I had been thinking about letting go of Syncretia for quite some time. An announcement by Linden Lab stating that non-profit/educational sims would be expected to pay the full price starting from January 2011 catapulted me from apathy into taking a final decision. And although Linden Labs reneged upon their initial announcement very quickly – within a matter of days in fact, for me the decision was taken and I am not going to be renewing the lease, which is up on November 25th. And, quite frankly, I am relieved.

The problem with Syncretia is that what I made gives me too much of a feeling of permanence, of being a really “real” place. Nothing can be deleted, and nothing can be added onto. You could conceivably tear it down and start afresh, but I do not have the heart for that either. It is too precious a toy. Problem is, it is also a discarded toy since I no longer play there anymore. I have not been there in a very long time. It is just sitting there waiting for something to happen which I seem to be incapable of delivering.

I have been taking videos and photographs to document what I made at Syncretia. Will continue to do so until the last day, I suppose.

I have learned from Syncretia. When I build again it will be different. And that will happen at OSGrid from now on. Where I already have a sim. And a new identity. Hopefully a much smarter, no nonsense sort of me…

This has been around for quite some time, however it has stood somewhere by itself in cyberspace and unless people have somehow stumbled upon it inadvertently, it has remained concealed from sight. Two reasons:

First: This is very personal and I have felt reluctant to disclose something which cuts so close to the bone. Now, today, I feel that I should. That it is time that I finally do so. I have disabled the links to a set of images named ‘Deconstructed’ which in the end I really did not wish to show. Maybe, someday, much much later I will do so. Today, I still cannot. The rest is intact.

Second: I am taking a huge liberty with Kristeva’s extraordinary text on ‘the Abject’, upon which the site is based. The way I am interpreting these words is not at all the way in which the author has meant for them to be read and I am well aware of this. I am not even sure about the copyright issues, to be absolutely honest – whether this would fall under ‘fair use’ or not. I came across the text 2 years ago, as part of a university course’s reading material and cited it in a conference paper on ‘uncanny valley’ avatars. However, the text has continued to haunt me. Has acquired a significance for me which has compelled me to interpret it further and further. Anatomia and body parts are also inspired by it, although I have never acknowledged this inspiration openly. I am doing so now.

I do not wish to talk much more about my obsession with Kristeva’s text on this post. There is a paper called ‘avatar-narcissus’ which I wrote some time ago and those interested in reading more can do so here.

All the images were taken in Second Life with my tribe of avatars playing the parts. Most of the images were more or less left in their raw Second Life state, however some of the ones entitled ‘Caged’ were also post-processed in photoshop. The three sound files are constructed from midi files by the Internet Renaissance Band which I combined with various sound effects and other music samples.

Both this site and The Tales of Ruysch are meant to be components of a huge interlinked domain of avatar tales consisting of many different tumblr sites. Some of these are already linked to abject.avatar, although they are still empty. Hopefully, I will fill them at some point.

It would probably never have occurred to me to construct the nonsensical/non-linear web tale which I am cobbling together out of virtual imagery and Shakespeare’s quotes and sonnets, had it not been for the pose library which I was given by storyteller Frigg Ragu in Second Life. Initially I was using these to take photographs of the output of alpha.tribe for display purposes. Even on the very first occasion that I wandered back and forth between them I became aware to what an extent Frigg had managed to capture the expressive language of Renaissance/Rococo paintings within these poses. There was an art historic quality to them which was simply begging to be put to use within such a context. In other words, not “contemporary” avatar photographs in Second Life, but something more along the lines of genre painting.

