Session 3 was conducted during the lunch break of the Parallel Worlds conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The schedule of the day was as follows:
11:00 – 12:35 Session 1 – Brave New Worlds
Simon Parkin (Author and Journalist)
Kareem Ettouney (Media Molecule)
Pol Clarissou and Héloïse Lozano (Klondike)
12:35 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:40 Session 2 – Playing With History
Holly Nielsen – Session Chair
Simon Mann (Creative Assembly)
Meg Jayanth (Writer and Game Maker)
14:40 – 15:50 Session 3 – The Realities of Virtual Reality
Kristian Volsing – Session Chair
Laura Dilloway (Guerrilla Games)
Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn (Tale of Tales)
15:50 Break
16:15 – 17:30 Session 4 – Augmenting Reality
Marie Foulston – Session Chair
Holly Gramazio (Matheson Marcault)
Keiichi Matsuda (Critical Design)
While all the presentations and discussions were interesting, I personally found Pol Clarissou and Héloïse Lozano (Klondike) and Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn (Tale of Tales) work and discussions most interesting. Klondike had an interesting collective approach to their work – allowing individuals to make contributions with no centralised control. The demonstration of Fishbones (about the last moments of the players life while drowning) was both harrowing and beautiful. Tale of Tales were inspirational for their ambition, determination and level of research. I can’t wait to experience Cathedral in the Clouds in person.
Over lunch I had a chance to catch up with Jayson, Julianne and Diane. While no one completed their paper prototyping task, it seemed that everyone had made progress on locating their Golden Eggs as well as their Heroes or Heroines to interview over the holiday break.
Diane delivered her homework from session 1, concentrating on the bill of materials of mobile phones – mainly thinking about what kind of objects could be made from the various different elements that make up a mobile phone, selecting based on arts and crafts that are associated with the country of origin. For example, a Nkondi idol from Congo, but made from Cobalt, a material used in batteries:
She identified the following three possible heroes:
- Ralf Baeker (also one of Jayson’s)
- Martin Howse
- Jussi Parikka
Luckily she ended up choosing New Materialism and Non-Humanisation, an Interview with Jussi Parikka by Michael Dieter as her golden egg – i.e. an element from their journey down the rabbit hole of their research that they would like to surface and share with their audience. She stated the following uses of her egg:
It is more of an interview than a paper that has a lot of in depth information which has been extremely useful in guiding further research covering the following key themes:
New Materialism
German Media Theory
The nonhuman
“Dirty Matter”
Jayson sent me the following egg, which he also posted on his blog:
Many-body correlations
At the moment there is a gap between quantum physics which can explain the very small and relativity and classical physics which describe things at a larger scale. The many-body proposition is that the larger effects of physics such as the force of magnetism emerges from the quantum behaviour of particles. We cannot observe quantum behaviour such as entanglement at real world scales but many observable effects such as magnetism are caused by the overall entanglement of particles. One real example of this is that birds use the quantum entanglement of electrons in their eyes so that they can navigate over huge distances during migrations.
Julianne selected a paper by Hans Bjelkhagen and Jill Cook: “Colour holography of the oldest known work of art from Wales“:
The human contact with this is holography’s unique ability to be used in a gallery setting for a purpose other than art. I felt this piece was more relevant because holography can be used in a variety of ways but I thought it was interesting to use it as a way of replicating a piece of art. It’s a bit meta in a way. I thought this contrasted well with its use in art. I feel someone would care because it shows that holography can be a tool as well as art. Almost simultaneously, if we chose to see it that way. I care because it opened my eyes to the many uses to holography and its many uses in a gallery.
I set the following two pieces of homework, both due to be presented at Session 4:
- Have a good break
- Try to interview your chosen hero
- Exhibit your interview – the journey of your conversation, even if you fail, preferably 30 minutes video or interview