Kidz Connect

The Macondo Dance Connect project has been green-lit! It is a mixed reality performance project created in collaboration with Cabula 6 and the dance organization Tanzquartier Wien and will involve bringing kids together from the Macondo refugee community using folk dance, mapping and Second Life.

The objective of the Macondo Dance Connect project is to re-connect youth from the refugee community to their native cultures by allowing them to explore and identify with folk dance from their native countries, while allowing them to discover the nature of cultural identity through creative collaboration in virtual space.

[Image from Cabula6 in the Macondo]

We will facilitate a process in which we ask the students to make dance phrases based on the kind of movement and folk dances they may have learned in their native countries, thereby allowing them to reconnect with their native cultures through dance and providing an outlet for expression and sharing between cultures.

We hope to provide a cultural exchange through shared creativity that will enable the youth to gain a sense of empowerment as they explore their identities through dance, inspired by their native cultures as well as their newly acquired cultures.

There will be a workshop component inside the virtual world Teen Second Life which will provide the students with the ability to explore identity through the use of avatars and roleplaying. The workshop will enable them to expand their notions of evolving identity, making it dynamic and creative precisely at a moment in their lives when their multiple identities are both in flux and in danger.

Cabula6 has been working within the Macondo community, creating some interesting installations - one of which involves mapping. Their Living Maps exhibition entails “individual maps, fantasies and visions of Macondo drawn by different people who have lived in the neighborhood anywhere from fifty years to 1 month…fused into a single massive map and displayed on the billboard wall of the Zinnergasse-Kaserne bus stop.” The Macondo Dance Connect program will build upon this effort, encouraging the students to map aspects of their neighborhood onto objects in the Teen Second Life environment, so that a virtual extension of their experiences becomes part of the online performance.

In a series of progressive sessions within a workshop from 8-16 May, the students will learn performance skills involving dance, while also learning technical skills such as digital storytelling and creating in the online virtual world Teen Second Life, in order to create a mixed reality performance that will occur both live and online simultaneously. The performance will be on saturday, 16 May, live and online. You’ll be able to view it on a regular web page as well as within Teen Second Life. Stay tuned for more details…

Tags: dance, Macondo, mapping, Second Life

A Kidz Connect project connecting youth refugee communities in Vienna and Berlin is in the works. The program, initiated by Cabula 6 and the dance organization Tanzquartier Wien, will involve bringing kids together from Berlin and the Macondo community on the outskirts of Vienna.

The teens will meet via videoconferencing to create a dance theater performance together online. We will facilitate a process in which we ask the kids to make dance phrases based on the kind of movement and folk dances they may have learned in their native countries, thereby allowing them to reconnect with their native cultures through dance and providing an outlet for expression and sharing between cultures.

[Images from Cabula6 in the Macondo]

What they all have in common is that they have fled their native countries due to violence and hardship. As refugees, acclimating to a new culture can be a jarring experience. We hope to provide a virtual cultural exchange through shared creativity that will enable the youth to gain a sense of empowerment as they explore their identities through dance, inspired by their native cultures as well as their newly acquired cultures.

There will also be a workshop element inside the virtual world Second Life which will provide the students with the ability to explore identity through the use of avatars and roleplaying. The workshop will enable them to expand their notions of evolving identity, making it dynamic and creative precisely at a moment in their lives when their multiple identities are both in flux and in danger.

Kidz Connect Vienna<>Berlin will focus on questions about the complexity of contemporary identity while acclimating to a new place, meeting new people, and adjusting to culture shock, and will offer the space for alternate, expansive identity through shared creation in a virtual world, independent of their bodies and histories and hinged, rather, on the scope of their fantasies and dreams. They will be able to locate their past identity through personal memories and “traditional” dance and storytelling, while exploring ideas of current identity and cultural confluence by sharing these stories and dances in a virtual space which encourages collaboration and transcends cultural boundaries, thus offering the basis for creative interaction within their various “real life” worlds.

Tags: Berlin, Cabula6, dance, identity, Macondo, performance, Second Life, Vienna

Kidz Connect is excited to participate in the upcoming Henry Hudson 400 Festival, which will celebrate the 400-year-old bond between the Dutch and Americans that started with Henry Hudson’s discovery of New York in 1609. There will be a series of events in both New York and Amsterdam in August and September 2009.

Kidz Connect will be part of a project called The Island, an alternate reality game that will take place simultaneously in the real and the virtual world, connecting students in New York and Amsterdam in a shared experience of discovery while imbuing historical narratives of New York’s Dutch origins with a sense of adventure and cultural connection.