I had already made a number of quasi-historic outfits for sale in Second Life, but once the idea began to gain hold I started to deliberately create more of them since “the actors” would need to be kitted out in appropriate garb. I also began to experiment with virtual photography and realized very soon that an artificial studio, completely closed off from the outside world would need to be created within the already artificial world of Second Life if these images and videos were to look anything like what I wanted them to look like. So, although shot in Second Life, this is not really Second Life, but a simulated environment housed inside a colossal spherical mega prim in the skies above Syncretia, at an altitude which is high enough for privacy and yet low enough for windlight presets to fully work. This latter is quite crucial since the bulk of the lighting is achieved through a number of custom presets I have created for the studio (and which are completely unusable outside of it by the way).  These are supplemented by countless small light prims placed close to the avatars, particularly around their heads and inside their palms. The walls as well as all the props of this studio are textured with historic genre paintings, which change from scene to scene, since I found out that, for me, there is a particular fascination and magic in juxtaposing the “synthetic” avatar to the “analog” content found in these.

It should also probably be added that I have quite a bit of previous familiarity with Real Life photo studio environments as part of my old job as art director. It was surprising how easily this past experience could be transferred into the virtual studio of my own creation. One in which the props, actors, and light are under my full control. And, even better, Frigg’s poses give the scenes which I set up an expressive quality which it would have been quite impossible to achieve with human models, unless one were using highly skilled actors and actresses for the task.

I have to say that I am not a big fan of History. I have no nostalgia whatsoever for days past. In fact, if anything I am heartily thankful that they are precisely that – past! I tend to avoid biographies as well as historic novels and films if I can possibly do so (they tend to bore me to tears mostly…) but there are some exceptions to this overall dislike: Jane Austen’s novels, which I must have read at least 20 times over (and will hopefully read a good few times more before I leave this earth); the whole period of Western art ranging from the late Gothic to Classicism. And therein particularly Dutch genre paintings and still lives, including the small but exquisite output of one of the very few professional female painters in art history, Rachel Ruysch. And then, bizarrely enough (since I often cannot understand him straight off the bat, but have to resort to dictionaries and explanatory texts), I really adore Shakespeare.

And Shakespeare’s words are what I am basing this somewhat absurd tale in progress upon. It is good to know one’s weaknesses and one’s strengths: Although I do love a good yarn, I am completely incapable of making one up myself. Thankfully, once I have a story I can work it visually. Years of professional design work have given me the know-how of doing so. And it is no remarkable or rare skill by the way: Any art director worth his or her salt has to know how to set up good visual hierarchies and develop a keen eye for detail. Has to know how to create a story board and know what moments within the “tale” to emphasize.  And yes, a storyboard for advertising eggs or facial cream or dish washing liquid involves no less of a tale than what I am trying to do here.

Currently there are three episodes to which I shall continue to add, so, this is not anywhere near being complete. There is, however, already an ending of sorts since, as Shakespeare says, all Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know. And who am I to argue with old William? ;-).

The next episode I am contemplating right now is Vanitas, for which the sonnet which goes Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye And all my soul, and all my every part; And for this sin there is no remedy seems to provide the perfect context.

I am thinking that there will probably be 12 episodes based upon the months of the year (although this will most probably get added onto given how much in Shakespeare there is to pillage): Some years ago I generated 12 quasi-Renaissance/late Gothic tunes with a no longer existent software named Koan. The idea back then had been to create a web based book of hours along the lines of Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry. This never worked out, I could never get it to be like I wanted it to be, however I did do a lot of studies for this at the time and the 12 sound tracks are part of that and seem to fit into the current undertaking rather well.

