Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Exeter
2ND LIVE: exploring live performance in the Second Life® world
Description and rationale:
This is a Practice-as-Research project exploring space and event across Second Life and Real Life environments, through a programme of Arts Council England commissions and a solo-authored performance commissioned for ANTI Festival, Finland. The project also generated an article, seven papers and a three-day Knowledge Transfer workshop.
Approaches and strategies:
Hodge curated, produced and mentored the ACE-funded programme ('2ND LIVE') and created a commissioned performance ('SLaaristokaupunki'), which referenced a body of interdisciplinary spatial Practice-as-Research and new research into virtual worlds. Methods and practices were drawn from choreography, computer animation, architecture, musical composition, games design and walking art.
The research imperatives for the project were:
1. What can be learnt through the transference of Real Life performance practices into a Second Life context?
2. How can we construct space and event in order to exploit the potential of the virtual environment, rather than attempting to mimic everyday dynamics?
Outputs and evidence:
In line with Exeter's policy of interweaving practice and scholarship, the outcomes of this project are both performance-based and articulated through scholarly and other media.
1. '2ND LIVE' (2008) - ACE-funded programme of commissioned works and 'Scratch' events, hosted by Exeter Phoenix: 'Viral Duets', with Niki McCretton and National Centre for Computer Animation; 'A Study in Reflexive Architecture', with Jon Brouchoud; 'The Second Death of Caspar Helendale', with Jessica Curry and Dan Pinchbeck [reworked (2009) for Royal Opera House].
2. '2ND LIVE: Shaping Space and Event in a Virtual World' (CTR, 2010).
3. Seven papers (2008-2011), for: PSi#14, Copenhagen; 'Site - Art - Audience', Glasgow; 'Performing Presence', Exeter; TaPRA, Plymouth; 'International Conference on Adaptive Architecture', London; 'From Black Box to Second Life', Hull; 'Dramaturgies of Telematic Theatre', CSSD.
4. 'SLaaristokaupunki', commissioned for ANTI Festival, Finland (2009).
5. 'Avatartist 2.0' (2008), KT workshop for Live Art Development Agency/Arnolfini.
