SCORCHED HAPPINESS: Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner.

Project Summary:

A live online performance in multiuser 3D cyberspace. A cross-discipline, international collaborative process developing a performative vocabulary unique and appropriate to the multiuser 3D medium. The logged-on audience gets an audio-visual experience which is moving and meaningful and unique to the medium. The performers, using customised multiuser performance avatars, explore modes of expression possible only in 3D cyberspace.

Driving the creative collaboration is the 'script': Toccata and Fugue For the Foreigner by Julia Kristeva.

Driving the technology is VNet, the open source Java/VRML multiuser system.

The Project In Detail:

Aims and Objectives:

The objective of the project is twofold:

1) To develop a mature performative vocabulary for avatars-as-performers in live online 3D multiuser space performances by a collaboration between artists from visual art, dance, music, film, literature and computer programming.

2) To explore the concept of cyberspace as foreign land through exegesis of Kristeva's Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner, from "Strangers To Ourselves [Etrangers à nous-mêmes]."

The two objectives inform and enable each other:

Through the mounting of a live collaborative performance, the Scorched Happiness project seeks to develop and define a new performative vocabulary for live online 3D multiuser space performances based on the medium itself, its strengths, weaknesses and uniqueness. This process will result in a purely 3D multiuser space performance that is successful on its own terms, free from any unpaid debt to the physical world, whilst obviously referencing/acknowledging those influences and precedents. This will be achieved by a collaboration between practitioners from diverse fields, recontextualised in the online 3D multiuser medium.

Because online 3D multiuser space can literally be thought of as a new territory, Julia Kristeva's "Tocatta and Fugue for the Foreigner" is an ideal work on which to base such a production, because it deals with the psychology of those who find themselves in a new territory (ie, the foreigner), whilst being a highly poetical work of literature that prefaces a rigorous deconstruction of the notion of foreignness through history to the present.

VNet, the open source Java/VRML multiuser client/server system, is ideal as the logistical medium because it enables the relatively easy construction of customised avatars for each performer that can grow and evolve along with the performers during the process. In the same way that an actor might develop their character through the rehearsal period, so the performers in Scorched Happiness will develop their performance avatar.

The Medium:

The artistic, performative, success of the project depends on the skillful utilisation of the online 3D multiuser medium: the avatar, the space, and the interactions between avatar and space, and avatars with each other. This is the crucial point that defines the difference between online 3D multiuser space performance and other performance forms. In, for example, a theatre show, a ballet or a film, each of the sensual processes is assigned to a separate artisan: sound, music, camerawork, choreography, acting, all are discrete processes performed by distinct individuals. Additionally, other ephemeral functions have discrete roles: time, meaning, location. In online 3D multiuser space, however, the performer/avatar can literally BE any or all of these processes at the same time or different times, in different combinations. A performer can literally BE the location. A performer can be an emotion that a character is experiencing. A performer can be the soundtrack, or parts thereof. A performer can be a cloud of lightpoints that is chimeric in form over time. In this way, whilst it represents a unique medium, its conceptual approach or mindset is more redolent of the artforms that historically accommodate abstract expression, such as visual art or dance, as opposed to the 'naturalistic' or linear/narrative tendencies of film and text-based theatre.

The Scorched Happiness project is about the 3D space itself, not how it maps back to the real physical world, so humanoid representation becomes irrelevant, which frees the artists to explore alternative modes of representation. The collaborative process will involve extensive experimentation and discussion of the possibilities for representation. These possibilities are not restricted to the visual realm, but include the aural, the temporal and the textual. The collaborators will be exploring the performative potential of 3d space for every way that it is NOT like 'real' physical space. The process will be fascinated by the aspects of 3d space that do not relate to the physical world. It will explore the avatar as a means of expression that is impossible in physical space. It will be an extensive and rigorous exploration of this concept - how do we as performers express ourselves when there is no up or down, no gravity, no friction, no discrete unit called 'my body' or even 'my self'. How do we perform an avatar that has no visual manifestation whatsoever - maybe it is only expressed as sound, and yet can 'move around' within the space and can interact with other avatars that are expressed in visual and other forms. The online multiuser 3D space offers an astounding potential for this kind of exploration of performative practice.

