Ars sine Scienta Nihil Est

The Second Life production of "The Wall," approaching the end of its run, has been running for many weeks now, and has entertained a huge number of people. The performance schedule for this fine spectacle and its contributors’ contributions have been chronicled before in this blog. Therefore, this particular post has a special focus on some good friends, the production’s Creative Director, Ms. Debbie Trilling, and the superbly talented creator of its animated puppets, Mr. Duggy Bing.

Like so many of us, Debbie first heard of Second Life in the mainstream media as it grew in popularity and became an object of interest more or less universally. Like many “residents,” she came from an IT-related RL background and like many she avoided any scripting, regarding it as too much like RL work. Though Debbie still considers SL a relaxation and an escape from her first life, she gradually found that her scripting talents complemented her newly found leisure preoccupation. In Debbie’s own words:

“Second Life offers an opportunity to create almost anything that one can wish for or can conceive of. Although I cannot create anything of note using a pencil and paper or paintbrush and canvas, I appear to have a knack of picking up any new piece of software and taking it to a high level of competency within a short period of time. As such, although I cannot draw or paint, I can do some quite cool things using a high specification PC, mouse, tablet and pen, software and then meld it all together using a programming language. I consider myself as a ‘Technical Artist’, rather than a ‘Natural Artist’. My art is made of algorithms and pixels, rather than oils and parchment. Second Life came natural to me. It was the ‘game’ I had always been looking for; I just didn’t know I had been looking for it until I found it.”

In the course of exploring SL and discovering this new artistic outlet, Debbie met another longtime friend of mine, Duggy Bing, who needed some help scripting the cartoon creatures that became his now well-known and successful line of “Cartoonimals.”

Duggy’s SL story is slightly more succinct:

Duggy Bing: ”Hi Gudrun!”
Gudrun Gausman: “How is you?”
Duggy Bing: “Am good how ‘bout you?”
Gudrun Gausman: “k”
Gudrun Gausman: “Can you give a little backstory on your Cartoonimals? Doesn't have to be much...”
Duggy Bing: “Well, I started building animals for fun, to decorate my waterfall”
Gudrun Gausman: “LOL”
Duggy Bing: “ppl liked them and passersby offered to buy, so I started the skyshop over my house. Soon the shop got bigger, had to tear house and waterfall down for prims. Then simowner quit so had to move...bought my own sim. And that’s my story. The end."
Gudrun Gausman: a man of few words :P Sheesh!

(btw, Duggy’s Cartoonimals store was featured in SL Showcase: cute, whimsical scripted animated cartoon animals; pajamas, animal slippers, unique hats, baby carriers, monkeys, cats, zebras, turtles frogs, dogs, skunks, fish, kangaroos, elephants, dinos, lions, and marine animals.)

During this period, Debbie also created the collection of particle sculptures she calls her “Particle Garden,” and open- sourced the script for her extremely popular (and she says notorious) “Random AV Profile Projector.” (One of Debbie’s earlier efforts, the “Random Lover,” is quite a bit more notorious and has gotten me, personally, in quite a bit of trouble, albeit because of lapses in my generally reliably good judgement.)

In the end, though, it was her Particle Garden that caught the attention of Velazquez Bonetto and won her an invitation to join the Cybernetic Art Research Project (CARP), a collaboration of artists working in Second Life to experiment and share ideas and techniques to create New Art. And it was with Velazquez Bonetto and in the framework of this group, that this production of “The Wall” came into being.

Creating a spectacle in the spirit of, but not identical to the original, involves many challenges, some relating to the production itself, some merely technical.

“Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' has a number of iconic images, notably the giant puppets, the Crossed Hammers and the wall itself. All these are included in our production. However, we did not want to simply produce a copycat of the original but instead create a unique artistic vision and interpretation. Our production of 'The Wall' therefore adds other components that were not in the original version. We also re-mixed the soundtrack in a number ways - some subtle, others obvious. A dedicated Floyd fan will find much that they recognize in our production but will also see and hear entirely new components and concepts. Hopefully there is nothing that we have added that they might object to; we were very conscious of keeping to the spirit and essence of the original.

