Corvinima

Corvinima from Siri Woodget on Vimeo.

Digital Encounters...a new phase

"My desire [was] to do something we hadn't seen before, a superhero story told in a realistic fashion. And doesn't step outside itself and acknowledge the form and the medium it's coming from, but one in which the audience is just immersed in the reality that's going on." (Christopher Nolan, 2005).

I've spent several years now INSIDE Second Life...how might we be able to bring Second Life outside and share our digital encounters?

Marcel Duchamp brought motion into art and illustrates an expression of depth: Rotoreliefs

Through the Virtual Looking Glass

Exhibition - Harbor Gallery, UMASS Boston

April 7 - April 30, 2010

Ara Vella, Tezcatlip0ca Bisiani and I went to the opening of Through the Virtual Looking Glass, a mixed reality exhibition being held at UMASS Boston’s Harbor Gallery. UMASS sits on Columbia Point, where the Puritans alit, and is the site of one of the earliest railroads in the country. It’s an appropriate venue to show virtual world art, this gallery with its pioneering backdrop.

We saw the organizer, professor of philosophy and director of the Virtual Art Initiative, Gary Zabel (Georg Janick in SL), buzzing around the gallery in full curator mode, greeting guests, checking on artworks, and glancing over at the crudités. He welcomed us with an engaging conversation about each artist. I was immediately drawn to a small work in the corner of the gallery, a photograph printed on canvas depicting a lovely Maxfield Parish styled installation I’d seen in-world. I was delighted to meet the artist Alizarin Goldflake (Martha Jane Bradford) who patiently explained her technique for making digital drawings, captured in Second Life and exported onto canvas. The texture of the canvas exuded warmth, in contrast to the giclée prints nearby by Bryn Oh and Feathers Boa, which illustrated darker subject matters.

Zabel has brought together a well rounded combination of formats; prints, photo frames with rotating digital stills, machinimas and the real life counterparts to Second Life creations, such as the Mayan styled imagery of Big Psomm 2, painted onto wall sized tarps, sent from Poland by Piotr Kopik (Olza Koenkamp) and the tangled telephone lines of communication from Misprint Thursday (Karina Mitchell) - “Just pick up the phone and call me” her installation seems to plead.

One would have to know a little bit about Second Life in order to truly appreciate the work presented. An orientation to the medium of virtual world art making would be helpful to non-users. While most of the work stands true on its own, it is the process of mixing mediums and realities that make these creations especially compelling.

Blogger giving me trouble with photos - see the exhibition here and here.

Fox Roulette

"Of all the transformational devices, the most important and spectacular are the masks of the Kwakitul...The masks play a critical visual role. For the Kwakiutl, the mask is what is real. It isn't symbolic because it covers up and disguises; it is symbolic because of what it makes present: the spiritual reality. As such, masks are seen as objects of immense power." - Martha Padfield.

From Loki in Norway to Anansi in Ghana to Tezxatlipoca in MesoAmerica, tricksters act as conduits to the spiritual. They serve as teachers, working along the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, finding their manifestation through human imagination, forcing us to reflect on the roles we play – whether they are imparted upon us or chosen - through surprise or upset. Through this process, the trickster hopes to get us thinking about our social boundaries and questions why they exist or if they make sense. In many native cultures, a mask was used to conjur up the voice of the trickster, confronting and teaching through dance and performance.

Kitsune Chat 2 from otolythe on Vimeo.

In Chatroulette, an “uncensored mess” of a site, visitors have the chance at a boundary-less experience where anything goes. There is a glaring lack of imagination that abounds via the hands of the majority of users – namely 22 year old boys and older men with hands on themselves. The perfect zone for a trickster figure to insert herself, in this case, in the form of a kitsune. “Who are you”, she cocks her head, sniffs, and silently confronts. “What are you doing here?” Technology plows forward, giving us hardly any time to reflect. Likewise, our social mores and rules have little time to catch up. Chatroulette is the ultimate reality show, exposing all of us as voyeurs. With the “next button” so close to the fingertips, it’s easy to make a quick scene and depart, before anyone finds out who you really are. Kitsune hopes to give you pause.