Students will play by using GPS-based mobile phones on the streets, receiving assignments based on their location. These assignments relate to historical events which link their current location to the past. They unravel the mystery together. The game is a giant puzzle – a treasure hunt where students and their companion players solve a mystery while being connected in real-time to their peers. Each game is an episode of a bigger story, so the students must finish an episode for the next to be revealed.

The information collected must be shared with students abroad in order to advance. The game continues online where players collaborate on the web and in virtual worlds, i.e., in virtual Amsterdam and 17th century New Amsterdam (New York) in Second Life. The virtual world component is where Kidz Connect will come into play.

The main storyline is based on the ‘lost’ history and cultural connection between Amsterdam and New York City, largely inspired by the narrative in Russell Shorto’s book, The Island at the Center of the World. In 1609, Henry Hudson was chosen by the Dutch East India Company to find an easterly passage to Asia. While Hudson only made it as far as Albany, New York, his first steps on the tip of Manhattan eventually gave rise to a thriving settlement on what is today New York City. Much of the history of this early colony was lost, until thousands of 17th century Dutch documents were recently unearthed, revealing stories about early leaders and settlers – seminal figures in the development of Dutch Manhattan, the first place in the New World where men and women of different races and creeds lived in relative harmony.

In 2009, the Henry Hudson 400 Festival will commemorate the legendary voyage in both Amsterdam and in New York.

The Island celebrates this bond between the Dutch and Americans that began with Hudson’s discovery of New York, by creating three episodes of this historic narrative within an alternate reality game environment. The first episode is a real-time collaborative location-based game using GPS technology. The second episode extends the historic narratives and gameplay into an interactive web environment and the third episode occurs in a virtual world (Second Life).

The goals of the project are

• To commemorate the historic voyage of Henry Hudson by celebrating the tolerant and diverse traditions of both Amsterdam and New York and to reinforce how important diversity and tolerance are to the expansion and prosperity of great cities.
• To intensify and renew historic, cultural, and commercial ties between New York and Amsterdam by creating productive cultural relationships and youth entrepreneurship.
• To promote the learning of social, historical and cultural facts through gameplay.

We are partnering with area/code, the Institute of Play, the John Adams Institute, and the Waag Society, among others.

Tags: Amsterdam, ARG, festival, game, gaming, Hudson, locative, New York

This is a live mix recording of our show yesterday in Tampa, Amsterdam and Teen Second Life. We haven’t fixed the audio levels yet — and we will — but in the meantime, enjoy the show.

Tags: mixed reality, performance, show, teen second life, video

Well, the show’s about to start! The dress reheasal was inspiring, really. To see the way these kids have bonded and created something so beautiful - transcending theater, really - is very moving.
If you aren’t here in the theater now, watch it live at www.kidzconnect.org/shows.

We’re adding a Q&A “talk back” for after the show, allowing audience members to ask questions and try out Second Life by exploring with an avatar. If you watch the live online broadcast or come to the live show in the Patel Conservatory’s TECO Theater at the TBPAC, you’ll get to meet all the creators of the show, including director, choreographers, musicians and performers. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 if you procrastinate until tomorrow. Or, you can watch online for free at www.kidzconnect.org/shows.

I’ll be sad to see this all end. It’s been a blast getting to watch this whole amazing process develop into an actual show, involving technology and traditional theater. Until next year when hopefully, we’ll meet again. And in Second Life, we can meet anywhere, anytime!

Tags: talk back, technology

So, here we are! 3 days ’til our Tampa show time! In the morning, we’ll

be part of Amsterdam’s show– funny we’re having two separate (yet connected) shows.

BUT! That’s how these things go- dealing with our distinct cultural situations,

and making it work in our own unique way! Now, THAT’S brilliant collaboration!

(If we do say so ourselves) haha! :))) I am on a theater/networked performance high…!

As tired as I am from the rigorous techno-troubleshooting, rehearsing, and long days of

constant creatingI am living in a state of ultra-awareness- HYPER-reality.

I am so proud of our students, of their diligence, energy, genius creations, and beautiful

ways of working things out together every day… what a joy to watch and hopefully help along

the way! I hope that they are inspired to fly- to create on their own-

to take what bit of knowlege we can provide, and expand on it. I have learned so very much from

this gigantic, yet intimate project.

The process has brought great rewards & the show is going to be AWESOME!

I am new to the Second Life Blog and new to even the Second Life program, but today I was able to see first hand what these students have been able to do.  Have you ever played the computer game The Sims?  I’m not talking Sim City or Tycoon, I’m talking about the game where you control the little virtual people in a little virtual world that you create? 

