Slizzle Dreams...

Here is a rough edit of the second in my experiments merging machinima. In this little video my level 7 Blood Elf Huntress (world of warcraft character) falls asleep after a hard day hunting the Wretched. She dreams of Second Life.
I have been working in both WoW and Second Life this week. I have created quite a few WoW characters to play with and am truly enjoying the interface and shooting lots of tests. Soon I am going to start incorporating Real Life digital video and see what kinds of effects I can come up with. Ultimately all of this will lead to an epic narrative tale.. the story is slowly developing..

World of Warcraft™
World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Questing for Sigilbringer

So.. I have been shooting away in WoW and also trying to get my levels up so I can have access to lots of props and have knowledge of the lay of the land. I have been spending some of my time working with Sigilbringer - a.k.a. media artist Jeremy Owen Turner - who is developing his own rather esoteric project in World of Warcraft based on the shaman character of Sigilbringer. On Sunday nights we meet up with the friendly folks from Ars Virtua. They run guild in WoW that works with artists interested in intersecting/interpreting the environment, creating new work inside of the environment and also just having good old fashioned gaming fun. My Sunday night WoW sessions have been devoted to working with Sigilbringer to help him on his Shaman based piece. Mostly we have been working on leveling and getting Sigibringer all of his totems - something he will need for the final manifestation of his piece.

Here is a little documentation of Sigilbringer and Dorka ( a shaman I created to assist Sig in his quest), accompanied by Woshaman of Ars Virtua, attempting to Vanquish those frigging Betrayers. Woshaman teaches us the value of having a healer in our midst. After all the the slaying we sleep at Razor Hill Inn.


World of Warcraft™
World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

First Baby Step

Find more videos like this on Odyssey Contemporary Art and Performance


This is a rough-cut of my first experimental merging of machinima. Here Sliz of the Horde in World of Warcraft encounters Lizsolo Mathilde of Second Life. This video demonstrates some of the ideas I am exploring with this project. The edit is still a little rough but you will get the idea.

I plan to experiment with techniques and ideas for a few months before heading into my main shoot and will generate a series of these short videos. I have had lots of technical issue fun finding the right screen capture program for my mac but finally settled on Snapz Pro and am editing with Final Cut. I am about to upgrade my computer soon and hope to improve the overall quality of the machinima I am shooting. Having a great deal of fun.

World of Warcraft™
World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

The Mighty Sliz, of the Horde, is born!

The Mighty Sliz has come into being, born online last night in the Demon Soul realm of the World of Warcraft. I am a Troll Mage. My first order of business was to up my stats and get familiar with the interface. I spent a few hours at this and must say I found WoW to be pretty Wow. My character took to the place right away and I have completed enough quests to reach Level Five. I had been advised to join the Horde - as that is where the group Ars Virtua have their guild and I am hoping to collaborate or at least interact with this cool online artists collective.

Then it was time for my meeting with Sigilbringer - a.k.a. Jeremy O. Turner - my long time friend and collaborator. We have been working together in virtual environments for five years and this meeting marks the beginning of what looks to be another exciting chapter in our collaboration. Jeremy and I also work together with the The Second Front Performance Collective in the online world of Second Life and the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, also in Second Life. We have done presentations and performances in the virtual worlds of Onlive Traveler and the text based world of Achaea . And now here were are in World of Warcarft, pondering the strange new environment.

We waited for the crew from Ars Virtua to arrive. Ars Virtua are an artist's group working in Second Life who also have some work developing in the World of Warcraft. I am reproducing part of their mission statement here - direct from their website - as it touches on ideas I am interested in and explains some of the concepts artists are working with in virtual frontiers:

from arsvirtua.com: "Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located entirely in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation... Ars Virtua brings the art audience into "new media" rather than new media to the museum or gallery, and calls upon its audience to interact with the art and one another via their avatars within the space."

Cool or what?! Lots more interesting stuff to read on their website, do check it out - Ars Virtua. Here are some of the people from Ars Virtua meeting up with us for the first time:

I know some of these folks as their Second Life personas but it will take me awhile to get it all straight in WoW. We had a little conference and created a plan to complete quests to up Sigilbringer's stats so we could move out of the Valley of Trials and into the game.

Good old Nobleorc and Ignobleorc helped us out alot, not to mention Shivvy, who really kicked some wild boar ass.

I was happy to see that my character/avvie/toon/SLoon could dance and I spent some time after the wild boar hunt and cactus apple collection practicing my moves.

Amazing in Amsterdam

Below is my first machinima piece, made about a year ago, an experimental video called Amazing, music by Lizband. It is currently being presented in Amsterdam in an installation context as a part of this PlanetArt Project. For those in the area the exhibition is happening 24/7 t/m 28 feb 2008 at PLANETART - ViolaVirus, an exhibition space of young artists, Weteringschans 181 Amsterdam.

Merging Machinima

Welcome to the Machine I Am Project blog - created to document my adventures in Machinima, virtual-space based and intergrated performance. I am currently experimenting in the virtual environments of Second Life and the RPG World of Warcraft. I am also tooling with video game environments, especially S-NES.

I am developing a new video work that will merge machinima with other forms of video and live performance. Stay tuned here as I experiment with ideas. I plan to invite some very talented people from the virtual art world to collaborate with me. I will document all the adventures here.

I am also actively working with other virtual space based projects - please visit:

I AM COOP Project

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse

The Second Front Performance Collective