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Dante submerged in the River Lethe, by Gustave Dore: illustration from The Purgatorio

A new year is often a time for reflection as well as an opportunity to cast off bad memories. I’ve mentioned Gordon Bell (MyLifeBits) who has stored as much of his life as possible, every scrap of evidence, hoping to facilitate a reconstruction of his life – an almost-accurate memory aided by technology. Viktor Mayer-Schoneberger examines the attempt at “perfect remembering” in his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Mayer-Schoneberger is considerably alarmist in his focus, describing the dangers of permanent digital memory, citing cases of particular online behaviors that come back to haunt professional and personal lives. He suggests that self-destruct dates be imposed on digital records. This isn’t a new idea; in fact, it’s one of the main functions in records and archival management.

courtesy of Marvel Comics

Is there a value in forgetting? “Within the abyss Lethe, measureless in sweep, glides smoothly on with placid stream, and takes away our cares.” (Seneca, Hercules Ferens) In Hades, the River Lethe offered the power of oblivion, allowing certain souls to forget all they had experienced in their lives, all the mistakes, all the pain. Writes Daniel Schacter, "Memory, for all that it does for us every day...for all the feats that can sometimes amaze us, can also be a troublemaker...” Our brain reconfigures memory, based on our present preferences and needs, affected by bias, absent-mindedness and misattribution.

Archivists spend years cataloging photographs and documents so that they are robustly described and better comprehended. When we reexamine the digital record of a life lived online, we – as spectators - likely take these records out of context. A photo of a group of women with cups in their hands may have little to no information associated with it – no time, no place, no description, so the spectator fills in the blanks (those cups are filled with beer, they sure look wasted!), making up a story to go along with the bits and pieces they observe. It’s easy to make assumptions, isn’t it? In her book, On Photography, Susan Sontag describes Marcel Proust’s attitude towards photographs – he considers them “a synonym for a shallow, too exclusively visual, merely voluntary relation to the past...whose yield is insignificant compared with the deep discoveries to be made responding to cues given by all the senses – the technique he called ‘involuntary memory’.”Mayer-Schonenberger panics about evidence left behind – I don’t doubt there are risks – but, like our own memory can be altered, so can the digital record.

MyLifeBits
The Virtue of Forgetting – interview with the author in Second Life

Happy 2010!

wishing you well, dear followers...

Natural History in its Aesthetic Fashion

“..stepping lightly down to bathe in the rainbow-coloured spray, would have seen the identical sights that we now saw,– the great prawns gliding like transparent launches, anthea waving in the twilight its thick white waxen tentacles, and the fronds of the duke faintly streaming on the water like huge red banners in some reverted atmosphere...” wrote Philip Gosse to his son Edmund in 1907.

Gosse is the author of Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (published two years before Darwin’s Origin of the Species), a marine biologist and illustrator of sea creatures, anemones and corals. I was reminded of him when I stepped out of my trap with Blued Food, on a visit to VeGeTal PLaNeT, created by French artist Vroum Short. Beneath a churning sea, we moved through galleries containing natural and cybernetic forms that flared, spiked, oscillated and swirled. Short’s output is almost overwhelming. She layers animations to create unique compositions that impart a kaleidoscope of moods. Blued’s distinctive eye led us through the wild maze of panels and free standing kinetic work and settled in front of a piece called Chaos.

Abductor, 2006. Fred Tomaselli. Courtesy of the James Cohan Gallery

It reminded me of the artist Fred Tomaselli, who explores the relationship between art making and drug taking. His chosen materials include pharmaceuticals - prozac, aspirin, antacid, saccharin, ephedrine - plants and magazine clippings that he meticulously arranges onto glazed panels. The combined effect makes references to everything from a primitive 18th century folk quilt to a tripped out 3-dimensional universe that morphs in front of your eyes, requesting an audience with your spiritual side. Tomaselli writes, “I want people to get lost in the work. I want to seduce people into it and I want people to escape inside the world of the work.” Short accomplishes this too, especially with Chaos, inviting viewers to literally sit on pose balls, alongside its pulsing panels. I was seduced by its celestial and rhythmic patterns, and disappeared into my own galaxy. Short’s Neptunian botanical installations offer an aesthetic appreciation of nature in its most fantastical forms.

More photos here.

The Romance of Natural History by Philip Gosse

knock knock

is this thing on?


Happy Thanksgiving, lovelies. And beware of late night leftovers...

