and the CAC is hosted in Second Life by Georg Janick/Gary Zabel of UMass, Boston. I did the filming, and Cobalt Zeplin/Alfred M. Ajami did the editing and sound remixing. The film features soror Nishi, along with Cobalt, Viridian Nightfire, and myself.

The scenery is derived from my digital drawing "Anza Borrego Oak," which can be found on my RL web site at
http://www.marthavista.com/DigiDrawHoriz1.htm (scroll down to the bottom row of images).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Xv_pAf0Qc