One thing to add is what is going on with the avatars in all of this: For the first time since there has been a “tribe” I am logging in almost all of them simultaneously from the two computers that I have at home and that are up to the job (I have more, but they are quite useless for something like this). And I am amazed to see that an unforeseen (re)distribution of roles and a novel constellation of personalities is in the making, almost outside of my control. While Grapho seems to have taken upon himself the role of the worldly older man (although by no means the wise old man); the male “tour guide” for Syncretia, Syncretio Kanya has gone and cast himself in a lead role of sorts: A handful of naughty, mercurial, confused, well meaning yet blundering, but ultimately lovable manhood (with whom I seem to be all too familiar with from my own encounters with the ilk). And then Syncretia Kenin, the female tour guide of Syncretia has turned out to be a complicated, somewhat pathologically inclined problem child. Alpha is remaining resolutely in the background for now, as is Amina – the latter, funnily enough, showing a distinct preference for male parts. And then Xiamara, little Miss “goody-two-shoes”, “never-put-a-foot-wrong” is suddenly a jilted heroine? Crying her eyes out? I somehow always assumed that she would be in full control of herself and others in all encounters of a romantic kind. Well – apparently not! (teee heee)… Indeed, so far, only Alpho seems to stick to character, a no-nonsense Furry, given to speaking her mind.

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And one very important thing to say is also this:

At the end of the day, the aim of The Tales of Ruysch is nothing more than to create entertainment for me, it’s assembler. It is a frivolous (21st century – hhh) rococo folly and should not be seen as an ambitiously serious undertaking but rather as tongue-in-cheek play with material borrowed from here and there, ruthlessly chopped up and re-assembled to suit my needs, involving my many avatars as its actors. If anything, a funny sort of a doll’s theater.

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Blogged by NWN on April 20th:

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/04/shakespeare-tableaus.html

Thank you Hamlet!

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Keywords

art, installation, presence, avatar, embodiment, physicality, corporeal, hybrid actor, experiential

Background

Clarity of purpose has been attained from John Dewey on the experiential quality of art. In as synthetic a world as the metaverse where art work presented is still largely housed in galleries or museums, Dewey’s concern for the separation of the art work from its experiential functions seem to be well founded. Dewey draws attention to cultures, where aesthetic appreciation is integrated with day to day usage, adding that the present task at hand “is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience”, thus elevating art work from its current state of being the provider of mere “transient pleasurable excitations” into once again becoming the powerful carrier of experience.

I wished to create an experiential environment along the tenets of John Dewey; one which would aspire to create a socio-cultural presence as defined by Mantovani and Riva , from which the visitor might depart retaining a sense of “a place visited/experienced” as opposed to “a place seen” . Given the results of studies conducted by Yee and Bailenson which underlined my already strong sense of the importance of the avatar in the engenderment of “presence”, the installation is centered upon the avatar. Thus I have devoted considerable time to creating the avatars with which the visitor is expected to enter this installation, which will not reach its full potential unless these avatars are indeed utilized.

“body parts” urges the visitor to celebrate life by looking outward, through connecting with the virtual body of another. Consequently, this installation needs two participating avatars, both of whom are asked to dress in custom designed skins adorned with attachments, in order to conduct a virtual exchange of heightened emotional intimacy. To this end, the avatars have the caressing hands of their virtual partner painted onto their own skins, while soft, tentacle-like human limbs reach out from their own bodies towards the other. However, the couple is not alone in that they are also surrounded by a conglomeration of sculpted human body parts melting into a mass of virtual humanity. This conglomeration of physicality is expected to create a sense of heightened connectivity through which the dancing couple may transcend into a state of collective consciousness, as would have been the case during Dionysian rites. Animated pose balls are scattered throughout the sphere, paired up to create intimate couple poses, which enforce prolonged eye contact and the invasion of interpersonal distance, the Real Life observances surrounding both of which are strenuously observed in virtual life as well.

The sphere is white, which, together with the participating avatars, gets a pink ambient hue from the custom sunset colored sky setting. The sphere has been created as a stage for which a romantic valse has been choreographed. However, interacting agents are at liberty to modify the pre-set choreography by accessing the provided pose balls in a sequence of their own creation.

Given the importance of the existence of the audio element in the overall immersive experience, the sphere has a custom created sound scape consisting of a series of unintelligible, barely audible whispers and water gurgles embedded into it.

