Neil Jenkins's Visitor's Studio

gotta say i really like neil jenkins's Visitor's Studio chat app at
http://www.furtherstudio.org/live .

it's particularly good for chatting with a net artist and experiencing parts
of their work at the same time, which is what the chat today was about with
andy deck.

neil was doing the visulal/sonic mix as we chatted.

i also like the way that the position of a person's text depends on where
they move the mouse. rather than the more typical linear progression of text
associated with chat.

the menu is quite useful also. for instance, the "current mix" menu item
lets you mix the various layers yourself.

you can also 'upload files' to add files to the mix (jpeg, mp3, or swf).

i think he's programming in the ability to play back chats as they happened,
including the text and the jpegs, mp3's and swf. that would make for a great
archive of multimedia chats with net.artists.

i gather it's flash and perl. no flash communications server. nice to see
the flash communications server avoided. it's expensive as hell and if i'm
not mistaken it has to run on a windows server.

neil's app managed to both really excite me as a multimedia app that keys on
interactive text–the interaction is with people as well as the app, and the
text is truly animated–there are people writing–and managed to also really
annoy me when the visual mix drowned out the text. usually one is neither
truly annoyed nor excited by a piece. i found it interesting that it hit two
opposing extremes.

i have checked out quite a few net.art pieces that key on language but are
also multimedia and code-oriented. gotta say this is one of my faves.

chatting with andy deck, marc, ruth, charlotte, neil, doron, chris, and
roger via this app was an oddly memorable, perplexing, and exciting
experience. also, very appropriate for the experience of andy deck's
terrific work.

ja