Performing in VWs by Laszlo Ordogh

 The following is a guest post by Velazquez Bonetto, in rl László Ördögh. Vela's long career in virtual worlds is best known for the many performances and presentations of the Cybernetic Art Research Project 'CARP'  which was founded in Second Life in 2007. Now based mostly on Craft Grid and a close collaborator with Rosanna Galvani and her Museo del Metaverso, Vela reflects here on aspects of performance in Virtual Worlds. 

The miracle that we are experiencing today: the Cyberspace, the dematerialized virtual time-space, the worldwide webbed society, where we surf at lightspeed. Any artist NOT using this virtual universe as a challenge and a goal does not deserve the name Avantgarde.

Velazquez and colleague Rosanna Galvani, on Craft Grid, 2022

Why work in Virtual worlds?

1: Everything built in virtual worlds has no material consequences. Everything is Illusion but is useful as a model situation.
2: There is a unbelievable potential in variability and flexibility.
3: Nowhere else you can express and experiment new ideas and thoughts in such a fast spontaneous way. For creative people this world is a  playground to model new situations and experiment with them.

The metaverse theatre was described half a century ago by Nicolas Schöffer as "space-dynamic theatre". He imagined the spatial-dynamic theatre in a spherical space of 100-250 metres, and placed the audience in the centre of this space, so that the position of the audience space is constantly changing. The stages are arranged in a series of cybernetic ballets in this space. Constantly changing images are projected onto the inner surface of the sphere. The scenes of the spatial-dynamic theatre are composed in a central cybernetic control room and control all the scenes from there. Each audience member can transmit his or her perception and impressions via a control panel. The cybernetic control unit dynamically changes the scenery according to the opinions received. In this way, the audience becomes an interactive collaborative participant in the performance.

Nicholas Schöffer, courtesy Compart

Of course, the technical possibilities of the 1960s did not make this vision a reality. With the birth of the metaverse,  the technical means were available to make Schöffer's vision a reality. Indeed, the technical possibilities of the metaverse go miles beyond the concrete technical means that Schöffer imagined in the 1960s. But the principles of the vision have not changed, they have only been enriched. For example, it never occurred to Schöffer that both the actors and the audience could participate from anywhere in the world without leaving home.

The collaborative nature of virtual worlds allows not only a single performer to create a performance, but also productions with many participants. The number of participants is limited by the performance of the simulators. Coordinating the work of avatars from different geographical locations and representing different language and cultural backgrounds is a particular challenge.

Storyboard

The Performance:  A virtual performance can have different communication purposes. Some people just want to be entertaining and others want to convey some kind of content through art. They include virtual ballet, a virtual theatre performance, or a music video recording. The common component is the storyboard. It holds the production together. The storyboard describes to the participants the space-time events that are to be performed. If everyone sticks to the storyboard, the production will stay together, if not it will fall hopelessly apart. Storyboard writing is usually done using a special program, like the one used in films. Of course, there are also one-man productions where the storyboard is in the performer's head because he doesn't have to share the story with the other performers.

The Storyboard:  The traditional Art-Categories are for us not very relevant in the future. We experience on this platform of the Metaverse a new integration of Art and Science. Art is Communication, that was , is and -will be its main function. We want bring a message to the people/avatars in the most concentrated form.

Example of a storyboard from the CARP show Metropolis

In this relationship it does not matter what kind of expression forms we use. What traditional categories we define to bring our message is no longer a question, (productive/performative) The question of today is: How do we integrate this many expression forms so the message will be communicated in a better way.

I think the old traditional Art categories from the 20th. century are done, we have to define and renew our virtual media World. Our mindset is more integrative as separative - we ought to integrate varied Art and science disciplines into a new environmental form.

The collaborative nature of virtual worlds allows not only a single performer to create a performance, but also productions with many participants. The number of participants is limited by the performance of the simulators. Coordinating the work of avatars from different geographical locations and representing different language and cultural backgrounds is a particular challenge.

Flying seats, at a CARP show on SL in 2009

Performance Structure: Even the simplest performance usually requires the cooperation of several avatars. You need to make sure that the audience is aware of the performance, and organise the visual elements of the performance space. The technical implementation of audio sources is very important. The coordination of costumes and props with the elements of the performance space is essential for the overall effect. Animation must sync with the music. Much depends on the quality of the lighting. And on top of all this, simulator overload (lag) must be avoided. The viability of a production depends on how smooth the performance is, taking all the elements into account. In addition, of course, the performance must be interesting, spectacular and beautiful.

Capturing the audience's attention is a vital factor. This is done by the various "flying seats" and remote-controlled camera programmes.  Above a certain level of complexity, a master controller programme is essential to ensure that the many components are precisely synchronised.

The CARP team

 Event control: Two tools are available: 

- interactive tools that can be activated through their different program menus - most useful to control a small production manually.

- the LSL script tools which allow almost infinite possibilities for precise control of space-time events. LSL requires more competence but is more powerful by orders of magnitude. Of course there are also combined interactive/LSL controlled productions.

The components of a complex controller (Master Controller) are very diverse: 

Sensors take care of events that are related to events of other components.

Timers take care of the timing of the production (by Timestamps).

Control functions keep in touch with receivers through communication channels, which are responsible for processing and executing commands.

The event notecards contain the instructions that the control functions send to the receivers.

Event recorders are used to record the state of each component in writing for the event notecards.

Each control element is capable of triggering the other and thus initiating large and parallel chains of events.

Now that's a pretty dry description. A more entertaining explanation of this is possible if one ventures to try out these virtual devices.

Effektors: These convert commands from control units into audiovisual events. For example, there are prims that contain effectors that change the shape, size, position/orientation of a given prim. Some effectors control the textures, colours and transparency of the prim surface. A significant advantage is that you can place multiple effectors in a single prim. The NPC (Non Player Character) is a fantastic effector tool available in the OpenSim environment. These can be equipped with all kinds of primitives, animations, scripts and textures. They are especially useful for productions where you need a lot of animated characters, including animals and plants. You can create a whole dance group where the dancers move in sync with each other. 

Josina Burgess at The Wall, 2010

Productions: Between 2008-2012 the CARP team produced and performed these were THE WALL, THE RINGS, METROPOLIS, THE CHANGE, usually one-hour full music theatre performances. These performances often ran to sold out houses for years. 

There were also many dance productions including the DC Spensley Skydancer I-V productions, the ballet productions of the CARP team EMOTICON or ALIEN BOLERO, presented in 4 versions on the virtual stage over 2 years. On Craft in OpenSim, the CARP team staged Igor Stravinsky's ballet Le Sacre du Printemps, and I have performed visual improvisations at most of the openings of the MdM (Museo del Metaverso) Nowadays we also use robot artists with AI for this purpose.

Procedural graphics are also often used, especially in RL works. Thematic visual elements are inserted into a programmed set of rules that generate a large number of variations after the procedure (algorithm) is activated.

Moloch

 

Future Vision: With the help of many experts, we have managed to create a kind of performance culture in virtual worlds. Unfortunately, there is little trace of the early productions due to the performance limitations of video technology. In recent years, better tech has led to ever better recordings of virtual performances. It doesn't take a prophet to foresee the future of this technology - we are gaining great video production tools that will allow us to capture all the products of human imagination in real time and in a realistic way.