Artist’s Statement

I attempt to create an awareness regarding the absence of the expression of the tenderness and the complexity engendered by “love” in virtual worlds through an interactive installation meant to be accessed with avatars created for the specific needs of this piece; the urge to connect on a physical level. And yet the avatars are unphysical in their monochromatic, almost white state since no matter how many skins one buys or makes – the avatar is colorless in its very being. The lifeblood drained out of its body language has been replaced by the endless cycle of animations emulating physical expressions which a virtual embodiment cannot convey as it keeps on going through its graceful little routine of virtual poses.

It seems that once we begin to scratch the depths of all of the creativity, the play and games – in the end what remains is a big howling empty space where physical connection should have been. This is loneliness. Aren’t we trapped in the perpetual youth of our avatar bodies with no way of showing our craving for intimacy? And yet, do some of us even crave intimacy? Have they not run away from the world of the corporeal to this land of “game”, of non-physical emotion and thus by extension, of non-emotion, precisely because they could not cope with the pain, the at times utter humiliation of the physical?

They are monochromatic, the avatars that are meant to go into this space – white as they should be. No room here for the illusion of the reality of the flesh: Ephemeral, a spook, a specter of a human being, an avatar, either trying to connect or desperately avoiding doing so. Here I am challenging them to it with whatever meager means are at my disposal: pose balls equipped with affectionate animations, paired up. So, really no sense whatsoever in hopping on one by yourself, you will need another ephemeral white being to complete the circuit as you slowly rotate in a landscape where all is body and yet all is silent, maybe even dead. That is what your physicality has become: As fleshless as these sculpted body parts embracing all around you, as you and your sweetheart slowly do your romantic valse.

Because it isn’t sex which is lost in the metaverse, but it is the expression of love. How, in the absence of a physical interface, can the subtle shades of tenderness, of caring even be conveyed? Or passion and joy? Anger, humiliation and hope? How far can type-chatter possibly go in the expression of what is probably the most complex of all human emotions?” The installation is intended as a ritual in which the avatars are expected to become integrated into the ceremony through wearing the attire and objects to attain an “intensification of the sense of immediate living”.

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View a video of the “body-parts” here:

http://vimeo.com/3685002

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I have now decided to build Anatomia in Second Life – however with a twist: An avatar to traverse the environment. While I thoroughly detest the very idea of museums, there is one notable exception: Science Museums. So, I want to build as a Museum of sorts for this one. A very fancy, state of the art “science” museum. All glitz and glitter and shiny surfaces. Those I love and can literally spend weeks in. Why? What is the reassurance, the feel-good factor here? And why do I especially want to create a science museum-like exhibition environment for anatomical drawings?

So, my take on all of this can now be visited by teleporting from here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Syncretia/112/87/141

What happens when we look at anatomical drawings of the type which Dr. Gray compiled all those many years ago? Aren’t they projecting our very innards outwardly? With the implication of immortality embedded into the very experience? While our bodies are essentially convoluted labyrinths filled with all kinds of fluids which suffer pain; Gray’s anatomical drawings are reassuring in that suddenly the whole gooey mess starts making sense, is elevated to the clean precision of a perfectly working scientific diagram. No longer human, no longer smelly. What seems to be implied in Gray’s anatomy is that this imperfect mess which we walk around with can be a perfect machine, incapable of malfunction, incapable of decay…

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I have tried to deliberately make the dweller of the exhibit un-clean… Not the pristine, sharp black and white image assembly, with the odd spot of clean bright color here and there, but something mussed up with organic textures, layered and superimposed with elements that seem confusing and out of sync. The avatar of Anatomia is quite fragile: This is not a perfect, unbreakable machine, a thing rendered to help us gain insight into the workings of a superlative system. But rather a black and yellow mass – the colors of when things go bad in our bodies. Not the red of living blood but the low saturation of decay.

