A Real + Second Life Symposium

Saturday 24 November 2007, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester + Second Life, 1.00pm – 5.00pm GMT

A Real + Second Life Symposium, a collaboration between The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and The Presence Project, coincides with the major retrospective exhibition Autonomous Agents: The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson. The Guardian’s preview of the show spoke of Hershman as an artist for whom the creation of self-identity is less a vain game than a matter of profound political import’.

Working in performance, installation, video and film, new media and technology, Lynn Hershman Leeson has explored identity, politics, surveillance and artificial intelligence, operating at the vanguard of artistic innovation from the 1960s onwards.

A Real + Second Life Symposium considers the accumulation of Hershman Leeson’s practice and its habitation within live space, cinematic space, the buildings of museums and galleries and most recently, the virtual space of Second Life.

Through 20 minute long presentations, a range of academics and artists will talk about Hershman Leeson’s practice, as well as identity, politics, surveillance and artificial intelligence. Confirmed speakers include Prof Gabriella Giannachi (Centre for Intermedia, Exeter University), Prof Amelia Jones (University of Manchester), Prof Nick Kaye (Centre for Intermedia, Exeter University) Prof. Michael Shanks (Faculty Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center, California) and Prof. Jackie Stacey (University of Manchester) as well as the artist herself - Lynn Hershman Leeson.

This free symposium will take place in real life in The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester on Saturday 24 November 2007 1.00pm – 5.00pm GMT and on the same day in Second Life at 3.30pm – 4.30pm GMT. Contact susan.fletcher@manchester.ac.uk for Second Life location.

Autonomous Agents, A Real + Second Life Symposium is in collaboration with The Performing Presence Project, a four-year partnership between University of Exeter, Stanford University and University College London funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK and with the support of Stanford Humanities Lab, California. Performing Presence is available at: http://presence.stanford.edu/

Booking

To book a place at this free symposium please call Sue Fletcher on 0161 275 7472 (Mon, Wed & Thurs) or email susan.fletcher@manchester.ac.uk

CONTINUOUS CITY: Excerpts from a work-in-progress by The Builders Association, UC Berkeley, October 5-14, 2007

Our extensive documentation of this process will be developed on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1187

Initiated in a series of company workshops at the Krannert Centre and the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in July 2007, CONTINUOUS CITY will be developed throughout the next year toward opening performances in Autumn 2008.

CONTINUOUS CITY: Excerpts from a work-in-progress by The Builders Association, UC Berkeley, October 5-14, 2007

Engaging with the impact of network technologies on the nature and sense of contemporary place, the company write that:

CONTINUOUS CITY is a mediation on how contemporary experiences of location and dislocation stretch us to the maximum as our "networked selves" occupy multiple locations. Globally, we are at a watershed moment where, for the first time, more people are living in cities than in rural environments. From the megacities of the developing world to the gated communities of the U.S., our new production looks at the sense of 'place' within a global context, and how electronic connection contributes to and complicates that sense of place.

CONTINUOUS CITY also explores these networked architectures through a website created as a performance space where members of the public may participate in the project by joining a chorus, entering into dialogue with characters and uploading images, all of which may be added to the theatrical production. Uploaded material may also be viewed from the site. Visit http://continuouscity.org/ to explore and participate in this part of the project.

CONTINUOUS CITY: Excerpts from a work-in-progress by The Builders Association,
UC Berkeley, October 5-14, 2007

Ranging from extracts from Marianne Weems' preparatory notebooks to interviews at key moments with company members to analyses and accounts of working processes and outcomes, this documentation will form a unique dialogue between The Presence Project and the evolution of a major theatrical work.

from Phantom Limb series (1988-)

Running through until 12th December, this is the first retrospective of Lynn's work to be presented in the UK and ranges from the creation of Roberta Brietmore in San Francisco in the 70's, through to Lynn's recent collaborations with Tilda Swinton.

DiNA (2004-)

Autonomous Agents will also present Life to the Second Power, Lynn's reanimation of her archive through Second Life in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University as part of The Presence Project.

from Life to the Second Power (2006-)

For more details of Autonomous Agents, please follow this link to The Whitworth Art Gallery http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/exhibitions/future/autonomousagents/

Follow this link for a streamed discussion on video of Life to the Second Power between Lynn Hershaman Leeson and Michael Shanks, published in Seed Magazine, August 2007 http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/08/seed_salon_lynn_hershman_leeso.php

During this period, Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye, Mel Slater, David Swapp, Marco Gillies, with performer Annie Hudson, developed a mixed reality scenario in CAVE to test hypotheses defined in response to the our series of Performing Presence practice/research workshops in Exeter during 2006.

Using sophisticated motion capture and software, and developed as an interactive performative scenario between avatar, performer and participant, the experiment provided us with a wealth of qualitative and quantitative outcomes, including interviews, questionnaires and data recording physiological responses to the experience.

The outcomes of this process will feed into key project publications as well as shaping our developing work within CAVE. More images and details of the experiment will be available on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/645

The documentation of the workshops on which this process draws, and interviews with many of the contributing artists, including Tim Etchells, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes, Fiona Templeton, and Phillip Zarrilli, are now available on the Presence Project Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu

Marianne Weems http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/831

Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1120

Fiona Templeton http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1101

Phillip Zarrilli http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1143

A full directory of these discussions of presence, performance and visual art is available at our Presence research grouping, available on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/493

Our most recent posted discussion is with Tim Etchells:

I don’t know if there is such a thing as simply ‘being there,’ just being present. Being present is always a kind of construction. Perhaps we could think of presence as something that happens when one attempts to do something, and whilst attempting to do that thing you become visible; visible in not quite succeeding in doing it, visible through the cracks or the gaps. (Tim Etchells, Presence Project Interview)

Our interview with Tim is now avaliable online through the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/646

Recorded by Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye following Tim's Presence Project workshop, 'Presence and Absence Intertwined,' our discussion ranges over Forced Entertainment's live performance, digital and installation work, as well as the company's collaborations with the photographer Hugo Glendinning.

Throughout, Tim considers the constructions of performer presence that animate the company's work, as well as the work of other influential artists including The Wooster Group and Peter Handke.

courtesy Tim Etchells

Reflecting on the impact of new technologies on the construction and performance of presence, Tim notes:

One of the things we do as readers of signs and situations - and of all things - is that we respond to absences - and we fill absence. So, you know, the way the telephone makes us imagine the whole person, the way that in text chatting - instant messaging - in writing, you sort of spend time with other people but you are not in the same room as them. And because it’s purely in that sense, because it’s purely language, there is a huge role for you in mentally unpacking what’s written or, in the phone, unpacking what’s said, to create people.

As we look forward toward beginning year 3 of the project, we will be significantly extending the Collaboratory resource, incorporating video documentation, publishing a wide range of interviews and significantly developing our core investigations.

We welcome contributions and enquiries - details of contributing to the Presence Project Forum are at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1095