There has been little performance practice in 3D multiuser space that attempts to explore the medium in a manner that is not bound to notions of how the performance or performer/avatars relate to the physical world. Most significant works have been based on the existence of a body in physical space as a rationale for the cyberspace performance. This inevitably results in a concept that treats 3D multiuser space as an annex of the physical world, and is often disappointing for an audience, due to unavoidable subconscious expectations of physical world precedents. Similarly, there is little net-based performance that is not extremely self-referential. Whilst a stated aim of this project is to develop a performative vocabulary for this medium, it is *in order to* produce an artistic work about one of the major themes of contemporary society: foreignness. In doing so, it paves the way for others to build on the successes and failures of the work to help produce a lasting and durable conceptual and concrete vocabulary for a medium that is capable of artistic im/expression of the radically changed and challenging society in which we now all live.

The Source:

The source text for the Scorched Happiness project is

Julia Kristeva, Strangers To Ourselves [Etrangers à nous-mêmes], Chapter 1 : Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner.

Kristeva's work is ideal as a source because it is not a character-driven piece, but rather deals in emotions, reactions, motivations and other psychologies. Its structure of 24 short 'fugues' is ideal for enabling the collaborators to problematise their performative impulses in manageable chunks. Each of Kristeva's fugues deals with a different conceptual aspect of the foreigner experience, and thus its ideal performative outcomes can be easily articulated. It is very much suited to the collaboration of physically disparate artists in that different combinations of collaborators can, when necessary, work on a fugue independently of the group as a whole. As is customary with Kristeva's works, Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner, being the first chapter of the book Strangers To Ourselves, is an intensely personal and poetic preface to a rigorous academic analysis of the concept of 'foreigner'. A beautiful and confronting work, the sheer emotional power of this chapter provides an immense amount of creative raw material for the collaborators, whilst its context within a larger academic work gives the collaborators an intellectual confidence to explore the difficult themes that are so relevant in contemporary society. The internet is a very appropriate medium in which to explore the notions that Kristeva analyses, raising as it does fundamental questions about the nature of geographical location as cultural identifier. Cyberspace itself renders all people as visitors, and it is this quality that provides the crucial link with Kristeva's main argument that we are all foreigners ('the foreigner is within us'), and only by accepting this can we hope to see an end to xenophobia and racism. Not only is the subject matter intensely relevant to contemporary society, but its fundamental thematic vocabulary of emotions/feelings/impressions lends itself especially well to a performative articulation in online 3D multiuser space. The fluency of this articulation depends on the collaborators themselves, and the provision of such a rich conceptual source allows the collaborators to concentrate on developing a visual/audio/conceptual performative vocabulary born specifically from working in the medium itself.

The Collaborators:

Each of the collaborators must originate from a different arts discipline.

Each of the collaborators must identify themselves as a foreigner.

For the process to be effective, collaborators must originate from a cross section of arts disciplines: visual art, dance, music, film, literature and computer programming. This is vital in order to properly realise the 'synaesthetic' potential of online 3D multiuser space as artistic medium. 'Synaesthetic', being a term coined for this project, acknowledges that this medium can synthesise aesthetics from ostensibly disparate disciplines. The term's conscious similarity to the term 'synaesthesia', meaning a medical condition in which a person can 'hear colours' or 'see sounds', reflects the ability of onine 3D multiuser space as performance medium to offer new modes of expression such as 'visual music' or 'aural painting'. Each of the collaborator's experience in their usual medium provides experience in a creative problem solving process that will be useful in the problematising of the creative urges in online 3D multiuser space. Each collaborator will also provide essential knowledge for each of the other collaborators. Take as an example Kristeva's fifth fugue, "Confidence". To express the themes of this fugue, the dance artist will have extensive experience in visually representing the concept in a non linear/narrative fashion, but will have no experience in the visual expression being unrelated to the human physical form. Whilst the painter will be able to provide exactly these solutions for the dancer's problem, the painter will lack experience in using sound as part of the expression, which will be provided by the musician. While some fugues deal with language, which is the area of expertise of the writer, hitherto unexplored notions of the visual and sonic potential of words can be explored in concert with the filmmaker, the musician, the painter and the dancer. The computer programmer will provide the logistical ability to render all of these concepts within the medium. In this way, each collaborator will bring their individual experience to bear in order to collectively produce a new, synaesthetic whole.