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She is not all human either: I have tried to weave the human elements, the drawings and the 3 dimensional bones created by Arcadia Morales, into shapes which would be reminiscent of botanical growth, sprouting from her shoulders and her knee. And then I have also used quite a few horns, these adorn her head and circle her ankle and her midriff. Horns belong to the devil and I want her to be endowed with the attributes of the demonic. I do not want this visitor to an exhibition of anatomical drawings to have illusions of grandeur regarding her elevated status as a human, or indeed even an animal or mammal. I want her to be vulnerable, perishable, impure. I want her to gaze upon something other than her – in its cleanliness, its shiny surfaces, its clean bright lines, its mechanical perfection.
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Since I wanted to capture the sense of pristine display technology of the type found in high caliber museum exhibits, I had rendered the original environments of Anatomia in Bryce, which gives a superb quality of rendering particularly where reflective surfaces are concerned. It is of course impossible to capture this in Second Life under current rendering conditions. Thus, I have recycled these renders into the environment in Second Life. I will however attempt to add to these and create a faux-reflective platform achieved through the usage of mirrored prims.

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What I aim for is to create a sense of split, of divison, of distantiation between the visitor, clothed in the avatar described above and provided at the installation’s location and the surrounding in which he/she finds themselves. I do not know if we attain this sense of our own fragility, the messiness of our innards, the thin line between a working and a malfunctioning organic mechanism, the fluids (fresh as well as refuse) coursing through our system when we visit the places where such anatomical drawings are displayed in Real Life. My hunch is that our Real Life persona, clothed in its everyday attire, more often than not in the company of others, is held at bay, thus keeping the wolf of self-perception form our door; enabling us to hide behind the security of intellectual appreciation of the superb craft which is present in the anatomical drawings compiled and created by the likes of Dr. Henry Gray. The Anatomical Avatar will hopefully make us perceive the difference between our flesh and blood bodies and the schematic, precise depictions of an idealized mechanism…

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This all started with a conference paper that I had to write for the Consciousness Reframed 09 conference proceedings. I had a colossal writer’s block. I already had an accepted abstract around which I would ordinarily have been expected to round up the paper but what I had scribbled down 6 months or so ago at that point in time had lost its excitement for me. Also I had written another paper based more or less on the subject for yet another conference and it really became an insurmountable chore to have to sit down and rewrite the same exact things with just a twist all over again. So, I decided to pretty much scrap the whole thing and start from scratch.

Now, for the most part I quite enjoy writing. However, I cannot really write enthusiastically unless what I write about is based upon some kind of personal experience, or a creative act; in short something that captures my imagination. That has to be the foundation and then somehow I can usually forge something academic out of even the most subjective content – I have become pretty skillful at snooping out appropriate citations that suit my needs out of databases. You would really be amazed at how it always seems to work. How there always seems to be someone out there who formulated your subjective non-sense into hardcore scientific writing. It is like magic – once you know how to look and where to look.

The Uncanny Valley is the point in which the facsimile of a human looks almost, but not entirely, like a human. It was introduced by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, and has been linked to Ernst Jentsch‘s concept of “the uncanny” identified in a 1906 essay, “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” as well as Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay, “The Uncanny”. Mori’s hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels. This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely-human” and “fully human”entity is called the Uncanny Valley.
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I took this idea as the basis of creating a number of avatars that for me tackled this border, largely to test my own reactions and my levels of empathy towards Alpha, my more or less look-alike avatar.

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Replicator Alpha was created from parts of the Grendel’s Children Replicator avatar and the Ironforge skin by Vry Offcourse.

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Clockwork Alpha was created with the clockwork skin by Pandora Wrigglesworth and the Steampunk arm and leg attachments by Lucia Cyr.

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Cyborg Alpha was created with two Vry Offcourse skins, Frail above and Ocelot below as well as the Lucia Cyr steampunk attachments.

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Crawler Alpha was created with the parts of Crawler avatar by Grendel’s Children.

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And again, Defender Alpha was created by the same named avatar by Grendel’s Children.

