User:FrederickJPorter/sandbox

Annabeth Robinson, whose online Second Life alias is AngryBeth Shortbread, is a multi-media artist and lecturer based in Leeds, UK where she focusses on the teaching of audio, visual and online technologies. Using Second Life and other Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs), Robinson explores their potential as a medium for art and design practice whilst examining its educational potential. Robinson has been undertaking such projects since 2005.

Education
Robinson studied new media at Newport College of Art and Design. Following graduation she worked and studied at Sheffield Hallam University, receiving a MA in Film & TV Drama direction.

Career
Robinson now lectures Digital Media at Leeds College of Art where she develops tools and techniques for using Second Life for educational applications including the widely used Metalab Whiteboard.

Robinson is also one of the creative partners of blueair.tv.

Second Life Residency
Working primarily in Second Life to create interactive installations, Machinima and educative tools, Robinson has created a large amount of works and engages regularly in Digital Performance These are either tools for improving the educational experience that one can undertake on Second Life or interactive performances that anyone is able to participate in. On the Second Life virtual environment platform Robinson is known as AngryBeth Shortbread. This character, Robinson asserts, 'uses her anger proactively to foster and develop ideas' and describes her as a 'radical, trying to push the envelope of new media and education thought in her small corner of the world, developing projects that cross the divide of real and virtual.'

Robinson owns at least one island in the virtual platform, Second Life, which 'supports art and design practice either speciﬁc to a single course or to a range of courses'.

Robinson's avatar (AngryBeth Shortbread) has been listed as someone who has 'inspired with [her] creativity' by Wagner James Au, a reporter on Second Life.

Robinson is also listed as an Educator, and Instructional Designer in Second Life by J Hiles in the TCC 2007 Proceedings.

Educational Tools
Robinson has used her avatar on Second Life to create a range of Educational tools in an effort to improve the quality of online education in virtual platforms. The two most notable of these are the Metalab Whiteboard and the HandShow Chair.

MetaLab Whiteboard

The ubiquitous 'MetaLab Whiteboard' is an educative tool that was developed in order to improve the quality of education within Second Life. It is an interactive board 'that [a user] can pre-load with images'. These images can consist of either text or pictures which have a click through function to display.

HandShow Chair

In other projects for the MetaLab on Second Life, Robinson has created the Hand Show, or HandUp Chair. This tool can be operated using the PageUp and PageDown keys on a keyboard. If the avatar's hand is up for more than thirty seconds, whilst in the chair, it will begin to wave. The Hand Show Chair is designed to allow student avatars to be able to raise their hand within a class hosted on Second Life. Essentially, the chair allows students to be noticed by their avatar teacher.

Both of these educational tools and more are available on the MetaLab in Second Life.

Installation Pieces
Robinson creates interactive instillations within Second Life which rely on the avatar performing actions in order to create a response from the work, either in movement, sound or other forms of activity. Below is a list of her installation works, some with a detailed account of the specified work.

Ping Space

Whilst working at Leeds College of Art and Design as a lecturer, Annabeth Robinson contributed to the 'Kritical Works in SL' project (2008) with a project called Ping Space. The interactive performance consisted of two cubes being used in 'Kriti Island'. The aim of the performance was to create sound. This sound could only be created when one cube was placed on the ground and the other was placed 300 metres above, in the air.

The sound that can be created within the Ping Space project has been described as:

"a mixture of organic pink noise [...] water/wind and binaural beats - sine wave tones of sound that range from 7 - 30 hz difference. The type of beats and other sound design within the void is controlled by an external source outside of Second Life [...] Avatars flying around inside the void will also be sending data back out to the interface - effecting its presentation. Between these two spaces ping playful interaction - where each space's activity affect the other"

The Pencil Factory Gallery

Robinson, along with artists such as Adam Nash and Brad Kligerman, use Second Life as a platform to imitate real life mediums and transfer them into a virtual world. Robinson manipulates everyday objects, such as coloured boxes' within the virtual world of Second Life in order to create a performance or interactive instillation that is available for users to view in The Pencil Factory Gallery.

Within The Pencil Factory Gallery, Robinson's gallery within Second Life, an avatar can freely walk around the and interact with the exhibitions. The viewer can connect them with exhibitions they have experienced in the real world. Robinson has more recently been focussing on 'the role of the avatar' and how it influences the space around it.

Robinson's recent focus has been on the manipulation of sound and instruments. In some installations a user's avatar can click or touch multiple boxes to create a unique compilation of sounds. For example, a user can create their very own soundscape in the Synthy-Go-Round by clicking coloured boxes to enable or disable sounds.

Within The Pencil Factory Gallery there is an area called Sandbox. Here anyone is free to create work in Second Life and experiment with the creations of objects within this space. However, each object must be removed at the end of the user's session and it must be left clear or else it will be subject to deletion.

Synthy-Go-Round

In this installation users can create a soundscape of their choice by clicking different coloured boxes. Clicking the boxes will enable or disable sounds which creates an overall noise of varying timbre according to the users personal choice.

The Letter Well

In this installation, an avatar can either speak or type in close proximity to a well. The action of entering words into the chat bar, or speaking them aloud, 'throws' the letters into the well. Once this has happened the words then emerge from the well, made from steam. In addition, if the user walks into the well they fall under the gallery. Underneath the well is a replica of the centre of the earth with lava and rocks.

Avatar DNA

In this installation piece, avatars can touch a generator pad in the gallery. Once touched, the generator will show or create a physical representation of the avatar's unique DNA chain.

UUID Polyphony: Harmony of Avatars

Developing from the DNA Sculpture, the UUID Polyphony translates the avatar's DNA structure into sound. From this, a unique soundscape is created relevant to each avatar's DNA. The effect of this is greater when multiple users are in the space as these unique clips of music link together making a soundscape for the community present.

Free Fall

In this installation, users are able to touch coloured squares on a cylinder. Upon touching the coloured squares, a ball of the same colour will 'free fall' into the cylinder. The balls will then bounce around until the time runs out.

You Demand Too Much Of Me

In You Demand Too Much Of Me there is a large clear box filled with smaller boxes. These boxes have words such as 'whole' and 'undamaged' inscribed on them. If a spectator is observerving the work, the number of boxes decrease in correlation to the number of avatars viewing the work. For example, if one avatar is viewing the piece, one box will remain. As avatars leave the space, the boxes reappear.

SynthyCube - Avatar Harp

Another room within The Pencil Factory Gallery contains a large, dark square upon the floor. Within this, there are smaller squares which act as harp strings that create a humming noise. The avatar is then invited to fly through the piece and as the avatar flies closer to the centre of the square, the tone that is produced raises in pitch. Throughout the time spent in the installation, blocks appear showing the avatar's collision with the inner sections of the SynthyCube.

Machinima TV Studio

This is a specific area which is used primarily by videopodcasters in Second Life which is set up in the style of an interview. There are multiple cameras where the camera view can be changed by the use of the control button on the keyboard.

Email Invaders

Whilst not based on Second Life, Email Invaders is an inherently interactive performance. Based on Robinson's website, viewers can send an email to either a Red Space Invader or a Yellow Space Invader. Either invader will then grow according to the size of the email sent. Robinson states that this interactive performance is an 'exploration of changing aspects of the virtual world via outside communication.'

All of these works can be found at [The Pencil Factory Gallery]

Other Work in Second Life
Brian Eno's 77 Million Paintings

From the 29th June 2007 to 1st July 2007, Brian Eno commissioned his work 77 Million Paintings in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The 77 Million Paintings is a software/DVD disc which generates random images and music clips to form an installation piece. Shortbread worked parallel to this and recreated this in Second Life.