Wednesday, July 30, 2008

art.xxXtenxion report

Now back from a wonderful week at art.xxXtenxion in beautiful Regensburg.
During this time I did 2 machinima workshops, 2 cinema programmes, attended a lecture from Stephan Doessinger about bastard spaces, and did the live camera for the Second Life projection screen during the MixxXxed Reality - Extended Night.

During the first day of the workshop I did a general introduction to the topic of machinima, and explained different approaches ('getting in there' versus 'pre-produced'), how it relates to regular RL filming and animation, techniques (camera, animation, lipsync etc.), the pros and cons, and my view on the future of machinima. All this was illustrated by demonstrating software and showing some of the footage we shot for Volavola in the week before I went to Regensburg.
During the second day we got dirty, by actually making a machinima!

A very interested group of people showed up for the cinema programmes.
The first programme showed machinima documentation of different art forms that exist in Second Life. This programme was a bit harder to understand for people unaquainted with virtual worlds. Different people like different things, but I dare to say that most visitors were blown away by Osprey Therians video of a performance by Second Front at Dorkbot SL / Dorkbot Paris called Haledol Dreams of the Minotaure.

Some more people showed up for the second program, that showed off a variety of machinima made in Second Life. With this selection I aimed to show that the creators imagination is the only limit, that any movie genre can be succesfully made, that machinima have surpassed the underground gamer community, that being 'turned off by Second Life esthetics' is history, and most of all to inspire and entertain!
It was a great success and people clapped after every movie, and I got many enthousiastic reactions and thank yous for showing this selection!

The art.xxXtension event had a great finale with the mixed reality night!
Wonderful performances by Biagio Francia, Gecko, Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, Komuso Tokugawa and Dirschl & Starzinger.

To finalize all this, here is my favorite photographic residue, made by Bingo Onomatopoeia of the RL members of the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse that were in Regensburg, and their SL avatars. (many more members played from all over the world).




A big thank you to everybody who was there and especially the people from Pomodoro Bolzano who organized the entire event!

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