The CAVE (Collaborative Audio-Visual Environment)


Often at festivals and other community gatherings, conflicts arise between groups of people based essentially on differences in music and media preferences. In the past, I have mediated such conflicts both officially and unofficially in a variety of settings. My experiences lead me to believe a more pro-active, partially-automated solution would work better.

The CAVE will encourage people to recognize their fundamental similarities, and also celebrate their differences through building an audio-visual dialogue together through which they can comfortably express their conscience concerning even the most controversial issues. This mediation is accomplished through performance, networking, and the exchange of audio-visual data. Evolving models of non-violent conflict resolution, such as cooperative game play, will keep a robust and lively interaction between participants.

The CAVE aims to empower the individual to select audio-visual content for entertainment and education from a “cybernetic collective unconscious” to power the communal audio-visual experiences. Public education will be provided about the nature of artistic collaboration, privacy, transparency, and peer-to-peer sharing of digital information. Concepts such as intellectual property and artistic livelihood will be re-contextualized for the Information Age. By encouraging more peer-to-peer sharing of information in the physical world, we will provide the means to effect a ubiquitous paradigm shift in our society!

Participants will register their presence in a room by scanning a badge when they enter. In order to provide an interactive environment without requiring people to use a computer, people may use their cellphones to take photos of these badges, which will add them as contacts in their phones or web-based social networks (like FaceBook and/or MySpace). The content (music, video, photos, and text) supplied by those present, are queued for the area and will play in rotation. A variety of different games will be played to cooperatively and competitively share the time and space.

People will be able to register and upload content online beforehand, as well as in person at the event, with ipods, and cell phones, laptops, etc. Playlists can be pre-selected, created randomly, or actively constructed collaboratively. People could also opt to perform live music, give a speech, host a discussion, or do performance art. Participants will be given rules and guidelines to provide a framework for them to take turns writing sections of multi-media content in a collaborative dialogue.

The project is designed to facilitate the development of respect and honor for the collaboration, allowing for constructive criticism, but primarily encouraging the participants to appreciate the composition from each other’s perspectives. People who win games can designate prizes to be awarded to humanitarian organizations, sustainable development, open source programming, or other similarly community-oriented causes.

Throughout my life, I have helped many other people actualize their artistic projects. The CAVE will be an opportunity for me to produce, direct, manage, perform, and otherwise share my own personal creative dreams, while at the same time, continuing to offer these opportunities to other people.


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( will you please step into the CAVE with us? )

Black Rock Arts Foundation 2009 Grants Applicant
Project Information

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As usual, the DaFT crew has been @ the Warehouse all weekend long, swearing, sweating & bleeding to finish the Effigy. Thanks to all o' y'all who have showed up to offer us support, in any way! Many of us were there all day & all night... some of us have been rather ill, but we have been there anyway, 'cause we're committed (or perhaps we should be, anyway?)!

During Twilight on Saturday morning, sometime after finishing a stencil of the veve for Ayizan Velekete, a Loa with aspects of healing, commerce, & initiation:

inspiration came to me in my feverish dreams, concerning some of the archetypes that will be present at the Effigy, this year!

Out of these revelations, Eight Flash Mob scenarios have been added to the Effigy Art schedule... one for each of the Trigrams (BaGua) of the I Ching:

*PIRATES & CREATURES OF THE DEEP (BaGua: Open) Hosted by Jesus & The Kraken
*MIMES & MOUSTACHES (Bagua: Receptive/Field) Hosted by Salvador Dali & Mae West
*SHAMANS & FURRIES (Bagua: Radiance) Hosted by Florence Nightengale & The Sasquatch
*SUPERHEROES & CLOWNS (Bagua: Creative/Force) Hosted by Rosie The Riveter & Carmen Miranda
*ZOMBIES & CORPORATE EXECUTIVES (Bagua: Thunder) Hosted by Elvis & Cleopatra
*ALIENS & ROBOTS (BaGua: Wind) Hosted by Santa Claus & Valentine Michael Smith
*NINJAS vs. HIPPIES (BaGua: The Abysmal) Hosted by Guatama Buddha vs. Hassan I. Sabbah
*MARTINIS & LAB COATS (BaGua: Bound) Hosted by Hunter S. Thompson & W.S. Burroughs

If you would like to support any of these Flash Mob Scenarios with audio or video files, please bring your files to the Effigy itself directly during Flipside (If you would like to support any of these Flash Mob Scenarios with audio or video files (any format will work: .avi, .mpg, .mov, .mp3, .wav, .jpg, .gif, cd, dvd, vhs, etc.). It would be an appreciated devotion of your artistic talent, if you brought your files sorted into eight folders: each folder named after the eight Flash Mobs, which are in based on a seperate Trigram (BaGua) of the I Ching. You can bring them on portable flash memory, laptop, ipods, cds & dvds, or whatever! You can even email them to <aethyrflux -at- gmail -dot- com>... keep up The Great Work & we are eagerly looking forward to Playing With You @ the Effigy!


