A Delightful Interactive Forest

Treeline 2012 is still happening over the next month but I'm already turning towards thinking about Floating Land next year and Treeline 2014. There's lots to inspire, lots to learn and many things I want to experiment with. I'll be posting some of the more inspirational things I find on this blog. Maybe that's just my way of keeping a diary, but I hope you enjoy them too.
I am interested in blending old and new media and real and unreal envrinments. The wonderful interactive piece called Night Bright (below) was created by Theo Watson for Bumble children's cafe in Los Altos, California. Knee Deep is another of Watson's interactive works, created in collaboration with Emily Gobeille of zany parade http://www.zanyparade.com/
Watching some of the videos of Watson's work I am encouraged to think that some of the immersive experiences I thought were confined to virtual worlds might be possible in a different context. I guess, at this stage, only children are unhinhibted enough to fully immerse themselves in the intereactive experience in a public place, but what if we had this sort of experience in the privacy of our own homes. Kinect comes close, but ...........




Knee Deep - Cinekid 2009 from Theo Watson on Vimeo.

Treeline at The River School - Treeline Opening Caloundra Regional Gallery

The collaborative residency at the Ananada Marga River School in Maleney is represented in the Treeline exhibition by a hard cover book 'Treeline at the River School'. Visitors can also read an electronic version of the book on a large screen.

The cotton cyanotype squares made by the children are on a table in the main gallery and images of these squares are used in a kaleidoscope projection that has been a great hit as part of the exhibition.
There has been general fascination with the process of cyanotype and the beautiful imagery that has been produced by students from both River School and Kawana State High. I particularly liked the way the projection inadvertently became another sort of artwork (below)  during the artist talks last week. It was the sort of thing we played with in collage at River School, and happening right there by chance, making an amazing outfit for one of the visitors.

It was great to see teachers from the school Joshua Boldt and Tracey Lewis (above) there at the exhibition, seeing the end results of the days we had spent with the children.
They are holding some of the free tree seedlings that were handed out to everyone who attended the opening, courtesy of Coolum Native Plants nursery.

The book 'Treeline at the River School' is available online in hard and sfot cover and as an ibook, from the Blurb bookstore.

Print version:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3185823

ibook version:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3186276


Treeline continues at Caloundra Regional Gallery until July 8th.

The Imagination Garden -Treeline Opening at Caloundra Regional Gallery

The Treeline Exhibition was officially opened on Saturday by Ross Duncan, Manager of Library and Gallery Services with the Sunshine Coast Council.

It was great to see so many people there on an afternoon of torrential rain, and to notice so many of the students and their families and teachers in the crowd.

The room showing the  Imagination video was a major drawcard, inviting people to come in and experience all the colour and fantasy of the virtual garden made with the work of students from Caloundra City Private School.

At one end of the room two comfy chairs invite visitors to sit down and enjoy the 23 minute video. At the other a series of panels explain the process of building the garden and the student's drawings are displayed on a table.

An inmportant part of being an artist is to work towards an exhibition, keeping the end product in mind and making decisions about how it will be shown. The students had been an integral part of this process and were justly proud to see their work as part of a prestigous and important exhibition in one of the Coast's major galleries.

Earlier in the week volunteers and friends of the gallery had a morning tea and sneak preview of the exhibition, with an artist talk explaining the works in the exhibition.This is important for new media works like the virtual garden, as it's sometimes difficult to understand how they came about. The volunteers who will be manning the gallery during the exhibition now have some idea of the project with Caloundra City Private School and the making of objects in virtual worlds.

Congratulations to the students of Caloundra City Private School who were involved in the exhibition. Congratulations and thank also to collaborating artist Victor Keegan whose textures added another dimension to the garden.

Treeline continues at Caloundra Regional Gallery until July 8th.

The Imagination garden in the virtual world Inworldz, which has been sponsored by Jeri Rahja, will have its own separate official opening this week, where avatars from around the world can enjoy seeing the work as a three dimensional space.

Treeline2010 Books Now Available as ibooks

The books from Treeline 2010 Virtual Treeline and earthlines are now available as ibooks from the Blurb store. The books can be downloaded to be read on ipad, ipod or iphone.

Underwater the story of the life underwater on the Sunshine Coast in Australia is also now available in ebook format.

You can purchase and download the books here:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1316177

Caloundra City Private School - Treeline 2012

Last Friday was my last hands-on day with the students at Caloundra City Private School. We watched some preliminary machinma footage of the Imagination sim and talked about credits, what music to use, the mood of the machinima etc.Then it was 'free time'. Students could work on whatever they wanted within the project.

 Some chose to have a relaxing afternoon creating more textures by drawing on paper. Butterflies and wings were added to the cache of plant textures.

 Others chose to work on the ipad, in photoshop, on the graphics tablet, or within the sims on their hard drive.

A professional photographer came to take images of the students and the processes, and we had the formal thank you's with the principal of the school and staff from the Caloundra Gallery.  The students gave me a beautiful bunch of lilies that smell so much better than any of the virtual plants we've created.

I now have a HUGE task ahead bringing all the textures created  into  Imagination  and making the machinima, but I'm looking forward to the results.

The picture on the right is the small student group involved in the project (minus Bronte). They've been great to work with and I thank them for their contribution.

Imagination  will open in Inworldz in mid May. I am still negotiating a date with our sponsor Jeri Rahja, but there will be live streaming of music and a party for avatars from all around the world to celebrate the opening of the sim. The sim is a magnificent fantasy garden created with textures  from UK artist Victor Vezina and the students of Caloundra City private School.

The real life opening of Imagination machinima will be at Caloundra Regional Gallery on June 2nd.

Treeline 2012- Session Three at Caloundra City Private School

 One of the objectives of artist residencies in schools is to give students an insight into how artists work. Like many artists,  I use whatever comes to hand and whatever feels right for the job. Anything at all can become an art medium if you use it creatively.
For Session Three, our objective was to make more plant textures for the garden in Imagination sim, and students used a variety of tools.

 Digital images of real plants manipulated in Photoshop

 ArtRage on the ipad

 Crayons on Paper

Graphics tablet in Photoshop

The sim is starting to look more finished. it's our last session together on Friday and I plan on taking some preliminary video footage along so we can discuss the details of credits, music and sound effects, visual effects, mood etc.

Treeline 2012 - Session 3- More Textures

The Year 10 students were away on camp, so with a smaller group we had a relaxing day, with each student working on their own textures for the build. Noah, who missed the Photoshop session, was able to catch up. The images below show how Noah built up textures from images of small sections of real plants.

To the left is Noah's original  image from the camera.
Below are the textures he made as PNG files on transparent background in Photoshop.

The images below show Noah's textures used to make plants in the Imagination sim Inworldz.

In the image above Noah's texture has been recoloured in Photoshop to give a different feel to the plant.

The Stained Glass texture didn't work quite as well as it might. I will play around with some different plant shapes to see it it works better in a different format.

 The yellow image above is Noah's original photo of a flower from an umbrella plant.
The others are textures created from that image in Photoshop.

In our Imagination fantasy garden the real life colours look a little out of place, but it does make a nice grove of trees.

It fits into the build better coloured yellow (left), but also looks great in blue (below).