Who Burgles the Burglar

I received a wrinkled envelope containing an anonymous note made from letters cut from magazines. “Pssst.” was all it said. I looked up and down my beach, flitted to and from my skybox. Nope...no one there. I was intrigued. Who left it?

And then a link – literally – was sent to me - http://otherpeoplesplaces.wordpress.com/ *– detailing the exploits of SL’s premier cat burglar. I’d heard about him! Velvet unicorn paintings were being ripped off from around the grid and people were getting worried. I'd heard there was no building, no security system, he couldn't breach. As I pored over his journal entries I became increasingly excited - what did he want from me?

He wanted to meet. What do you wear when meeting a prowler? Nothing sparkly. He might grab it like a magpie. I tucked a pistol under my skirt and opted for trench coat and getaway thigh highs. I arrived at our agreed meeting place, palms sweating, gripping my notepad and pen.

And then there he was, right in front of me, knitted cap pulled firmly around his face, scratching his back with a lethal looking crowbar. Did I feel threatened? Yeah! I sat still and looked about. I was in his lair, surrounded by loot. He had taken me to his hub of operations. He began to talk and I was surprised by his gentle voice. Not at all what I expected.

He started prowling only lately, out of necessity, he told me. The recession had hit him hard. “It seems really unfair that people have pixel food in their fridge...and some have none.” Ah! A sensitive burglar. A bit like the amateur cracksman A. J. Raffles who justifies his thieving thus, “We can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is all wrong anyway...” Mainly, our burglar prefers lifting collections of fantasy art that won't be missed, rather than decorative arts, furniture, or other objects. However, his sensitivity soared to new heights recently, exemplified by his – er - “adoption” of a baby that he found during a prowl, left alone, in a less than seemly home environment. “I know this is going to look all Limbergh baby and sh*t…and I don’t care. In the long run, this little tiger will thank me. And if worst comes to worst, in a few years...I have an accomplice...”

This burglar works hard. I asked how long it takes to scout a prospective home. “For every 20 places I find, 1 or 2 maybe are worth telling the story...All of this stuff...is not faked...these are not things I place in peoples homes. Everything you see here or in my stories is 100% authentic and found in their houses.” For each exploit, the burglar writes descriptions and shares the slurl so you can authenticate his movements if you care to (I tested out a few slurls and confirm their validity.)

I looked across at him, slumping slightly over the table, and sensed a bit of pathos about him...he seemed, to me, to be a lonely burglar. “What have you learned about people, from exploring so many homes?” I asked. “How do people express themselves?” He sighed. Through “Lots of porn. Lots of self-portraits. Lots of wolves.” I began to think it was less about the loot and more about revealing the proclivities of some of our residents. He serves as the Phantom Gourmet of SL aesthetics.

We spoke about his greatest challenge so far (the Gorean castle) and he offered a few tricks and tips for maneuvering around security systems (which he may share with us). Although the burglar works alone, he asked me to ask you for tips and comments. If you know of a place that begs exploration, drop him a line via his blog and he’ll follow up.

As for future goals? “I think a visit to a Linden's home soon is in the cards.”

*Be warned, his discoveries are NOT PG-rated.

The Roof is Gone (Burning Life, pt. 2)

Above photo by Warrick Renfold

The moment you arrive at Miso Susanowa and Misprint Thursday’s building, The Roof is Gone, your eyes and ears are put on alert. The main structure, constructed of wooden planks and encased in scaffolding (“I could actually build most of this in Nevada” says Miso), stands cross-like, assuming the air of a place of worship in the middle of a disaster zone. It generates a weather system of its own and is surrounded by swirling details; photographs spiral on the wind above, videos, embedded into prims, blink like lightning, and the static beginning of the soundtrack passes back and forth between your ears like sheets of heavy rain. And then you reach the eye of the storm, calm among the chaos. The song begins to soothe, there’s a living room to rest in, and, if you look carefully, you can even disappear quietly into the building.

The piece is part political, part personal. It conjures up memories of Hurricane Katrina and other natural catastrophes. It also invokes psychological drama through childhood imagery – the house is breaking apart, little bicycles are tangled in spikes, photos of kids are bent and curled. Miso left her “digital DNA” for us to examine, in the form of a poster in hanging on a wall inside. Over 50 hours worth of work went into the build and it shows. There are so many layers to explore (teleport yourself up several meters to experience the accompanying video to full effect) expect to spend at least half an hour to begin to scratch the surface. Miso explained that one of her main goals is to make art in SL that can be translated to the outside world. I look at this piece and see a maquette, a model that might be realized again in the actual world. The artists kindly offer a lovely freebie miniature of the piece, a great souvenir of BL 2009.

