[spectre] Becoming Dragon opens in LA, San Diego, questions limits of gender and the virtual

[dj lotu5]

WHAT: Becoming Dragon opens in LA, San Diego, questions limits of gender

and the virtual

WHERE: Compactspace gallery, 105 East 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014
and University Art Gallery, UCSD

WHEN: Thursday May 28th from 6-8:30pm and Friday May 29th, 6-10pm at 
Compactspace

CONTACT: Micha Cardenas, mcardenas a+ ucsd D[]t edu

Becoming Dragon, the controversial art project by Micha Cardenas which 
questions the possibilities of Species Change Surgery and the limits of 
merging the virtual and physical body, will be part of two exhibitions 
opening in Los Angeles and San Diego on May 28th and 29th. The project 
consisted of a 365 hour performance in Second Life, using a Head Mounted 
Display, motion capture and a stereoscopic projection and coincided with 
Cardenas' real life hormone replacement therapy. The project has been 
the subject of more than one controversy since it took place.

On Friday, May 29th, Compactspace in Los Angeles will be holding an 
artists' reception for the show The Dark Tower, which includes photo 
documentation of Becoming Dragon. The show also features the work of a 
other UCSD MFA artists and was curated by Cauleen Smith. More details 
about the show are at http://www.compactspace.com/

On Thursday, May 28th, the University Art Gallery on the campus of UC 
San Diego will be opening the show MFA 2009, highlighting the work of 
MFA graduating MFA candidates including Cardenas and many others. The 
show will include a 25 minute video of Becoming Dragon as well as a 
number of digital prints from the virtual point of view of the 
performance.More information about the show is at  
http://va-grad.ucsd.edu/~drupal/node/903

Becoming Dragon has been presented at the Southern California Institute 
of Architecture (SCIArc) in Los Angeles, Supersonic 2009 in the Los 
Angeles convention center, the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in 
Alexandria, Egypt, the "Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality" 
conference in in the San Jose convention center, the Lui Velazquez 
gallery in Tijuana, Mexico, the Ars Virtua gallery in Second Life and 
the Pendergrast gallery at UCSD.  The project will also be presented in 
Victoria, Canada at Ctheory's Critical Digital Studies Workshop in June. 
The project was featured on the cover of the San Diego Union Tribune and 
the San Diego Reader, as well as having articles published about it in 
San Diego City Beat, Dr Dobbs Journal Online, Secondlife.com, New World 
Notes, Brooklyn is Watching and numerous other art blogs.

Becoming Dragon questions the one-year requirement of 'Real Life 
Experience' that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive 
Gender Confirmation Surgery, and asks if this could be replaced by one 
year of 'Second Life Experience' to lead to Species Reassignment 
Surgery. For the performance, Micha Cárdenas lived for 365 hours 
immersed in the online 3D environment of Second Life with a head mounted 
display, only seeing the physical world through a video feed, and used a 
motion capture system to map her movements into Second Life. The 
installation included a stereoscopic projection for the audience. A 
Puredata patch was used to process her voice to create a virtual 
dragon's voice. The performance included public discussions with 
theorists Sandy Stone and Brian Holmes and the performance artist Stelarc.

During the year of research and development of this project, Micha began 
her real life hormone replacement therapy and wrote poetry about the 
experience which was included in the performance. The project was 
realized through a collaboration between Micha Cárdenas,  Christopher 
Head, Elle Mehrmand, Kael Greco, Ben Lotan and Anna Storelli. Becoming 
Dragon was supported by the Center for Research in Computing and the 
Arts, Calit2, University of California Institute for Research in the 
Arts, Ars Virtua, the gallery at calit2, the b.a.n.g. lab and the Embodied 
Cognition Lab of the Cognitive Science Department at UCSD.


More information about Becoming Dragon can be found at:
http://secondloop.wordpress.com
http://secondloop.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/press-release-becoming-dragon-a-mixed-reality-durational-performance-in-second-life-opens-december-1st/


3 minute video at: http://vimeo.com/3874238

Photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/azdelslade/sets/72157610992544600/

For more information, contact Micha Cárdenas at mcardenas A+ ucsd d()+ edu

#