Each of the collaborators must identify themselves as a foreigner. This is crucial to the project for two reasons. First, and most obviously, is the empathy, recoginition and comprehension of the source text - this is not to say that the non-foreigner would not understand the text, but that the foreigner will undoubtedly find such deep and personal resonances in the text that the impetus to express it in a performative context will be irresistable. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the fact that the foreigner has intensive experience in adjusting to a new territory. The foreigner is used to quickly picking up on, and exercising, key skills and behaviours for satisfactorily negotiating the new space. Points that identify one as 'from here' or 'not from here' are quickly observed, internalised and consequently externalised by the foreigner. Drawing on this experience, the foreigner will, instead of being overwhelmed by the task of developing a new vocabulary in a new medium, be informed and equal to the challenge.

Finally, the collaborators should be residing in (and foreign to) a country that is currently actively dealing with issues of foreignness and immigration, whether in a postivie or negative sense. Of particular interest are Australia, England, Sweden, Russia, Korea and Canada. Additionally, nationalities of particular interest are Philippino, Mexican, Chinese, Indonesian and Eastern European. (See attached appendix on international migration).

The Technology:

VNet is a free multiuser VR client/server system. It is released under the GNU General Public License, and uses only VRML and Java, both of which are open standards. VNet works by serving multiuser 3D worlds, conceptually similar to a conventional text-based chat room but with a 3D visual dimension. VNet is theoretically capable of handling thousands of users at once. VNet worlds, such as will be used in the Scorched Happiness project, are accessible on the world wide web by anyone with a VRML-compliant browser. VRML browsers are freely available, usually as web-browser plugins, for all major operating systems. The open standards approach of VNet ensures that it will remain viable well into the future, as VRML evolves into its next generation standard, called X3D. The original authors of the system are actively involved in the VRML/X3D development scene and as such are readily contactable via the conventional VRML discussion forums such as the www-vrml mailing list and comp.lang.vrml newsgroup.

VNet is ideal for the Scorched Happiness project because its design allows the adding of custom behaviour buttons to the client window via the PROTO field available in VRML. Therefore, any animation, geometry, image or sound that is possible in VRML can be added as a behaviour button to an avatar. These buttons are accessible only to the person controlling the avatar, whilst the results are visible to everybody logged in to the space. This system forms the heart of the performance mechanism for the performers and their avatars. An important part of the process will be the interaction between the collaborators and the technology, as they learn to use the system and apply their existing skills to create a new mode of expression for themselves and their audience.

The Process:

The entire process is divided into five stages:

1. Research and Development

2. Artistic Collaboration

3. Rehearsals

4.Performance

5.Online and Physical Space Performances.

6.Documentation and Exegesis

1. Research and Development.

This phase has been underway since September 2002, partly with the help of a grant from the Digital Summer organisation in Manchester, UK (see attached letter). It chiefly involves the director, Adam Nash, working with the code of the VNet system, both the Java and VRML components. To this end, a test server has been set up, and is being used to both customise the system to the specific aims of the Scorched Happiness project, and to develop and test various concepts and approaches to avatars. The test server is accessible on the web via http://www.yamanakanash.net/scorched_happiness/index.html

Subsequently, the research and development phase is expanded to include the other participants, taking the form of email-based discussions and online learning sessions regarding the history and use of VRML, multiuser 3D space, and VNet itself. There will be regular sessions within the Scorched Happiness 3D multiuser test world to build avatar performance and construction skills in preparation for the collaboration phase, as well as some group research into currently available massively multiplayer online games.

