UNDERGROUND CITY 3D/XXI

An artistic and cultural interdisciplinary
Platform and utopian future online 3D city
Supported by the European Commission and the European Cultural Foundation

Final Presentation & Exhibition

Click here to see photos of UC3D/XXI exhibition at GAMERZ Festival in Aix en Provence

LIBAT and PRAGUE COLLEGE are happy to announce:

Final Presentation of Underground City 3D/XXI project

Where and when?

--> Vernissage
Saturday 09.04.2011 | from 6 pm with reception and presentation of Art Catalogue

--> Open
07.04.2011 - 11.04.2011 | 11 am to 6.30 pm

--> Prague College
Polska 10, Prague 2

Underground City 3D Environments

Since May 2010, the Underground City 3D (UC3D) project, directed by Pascal Silondi, has aimed to establish a specific cultural, artistic and educational virtual community structured as an online collaborative and interdisciplinary 3D platform.



Participants can enter here and navigate in different Underground City 3D online environments that are accessible through a series of computers connected to the Internet; these environments were developed collaboratively during the last 10 months by Libat and Prague College. Users can discover different types of cells connected to the “Rhizome architecture” of the 3D Labin ex-coal mine tunnels recently reconstructed by P. Silondi and J. Grosz from laser measurements. It is a vision of the being projected in abstraction and in the architecture of messages and data structures. It is a 3D multimedia environment where one can question their identity when surrounded by digital autonomous agents and emerging visions of a contemporary network society and interactive digital cities. The UC3D environments are the products of deep interdisciplinary collaboration, and are inspired by Stefano Cavagnetto and Bruce Gahir papers about “The conception of the self in multiple cyber worlds” where they discuss many issues about personal identity and propose a model of the Self in Cyberspace based on the information theory, “The Code of Coal” or “Cellular Automata and the Game of Life” that focuses on algorithms and representation and “Morality and Artificial Agents in Cyberspace.”

The platform, which will then be accessible online, will reach another dimension, and will become a free public artwork accessible from anywhere. Underground City proposes a specific approach to democracy also in the fact that people from the public can display their own messages perceivable by the other users; they can influence the 3D world system, not only by their presence, but also with their participation in becoming citizens of Underground City.

Authors: Libat (FR), Prague College (CZ), Skutr (CZ), M2F Créations (FR), NxGraphics (FR)

Lamparna for Underground Landscape

Participants can enter and navigate through Underground city 3D environments developed collaboratively last months.

It is an interactive audiovisual installation where users are immersed simultaneously in multiple 3D cyber underground worlds projected in parallel. This is an inside partitioned space, a sounding board for dissonances, fractures and wandering of beings immured in the contemporary digital exhibition.

Equipped with a “Lamparna” (lantern) and a hammer increased by motion sensors, the new twenty-first century minor may initiate their descent into abyss. There they can explore a network of multimedia tunnels lined with pixelated shadows, virtual characters glued to frantic loops, mechanical rhythms and over-cadenced sounds, all inspired by past industrial revolutions. Still under pressure and near to explosion, the belly can, at any moment, let an imperceptible lethal information sheet escape.

The installation offers the user a chance to increase their influence, and is given the opportunity by using a computer network, to interact simultaneously with the contents of several interconnected cyber tunnels. It is a schizophrenic installation-system; it is an organism sensitive to stimuli that can react however contradictory to their translation, proposing a non-linear and chaotic storytelling architecture that uses 3D gaming technologies for the network to integrate and manipulate videos, sounds or 3D objects, and it also allows the "free" exploration of the virtual “diptych” while multiplying viewpoints.

"Lamparna for Underground Landscape” is an adaptation of Underground Landscape, the first interactive installation that was part of the European project "Underground City XXI." It was proposed by "Libat" and created originally in situ for the Gamerz # 5 Festival and “Lamparna” installation that was developed collectively during the last Underground City workshops by Libat and students of Prague College.

Authors: Pascal (FR) and Marie Silondi (CZ), Jakub Grosz (CZ), Rajmond Berisha (Kosovo), NxGraphics (FR), Stefano Cavagnetto (I), Bruce Gahir (UK), Tihana Valent (HR), Yevgeniya Drovossekova (KZ)

Production: Libat (FR), Prague College (CZ), M2F Créations (FR), NxGraphics (FR)

Those works were supported by European Cultural Foundation (ECF) and the Culture program of the European Commission

UC 3D/XXI Project Presentation

You will discover in images all of the Underground City events, artwork and research made during the last two years including:

Labin ex-coal mine; the 3D environments development process; “Triangular propaganda - site specific performance in the Army House of Culture” developed in collaboration with Jakub Kopecky and the “Skutr” theater group and presented in the city festival of Legnica, Poland; “Underground Landscape," the first interactive installation proposed by Libat for UCXXI, and created originally in situ during the Gamerz # 5 Festival, in Aix en Provence, France; the four workshops organised by Libat and Prague College in Prague for the development of Underground City 3D environments and the creation of mixed-media installations and performances; interactive installations results created collaboratively by artists, interdisciplinary researchers and students like “Lamparna” or “Neurons.”

Authors: Libat (FR), Prague College (CZ), Skutr (CZ), M2F Créations (FR), NxGraphics (FR)

Art Catalogue

Underground City Art Catalogue will be launched and presented by Stefano Cavagnetto during the vernissage evening on 9th of April from 6pm.

This work aims to collect in a form of an art catalogue most of the theoretical and practical work developed during the creation of a virtual 3D futuristic underground town [Interdisciplinary Internet platform Underground City XXI (UC XXI)] by Prague College and Libat researchers and artists. The Internet platform UC XXI, was imagined as a 3D multi-user environment shared and distributed on Internet consisting of interactive spaces and avatars.




The catalogue is divided into three parts:
1. Theoretical developments connected to virtual spaces and avatars
2. Art gallery of the futuristic environment developed
3. Activities originated from the project.

The first part focuses mostly on the conception of the self in virtual environments, on the development of virtual personality models using a Wittgensteinian approach and on some aspect of modular architecture and the concept of fractal city for the futuristic town. This initial part is fundamental to the foundations of cyberspace and hence the fractal city as it attempts to examine some of the fundamental questions relating to identity in cyberspace and virtual personality.

The second part uses the art work produced using a modified version of the Unity game engine. The art work is presented in a form of art gallery of paintings which starts from the cloud points of the real coal mine and it goes to the final abstract and modular environment developed using fractal concepts such as self similarity and scalability.

The third part of the catalogue refers to the multiple activities originated from the project, including workshops, exhibitions and special courses involving the schools of Art and Computing at Prague College

Exhibition of Visual Identities developed by Graphic Design students

The exhibition will present a selection of around 25 works by Prague College Graphic Design students done for the Underground City XXI project, for which they developed visual identities under the supervision of Graphic Design Programme Leader Simon Gray.

Prague College Research Centre Bulletin

Beginning in March 2010, the Prague College Research Centre Bulletin started to publish research. The Bulletin is a quarterly publication that publishes current and relevant research activities of lecturers and students at Prague College. This Bulletin forms an integral part of the Prague College Research Centre (PCRC) and provides a medium whereby the research activities of the centre can be documented.

All Underground City 3D/XXI research, productions and activities have been analysed or published in the Prague College Research Bulletin. During the exhibition time, all articles will be accessible for reading.

More information:

UCXXI Facebook --> Underground City XXI _ Interdisciplinary platform
Libat Facebook--> Libat-Hybrid Lab for Arts and new Technologies
Prague College ---> praguecollege.cz

Contact:
--> libat@silondi.net