Nettrice Beattie's Alternate Futures

Alternate Futures by Nettrice Beattie

17 August 2010

Alternate Futures: Afrofuturist Multiverses & Beyond

IBM A (now closed)

Larger view

Opening Today, Garrett Lynch on Soup Push 'There, Now'

Image: Garrett Lynch


Image: Garrett Lynch

. . . in a world which lives by the truth of its simulation, that is by abstracting reality and virtualizing it until the map stands for the territory, there seems to be no reason to re-abstract the abstracted, for it would be an act without logic. It is here that artists, by being compelled to point out the opposites, arrive at new ways of showing the sublime (Doreet LeVitte Harten)

Wednesday, 11 August 2010 1PM SLT

You are invited to the opening of "There, Now" by Garrett Lynch:

__________ There, Now by Garrett Lynch __________


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NOTE: The installation uses numerous media streams, please make sure you have audio and video enabled, turn your audio up high and be patient for the content to load.

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There, Now, a mixed reality installation by Garrett Lynch, continues work on ideas of space/place initiated as part of the on going series of interventions at I AM Columbia:

Intervention #1
Intervention #2

On entering the installation at Push the visitor is presented with what resembles a vista of another space, a combined place that employs live imagery from four continents together with rudimentary Second Life primitives and dynamic effects such as simulated water and particles.

Similar to Intervention #2, the installation is a way and means of seeing out of the 'virtual' space that is Second Life however this time it is our global physical environment we see which has been cut and pasted together. Distance, time and place as experienced in 'real' life are folded together. On closer inspection however the installation is revealed to be designed to be seen from a single viewpoint. 'Real' mountains, forests and skies become flats on the 'virtual' stage of Second Life, moving around them reveals their true shape, their featureless sides and back and the props that supposedly support their ('virtual') physical weight.

More than a Second Life space, blacked off from the environment of Second Life within its own construction, it is almost completely isolated from the 'virtual' world yet acknowledges and underlines its falsehood. The space is visually analogous to pictorial representations of space within our culture. It is a representation layered within the representation of Second Life. Not 'real' and yet no longer just 'virtual', it mixes these together to create a third space, a meta metaverse that adds another layer to our experience of reality.

Only by entering this representational space within a representational space can we remove/distance ourselves from the first and look at it objectively.

Many thanks to all at Soup and Lovers Lane Studios for their support and kindly hosting this work.

Webcam locations within the installation are arranged as follows:

1) The sky over Shizuoka Prefecture in front of Mt.Fuji, Japan
2) The Grand Canyon, Arizona, America
3) The Rockies, Banff, Canada
4) The Black Forest, Todtmoos in Germany
5) The plains in front of Kilimanjaro, Kenya, Africa
6) The Pyramid of Cheops, Giza, Egypt

(Text by Garrett Lynch)



Viewer 2 is required to experience shared media in this installation.


Teleport to Push