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Representations that fall into the Uncanny Valley would not necessarily have to be mechanoid – or at least that is what I would imagine. Something which is humanoid yet clearly non-human, should also qualify. However, in this case it might help if the representations in questions have negative subconscious associations. Thus I proceeded to create three mythological female avatars, all with inherently evil attributes, as a succubus or a siren surely have. All the skins for these avatars are by Vry Offcourse and all have been assembled out of Grendel’s Children avatars.

Siren Alpha

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Fog Succubus Alpha

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Smoke Succubus Alpha

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Can extreme beauty become scary, repulsive even, simply because it falls outside of the scope of what we recognize as human? When I made Steampunk Queen Alpha I found her to be so beautiful here that I was in awe of her. In fact, this was the most removed that I felt from her since the onset of the little adventure in the Uncanny Valley.

Stempunk Queen Alpha. The skin used is a Drow skin by Loli Nori and all the attachments are by aoimizuno Meili – except the feet which are the work of Marissa Lurra.

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However, I knew that no matter how alienated I had felt from Steampunk Queen Alpha there was one last big hurdle in store for me – a skin that I had seen on a colleague and had been really struck and fascinated by. I had left the Decaying Cyborg Skin to last. Thus, to quote from my own Flickr photostream:

“This is truly horrifiying. I had a really hard time doing this… Seeing it on someone else is not quite the same as putting it on yourself. I did have a sense that clothing Alpha in this skin would be a very difficult thing to do and it took me a really long time to even decide to go out and purchase the skin. But finally I did it yesterday. The bones are the bones of the whale avatar of Grendel’s Children.

So, this is the end of the road for now: I have raked this as deep as I think can go at the moment without totally cracking up over it. One of my favorite writers is Mishima and what I think of as one of his best books is entitled “The Decay of the Angel”. And that is what should probably be the title of these.”

Decomposing Cyborg Alpha. The skin is by mealune Arad and the whale bones by Ryan Snook of Grendel’s Children.

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However, as it turned out, The Decomposing Cyborg Skin was not the end of the road: I met Jeanni Nishi on Flickr, through a very nice and supportive comment that she wrote for the Uncanny Valley set, in which she expressed an interest in the whole process. As time went on she and I began to correspond and she let me know at some point that she had designed an “uncanny” skin and showed me the pictures she had posted here on Flickr. Then she wanted to know if I would be interested in trying out the skin to which I gave a yelp of joy in response. The skin duly arrived in SL. So, here it is:

Alpha is crying… Crying helplessly, silently, in resignation. This is the closest that I have ever felt to Alpha, the most that I have ever identified with her avatar pain…
Jeanni thank you. You have made Alpha come alive for me, like never ever before.

Same identical shape, I just changed the skin.

It is all in the expression. All our humanity, all our beauty, everything we posses is our expression. It really doesn’t matter if you have steampunk prosthesis or black horns or whether your skin is green. What will catapult you over the threshold of the valley, into the realm of the fully human is your expression…

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Note: When I wrote the paper, I also made mention of Julia Kristeva’s concept of the Abject, which seems to me to somehow relate to what it was that I was trying to accomplish here. The blog post related to that can be read here.

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I need to thank Hardwarehacker Hoch for having taught me how to play. I had completely forgotten how and Hack is the one who undertook my re-education, without which there is absolutely no way that it would even have occurred to me to conceive of Syncretia in the way in which I did.

I need to thank MosMax Hax for having inspired me to build. For having inspired me  – period!

I need to thank wolfgeng Hienrichs for having been Hack’s co-instructor in my playful education.

I need to thank Bettina Tizzy for having discovered Syncretia and having put it on the map of Second Life.

I need to thank Hamlet Au for having blogged about Syncretia, and the wonderful way in which he has done so.

And finally I need to thank Truthseeker Young, Suzanne Graves, Skills Hak, four Yip and Vry Offcourse for having made spectacular presents of their artistic output, now all rezzed at Syncretia.

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