ETHER interventions
My entry into “the ether” came by way of traditional documentary filmmaking, Julie Talen’s theory of glimpse culture and multi-channel storytelling, and video installation, like Gary Hill’s Tall Ships. Moving from single screen, to multiple screens, to locating stories in space activated my imagination, especially around how differently the body is engaged in storytelling. The second wave of XR innovation arrived circa 21014, bringing access to new tools—VR, AR, MR— and, critical grants from industry for experimentation. With my long-time creative and business partner Sandy Cioffi, we dove deep: producing festivals and workshops, engaging innovating artists like Nonny de la Peña, Winslow Porter, Milica Zec, Toby Coffey, BeAnotherLab, among others, and making our own work.
ENGAGING THE BODY IN STORYTELLING
Captivated by BeAnotherLab’s The Machine To Be Another—its potential to illuminate a liminal space/ether that’s somewhere between Me and You —we hosted BeAnother Lab residencies over several years to train in embodied narrative methodology and production. Embodied narratives are virtual reality first-person non-fiction stories enhanced by facilitated touch and physical props where the viewer virtually “sits” inside another person’s experience and point of view.
The round image is from “EMBODIED NARRATIVE: MARIBEL”, an immigration attorney relaying her experiences of first arriving as an immigrant in the US.
Facilitated touch: wind; greeting (hand on shoulder) from a friend
Props: law book
Presented at: TWIST360, Seattle, WA * EMBODIED NARRATIVES OF THE SILICON RAINFOREST, Pacific Science Center, Seattle, WA * FEMINIZING THE MACHINE workshops for global feminist convening RECON, Kathmandu, Nepal * BELLWEATHER, Bellvue, Washington * UNLIKELY COLLABORATORS, Ojai, CA
FORGING A PUBLIC ETHER
Working in the “round world” of virtual spaces peaked my interest in the invisible particles, frequencies, histories, artifacts, ghosts—The Ether—which exists all around us but we can’t access (unaided) through sight, hearing, touch. It also made the Digital Ether—the gazillions of bits flying through the air dominated by corporate interests and evolutionarily transforming human experience (!)—conceptually accessible and sparked questions about why wasn’t there more advocacy for public space/commons for art, learning, gathering and collective ownership of infrastructure and data. To begin addressing this questions, Sandy Cioffi and I developed STORYBRICKS ON THE RED LINE and WE STREET.
STORYBRICKS ON THE RED LINE (PROTOTYPE): A collaboration with Shelf Life Community Stories to prototype an augmented reality walking tour of oral histories given by residents of the Central District of Seattle, a predominantly African American neighborhood. Geolocated according to the location(s) identified in the stories, the oral histories are activated via motion triggers on red bricks placed along the tour route as a reminder of the legacy of redlining in Seattle. The aspirational goal of the project is to create mechanisms to capture and assign value generated by the stories, every time they are played/listened to, for the benefit of the community (inverting big tech’s extractive model of data capture/collection for community ownership and benefit.)
Presented at: Creative Exchange Lab pilot, Pacific Science Center, Seattle, WA
WE STREET: As a response to Big Tech’s smart cities initiatives, WE STREET (Seattle, WA) is a thought experiment and public art process asking what does it look like when a community designs, owns and benefits from the technologies used in the community? In Phase one, we brought together artists, government leaders, activists, students, and technologists for a series of human-centered design sessions. Themes explored included: mesh networks + community-owned data, community stories + the digital ether, and community care minted into local digital currency. Phase two will interpret these findings into a series of public art activations.