Hey, can’t BL be extended for a week? There’s too much to see and do...!

This just in from White Lebed, art director Burning Life: "The events and the activities will be closed in a few days, but the art and the builds will stay for another week and the gates will be opened till Nov 1st."

Just a Mortal with the Potential of a Superman...

The Watchtower

Kalel Venkman in the Fortress of Solitude (photo courtesy of Venkman)

I read the article by Apollo Manga in the Second Life Examiner, about his role as ranger on the Playa. He writes that Burning Life Rangers are like “lubricants, reducing friction in the Burning Life community.” In a world that is self-governed, is there need for policing? The Linden Lab Terms of Service and Community Standards are in place as a set of rules for behavior – a LL book of etiquette if you will. But some folks choose to burn the book.

Have you ever been in sandbox, happily building away, when you were suddenly swamped under an obnoxious mass of particles? Le sigh. If you’re being shot at by projectiles, shoved, caged, verbally abused and worse, you’re being griefed (see one of my experiences). Who do you look to for help? Linden Lab has its own tactics we can use. For example, we can mute a fellow resident, or fill out an abuse report. But sometimes things happen that are beyond our skill set. Sometimes, we simply want help. What’s more comforting than the sight of a superhero, flying to your rescue? Yes, you can put a call out to the Justice League Unlimited. The JLU will sweep away the nonsense and leave you safe and sound. They have strategies to cope with the wide range of issues that cause grief in-world, from the obvious to the insidious, and offer assistance to everyone from sim owners to newbies.

The group began organically in 2006 as a crew of comic book fans, dressed as their favorite characters. Hanging around a sandbox one day, a couple of guys tackled a bothersome griefer using their innate tech skills, and from there, the JLU was born. It’s now made up of a 60-odd strong crew of scripters, artists, business people, authors, engineers – each contributing a particular talent to their collaborative undertakings. It functions much like a well-organized neighborhood watch. Their public service in SL has extended into the actual world; they sponsor and dedicate their services to a number of charity events, such as Project Jason.

I was invited to Justice Island for a few sessions with Kalel Venkman, who offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the headquarters of the JLU. Business takes place in a stately space station, the Watchtower, complete with a dispensary of sophisticated gear, meeting rooms, a library, and a place of respite, in the form of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. At the center of all is Brainiac, a tool designed by the League to monitor griefer operations throughout the grid. It’s a powerful piece of equipment, linked to all the gear League members carry about their person during patrols. Members go through a period of training and abide by a code of ethics that prevents misuse of any tool.

While some may bristle at the idea of “policing”, Venkman is adamant that the League operates as a peacekeeping and education force only, in place to help all residents enjoy the best SL experience, free from unwanted interference. The JLU gathers intelligence about griefing actions and communicate regularly with Linden Labs. Member ZenMondo Wormser invited me on patrol one evening and I watched Kohaku Owatatsumi, JB Hancroft and Wormser whip through a sim full of zombies and shooters in no time. As for advice to newbies, when confronted, don’t retaliate, says Venkman. “That does no good and just gets you into trouble yourself."

Their activities are a back breaking labor of love, like so much in SL, run on the good will of people who care that you have a good time. Although a dude or a dame in tights and a cape may not seem threatening, I assure you, they pack a punch. In a nice way. To read more about the JLU check out Krypton Radio.

Burning Life, part 1.

