The Fall of 2019 was a super busy and successful time for us here at Friend Generator. In addition to winning the People’s Choice Award for Best Interactive Experience at the 2019 Festival of International Augmented and Virtual Reality Stories, I had a chance to present our work at a number of academic conferences.
On Sept. 21, I had the privilege to sit on a panel with David Rokeby, Chris Salter and Linda Lauro-Lazin as part of the MixtuRe: Digital Arts and Compositional Realties symposium. We discussed our creative practices using technology in the context of experimental research creation. I’ve long been a huge fan of David Rokeby’s work, as well as Chris Salter’s work in research creation. It was such an honour to meet and chat with these incredible artists and scholars.
On Nov. 5, I was invited to present After Dan Graham as part of Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Symposium, sponsored by Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University and the Canada Council for the Arts. Despite a few minor technical glitches (who knew that technology isn’t always 100% reliable?) the presentation was a success and I really enjoyed our discussion afterwards. The wonderful people at Toasterlab are doing some incredible things in mixed reality, so please do check out their work if you’re interested in this field. If you’d like to see the presentation, check out the video below!
And last, but certainly not least, I presented my experiences working with VR as a creative medium at the Two Days in Canada Conference sponsored by the Centre for Digital Humanities at Brock University. Not only did I get a chance to speak about how my experiences leading community-based VR workshops (such as the Media Embassy at Lawrence Heights) have influenced my own creative approach to work with Friend Generator, but another media scholar, Justin Baillargeon, included After Dan Graham in his presentation on interactive VR experiences!
Peak conference BINGO me: taking a picture of @DavyDangerpants watching Justin Baillargeon talk about David’s VR project @friendgener8or. pic.twitter.com/ys9DhI1Zic
— Claudia Sicondolfo (@claudia_sicon) November 8, 2019
All in all, it was a busy Fall, and hopefully, things will continue to be busy as we head into 2020. With any luck, we’ll be showcasing After Dan Graham again in the near future as we continue to develop new features as well as push towards integrating it onto other VR platforms. Stay tuned!