Douglas Story & Desdemona Enfield
-------with-------
Dizzy Banjo - music and sound
After an absence of nearly 8 months, the popular and beloved DynaFleur immersive art installation has returned to Second Life. Spanning an entire sim high above the Victorian-themed Caledon Kintyre, DynaFleur is the kind of experience that truly is possible only in Second Life.
It has been augmented in this incarnation with new graphic and design elements, including a landscape composed of 25 interlocking sculpted megaprims...
....over which video rolls on a sim-wide scale.
Officially opening to the public on August 8th, 2009, the piece may be visited in Second Life at the following location:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Kintyre/230/222/2624
DynaFleur presents the almost abstract close-up floral photography of Douglas Story in a very unusual way. The monumental and colorful installation is cradled by the sculpted landscape mentioned above. As you walk (and fall) through it, you are immersed in the densely layered sound design of Dizzy Banjo which is tailored to accompany the movements of the elements of the piece that surround you, all of them moving and changing in response to your presence. This magic is powered by complex scripts written by the talented and energetic Desdemona Enfield, which in turn were based on the open-source Reflexive Architecture scripts made available by Keystone Bouchard and his group.
One early visitor said in response to one of the three main sections of the sprawling piece, “I don’t know whether I’m in awe or creeped out.” The makers of DynaFleur were oddly pleased by this statement.
The landscape was made by Desdemona using mathematical data which was generated from a model that Douglas made from a grid of primitive objects...
...from this, Desdemona interpolated, massaged, and otherwise crunched the numbers to create sculpty maps, which she applied to a 5x5 grid of 50-meter megaprim spheres. Here's a picture of a small-scale test:
Experiencing DynaFleur is one of those Second Life 'wow' moments that is not to be missed.
There will be a reception with the witty and talented artists on Saturday, August 22nd at 2 pm SLT, followed by ballroom dancing from 3 to 4 pm SLT.
--About the artists--
A Second Life resident since 2005, Desdemona Enfield continues to study the Zen of Scripting and to refine her scripting methodologies. She works with artists to create special effects for their exhibits and with science researchers to create visualizations of their theories and experimental data. In those rare moments when she works under her own direction, she develops the mathematics needed to reconstruct volumetric structures from projective images and then implements the scripts that perform this function within Second Life. However, it is encounters with people and the ensuing collaborative efforts that give her the greatest satisfaction and sustain her in the virtual worlds.
Douglas Story is the Second Life avatar controlled by the Real Life persona of Dennis Schaefer. Douglas and his work partner Desdemona Enfield create large-scale interactive art installations in SL. These include the FlowerBall with musician AldoManutio Abruzzo, which was judged one of 2007's Top Ten Art Installations by the New World Notes blog, and more recently the StormEye installation, which was part of a real life gallery show curated by the New Media Caucus. The pair has also done collaborations with noted RL and SL architect David Denton/DB Bailey, adding sound design and interactive elements to DB's structures. Douglas/Dennis photographs flowers at very close range in and around Los Angeles.
Dizzy Banjo is a composer exploring new methods of soundtracking virtual environments. He is experienced in providing music for more traditional media outlets, such as radio, trailers, advertising and video games (for clients such as Czech National Radio, Boosey & Hawkes, Revlon, and Sony Playstation.) However more recently he is concentrating on developing the possibilities of non linear composition and multiple user interactive music. He is currently working on a number of projects in this field including soundtracks for the in-world presence of the country of Mexico, a book on Second Life published by Intersection Unlimited and a major virtual business event.
--About our hostess--
Autopilotpatty Poppy has been a Second Life resident since 2005 when her son, Vlad Bjornson, a SL resident artist, encouraged her to come inworld with her own floral photography. The pair have worked together on a number of projects together and continue to support each other to this day. Poppy (as she is known) is well-known for both her RL and SL photography and her volunteer work with the residents of Caledon and of Oxbridge University near her home sim of Caledon Kintyre. Poppy has done collaborative work with Douglas Story and other artists in the past and is enjoying the encounter with him and Desdemona Enfield on this installation. Her galleries on the sim are 5-star rated. She hopes this newly aquired sim of Caledon Kintyre becomes a destination spot for artists in the near future.
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The artists wish to thank Autopilotpatty Poppy for her generous offer of this space, and her patience when we discovered the piece consisted of 300 more prims than we had originally estimated.
Thanks also go out to Princeton University which provided the orginal venue as well the space to develop this installation, and to Poid Mahovlich for the execution of the terraformed landscape surrounding that earlier version of the DynaFleur..
