I’ve been having so much fun exploring theory, my brain went into academic paper research mode. I guess it’s time to pivot back to project planning lol. Or maybe I should also write an academic paper.

Research Topics I have been exploring:

• Transhumanism
  • Both human-machine and human-animal/human-mythological transformations
  • Ritual as transforming experience (human-god, human-not human)
• Avatars as Self-Portraits
  • Exploring for my Creative Response: Performance Art class - combining with VR final project to make an avatar/character driven utopic/dystopic narrative experience
  • How you view yourself is different as to how other people view you, tracks in digital space as well
  • Acting vs Not Acting in every day life and performance
• Fully realized, yet contained 3d environments

Additions to Research and Inspiration

• Research
  • Mythologies of Transhumanism by Michael Hauskeller
  • Metahumanism Manifestoby Jaime del Val and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
  • The Digital Mind: How Science Is Redefining Humanity by Arlindo Oliveira
  • How we became posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles
  • Place, Illusion and Plausibility by Mel Slater
  • Living Virtual Digitally: Worlds Embodiment by T.L. Taylor
  • Acting/Not Acting by Michael Kirby
  • Avatar, Assembled: The Social and Technical Anatomy of Digital Bodies by Jaime Banks
• Inspiration
  • Manifesto by Julien Rosenfeldt featuring Cate Blanchett
  • Training Transhumanism (I WANT TO BECOME A CEPHALOPOD) by Miriam Simun
  • Several fiction/scifi books that are sitting on my coffee table and I need to go look at and then I’ll update this list (some I have read, others are on my tbr list)

Performance Topics I am Interested In:

• Live Mocap into Unreal
  • Playing with in Virtual Production class
    • Would be curious to then push this all the way into a headset
  • Going to see Bag of Worms and Maquette on 11/10 at ONX
• VR Puppetry
  • Learned about it in Liminal Productions class
  • Looking for resources on how to start playing with it
  • Need to email Sam Rolfes to get his advice
• Live actors in VR environments a la Tender Claws
  • Still obsessed with The Tempest in The Under Presents 3+ years later
    • Specifically how they would interact with audience and also how they would have 1 actor sharing the entire story

Thesis Project Proposal Overview

The Installation

• The part I definitely want to spend next semester making
• A video piece exploring what it means to be human, and why we chase transhumanist ideals?
  • How our tech has become a part of us already
  • Why do we want to become robots or computers?
  • Why shouldn’t our ideal be animals, or nature related, or even just to be human as we are now?