Participants will also carry out their own individual research based on the recommended Scorched Happiness reference sources. Chief among these are the Kristeva text itself, along with Lefebvre's landmark work "The Production of Space", and Margaret Wertheim's "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace". It is important that the participants are very familiar with the body of thought and practice regarding space, foreignness and cyberspace as performance medium, in order that the collaboration becomes a useful extension of and contribution to the development of cyberspace as serious art/performance medium. (See attached reference list).

2. Artistic Collaboration.

The Artistic Collaboration phase will constitute the most significant phase of the whole project. This is when the collaborators will meet online in the 3D multiuser space regularly, to workshop the source text via the performance avatars, with the aim of building a methodology for a performative approach to online 3D mutliuser space as medium. Each day will be a repeating cycle of discussion, construction, and testing. During this phase each of the fugues from the text will be distributed among different partnerings within the group, from solo to full-group and these sub-groups will splinter off to workshop their fugue, then return to the full group for testing and appraisal of the fugues. The participants will be challenged to apply their own specialised knowledge and experience to an expression of the foreign condition, via Kristeva's text, in the recontextualised medium of 3D multiuser space, as well as learn (and impart) different approaches from (and to) their collaborators. They will also be challenged to attain the level of technical proficiency in the medium that is neccesssary for an effective utilisation of it in an artistic context. An important part of this process will be its documentation, and towards that end all logs will be retained and catalogued for retrospective analysis and hopefully as a valuable resource for future efforts in this arena. Ultimately, the collaborators will arrive at a form and structure for the whole piece (comprising the 24 individual fugues) and will be ready for the rehearsal phase.

3. Rehearsal

The rehearsal phase will be analagous to the rehearsal phase of a play, a dance piece or a musical piece, in that the shape and mechanics of the show have been decided and each day will be a process of repeating, refining and polishing the performance of the piece. As the whole piece is made up of 24 smaller, interrelated fugues, it is expected that the piece will consist of meta-forms, which are predetermined and immutable, containing numerous micro-forms, which are plastic and improvisational according to the performative urges of the artists in the live context. This is analogous to the gestures and facial expressions of an actor (the microform) whilst reciting the text and movement (the macroform), or the saxophone solo (the microform) within a song's chord structure (the macroform). Thus, the rehearsal phase will comprise practicing both levels, in a group and individually. A second, important component of this phase will be to invite audience members to log in to certain rehearsals in order for the project to explore the mechanics and implications of the virtual presence of a live, logged-in audience.

4. Online Performance

The performance phase will be analagous to the performance season of any live production in physical space, such as a play, a dance or a concert, in that there will be a set number of performances at given times, at which an audience will be expected to attend. Performance times will be scheduled to accomodate the performers' time zone differences, and the season will comprise several performances over the course of a few days. Potential audience members will be given detailed instructions and help via the Scorched Happiness website and a support email address. Audience members will log in to the space, using a VRML browser, at a given time. During the performances, 'virtual ushers' will be available via email and instant messaging systems to assist audience members. The mechanics of audience attendance, participation and interaction will be documented and analysed.

5. Combined Online and Physical Space Performances

After a period of analysis and appraisal of the entire process, the project will move to a more traditional physical space exhibition phase. This will involve performances in suitable galleries and other physical spaces where the audience, rather than logging in to the virtual space themselves, observe a projection of the online 3D world whilst witnessing the performer/s using their computers to access the 3D world and manipulate their avatar/s. The purpose of this phase is to expose the project and the performative practices that arise from it to that sector of the community that is unwilling, uncomfortable, or unable to log in as virtual audience members. In order that a debate is established within the art and performance communities about the performative and artisitic practices of 3D multiuser space, it is expected that discussions will be held after each performance in physical space. Each participating collaborator will be encouraged to seek local funding for these performances, and this will help determine whether or not a physical space performance takes place in any given location. It is neccesssary that this phase only occur after the performers have become fully proficient and comfortable with the online aspects, due to the added logistical, financial and psychological aspects of physical space performances.