Okay, now, take that image and add to it.  What you’re looking at now is an island full of avatars (the little virtual people from before) who are building their own society on the island (think Swiss Family Robinson without all of the struggling for food).  And then, if that is not enough, add on the fact that each of these avatars have a real life counterpart and that some of these counterparts are from right here in Tampa, FL and some of them are from Amsterdam!  It really is the cross-section of techonology and really awesome internet communities.

These kids have quickly learned how to operate this complex program and have been communicating regularly across the ocean with kids doing the same thing.  And *cool tidbit warning* one of the kids involved in the Amsterdam program is a popular television actor in the Netherlands.  Think the Zac Efron of Amsterdam.

So, today these kids were rehearsing for their part in the Amsterdam show tomorrow and they danced and performed a song together.  It was funny to watch the Amsterdam students dance to the music and then move to talk and interact with them as avatars.  Talk about multiple personalities!

So, their big performance is this weekend and it will be live here at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and also streamed online.  They have rehearsals, more song and dance routines, and a world all of their own.  

What would I do if I had my very own virtual island?  I don’t know, but I’m sure that I would begin with the question: How do I make myself taller?

“Better than expected.” While some of us did have some great expectations, the overall consensus expressed by students and even the creators of Kidz Connect, is that reality has surpassed even our highest expectations. “They get the vision; they’re making it their own,” says creator Josephine Dorado, adding that it’s exciting to see the project manifested and to see how engaged the students have become.

15-year-old Ivaniel had thought the workshop might be boring and he has been more than pleasantly surprised. Turns out he’s having a great time and the workshop has been anything but boring. Eight hours a day for two weeks these students been working, creating avatars and building spaces in Teen Second Life, learning songs and dance moves, getting to know each other here and video streaming and bonding with teens in Europe.

Vanessa had previously researched Teen Second Life and says she knew a bit what to expect. “It’s been fun learning what things are like over there because it’s different than here,” Vanessa says. Meghan, 13, plans to keep her avatar and stay in touch with her new friends in Holland.

Like them, the Dutch teens go to school and like to hang out with their friends, Vanessa observes. Director Lisa Powers has noticed that the teens are focusing on similarities, ties that bind them, so to speak. Then, they notice the differences, which have mostly been about styles of living, such as transportation. The Floridian youth are primarily driven from place to place, while the Dutch ride more bicycles and walk, Lisa says.

This whole cultural exchanges helps to prepare them to live together, to live in a world where we have many differences, but where fundamentally, we’re all alike. The way it’s going, these students have a real shot at making the “real” world better for us all.

“We can change the world, today, if we mean just what we say…
If we want to come together, the solution depends on whether…
We are real, let’s be real; there’s a bond that can be sealed-
Let’s be real, it is time for the world…to be real!”
–from the song, “What is Real?” written for Kidz Connect by James Crumbly

I have another confession: I never really “got” hip hop before Kidz Connect. Rap music has never been my favorite. But listening to the kids rapping to ranney’s song yesterday has given me a new respect and enjoyment of this art form.

The students were given the lyrics and the rhythm and got to work. And let me just say, it is work. They had fun, twisting their tongues around lyrics like “correlation or causation - situation or equation; validation or negation - stimulation of each nation” - but it wasn’t easy. Ranney (itsranney.com) suggested they study their breathing and consider melody. “Great hip hop artists have a melody in their voices,” he explained. He encouraged them to use their “voices and attitudes” to stay on rhythm.

About the lyrics, I kept wondering how on earth he was able to come up with these words - words with rhythm, but with meaning so deep they kept true to our workshop theme of “What Is Real?” Words the kids can relate to, words that provoke thought and meaningful discussion.

“We are given this world as a problem to be solved
From sunrise to sunset - or is it that we revolve?
Truth is what you make it, so you better find your peace
How does one make their truth better in the Middle East?” ranney wrote and the kids chant.

From politics to fashion to sports to musical tastes, these teens have been learning about each other and life across the world. Similarities and differences in our “real” world and in our “virtual” world. As ranney wrote:
“Schools out, schools in - both are in class
They bike it home; we pump the gas
Everyone gets home; it’s much respect
All go online where we connect
No fuss, just us, virtual bliss
The world we know does not exist
It’s different world; yet it’s all the same
It’s a second life - we can rearrange
The laws, the rules - they all are ours
And we co-exist with our avatars”

“How will we do this and dance at the same time?” one student asked. Someone else suggested half the group dance and half the group sing. That’s real collaboration. They were still discussing it when it was time to break for lunch.

Tags: dance, hip hop, lyrics, rap