immersive virtual reality

For my studio piece I'd like to create a skateboarding virtual reality installation piece using multiple monitors to create the sensation of actually riding on a skateboard for anyone who walks into it. It will require me filming myself skating from m POV, I'll shoot each run four times (camera in front, back, and on both sides) Ideally the screens would be angled correctly and close enough so that the viewer would be able to turn their head left to right and see what I would see.

digital art

Research

I'm very interested in the way space can be manipulated to result in different types of spaces. For example, this first photo is a simple water run-off that has been slightly modified to be far more fun to skate, it reminds me of the subversive art of Banksy where the more slight the modification in the piece, the more dramatic the effect is...


I recently spent time with Jeff King who stars in "Built to Shred" a tv show about spot-modification on Fuel TV. In the time I spent with Jeff I saw him transform junk metal into skate-obstacles, pouring concrete to permanently change a space, he even brought in snowblowers to turn his southern california home into a ski resort complete with jumps off of the roof. When Jeff or any other skater look at space, we look at it for potential in a way that someone who doesn't skateboard will never see. A simple swimming pool or jersey barrier between lanes on the freeway are pure potential...

skate runs

steepness of SF streets

One of my ideas for a mapping piece would be a type of map designed to look like a map of runs at a ski resort of steep hills in san francisco. this will require identifying "runs" through the city that link up (making runs that are MUNI-accessible would give the skater the opportunity to use the hill just like a ski run with a lift back to the top)

this is the steepness of one of the runs that I skate down often...

GPS Project progress

I've been continuing my exploration of the potential artwork to be found in GPS and skateboarding. I used the Garmin once while skating around my neighborhood, I really didn't mean to but my trace came out as kind of a phallic shape..