What terrific travels at Burning Life last night...do see the Burning Life flickr pool for useful links and peeks at activities on the playa. It’s hard to know where to begin, so I started at Burning Life Zero Mile, hopped in a temp rez flaming vehicle and spun around randomly. It’s great to see the sims full of a variety of action - people looking and exploring, performers, like the Lamplighters, dancing off into the dusk, artists fiddling with their work, sculptures powerfully beating out heat, all against mad soundtracks from gentle breeze to speed metal. I was happy to run across wicked-blogger-on-a-break Wyatt Wellman, fitting right against the fiery backdrop wearing his charcoal persona. Blued Food was an ace companion – he’s a speedy scout. I followed him around as he shouted “Click EVERYTHING”. It’s true, the builds are full of surprises. I recommend doing one build per visit to really appreciate the work that’s gone into these sites. We found four Yip’s Fusion and I lost myself there for a good while. Yip has a way of providing comfort and romance wherever she lays her hand, and Fusion is no exception. Simple stenciled eyes blink and tear before you as you’re enveloped in a wash of pink and deep brown scrims, bending like waves. A track by I Monster (Heaven) makes you want to bow with them. The muted, dimly lit space is more mysterious than Yip’s typical palette, and suits the harmonic track. As always, she’s offering some charming freebies – soft bear noses and iridescent butterflies which follow along as you trek.

Other builds of note: Gettr II from Idialab for the Museo del Metaverso at Opal and The Roof is Gone by Miso Susanowa and Misprint Thursday at Black Rock which I’ll write about next.

Pardon my silence - there's been a lot of interesting material to blog about, and I'm gathering entries for posting over the next few days. So please, stay tuned. For now, take this handy map and explore the Playa which makes up Burning Life...more soon and thank you for your patience, dear readers, x.

Unfinished Symphony of Prims

There’s something special about a work of art unfinished. The viewer is able to study the methods of the artist, and observe their hands at work. Seeing a sculpture where its hinged or the lines that lead into an idea - it’s like being a botanist regarding a leaf with a magnifying glass. Egon Schiele is an artist whose body of work includes several unfinished pieces which are some of my favorite, like this one, of old houses in Krumau.

Coordinators at Burning Life respectfully requested that observers refrain from taking photos of works before they were finished. However, as I watched builders at work today, I was enthralled by the amount of work that goes into building, which I could only appreciate by seeing each and every prim revealed. Seeing these builds in partial states made me consider the intricate planning it takes to build a structure, and, when a build is done right, it leaves the impression that it was a cinch to make.

I crept around Donpatchy Dagostino as he worked today, watching from high above to below his feet, careful not to interrupt. More than half is in a raw state, elliptical shapes awaiting textures, resembling, from above, the shell of a beetle. At this stage it made me think a little bit about artist-architects pushing the limits of wood, like Robert Harvey Oshatz. Dagostino’s intent may be better revealed once the structure is complete, but seeing it unfinished doesn’t make it any less impressive.

SLtweets

I joined twitter and plurk a while back but found my constant chatter to be incredibly dull. I bored myself to tears. To really take advantage of the twitter scene I'd have to spend way too much time away from rl work - so I gave it up. Until now. Today I found a clever thing. The SLtweets HUD allows you to twitter from within SL. Simply wear the HUD and post your thoughts, discoveries, and announcements in the chat bar where they'll be transported to twitterville for all your contacts to see. SLtweets also offers a tinyslurl widget so you can easily post locations. As an avid explorer, the HUD should offer a great way for me to share my explorations with you all. Away we go!

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

One of the first things I did when I logged on to SL for the first time (once I'd figured out how to keep my hair on) was to go dancing. First I did the rounds of ballrooms and jazz bars. Realizing ballroom dancing masks itself as SL foreplay I found my way to the indie clubs - first to Popscene (now defunct) and Alt7 (going strong since March 2007). Swiftly, I was tuned in to djs from around the world and introduced to a great variety of new music. I kept a pad of paper next to me, scrawling all the wicked new tracks I was hearing.

Let's hear it for the DJ!

Generating soundtracks and backdrops against which you create your own personal dramas...these DJs are the secret workhorses of SL, engaging us using their own particular techniques; some spending hours upon hours crafting a set (yes, you Ms. Lilliehook), some "curating" music, hoping to turn you on to something you've never heard before, others space out and forget they're spinning at all but no matter - they're here to entertain us and animate our experiences.

So next time you're out and about, eager to try your new dance from Henmations, remember to tip your hat (and a few linden) to the dedicated crew that make your world more aurally exciting.

A special shout out to DJs past and present Colleen Lilliehook, Darn Darwin, Enigma Bombay, Ennui Clip, Hotjack Canning, Infinite Graves, PirateDucky Constantine, The Nachts, and Warrick Renfold, who've each created brilliant soundtracks to my slife...