Output details

‘Babble’ took place in the virtual world, ‘Second Life’ and was also broadcast live for public viewing in venues in 13 countries as part of the 121212 Upstage Festival of Cyberformance directed by Helen Varly Jameson and Vicki Smith.

Liz Swift was ‘Babble’s director, working with a small team of performers and technicians. The performance was based in the VOID Library (see output LSwift2) and presented by avatar storytellers and singers. A first group of audience members logged into ‘Second Life’ as avatars and attended the event in the library, where they encountered live performances. As each individual’s avatar travelled through the library its movements also triggered the appearance of text and film clips which appeared on users’ personal computers. Experience of the performance involved users’ avatars watching and listening to the performer avatars and users’ own interaction with the space throughout the virtual site-specific event. Audience experience of moving through the library took them on a journey to the top of the tower, which reflected texts on which the piece was based: Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Library of Babel’ and the Biblical story, ‘The Tower of Babel’.

A second group of audience members experienced ‘Babble’ as non-interacting observers at the event’s live screenings at: Physics Room, Christchurch, Aotearoa, New Zealand; Museum of Modern Activity, Wellington, New Zealand; Reciclarte 2.0 Gallery-Atelier, Olazábal, Argentina; Norsk Telemuseet, Oslo, Norway, Signalraum, Munich, Germany, Marionet Teatro, Coimbra, Portugal; Galerija Elektrika, Pancevo, Serbia; Kawenga, Montpellier, France, MAD Emergent Art Center, Eindhoven, Netherlands; APO33, Nantes, France; Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium/Odin Teatret, Holstebro, Denmark; Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts; Werkstatt am Hauptplatz, in partnership with Kunstraum Goethestrasse, Linz, Austria and the Bikeshed Theatre, Exeter, UK. The screenings lasted half an hour and were part of the programme of screened internet performances comprising the 121212 Upstage Festival of Cyberformance. http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?page_id=3358