Ordination

Cross the liminal space and enter into another realm for an entirely private exchange. Within this intimate space, the avatar will engage with you to offer up a tale of wonder, a commentary on her experience — one which perhaps reaches throughout the Universe. How does she gather her experiences? Through the ether, from her visitors, via an invisible web to limitless ports of call? She knows what might interest you most and provides a tale based on your selection, but ultimately, depending on how satisfied you were with the story, she provides the true message meant for you — the ‘reading’ she gets of you based on this intimate moment. The Wonder Orb reveals this message to you in your physical realm and what you do with it remains a mystery to her — or does it?

Ordination references the relationship between avatar and self and how the former offers a virtual extension and presentation of identity to others through storytelling.  With the work I also consider what it means to create a self-sustained, evolving experience that is seeded with one’s stories, one’s voice — are we as neuroways of memories and semi-random triggerings of said stored memories, not extended through our memory-making in others? Is storytelling and subconscious neurobinding not the very embodiment of human evolution? If so, then how might we infuse our art with not only our stories, but the ability to spread these stories, propagate our essence outward, with intentionality.

The piece further reflects on how the power of story lies not simply in the story content, but in the storytelling and how the power of storytelling is housed not solely in the moment of the magic circle, but deeply dependent on all that the storyteller brings to the circle.

For me, the storyteller, engaged with the listener(s) is ultimately the MOST critical, most human, most valuable essence. The story could be in a made up language, it could consist of 4 words repeated over and over. The storytelling could be held under a bed while a siren blares or in a smoke-filled salon or in front of the glow of a monitor streaming in a spacecraft. But the shared moment between storyteller and (active/passive) listener, the shared spark of human engagement, that is what not only feeds us, but nourishes us, not only connects us, but completes us.

And so this piece does indeed provide access to sacred stories. It does indeed facilitate storytelling. But the distance between storyteller and listener, that distance means the true experience is one only possible in the future — when listener becomes storyteller.

=== SPOILER === materials & process === SPOILER ===

I sculpted a 3D avatar, digitally painted her, designed and built her tent environment, wrote the stories, programmed the experience using Unity3D as an interaction software base, integrated Tobii eye racking sdk and hardware, scripted the interactions, designed, built, and programed an electronic component from an Arduino Feather with bluetooth shield and miniature motor arm, designed and built an orbital house for it, developed the mystical codex to reflect the messages passed between the story experience and the Wonder Orb fortune teller, and did some other things I cannot recall.

I also recorded my performances of the storytelling, which I prefer to do facing the recording monitor, as if looking in a mirror. For these pieces, some of the stores were taken from my reflections on the beauty and limitations of language, in part because I am always fascinated with other mediums of storytelling beyond spoken language, from sign language to body ‘language’ to visceral response scenarios. The material I was reading at the time I wrote these pieces included histories of sign languages from around the world, the secret hand speak of silent nunneries, the body movements of divinations and rapture sermons, and the storytelling moves of traditional dances from various cultures.