“The biggest technical challenge is without doubt getting the seven Controllers to remain in synchronization with the soundtrack being streamed into SL. This caused the biggest heartaches and headaches during the early days, especially when we were still performing on a Class 4 mainland sim.”

[NB ~ the team is most grateful to the NMC Campus for later providing them free with a Class 5 full sim on which to stage ‘The Wall, and also to Haven Colville of ‘Havens Paradise’ for the free use of a four-sim amphitheatre.]

“However, we have since learnt a number of tricks and techniques and can now pretty much guarantee that on a normal day within SL that synchronization will be within half-a-second to two seconds over a 45 minute period. This is an acceptable level of tolerance. When SL is having a bad day, however, there is little or nothing that we can do to restore synchronization once it has been lost. Some things you just can not control, either in RL or SL, and when this happens, although disappointing, we just have to live with it. Fortunately, such instances are rare.

“[Though] there were no real organizational problems or challenges to speak of. Once it was agreed that CARP would stage ‘The Wall’ as a major production, and that I would act as Creative Director and Velazquez as Producer, it was a matter of allocating particular segments or elements of the show to one of the core members, and refining that work to fit into the show. For the most part a spirit of co-operation existed. However, that is not to say that a certain amount of professional and artistic conflict did not arise during the creation process – it most definitely did. For example, there were calls from a number of quarters that we should reduce the size of the wall, saying that is was too big and dwarfed the dancers. I resisted this suggestion vigorously, arguing that not only is there a symbolic message behind a massive wall and a tiny human being in front of it, but the visual impact of the show would be diluted with a smaller sized wall. Both sides of the argument presented their case in a forthright manner. In any event, over time, the wall has increased from 50m x 20m to 60m x 20m to its present size of 70m x 30m. And if we were to re-build the production again, I’d want to make the wall even bigger ~ perhaps 90m or 100m x 45m.

“As Creative Director I was granted final veto over other artists’ ideas and contributions. This could be a psychological strain sometimes. Emotionally it has been a challenge because we are all experienced artists in our own right, often passionate and sometimes opinionated ~ myself probably the worst! Emotions can run high about an idea or contribution, and often have. Fortunately we have Josina [Burgess] who compliments her delicious design and colour-sense with skilled negotiation and diplomatic skills. In every instance where creative conflict has occurred, once a final decision has been made, the team have wholeheartedly supported it.”

DEBBIE’S PET PEEVE: Facelights!

“Facelights ruin artists’ work! Because of the way SL lighting works, one person in the audience wearing a facelight can possibly ruin the show for every other member of the audience. We have spent many hours over several months perfecting the lighting systems on ‘The Wall’. Most of our promotion politely asks that patrons refrain from wearing facelights at the venue. We have ushers who politely ask wearers to remove their facelights. We give shout-outs before the show asking that people detach their facelights; we even send them polite IM’s. But still a small hardcore refuses to remove them. The problem is essentially technical. SL (or more specifically OpenGL) only allows the rendering of eight lighting sources, In SL, two of these sources are allocated to the sun and moon. Therefore, in practice, only six lights sources are available. Moreover, a client can only render the nearest six sources. So, if you happen to be seated near to someone wearing a six-source facelight, you will be unable to see any of the lighting effects that we have carefully crafted into ‘The Wall’; if they are wearing a four-source facelight then you’ll only be able to see two of ‘The Wall’ lights and so on. Watching the ‘The Wall’ in a facelight-free zone is a completely different experience to watching whilst wearing or seated near to someone wearing a facelight. In the facelight-free zone it is a panoramic festival of colour; with facelights nearby, it is gray.”

Trust me, seeing someone in the audience wearing a facelight is enough to bring Debbie to tears. You might as well trot a horse through her living room.

"The Wall, V-2" has run through July. There will be two final performances at the Second Life PeaceFest 08 festival - 2pm SLT on Friday 15th & Sunday 17th August 2008... Then it will be over.... Proceeds go to a variety of charities.

Please check Debbie’s profile for links to her “Particle Garden,” Exploratorium project, “Gravity’s Rainbow," and other projects, and Duggy’s for the Cartoonimals store.