Forum
Friends I’ve Never Met will investigate the expansion of virtual communities, investigating the ways that technologies like Facebook, Myspace, Skype, Second Life, YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia are transforming social relations and behaviour, bringing us closer together as well as keeping us apart. What are the defining characteristics of this new social landscape and how are virtual communities fragmenting and empowering human relationships? In what ways do virtual communities and human social networks overlap? Can virtual communities find equivalence or expression in real life, and is this even desired? Virtual communities are harnessed for so many different intents and purposes – to obtain and share knowledge, to represent one’s self in a particular way, to connect with likeminded people, to advance commercial interests to facilitate social agency and community action, and more. Are virtual communities enabling new insights into the human condition, or are we simply being hoodwinked by hype?
About Polyphonic
Click here to download the complete Polyphonic program (pdf – 382kb)
Artist/s:
Christian McCrea, Alex Gibson, Danielle Kirby, Mark Pesce
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About the artist/s:
Christian McCrea is a games writer and Lecturer in Games and Interactivity at Swinburne University. For the past seven years he has researched and taught in fields relating to cinema, culture, games, art, technology, aesthetics and politics, and he has written specifically about how mobile phones produce both social and_anti-social behaviour.
Alex Gibson is a visual artist and computer programmer researching online artistic collaboration for a Master of Fine Art at the University of Melbourne (VCA). Since 2002 he has exhibited his work at various galleries in Melbourne and Tokyo including the National Gallery of Victoria; Conical Gallery; the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery; the Tokyo International Exhibition Center: Bigsite; fortyfivedownstairs; Craft Victoria; Seventh ARI; Counterpoint ARI; and Bus ARI. He was recently nominated for a 2007 Green Room Award in the category of Outstanding Video Scenography – New Form. He has also received the Stoll Trust Award (2001), Friends of the VCA Award (2003), George Hicks Prize (2004), LWL Award (2006), Orloff Family Trust Award (2006) and the Australian Postgraduate Award (2007 – 2008).
Danielle Kirby is a PhD Candidate at the University of Queensland, researching fiction and media as conjunct locales for new forms of metaphysical questing and spiritual understanding. She has published and lectured in the areas of online religion, new religious movements and popular culture, and was co-organiser of the 2006 conference Alternative Expressions of the Numinous. Her research interests include mythology, reality perception, New Religious Movements and contemporary cultural trends.
Mark Pesce, one of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality, is a writer, researcher and teacher. The co-inventor of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), his career has included extensive writings for both the popular and scientific press, teaching and lecturing at universities and conferences around the globe, performances, presentations, and films. In 2006 Pesce received an appointment as an Honorary Lecturer in the Digital Cultures Programme at the University of Sydney, and is familiar to many Australians from his appearances as a judge on ABC1’s The New Inventors. He is the author of five books and numerous papers on the future of technology. His professional blog The Human Network: What Happens After We’re All Connected, explores the social, political, cultural and technological aspects of our thoroughly-networked era: blog.futurestreetconsulting.com
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