The Plaintext Players
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The Plaintext Players
The Plaintext Players were an online performance group founded by Antoinette LaFarge in 1994. Consisting mainly of artists and writers, they engaged in improvisational cyberformance on MOOs and later branched out into mixed reality performance, working with stage actors. Their performances form a "hybrid of theatre, fiction and poetry". Overview When the Plaintext Players began their journey into the world of cyberformance, they worked primarily in the text-based online environments known as MOOs. LaFarge would devise a detailed scenario which would be communicated to the actors or "participants" beforehand. The pieces would then be constructed through live improvisation under LaFarge's direction. Two early examples of this were their "Gutter City" (1995) and "LittleHamlet" (1995). In "Gutter City," they told the tale of what happened to Ishmael, from ''Moby-Dick'', when he became involved in the Civil War after his rescue; and in "LittleHamlet" they retold the story of Shakespeare's ...
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Antoinette LaFarge
Antoinette LaFarge is a new media artist and writer known for her work with mixed-reality performance and projects exploring the conjunction of visual art and fiction. Biography LaFarge received her M.F.A. degree in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1995, and her A.B. degree from Harvard University. She also briefly attended the San Francisco Arts Institute from 1980–1981 where she studied with Jim Pomeroy, Jack Fulton, and Robert Colescott. At Harvard University, her thesis was ''Proust and the Function of Metaphor''. She is the great-great-granddaughter of American artist John La Farge. She has been a member of the College Arts Association since 1996 and was a member of SITE Gallery, Los Angeles from 1989 to 1991. She is currently Professor of Digital Media at the University of California, Irvine, and she previously taught at the School of Visual Arts, New York, in the Computer Art M.F.A. program and in the Photography and Related Media M.F.A. program ...
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Cyberformance
Cyberformance refers to live theatrical performances in which remote participants are enabled to work together in real time through the medium of the internet, employing technologies such as chat applications or purpose-built, multiuser, real-time collaborative software (for example, UpStage, Visitors Studio, the Waterwheel Tap, MOOs, and other platforms). Cyberformance is also known as online performance, networked performance, telematic performance, and digital theatre; there is as yet no consensus on which term should be preferred, but cyberformance has the advantage of compactness. For example, it is commonly employed by users of the UpStage platform to designate a special type of Performance art activity taking place in a cyber-artistic environment. Cyberformance can be created and presented entirely online, for a distributed online audience who participate via internet-connected computers anywhere in the world, or it can be presented to a proximal audience (such as in a phys ...
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Mixed Reality
Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time. Mixed reality is largely synonymous with augmented reality. Mixed reality that incorporates haptics has sometimes been referred to as Visuo-haptic mixed reality. In a physics context, the term "interreality system" refers to a virtual reality system coupled with its real-world counterpart. A 2007 paper describes an interreality system comprising a real physical pendulum coupled to a pendulum that only exists in virtual reality. This system has two stable states of motion: a "Dual Reality" state in which the motion of the two pendula are uncorrelated, and a "Mixed Reality" state in which the pendula exhibit stable phase-locked motion, which is highly correlated. The use of the terms "mixed reality" and "interreality" is clearly defined in the context of physics and may ...
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Moby-Dick
''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler, whaling ship ''Pequod (Moby-Dick), Pequod'', for revenge against Moby Dick (whale), Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance, ''Moby-Dick'' was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sente ...
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Shakespeare's
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an ac ...
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Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. ''Hamlet'' is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". There are many works that have been pointed to as possible sources for Shakespeare's play—from ancient Greek tragedies to Elizabethan plays. The editors of the Arden Shakespeare question the idea of "source hunting", pointing out that it presupposes that authors always require ideas from other works for their own, and suggests that no author can have an original idea or be an originator. When ...
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New York International Fringe Festival
The New York International Fringe Festival, or FringeNYC, was a fringe theater festival and one of the largest multi-arts events in North America. It took place over the course of a few weeks in October, spread on more than 20 stages across several neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan, notably the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Greenwich Village. Most of the venues were centered on the FringeHUB. Yearly attendance topped 75,000 people. Festival Unlike most Fringe festivals, FringeNYC uses a jury-based selection process. Around 200 shows, out of a much larger pool of applicants, are selected for inclusion each year. However, from 2018 the Festival reduced the number of shows. The festival was founded in 1997 by Aaron Beall, John Clancy, Jonathan Harris (also known as Ezra Buzzington), and (current Artistic Director) Elena K. Holy, and is produced by The Present Company. Notable shows that premiered at FringeNYC include ''Urinetown'', ''Dog Sees God'', the musical adap ...
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Ursula Endlicher
Ursula Endlicher is a New York City based Austrian multi-media artist who creates works in the fields of internet art, performance art and installation art. Life and education Ursula Endlicher was born in Vienna, Austria. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1991. She relocated permanently to New York City in 1993. In 1995, she received a Master of Fine Arts, with an emphasis in computer art, from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Work Endlicher has created technology-based performances and installations that use live Internet data. A recurring theme in her work is the "nature" of the web and the behavior of its users, addressed through exploitation of the Internet’s inherent architecture, the web’s HTML language, and user behavior on social media sites. Endlicher’s earliest Internet artwork was presented at the Thing's Vienna bulletin board in 1994. Her internet art works have been since been commissioned for the Whitney M ...
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Adrianne Wortzel
Adrianne Wortzel (born 1941) is an American contemporary artist who utilizes robotics in her installations and performances. She has also created many online works. Early life and education Wortzel was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941. She attended Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where she studied painting and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts in 1963. She later continued her education at The School of Visual Arts in New York and received her Master of Fine Arts in Computer Arts in 1996.Wortzel, Adriann"Adrianne Wortzel Bio"/ref> Career Much of Wortzel's early career was as an abstract painter, and was featured in many group and solo exhibitions in several New York galleries, as well as in solo exhibitions at the Stamford Museum and Nature Center in Connecticut. When she returned to school, she began working more with robotics and telerobotics as she pursued her MFA in Computer Art, producing video and installation work, both in galleries and on ...
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Richard Smoley
Richard Smoley is an author and philosopher focusing on the world's mystical and esoteric teachings, particularly those of Western civilization. Early life and education Smoley was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1956. He attended the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and took a bachelor's degree ''magna cum laude'' in classics at Harvard University in 1978. Smoley went on to Oxford University, where in 1980, he received a second bachelor's degree from the Honour School of Literae Humaniores (in philosophy and classical literature). He received his M.A. from Oxford in 1985. While Smoley was at Oxford, he came in contact with a small group that was studying the Kabbalah, co-founded by the British Kabbalist and author Warren Kenton (Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi).Smoley, Richard, ''The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe''. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2009, xiii-xxv; also ''Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History''. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 201 ...
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