( These are meant as suggestions, not to limit the ways in which people explore interactive art @ the Effigy; but as arbitrary points from which to begin improvising upon familiar themes: )

Did you know... this year, the Effigy is not just something that gets burned at the event. It's an interactive art Studio for Flipizens to play and create and Construct their Symphonies. Not just of music but also theatre, dance, DJing, flash mobs…

Whatever your art is, you name it, come on down and get it on at the Effigy.

It'll be outfitted with electronic toys for props and play, amps and A/V support, and even computers with media files and software to make electronic music and art. We can interface with just about anything. We're talking super complete multimedia immersion here.

And check this out: If people prepare projects ahead of time, like flash mobs at the effigy, then people can ALSO have audio/video files playing and do music and theatre in this A/V supported performance space. Cool, huh?

So… Got some art or performance piece? Wanna throw down the gauntlet with Pirates / Zombies / Clowns / Mimes / Robots / Shamans / Vikings / Ninjas / (insert your favorite archetype here)? Interested in experimenting with collaborative storytelling?

Or just want to make some spontaneous art or play? Right on!

Participants may schedule their time at the Effigy, or not. See what people are doing already at:

http://www.burningflipside.com/flipside_art/effigies/2007effigy/2007EffigyArt/

...and sign up for a time, or just show up during Flipside and get your art on!

During Burning Flipside 2007's First Work Weekend (WWI) @ Flat Creek, we laid out the footprint of our effigy (does this remind anyone else of the Maginot Line?) ...and right before I left, I consulted the I Ching at the center of the effigy space (The Axis Mundi: nexus at the center of our world, where microcosm & macrocosm become one)

The first hexagram: "Withdrawl"

( As cultured people, we keep petty people at a distance... without wrath or disdain, preserving our dignity. )

This is the year of the fire pig, and I have heard a new Gospel!
The Book of Changes has spoken (I'm not making this up) ...another way to interpret this hexagram is:

( Save your bacon! )

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The second hexagram: "Thunder"

( By serious devotion it is possible to safeguard the heritage and the land, thus acting in a role of sacred leadership )

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This year, I am interfacing between DaFT, Rev. Dkr. Duby (Our Procession Leader), & the rest of you freaks... in order to facilitate, coordinate & otherwise syncretize events throughout Burning Flipside, all the way up to & including burn night, with the procession & the burning of our effigy!

I know that some folks can't make it to Church Night on Wednesdays... so, please remember that you can join us @ the Warehouse on Sunday afternoons, also! We would really love to have a representative from each of the major camps participate in planning the procession. And we will soon begin discussing other events during Flipside.

With that frame of reference, i would like to conduct an opinion poll, to get as many different possible answers as we can come up with for a fairly abstract question, at this point:


Q: If you were in an arcade that enabled you to design ritual for yourself without money or electricity... then what would you use, instead of currency, to play?


Please try to think outside of the box & interpret this from as many different perspectives as you can ;~} There is not one right answer... all replies are correct!

Funny how synchronicity works, sometimes... the Full moon during the festival of Imbolc!
(I previously addressed Imbloc, and related harbingers of Spring in the post entitled: Hope for the flowers?)

In the interest of "exceeding by delicacy," I have been making an effort to communicate with people one-on-one more often, in the interest of understanding their language better. That way, I can at least conduct my part of our relationship with more consideration for their feelings. I have found that this is often difficult to do online, even though electronic text is such a temptingly efficient means of communicating with many people at one time. It's so difficult to explain the complexities of of our interpersonal relationships to each other in person, much less to the whole world through a digital interface.

May I take a moment to say that, although I trust the counsel of many of my close friends & esteemed colleagues, I do not think that there is anyone who cannot also benefit from consultation with unbiased professional counsel (physicians, lawyers, psychiatrists, stock brokers, teachers, therapists, engineers, religious officiants, accountants, private investigators, librarians, etc.). Obviously, I am not suggesting that anyone should depend solely upon professional counsel; but I do believe that you can get what you pay for, if you are careful. And of course, just b/c someone has a degree & experience in a field certainly does not make them flawless; but it does afford you with at least a slightly higher probability that their opinion is going to be more useful than the average schlub.