Audience:

A vitally important aspect of the entire process will be considerations of the audience. Taking the various starting points of online games, physical space performances and exhibitions, chat rooms and recent interactive art, the process will deeply explore the role and abilities of a logged-in audience in 3D multiuser space. The extents and limits of audience interaction and ability to influence the performance/space will be investigated through all phases of the process. To this end, test audiences will be brought into the 3D space whenever possible. A desired outcome of the initial phases of the process is a clear articulation of target audience demographics, again synthesising possibilities inherent in the existing game, performance/art, chat and interactive art worlds.

6. Documentation and Exegesis

Documentation:

The entire process will be documented using various techniques.

This is vital in order for the project to fulfill its aims of being a useful and significant contribution to the field of 3D multiuser space as artistic performative medium. To this end, all logs of online sessions will be retained, catalogued and analysed, paying particular attention to Phase 2, Artistic Collaboration. An advantage of this kind of multiuser online collaboration is that all discussions can automatically be logged in text format. Where appropriate, video documentation will be undertaken, chiefly taking the form of 'fly through' videos of the construction of avatars and 3D objects, along with online performances. All avatars and associated VRML animations and objects will be available online permanently once the project has finished, along with any relevant source code and commentary. A detailed report and appraisal will be posted on the website, along with recommendations for future efforts in the field. Publication in suitable journals and other forums will be sought for these reports. All of this documentation will also be placed on CD and/or DVD for archiving and distribution purposes.

Exegesis:

A theoretical deconstruction of the process, form and nature of both the piece and the medium will be drafted and refined throughout the process, reacting to the circumstances that arise through practice as well as the current theoretical literature regarding cyberspace as performance medium, and cyberspace in its relation to foreignness and identity

Promotion/exhibition:

The Internet performances of Scorched Happiness will be promoted to an Australian and international audience, including artists, organisations and exhibitors. Subsequent to the online performances of Scorched Happiness, opportunities will be sought to exhibit the project in physical space in festivals and venues including:

In Australia - Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne Festival of the Arts, Museum of Victoria Immigration Museum, Adelaide Festival, Museum of Modern Art Sydney, Artspace Sydney

Internationally - Digital Summer (UK), Transmediale (Germany), ZKM (Germany), Ars Electronica (Austria), ISEA 2004 (Helsinki), CINARS (Canada), European Media Art Festival (Germany), Microwave International Media Art Festival (Hong Kong), Centre Pompidou New Media (France), Mediamatic (Holland).

As a Digital Summer Research commission, Scorched Happiness will form a part of the research for content into the Manchester - Melbourne - Montreal telematic networking project. (see attached letter confirming funding)

Collaborators' Profiles:

Adam Nash, Composer, Performer, Programmer.

Director/Collaborator.

Adam, an immigrant to Australia from England as a child, is passionate about Virtual Reality Performance Art. For the past four years, he has been the programmer, composer and lead performer in the internationally acclaimed live and online work Virtual Humanoids, which premiered at the new Melbourne Planetarium in 2000. That production's heavy use of the VNet multiuser system for humanoid performance avatars has inspired him to explore the potential for non-humanoid, non-linear live performance avatars. Adam has over twenty years of experience in professional performance art, sound and music. Since 1994, his work as performer composer and programmer for the Men Who Knew Too Much has been seen throughout Australia, and in Singapore, Japan, Germany and the UK. He has also played drums and keyboards in, and written music for, many musical groups including Japanese noise group Proud Flesh, Melbourne electro-dub pioneers Half Yellow, artpunk group Fink Finster (with Theatre of Hell’s Ewan Cameron), Brisbane’s Choo Dikka Dikka (responsible for the legendary underground anthem Cyclone Destroys Expo) and Melbourne conrete poets Arf Arf. He also spent a couple of years as live sound technician of choice for Melbourne’s healthy Latin music scene. He is currently undertaking a Masters Degree by Research at the School of Animation and Interactive Media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He is a contributing writer for Digital Media World magazine, and a Project Officer and Trainer at com.IT, a charity which recycles computers and redistributes them for free, which he helped to establish. He is also fluent in the Japanese language.

