researchnews

Trace Aureity
Trace Aureity is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Adam Nash will lead a tour of his work on Thursday, May 22, 2008 between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. US EDT. If you would like to take part in the tour, please contact adam at yamanakanash dot net.

Trace Aureity by Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona) [Needs Second Life account and client (free)] - Trace Aureity is an interactive, immersive, audiovisual sculpture located in the 3-D synthetic world Second Life. There are eighty-eight manipulated field recordings — from city streets, birdsong, to talkback radio — and ninety-six nested rotating objects densely arranged in a three dimensional grid. Avatars, either solo or in groups, generate sounds by moving through the installation. Some of the innermost nested objects, colored red, also spawn glowing spheres which fly out and bounce around inside the work, triggering sounds as they pass through other objects. Because the playable space is so dense, players are rewarded by slowing down their movements as much as possible, since even miniscule movements create differences in sonic output. The contingencies of time-based interaction by people-as-avatars creates a dynamic audiovisual composition, always unique to that moment and those interactors. This may be seen to represent an evolution of the aleatoric composition techniques of John Cage and Brian Eno, as well as an enactment of the objets sonore of Pierre Schaeffer.

BIOGRAPHY
Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University.

"Usher Planet" acclaimed
Patrick Tarrant was an AIM Master of Art by Research candidate who graduated in 2003. His research project CD ROM "Planet Usher: An Interactive Home Movie"... "mines the narrative, aesthetic and mnemonic qualities of the 20-year old home video archive of his brother, Peter, a deaf man slowly gone blind at the hands of Usher Syndrome. This archive is an audio-visual video library that was never heard by its producer and can no longer be seen by him.

The project proceeded from the notion that the lost archive might somehow be revived, revitalised or rethought through an engagement with new media technologies. So Planet Usher springs from the tragic story at its heart. It then turns to the multimedia potential of the archive as a storehouse of images, sound, narrative and meaning. And finally arrives at a synthesizing premise that within the realm of new media one might at least stage the idea of a reclamation of the archive, all the while making the audience a player in that drama." - Patrick Tarrant, 2003

Research Essay

Planet Usher was Highly Commended in the 'Best Student Developed Content' category of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) Awards 2002.

Planet Usher has been accepted at the "Digital Boundaries: Multiculturalism, Identity and Awareness" exhibition in New York October 10, 2004 as part of the ACM Multimedia 2004 Conference.

Planet Usher will also be exhibited at Peterborough, UK in November 2004, as part of an exhibition entitled 'Sequences' curated by Paul St. George.

Planet Usher is permanently archived and periodically exhibited at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) , Federation Square, Melbourne, as part of the 'Memory Grid' Program.

Other AIM student works housed in ACMI's Memory Grid are: Mango Bear by Won Young Lee, Toots by Kirrily Schell, The Kingdom of Humour by James McKenzie, The very last thing from Pandora's box by Kyunghee Gwon, Frank by Andrea Hiller, The A-List by Janelle Kilner; Hello by Johnathon Nix, Drive by Gina Moore, The Brasskateers by Maung Maung Aye, Blue by Grant Noble, Picture Start by Jeremy Parker.

Symbiosis awarded
AIM Masters research student, Mark Guglielmetti, and his colleagues from the Faculty of Constructed Environment RMIT, Jonathan Duckworth and Lawrence Harvey, who make up Metraform, received the Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) Award 2002 for "Outstanding Virtual Experience" for the immersive (aka 'virtual reality') digital art installation Symbiosis. This is a virtual navigable space designed for stereoscopic viewing on an immersive 180 degree screen and was selected for the Melbourne International Film Festival 'Undercurrents' exhibition 2003.

Congratulations to Mark and the Metraform team!

Our first PhD graduates
Cause for celebration. Simon Pockley (left) and Russell Naughton are the AIM centre's first Doctor of Philosophy candidates to complete their studies. They also make RMIT history in becoming the School of Creative Media's first PhD graduates. The conferring ceremony was held 9th June 1999. Congratulations Doctor Pockley and Doctor Naughton!

• Dr Simon Pockley's project
• Dr Russell Naughton's project

projectgrants

The calibre of past and present AIM students is further evidenced by their success in gaining competitive grants for their personal and professional projects. The value of these grants between 1995-99 is $1,857,800!