I have really appreciated my recent participation in counseling with Bob McGarey, M.A. @ The Human Potential Center. His Poly Communication Survival Kit focusses on five basic communication techniques which are generally useful in any realtionship (poly, or otherwise). I also really enjoyed the Intro to Communication Speech class I fianlly took @ ACC, recently. My professor, Dr. Lyn Colangelo, is totally awesome & she has great outlines of basic communication concepts on her webpage. Also, "The Usual Error" workshops are another inexhaustible local resource that I have enjoyed every single time i have participated! I'm sure that y'all have noticed by now that some people have really different ideas of how to love one another (even the xtians are starting to figure that out). Lack of direct communication was the inspiration behind the creation of areopagus; but more recently, I have been contemplating how to design a community that encourages Rogerian communication. The mojo_meeting was an excellent example of how awesome a gathering can be when people excercise the sort of basic communication skills that kids learn in kindegarten, like: taking turns, & how to share, in general. When people practice this kind of communication, they are often able to develop more understanding, sympathy & respect for each other. I look forward to exploring these, and other evolving & productive modes of communication out at Burning Flipside this year, facilitating the planning of events around the effigy, and developing Alternate Reality Games to play with The Crystal Ball.

This post is macrocosmic, in that it was cobbled together from various microcosms... some of which I have posted elsewhere recently; but all of these microcosms in some way reflect each other, as well as the whole macrocosm: As above, so below.

Vox Ignis is organizing the creation of a videoconferencing connection, called The Crystal Ball, that will unite Playa del Fuego (the NE regional burn) with Burning Flipside (the Central TX burn), next year (2007).

And I have to say, "The Crystal Ball" sounds like a damn hippie ren faire project ;~}
But I will support anything that improves the connectivity of our communities.
Besides, I am actually rather fond of using divination as a conflict resolution mechanic for improvisational-theatre oriented games.

In fact, I would also like to see who might be willing to assist in the creation of some sort of an interactive games that people could play over the network connection and in real space at the same time, as well as exchanging the live feeds with New York's burn! We can blur the distinctions between the mundane and the fantastic even further with this sort of "Alternate Reality Game" structure.

Although that sort of thing might turn out to be an entirely unrelated project, for all I know... I am just always excited about possible synergies... whether they work out beneficially or not, I love to explore all of the possible connections in the end! In fact, just last night, I was exploring some strange & vaguely related synchronicities...

But, back to the specific business at hand... if we can just figure out how to get an internet connection out there for the videoconferencing that will be reliable & affordable?
Satellite dish service from Dripping Springs may be the way to go, but does anyone else out there have any good ideas they would like to share?

Donohue's Law:
Anything worth doing...
is worth doing for money

or at least it's worth doing for the sake of doing it...
or, if we are fortunate, perhaps we will create ubiquitous post-rtf media?

::: transforming everyday life ::: and all that in some absurd way resembles it :::

according to the ancient ways:
"SOME MUST DIE SO OTHERS MAY LIVE!"

Don't let THEM immanentize the eschaton!
...we have the technology...
let's participate in a paradigm shift
which, through the integration of chiasms
still manages to honor all the ancestors with tribute.

8""""8 8""""8 8"""8  8""""8 8""""   8""""8 8  8"""" 8""8""8 
8    " 8    8 8   8  8    8 8       8    8 8  8     8  8  8 
8e     8eeee8 8eee8e 8eeee8 8eeee   8e   8 8e 8eeee 8e 8  8 
88     88   8 88   8 88     88      88   8 88 88    88 8  8 
88   e 88   8 88   8 88     88      88   8 88 88    88 8  8 
88eee8 88   8 88   8 88     88eee   88eee8 88 88eee 88 8  8

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( Why RPGs? )


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( Here is my (rather lengthy) suggestion for implementation of these ideas on a larger scale: )



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PS

"\/\/#47 ']['3|-| ß|_(*)(*)|>!
...])0 \/\/3 |<|\|ø\/\/?"

"We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions.
That weapon--the claim to possession of the one and only revelation."
- The Sign of Profound Accord

The Cthulhu Devival @ Pyropolis 2005

Friday, May 13th, 2005 @ 18:28 ADDENDUM: m7superstar has created The Official Discussion Forum for The Cthulhu Devival @ Flipside 2005!

let's introduce our allegiances to the seperate cults and get to work creating plots within plots, and schemes within schemes...


( This has the potential to be the largest performance art piece at Flipside, involving everyone present in an interactive participatory event! )

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( The Starry Wisdom Sect )

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( Temple of the Outer Daemoniacs )

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( The Esoteric Order of Dagon )

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( Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign )

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( The Witch-Cult of the Golden Bough )