Mami Yamanaka, Visual Artist.

Collaborator.

Mami immigrated to Australia from Japan 10 years ago. She is currently undertaking a Masters by Research in the School of Fine Art. Her thesis examines the visual expression of space by people who have undergone cultural relocation. A painter and installation artist, recently her work has come to include video and new media elements. Her theoretical and practical work make her an ideal collaborator for the Scorched Happiness project. She has received an Australian Postgraduate Award as well as a Local Artist Grant from the Japan Foundation and the SBS Federation Square Award.  Her paintings are held in several private collections, as well as the collections of the Equal Oppurtunity Commission and SBS Melbourne. She has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions in Australia and Japan. She is also a translator and language teacher. In Japan, she has been a magazine editor and writer as well as an interior space designer.

Kema T. Ekpei, Dancer, Choreographer, Educator.

Collaborator.

A British person of Nigerian origin, Kema is a classically trained dancer with over 10 years experience in dance performance, choreography and education. He has used 3DStudio and Lifeforms in his work, most recently in "virtuasitytwo" at the Green Room in Manchester. His ongoing experiments  in virtual performance arose from an interest in removing visual ethnic identity, and thus he is very interested in collaborating on the Schorched Happiness project. Kema is also a  website designer and multimedia author, and a committed and experienced dance educator.

Lisa Logan,

Producer.

Lisa works in the film and interactive media industries, as a Director of Smooch Artists and at Tantamount Productions, where she oversees documentary and broadband production. Lisa has worked as Artistic Director of Experimenta Media Arts and at the Australian Film Commission, managing AFC investment in interactive media projects and working closely with producers to creative content for new delivery platforms, including disc, Internet and interactive television projects, incorporating animation, gameplay, documentary and narrative. For a number of years, Lisa represented the work of Australian producers at Milia, an annual international market for interactive multimedia held in France. In 1994, Lisa co-founded New Media Network to exhibit and promote new media arts, design and associated products. New Media Network also acted as a referral agency, providing Australian companies with access to new media skills. Lisa has a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Art (Fine Art).

Cazerine Barry, new media choreographer.

Art-Technology Interface Consultant.

Cazerine is a director/choreo-videographer who has combined contemporary performance in a new media context for over twelve years. She studied performance at VCA graduating in 1990 and Open Channel Video Production in 1992. Her work has been invited to Tokyo International Arts Festival, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Latitude Festival Brisbane Powerhouse, Little Asia Dance Exchange Network, Australia Festival for Young People, Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe, Multi Media Art Asia Pacific Festival, St Kilda Film Festival, Antistatic Festival, Kampnagel Festival Germany, Biennale Dela danse del Val - de - Marne France, New Moves International and most recently Multimedia Exhibition at the Monaco Dance Forum presented by the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

Her awards include a Choreographic Fellowship at The Choreographic Centre, an Australian Cinematography Award for the film "F.E.A.R" co- produced with Adrian Hauser, a Green Room Award Nomination, an Asialink Fellowship, Scholarships for cultural exchange from the Australian Indonesian Institute and American Dance Festival, a New Media Arts Residency and the Eva Czajor Memorial Award 2000 for young female directors. Last year she appeared in Experimenta's New Media Performance Program FUSION and she took residency with Random Dance Company London. Her installation work was presented at Video Arte Mexico and M.A.A.P Beijing. Her consultancies include Geelong Courthouse Student New media program, Stelarc's Exoskeleton Project and Mixed Media Productions Stuttgart.