The work of Australian artist Georgie Roxby Smith challenges the relationship between analog and digital systems, questions materiality and explores new possibilities of virtual reality software. During her Watermill Center residency, Smith collaborated with new media and theater artists from New York and New Zealand to develop Reality Bytes, an interdisciplinary creation that incorporates visual arts practice, installation, new media art, video art, theater and performance, bringing them together in one “event.” In Reality Bytes, she extracts and re-injects her Second Life avatar into physical space so that her work exists on a kaleidoscope of planes: “in world,” within a body of physical sculptures, as ephemeral projections in space; and as recreated performances by both humans and avatars. The effect is that of a hall of mirrors, in which viewers occupy multiple realities at once. In fact, through Second Life, audiences have the ability to access the virtual installation component of the final work not only in person at Watermill, but from their own homes.
At Watermill, Smith collaborated in the same physical space with several artists she has worked with only virtually, includingOberon Onmura, a New York-based artist specializing in Second Life; performer Fernando Ariel Gallardo; and Paula Van Beek, a New Zealand-born, Australia-based dramaturge, animator and lighting designer. During her residency, on April 24, Smith also conducted a public workshop introducing participants to the world of contemporary art within Second Life. She and her cohorts presented this work-in-progress on April 29 and this film excerpt was shot and edited by Carlos Soto.