After a time where, for many people, nearly all encounters became virtually-mediated "meetings": what IS a meeting? What isn't? What might a meeting be in the future?
Two people in different physical locations (me and a guest) share a virtual environment (using VR headsets), following an agreed upon set of parameters to encourage emergent and open-ended conversation.
As each person speaks, their avatar is raised higher on a platform. To remain at eye-level, each person needs to speak a relatively equal amount.
The meeting "ends" when both participants have spoken enough that their platforms have reached the top of the virtual space, and both touch the sphere that represents the "end of the meeting".
The audience, in-person and online (at whatever.biz), can observe their meeting and conversation as a live-animated artwork, rednered in an evolving parametric style.
In 2021, operating as CHANNEL WHATEVER (with key collaborators Nate Turley and Savannah Phillips-Falk), we began prototyping this most recent iteration in the form of an durational performance, installation, and livestream, debuting as a work-in-progress at the ONX studio showcase.
During the showcase, 30 meetings were conducted and streamed, in which I did not know who I was talking to until the end of the meeting! Meetings included a diverse array of participants, including artists David Byrne, Molly Soda, Bobby Wooten, Karen Wong, and Claire Hentschker, among others.
The unededited streams can be found here: NEW MEETINGS from the ONX Studio Showcase, Summer 2021.
NEW MEETINGS was restaged as part of SUPERPROMPT, resulting in the following three edited “episodes”: