The Quiddity of Objects, 2 of 2

In rl I work with contemporary artists and many of them create installations. One could categorize their work as conceptual art. After a number of years working with this genre I’ve come to reappreciate more traditional arts, or, rather, craftsmanship. I’m eager to see the hard work, the time spent, illustrated in the construction of a work of art. The time an artist spends making offers insight into the working process in a way that conceptual art may often not.

As I make my way around the galleries and museums of SL, I look with a rather critical eye at both virtual art and the presentation of real life art in the virtual world. When I heard the Smithsonian was sponsoring the Latino Virtual Museum I was excited to see what they’d produced. It’s the Smithsonian after all. Curated by Olga Herrera, the museum includes selections of paintings and archives from the Archives of American Art and other Smithsonian collections. I ambled toward an oversized photograph of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera...and squinted. I refocused, cammed back and forth. Nope, still blurry. I tried out a few other images and they were all out of focus. The technology of SL allows us to dig deep, get close, immerse, and it’s up to the curators to ensure they take full advantage of the technology. It’s not enough to throw a photograph, or other object, into the metaverse for mere presence if it’s not useful to visitors. While the LVM provided much text about the image, they seem to have forgotten about the value of the photograph alone. I’d like to see the flowers in Frida’s hair, study the works of art hanging on the wall behind her, or the food on the table in front of her. One photograph has a hundred stories to tell and the curators should allow the visitor to make their own observations.

The Smithsonian might take a look at the Dresden Gallery , a replication of a rl museum. The paintings are carefully rendered. Each is cataloged with basic, tombstone information. Almost minute details can be observed, as in this detail of a painting by Johann Thiele (The Elbe Sornewitz in Hoarfrost and Fog, 1741), making it useful for both the general browser and the scholar.

On the making of objects in SL - the real masters can be found in our 3D artists, like AM Radio, whose builds are thoughtful replications of real life things always elegantly assembled. Just look at the swirling hoses on this engine.

Or the felted platter and transparent plastic cover of a turntable, made by maclane Mills. The details observed are the fingerprints left by reality on the imagination of these artists. Both Mills and Radio capture the quiddity of an object – its “whatness”. It’s a testament to their receptivity and curiosity about objects, as well as their technical skills that make them craftsmen. Wrote Brahms, “Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.”

Mending Walls

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

- Robert Frost

Here's a build by AM Radio, the Quiet at Welsh Lakes, well suited for a New England wanderer.
Radio acknowledges the loss of landscapes in America, first in his most famous build The Far Away, and now here. I was reminded of James Howard Kunstler's description of the ubiquitous and "tragic crapscape" that is plowing over the stone walls and wheat fields of America. Driving through New England, in the winter especially, when leaves have been whipped from their branches, you can see miles of these stone walls, some of the earliest surviving evidence of man trying to manipulate and control his environment. There's an excellent story about this phenomena in The Golden Spruce - a book describing a logger's extreme ascent (or descent, depending on who you're talking to) into environmentalism, when he cuts down an ancient and revered Sitka spruce tree in British Columbia. As always, the spareness of Radio's builds, and the clues he leaves about, encourage a visitor to pause and...consider.

You are original

Welcome, friends of Achariya who may have found their way here...I started this blog when I started Second Life a little over a year ago...gamely at first, to explain SL to folks who might never try it out, then mainly to keep a record of things that have struck me along the way. On Monday I was invited to a benefit concert for Heifer International which took place at AM Radio's Refuge. Singer ColeMarie Soleil played live. In between self-deprecating comments ("Sorry 'bout all the mistakes in that one") she belted out these amazing, moving notes; spontaneous, kooky, dark, gorgeous. I relaxed into my headphones, cammed about and felt like I was in some kind of charming menagerie, with the music, the wondrous setting, and the intriguing assortment of avatars all in one place...inspired me to look up Darwin's 1858 essay on the varieties of species...

Fine Craftsmanship

I LOVE the quality of these vintage headphones designed by AM Radio. You can pick up a free pair at The Far Away…they remind me of the enormous pair I used to wear as a teen – listening to Roxy Music and Prefab Sprout while laying on the scratchy burlap-y couch I used to sleep on. Can’t you just feel the soft poofy ear pads? Here I am wearing them as I work on a prim…

The Far Away

Peaceful blowing wheat field, creaking rusting windmill, abandoned train engine, a table set at pause…Am Radio, an artist who works for IBM, designed this environment based on his home scenery of Illinois, in honor of the disappearing farms that he’s been witnessing, as America gives way to the corporate crapscape.

Photographic backdrops of big skies create the feeling of depth, and you feel, as you stand there, that you might be breathing big country air as stalks of wheat tickle your palms. The skies are gray and brooding, anticipating a storm, and you feel the charge of the atmosphere, a bit of mist across the nose…this is a computer simulation, people, but it’s also art.

Radio has taken advantage of the attention he rightly deserves for creating this amazing place to sell replicas of the sim to benefit Heifer International. He’s earned about $500 so far…

I invited my new friend Polo to explore it with me. We released ourselves to an animation that allowed us to blow, turn and be pushed about by the gentle wind created by the windmill. Now and then other visitors would show up…one newbie joined us in the sky and played with his appearance, making himself paunchy and jolly, then studly, then paunchy again as he rolled over the air waves. Another couple disappeared behind the train engine…it’s a romantic spot really. A romantic, forgotten American landscape. And, like most things in sl, embedded with a bit of mystery and humor. We flitted this way and that, Polo in his Baroque suit clothes, me in my bustle, and talked for a long time…

Read more about AM Radio here: http://npirl.blogspot.com/2007/10/wheat-fields-have-secret.html