 |
|
|
|
|
|
WORKSPACE UNLIMITED PROJECTS
Our projects consist of a series of networked virtual 3D environments which adapt and reconfigure multi player game technology. Each environment is designed to coexist with a city, art centre or public event to which it is both conceptually and thematically connected. The 3D virtual environments are connected together by the internet forming a new kind of enlarged public space for artistic expression and social exchange.
Three nodes are currently in production in collaboration with international arts organizations where they will be accessible on a long-term basis. The first node, Extension, is linked to the Society of Arts and Technology (SAT) in Montreal, Canada. The second, Devmap, was commissioned for the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival organized by V2_Organization, Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam. The third, Implant, is being developed in collaboration with the Vooruit performing arts centre in Ghent.
In June 2006 these three nodes will be connected. Visitors will be able to travel between each of the virtual environments, moving between simulation and fiction while crossing physical, geographical, political and cultural boundaries.
|
EXTENSION
EXTENSION explores the potential of augmented reality to redefine and transform the way we experience digital art and digital space. EXTENSION was presented for the first time at the opening of the new building of the SAT - Montreal (Society for Art and Technology), in June 2003. EXTENSION is accessible through dedicated terminals at the SAT and through the VWA network. When visiting the installation from the SAT, visitors find themselves represented in a virtual space that mirrors their actual physical surroundings. As they move through the environment, they cross from reality into virtuality and from representation into imagination. Anchoring virtual experience in real space, EXTENSION forms a hybrid environment that blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination. EXTENSION gives access through virtual portals to a series of interactive art installations. The installations are digitally originated art projects that were created using custom modifications of game technology. There are currently five installations, created by the Workspace Unlimited collective, reachable through EXTENSION: Diplomatic Arena, Blind Love, Paranoid Bot, Infinite 60 Seconds, and Storyscape.
Project by: Thomas Soetens, Kora Van den Bulcke
with the collaboration of Matt McChesney and Patrick Bergeron.
|
|
DEVMAP
DEVMAP is an interactive immersive virtual world conceived to be sensitive both to external media sources and human presence. The project, commissioned by V2_organisation, was presented for the first time during the DEAF04 festival and will be included in the Virtual World of Art network. The concept is based around the interactive use of live media feeds from the outside world and changing media manipulations triggered by visitors. Webcam footage, video output and live streams captured from the festival, are transformed, manipulated and mapped onto a virtual landscape that reflects and refracts the data of the festival and the interests of its users. Representing both the informative content of the festival and the mood or feeling it evokes, DEVMAP creates an augmented poetic experience connected to a temporary physical event.
Project by: Thomas Soetens, Kora Van den Bulcke
with the collaboration of Matt McChesney and Patrick Bergeron.
|
|
IMPLANT
IMPLANT is the concept for the Cultural Center in Belgium 'Vooruit'. Implant probes the capacity of digital media to give tangible form to the invisible and implicit. Implant reconfigures the reality of the existing Art Nouveau building that is situated in the center of Gent. The building has a great historical value in the town and had several functions in the past before becoming a cultural centre. The multiple identities of the building inspired us to reconfigure and subvert the existing reality.The inside of the building will become a highly fictional and unrealistic environment based on the actual and historical activities of the building itself. Real-time informationfrom the Vooruit will be blended together to form textures that will be applied as skins over shapes growing inside the main spaces of the Vooruit. Playing on the oppositions between interior and exterior, physical and ethereal, past and present, Implant questions the nature of identity and the limits of representation.
Project by: Thomas Soetens, Kora Van den Bulcke
with the collaboration of Matt McChesney, Patrick Bergeron, Jason Dovey.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |