Wherein I finally love Cao Fei's RMB City: Part I

China Tracy is the Second Life® avatar of Cao Fei, a Beijing-based woman born in Guangzhou, China in 1978, and the most acclaimed virtual worlds’ artist in Real Life. It is therefore illogical that this blog, which has logged 745 posts to date and the majority of them about virtual art, has never featured China Tracy, Cao Fei or her creations.

I do so today, not because Cao was selected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation as one of the six finalists for the 2010 Hugo Boss award. The $100,000 are presented every other year to “the artist (or group of artists) working in any medium, anywhere in the world” for making the most important contribution to contemporary art. Certainly the most appropriate museum in the world for observing, fostering and archiving virtual art is the Guggenheim. We've been waiting for it to "arrive" with acute and, I suppose, guarded anticipation. How will things change when they take their rightful place?

Furthermore, Cao's virtual work was just featured on PBS’ Art:21 Fantasy and Contemporary Art episode last week. Here is the preview:



There are multiple ironies running through this story, for China Tracy's much celebrated virtual oeuvre, the four sims/islands work known collectively as RMB City, is thoroughly unvisited and unloved in Second Life - except when a bevy of hired content creators are constructing some new area or exhibit, the occasional “party,” and RMB City's illustrious first home-away-from-home, YouTube, is often blocked and inaccessible to most of her countrymen, and even to her. For all I know, it's possible that she may not even be able to read this blogpost.

The sorry truth is that even though I recognized that her work was important, brilliant even, and a credit to virtual worlds, I didn’t have much to say about it. The computer generated version of RMB City depicted in the video was charming and oddly alluring...



...but the realized construction of it in Second Life - though impeccably recreated by hired metaverse developers - left me cold. The plug and the socket were both present but the work failed to solicit any connections. Speaking for myself alone and as a frequent user of virtual worlds, RMB City felt lonely and somehow broken. It's biggest failing in my view: It's not immersive. It's like looking at a painting within a painting. The best way I can describe it is that I'm not there even when I am there.

China Tracy/Cao Fei is the only virtual artist I can think of that contracts out the work of constructing her visions in Second Life. While many artists do collaborate with others, the implementation of their ideas with SL's building tools and actual prims is a source of pride and critique, as well. This isn't to say that Cao Fei wouldn't know how to do it herself. Consider that she created the original RMB City on her computer with 3ds Max, a modeling program that more advanced creators use to fabricate sculpties in Second Life.

Looking for further insights, I asked Chenin Anabuki who heads up Avatrain, the company that recreated Phase I of RMB City in Second Life for Cao Fei, what he had learned from the experience. "I learned that we have this huge part of ourselves that is very creative. Prior to RMB, I mainly saw us as engineers, but SL almost forces you to be creative, no matter what your function is. Development in SL is not as linear as in RL. So, over time, we got to learn the different ways to implement content for our clients. These projects are difficult. Many people (who are new to SL) are not aware of what is possible in SL," he explained.


Okay, I get it

Something clicked with me back in early September, though, when I read the opening paragraph of a recent press release issued by Vitamin Creative Space, promoting the unveiling of a new video of RMB by Lainy Voom and a party, as well as fashion/photo contests, jointly held with metaverse chronicler Hamlet Au of New World Notes, and presided over by virtual fashion maven Iris Ophelia:



"Many of us are born into shelter, nurtured in the arms of people who guide us before allowing us to encounter our physical realities on our own. But imagine that you are born not into the arms of your mother, but into the arms of a city; and that you are grasped, embraced and cultivated by the towers and vessels, sounds and sights of a fantastical empire. For China Sun, the baby of China Tracy, this is reality from first breath. When China Sun asks “What is life?” it is RMB City who answers."



China Sun is the Second Life name for Cao's real baby son - Cowboy Lim - born in March of this year.


Welcome to the world(s), China Sun and Cowboy Lim!

And that's when I got it.

RMB City isn't intended as a space for us to inhabit. It is a 3D poem that we are witness to. We turn the page by visiting one sim or location at a time. It's a virtual postmodern allegory about all the yearnings and angst of our era.


The shops at RMB City don't actually sell anything


The courtesans - all bots - entice you with exciting promises, but there is no way for them, or you, to touch

chinesebeauty Shim: Darling, how I miss you! Why are you here so late?
chinesebeauty Shim: Let me treat you nice today.
chinesebeauty Shim: Follow me please, darling. http://slurl.com/secondlife/RMB%20City%201/219/19/65 (Please click the link to teleport)
chinesebeauty Shim: Wanna have close contact with me? Please IM: BeautyChina Aries, I will show up as soon as possible.



Games of chance and penalty are offered there, but they aren't interactive or don't work.



Upon arrival at RMB City, you are greeted by SuperConcierge Cristole, a bot, sitting behind an impressive desk:

SuperConcierge Cristole: Hi! Welcome to RMB City! Can I help you?
SuperConcierge Cristole: My name is Superconcierge Cristole, I'm the third mayor of RMB City, and also your concierge.
SuperConcierge Cristole: Please leave a message with your request, Superconcierge Cristole. I will reply as soon as possible.
SuperConcierge Cristole: Thank you. I don't ask for much in return, only that you give me something to love! Say "love", I will give you a gift :).
Bettina Tizzy: love
SuperConcierge Cristole: I have sent you a note card and a gift. Cheers. :)

He provides you with a notecard, but there is no gift.

Beyond that, RMB City is a bridge between immersive virtual worlds and Real Life that anyone can appreciate, whether they have experienced virtual worlds or not. It is unreal and abstract, free of Barbie and Ken avatars, yet chock full of symbols and imagery that anyone can recognize. China Tracy is "guid(ing) us before allowing us to encounter" virtual realities on our own.


Photo of the 3D-printed model of RMB City at the Serpentine Gallery in London by Vint Falken

RMB City's success is not the tail that wags the dog where Cao Fei is concerned. This is just one of many projects she is working on or has completed, including her analyses of the Chinese cosplayer culture.

Soon after logging in to Second Life in late 2006, Cao began to make "hidden camera" machinima. "I was directly recording myself as I moved through Second Life, but as I’m watching myself, I’m also controlling myself. I’m simultaneously director and actor. But I enjoy exploring everything and not knowing what will happen in the next step. A lot of the process is waiting for something to happen, and I didn’t try to make something fake. In the end, I had some 300 GB of saved chat dialogues and “real” captured footage," she explained.

This 3-part video, iMirror, is currently being screened in Second Life at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia's doppelgänger show, curated by Gillian Raymond, that explores contemporary notions of portraiture in the online realm (teleport directly from here). This is part 2:



Thinking back to RMB City, I have finally learned to love this virtual work and all that it has accomplished. Cao Fei has introduced millions to the idea of using a virtual world as a canvas for their creativity, and this is no mean feat. RMB City does, finally, speak to me and, for the first time I can hear it.

Part II of this series: "An interview in Chinese and English with virtual superstar Cao Fei - Will you be the next artist showing at RMB City?" is available here.

Teleport to RMB City directly from here or, if you are new to Second Life, begin here.

Forget text, forget voice. EMOTE!

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Polish Olza Koenkamp (aka Piotr Kopik) is a full time artist with two full lives: one as a human and another as an avatar in Second Life®. His virtual self operates a store where he sells freakish avatars of his own creation. In Real Life, he paints and is a co-founder of szu szu, a group that creates art for public spaces.

Now Olza has made this charming seemingly animated machinima in which his avatars speak not with text, or voice, but with emoticons.



Olza is fascinated with the inside of his body. He doesn't care what it looks like, but concentrates instead on his feelings, how his body works and its relationship with his mind and psyche. His interest in Eastern philisophies and practices such as yoga, led to his "realization" that he needed to REBUILD himself.

From that point forward, he gave his Real Life works the moniker PSYCHOSOMATIC REBUILDING. In Second Life, he refers to his activities as PSYCHOSOMATIC REBUILDERS.

You can teleport to Olza's PSYCHOSOMATIC REBUILDERS shop from here. Hat tip: Cutea Benelli.

See also:

• Head, move back up to the neck, please!
• Olza Koenkamp looks inside out

Sneak peek: Feature length machinima VolaVola

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Nearly two years in the making, VolaVola / FlyMe is the Italian feature length machinima shot in Second Life® and directed by Berardo Carboni, expected to have its debut in a few months.

Pre-production work is now in effect for the same screenplay to be shot in live action in Rome, Italy. Two films, two mediums, but the same story.

The plot aims to disorient the viewer and make it difficult to discern what is real and what is not.



Credits:
Director: Berardo Carboni (aka Finally Outlander)
Machinimatographer: Evo Szuyuan
Assistant Director: Fau Ferdinand
Editor: Simone Bellonio
Screenplay: Berardo Carboni and Frank Koolhaas
Music: Andrea Gabriele
Builder: Stella Costello
Costume, Hair and Makeup Design: Honey Fairweather
Production Assistance: Liz Solo

Want your virtual art to receive Real Life recognition? Here's the recipe

Last Friday at Jack the Pelican Presents Gallery - the Real Life counterpart to the Brooklyn is Watching project in Second Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Sautéed Real Life recognition of Virtual Art
(Serves 1,000+)

Ingredients:
1 (one) Second Life® account/avatar
1 (one) or more prim-based virtual artworks

1 (one) each, notecard giver and notecard explaining your artwork

1 (one) Brooklyn is Watching landmark or slurl
Patience, a pinch
Tolerance (omit ego)

Instructions:

1) Log into Second Life

2) Using the landmark or slurl, teleport to Brooklyn is Watching

3) Rez your virtual artwork there

4) Garnish your artwork with your notecard giver

5) Sit tight until the following weekend

5) Direct your browser to the Brooklyn is Watching website and listen to the weekly podcast to hear if Real Life art critics reviewed your piece.

~*~

That's my take on the recipe offered by the man who conceived it, Jay Newt (aka Jay Van Buren), back in March of 2008 when he launched what was to be a one year mixed realities project: Brooklyn is Watching (BiW).

That year has come and gone, culminating with the two-month long Best of Year 1 Festival and the unquestionably "not possible in Real Life (NPIRL)" installations created by the Final Five: Dancoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley), Glyph Graves, Bryn Oh, Selavy Oh, and Nebulosus Severine (aka CM Pauluh), not to mention a write up in the New York Times.

The finalists were tasked with creating original virtual art that relates to the virtual version of the Jack the Pelican Presents gallery, and...

Nebulosus Severine enveloped the virtual gallery in a luminous fortress-of-solitude-like structure — that is a meditation on the nature of the self.

DanCoyote Antonelli exploded the metaphor of the virtual gallery by using the building blocks of that illusion as raw material for a dynamic, rhythmic, abstract sculpture stretching up into the sky.

Selavy Oh exploited the intrinsically flexible nature of virtual space by creating an interactive maze of nested, shifting Jack the Pelicans in which she curated a show within a show featuring artists not selected by the judges.

Bryn Oh turned the gallery into a ruin of glowing technological fragments infested with digital flora, inviting the viewer into her own idiosyncratic fantasy narrative.

Glyph Graves used the gallery to show how art is a reflection of its physical and social environment by creating a work that changes based on the number of people viewing it.

~*~

The project is now slated to go on... indefinitely, and while it's had its share of bumpy technical moments, the concept and the people behind it have given the most acclaimed virtual artists in Second Life a reason to roll up their sleeves and not only participate with their art, but also to launch their own BiW initiatives and boost the effort in every way they can think of.

I thought we'd find out what is on Jay's mind these days now that so much has gone down, and the future seems to be wide open.

We already know what your original vision was for Brooklyn is Watching. What is your current vision of what BiW can be?

Jay: The biggest thing that has changed in my mind because of my experience organizing this show is that I really think control needs to start to shift in the direction of the community that has grown up around this project. There are people remote from Brooklyn who are willing and able to have more of a say in what BiW is and what it becomes and I'd like to find ways to let them.

Regarding the Festival, what have you learned from this experience that would be valuable to other Second Life'rs wishing to organize events around a theme? Or around the arts?

Jay: Well, organizing artists is like herding cats... but I knew that before. Never try to organize something this complicated in two months. Don't have a day job. No really - the parts that have worked very well in all this are the parts where specific people had discrete tasks they were responsible for and the authority needed to see them through from soup to nuts: Penumbra Carter and Stacey Fox making the machinimas, Dekka Raymaker and Wltrr Rajal making the virtual version of Jack the Pelican (art gallery in Brooklyn), and so on. Where I got into trouble was when people had overlapping or dependent duties - one person couldn't act without another. Also, give yourself twice as long to plan as you think you'll need.

How much do you get out beyond the BiW borders? Will this remain the same or do you intend to explore other lands?

Jay: I probably won't as long as I'm involved as I am just because I don't have time. I do think that focusing the conversation on what people bring to BiW is useful for two reasons: 1) You can't have a good conversation about everything. You need to limit it somehow and this is an easy (if arbitrary ) way to limit it. 2) It is one thing for us to give our honest opinion about art by artists who have actively sought out our opinions. It would be pretty nervy of us to just roam the grid saying what we think about all kinds of stuff when probably the people who made that work never wanted our opinion in the first place.

How has your opinion of art in a virtual setting changed from day one of the project to now?

Jay: Really this summer has just confirmed what i thought about it before -- its uncontrollable, it wants to stay wild. I think the virtual art has the capacity to undermine peoples assumptions about art more than art in a real space can. The SLon De Refuse is amazing - its more BIW than BIW - and Selavy Oh's show within a show inside the final five is another great example of how virtual art can turn everything on its head.

What has all of this activity meant to Jay Van Buren and his real life and how are you finding the time to balance both lives?

Jay: I'm not. I'm completely strung out and brain-fried. After the 23rd of August I'm gong to hide for a week from everyone and then I'm only going to talk to a few people at a time about where BiW should go. In late September we'll emerge from hibernation stronger, better, with a solid plan for the future and more people on board helping me in some kind of official capacity. With job titles. And sharks with lasers attached to them. I'm going to get me some of those, too.

• Teleport to Brooklyn is Watching's headquarters, sponsored by Popcha! and the University of Kansas' Department of Visual Art, from here. This is where you can rez new artworks on a weekly basis.
• Teleport to the 30 Best, sponsored by the University of Kansas' Department of Visual Art, KU Art, directly from here.
• Teleport to the Final Five exhibit at the East of Odyssey from here.
• Drop by the Real Life Jack the Pelican Presents gallery at 487 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211.

Own the universe - and a piece of Second Life - in Real Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

This mathematical structure - known as the E8 Polytope created by Wizard Gynoid in Second Life® with the guidance of renown physicist Garrett Lisi (and sometimes avatar, Garrett Netizen)... is now available for purchase in Real Life.

The virtual version consists of 6,672 prims that were generated via script by Wizard with the assistance of Desdemona Enfield and Nand Nerd. Given its complexity, it seemed unlikely that its recreation in Real Life would be possible, barring enormous expense.

Now art, math and 3D printing artist Bathsheba Grossman has done it.


The 80mm glass cube will cost $72 USD and will be available as of July 10, 2009

Batsheba used Wizard's mathematical data for the crystal visualization and explains: "This 3D projection is notable for showing all 240 vertices, arranged in the concentric circles that appear in the common 2D "spirograph" rendering of this polytope." She adds that if Garrett Lisi's unified field theory is true, it "would mean that it explains most aspects of the observable universe. Here's a handy model for pondering the possibility."

In Lisi's seminal work from which these mathematical virtual creations stem, "Theory of Everything," the E8 Polytope may at last reveal the link between gravity and the other fundamental forces of nature.

"It has all 240 vertices and if you look straight down from the top, the zenith downwards, you will see a hole through the middle. If it were flattened, it would form the perfect spirograph," Wizard explained.

Here is a TED talk recorded in February, 2008, in which Lisi unenviably attempts to get us up to speed on his unified field theory in just 18 minutes.



See also:
Universe in the Metaverse by Hamlet Au, New World Notes

The Impossible Made Possible - A Panel on the Future of Architecture

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Most Real Life architects who join Second Life® do so because they are seeking a new tool. In the beginning, there is much confusion as they acquaint themselves with the interface and become a part of one or more communities.

And then they begin to build recreations of Real Life buildings.

And then...

This Friday and on the occasion of Second Life's sixth birthday, hear the stories of seasoned Real Life architects who arrived in the metaverse to explore the possibilities and discovered that their path was not at all what they expected to be. Walk through a visual history of their trajectory, as they explain how one thing lead to another, culminating with them learning that the impossible is possible in virtual worlds. Cut short your own learning curve and advance your understanding of how virtual architecture can - and already is - richly benefiting Real Life architecture.


Event chair DB Bailey landed an important commercial contract thanks to his work in virtual worlds. Seen here in front of a building he created in Second Life for Stanford University

WHEN: Friday, June 26, 2009, 10am SLT - 90 minutes
WHERE: Cetus Gallery District, teleport directly from here

PANELISTS:

* DB Bailey (aka David Denton), Architect, urban planner and artist, event chair
* Keystone Bouchard (aka Jon Brouchoud), Architect, urban planner and artist
* Lou Tones, multi-media producer and founder of Green Islands
* Bettina Tizzy - Introduction from the founder of the Not Possible IRL group

DB Bailey is designing a Real Life project (for Cairo, Egypt) in Second Life. He will be giving a tour of the commercial building and discussing the meaningfulness of this venue for architectural design in the future.

DB Bailey and Keystone Bouchard have both gone full circle in Second Life, starting off in Second Life by recreating Real Life architecture as do most when first starting to build virtually. Then they both discovered the truest potential of this technology: to produce environments they would never have conceived in Real Life.


Multi-award winner and the creator of Reflexive Architecture, Keystone Bouchard has benefited Real Life with his virtual work in ways he never could have imagined

DB, Keystone and Lou Tones are all seeing the wall between the two worlds disappear as Second Life becomes more of a tool - but not how they originally expected it to be - in their Real Life work.

Lou has been observing for many years the evolution of the virtual world. He will discuss the ecological advantages of Second Life and the importance of Real Life buildings designed in Second Life.

Feel free to contact Bettina Tizzy should you have any questions. Please be punctual as the presentation will get underway at precisely 10am SLT/PDT.

Why you need to pay attention to Brooklyn is Watching's "Best of Year 1 Festival"

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

It's been a big year for Brooklyn is Watching (BiW), the mixed reality arts project sponsored by Popcha and taking place simultaneously at the gallery Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, New York and in Second Life®.

In fact, it's been the only year that BiW has been in operation, and what a year it has been. In March of 2008, I reported on the new performance space and presentation/sandbox that had been set up in Second Life (teleport directly from here), and the avatar in the shape of an eyeball and going by the name "Monet Destiny" that would be viewing and projecting the goings-on there onto a large screen monitor at the Real Life gallery.

Now the project's founder, Jay Newt (aka Jay Van Buren), has announced The Best of BiW Year 1, a two month-long festival spanning parts of 3 sims and the Jack the Pelican Presents gallery in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), with artist talks, panel discussions and two art shows leading up to the BOBIWY1 Prize. Anyone may nominate artworks that have been rezzed at Brooklyn is Watching during its first 52 weeks, but the key difference between this and other virtual art competitions is that the five finalists will be invited to create new works or adapt existing work to be displayed in Second Life and at Jack the Pelican. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm tickled that I've been asked to be one of the five judges, along with AM Radio, Amy Freelunch, AngryBeth Shortbread and Sage Duncan.

Nominations have begun and the Brooklyn is Watching Year 1 Prize (the golden eyeball) will be awarded on August 23, 2009.

I caught up with Jay to get the skinny:



Has your work with BiW impacted Jack the Pelican gallery? How are things different there from one year ago?

Jay: The biggest evidence of it having an impact is the fact that it is still there. Don (Carrol - he runs the gallery) was really going out on a limb to give the project space in the beginning. So the fact that now, more than a year later and even in these tough economic times, he's still devoting space where artwork that could be sold means that he must feel it is important. Many of the artists who hang around at Jack the Pelican have told me how blown away they are by the quality and variety of artwork that SL is showing us at BiW. BiW has kind of become a fixture at the gallery, and now with the coming RL show, it will be getting a much bigger profile than its ever had.

Have any non-SL users been won over by experiencing BiW from Jack the Pelican gallery?

Jay: Both Jenna Spevack and Norene Leddy (Norene is the first site if you Google her first name! She's like Cher!) were not that much into SL before they became involved and they have both got so interested in it that they joined the project and became my collaborators.

How has YOUR view of virtual art changed over the course of a year?

Jay: I just continue to be amazed and excited by what artists are doing. I think that the work is getting better. I don't know that my view has changed that much. I feel my belief that this is an important medium has been vindicated.

If you were to identify the three things that most helped to transform BiW in one year, what would they be?

Jay: Well - we would have never got off the ground with out Amy Wilson, and then I think Beth Harris and Steven Zucker really brought us a lot of fresh energy. The biggest thing is the growth of the BiW community, and I love that they complain when they don't like the podcasts - there is a reciprocal relationship.

If you could have three wishes come true in regards to BiW, what would they be?

Having Dekka Raymaker and Penumbra Carter show up in RL with a bottle of champagne was fantastic. I loved getting to go to Estonia for Estonia is Watching, and the last one is this upcoming RL show which will bring a new level of attention to some very deserving artists.

Who is sponsoring the land on the three sims?

Jay: We're going to have the "30 Best" show which on part of the University of Kansas Department of Visual Arts Sim, and Part of a new sim the University is getting called "Impermanence" that will be the new home of the regular Brooklyn is Watching Tower and space which will continue through the Festival as well. And lastly, the "Final Five" show will be at the Odyssey sim.

Do you remember most/all of the artwork that has been rezzed at BiW? What if an artist who has rezzed there wanted you to see something different? Would you be okay with that?

Jay: I don't think I even saw half of what was there - there's been so much it's just staggering - it's mind boggling. The idea of "30 best" is that its all artworks from the past, so we're going to be including specific works. Certainly the artists will be welcome to put notecards on those works that offer TP's to places where more and newer work can be seen. In the "Final Five" show the idea is that the five artists can create an entirely new work for that show, or choose to adapt and existing work.



What's showing at Jack the Pelican these days?

Jay: There's a painting show up in the front room - a group of young New York artists who all work in a style of fairly realistic looking images of fanciful, improbable or just slightly "off" subject matter. They're really good paintings.


Jay is especially excited about the Nomination Wiki: "It is going to be a fantastic resource for future art historians. I predict that sometime in the next 20 years at least 5 of the artists that have shown at BiW are going to have one-person shows in Real Life museums, and monographs written about them.

Domenico Quaranta on Gazira's "Hammering the Void"

Photograph courtesy of [DAM]Berlin - All rights reserved

Today marks the opening of Gazira Babeli's newest mixed realities show, which will run through July 31st at the [DAM]Berlin gallery in Berlin and concurrently in Second Life®. A new film will be screened.

May 29, 2009:
* 10pm - 12am at Locusolus - [DAM]SecondLife, teleport directly from here
* 7-9 PM in the gallery [DAM]Berlin

by Domenico Quaranta

“The world we actually have does not meet my standards.” - Philip K. Dick


In 1920, at the opening of a Dada exhibition in Köln, Max Ernst made an axe available for the audience. As far as I know, this gesture was never reenacted. That's a shame. An artwork should always come with an axe in attach. This would remind us that art must be loved, or hated. That it deserves more than an idiot gaze. Duchamp took years to make us accept his urinal, yet he's still unable to persuade us to use it in the more logical way: pissing into it. I bet he would be happy with this kind of interaction: turning an artwork into an urinal.

Gazira Babeli never reenacts – she acts. She's worshipped as a marabout, but she hates spells and she does her best to break them. Tell her “aura” and she'll throw an hail of meteoroids onto you. Tell her “virtual” and she'll shoot you into the air at 900 km/h. When, in 2006, she made Come To Heaven, she released the code of the performance through her website: she discovered the painful delights of being beaten up by a computer graphics card, and she wanted to share this feeling with everybody.

Yet, even on a computer screen, people keep on loving the moonlight instead of killing it, and being charmed by everything is introduced to them as “art”. Thus Gazira created the fourteen sisters. They are called Anger Erin, Envy Sixpence, Gluttony Aboma, Greed Petrovic, Lust Placebo, Pride Placebo, Sloth Swansong, Courage Sparta, Faith Radikal, Hope Varnish, Justice Kimono, Love Brandi, Prudence Miami, Temperance Navarita. They are Gazira Babeli, fourteen times. Carrying a wooden sledge-hammer, they move all together, and hit violently. When you, beloved art lover, meet them, feel free to think at the following references, at your pleasure: La Liberté guidant le peuple, The Night Watch, Il quarto stato, an army of models performing Vanessa Beecroft. At your first blow on the head, art will be replaced, in your mind, by Castor oil and gas chambers.

This platoon in Wellington boots and suspender belt comes without any notice, and intervenes in social events – mostly exhibition openings – making a hell of a mess. Is this the usual, boring self-referential crap we are used to finding in art? What Gazira likes is to intervene in the rituality of the real, and break up its continuity. The world she actually has does not meet her standards, and she hammers it. She works in this direction from the very beginning: just think to her earthquakes, her showers of pop bananas, her Campbell's Soup cans, her pizzas fouling up the gallery with tomato soup. Isn't she an arse-hole? If you need, Gazira's hammers are there for you. Use them, against her too. That's what she wants.

Postscript
When they are not swooping down on some crowd trying to smash an artist's head, Gazira's Furies are imprisoned in a claustrophobic office with a view on Windows' standard desktop, jumping around all the time. The office is encaged in a computer. The computer is encaged in a gallery. Gaz' en valise, finally. It looks like a storm in a glass snowball, until you don't open it. And it comes with an hammer, of course.

She[s] got a hammer: Hammering the Void

Photographs courtesy of [DAM]Berlin - All rights reserved

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

In Hammering the Void, there isn't just one Gazira Babeli, there are 14 and they all fight against an inner void. 14 clones of an artificial person, they are each named after Virtues and Sins: Greed Petrovic, Sloth Swansong, Temperance Navarita, Courage Sparta, Envy Sixpence, and more. Equipped with a hammer in their hands, they descend from the pedestal in the gallery, they swarm to openings of exhibitions and public events. They strike other unsuspecting avatars with blows from their hammer as if to say: "Wake up! Defend yourself! Act!" They force others to react. You love them or you hate them, but you cannot remain indifferent against this aggression, which can be understood as an attempt to awaken the intellect or simply as a malice.

Friday, May 29th marks the opening of Gazira Babeli's newest mixed realities show, which will run through July 31st at the [DAM]Berlin gallery in Berlin and concurrently in Second Life®. A new film will be screened.

May 29, 2009:
10pm - 12am at Locusolus - [DAM]SecondLife, teleport directly from here
7-9 PM in the gallery [DAM]Berlin

Man Machinaga (aka Patrick Lichty) is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men, a founding member - along with Gazira - of the virtual performance art group Second Front, and executive editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. He is a member of the faculty of the Interactive Art & Media Department of Columbia College, Chicago. He writes...


By Patrick Lichty

As I write this, Gazira and I are talking about my reflections on Hammering the Void, and in dealing with the moral tropes of Sin, Virtue, and most romantically, Truth, it seems that my text less resembles an essay and is more like a sermon. As this is no more surreal than reflecting on the moral implications of a horde of fourteen proxies wielding cartoon mallets, I'd like to frame this under just such a conceit of a sermon on virtual existence. Let us consider then, my Brothers and Sisters in Virtuality and Hypereality, the implications of unleashing Pandora's Box, of unfurling the Sins and Virtues forth into the Nets, armed with nothing less than Vulcan's Hammer itself; let us consider the effects thereof. I want to say that in setting this forth, the traditional Sins and Virtues give rise to four Principles of experience that remain in virtuality, and those are: Affect, Agency, Volition, and Complicity. It is through these that while after shedding the physical coil, humanity follows us into the Void. Let us meditate upon these in that we may understand the Void.



In the beginning of the Hammering the Void introductory video, Gazira and I (or my Man Michinaga proxy) sit before a screen in Second Life, marveling at an opening of 90's net artists, Vuk Cosic and Alexei Shulgin. We gesticulate excitedly like old heavy metal fans about the “Monsters of net.art." We agree that she must set the cloud of Gaziric Sins and Virtues upon the world, equipped with large mallets, perhaps as inquisition, perhaps as divine intervention. For the rest of the video, the Gazirae invade virtual social events akin to a host of viral Agents (as per the “Smiths” from Matrix Reloaded) creating avatar mosh pits and hammering the hapless onlookers. All of this would appear as simple farce; but I know Gazira, and we know one thing...

The Truth is out there, we are all complicit in its creation, and Gazira is hammering you over the head with it.

One point that is essential to consider when looking at the gaggle of Gazirae and their accouterments, is that she has provided the hammer in the gallery for you.


Nice to Meet You Mallets

They aren't inflatable hammers, either. They're probably oak or maple, engraved with the Deadly Sins and Noble Virtues, inviting you to pick them up and play. As a side note, I had considered being more explicit in regards to “play," but doing so would have been too heavy-handed, which is unnecessary when one is wielding an oak mallet.

As Gazira and I have continued to make works in virtual worlds for years, the question returns to the “why," which may return us to the Cartesian cogito. However, I would like to remap the Cartesian assertion into a consideration of the increasing retreat into virtual worlds in asking about some of the things that remain in our Pandora's Box of simulation when we remove materiality and embodiment. This leads us back to the fulcrum of our sermon; the median icon of our discussion.

The sign at the center of this discussion is the hammer, the archetypal sign of Vulcan/Hephaestus, the God of Technology and Artisans. In Hammering the Void, perhaps the null-stuff of virtuality is the metal of disembodied existence that the Gazira-Hephaestae forge into an ironic tool for dragging our own mortal encumbrance into cyberspace. Her traditional Sins and Virtues infest the online worlds, placing all they encounter upon the existential anvil or litmus test of action and reaction. There is little time for reflection, for what is under the hammer nothing less than our human nature. What do you do? From this vantage point, the result is the transmutation of the traditional Sin/Virtue binaries into monads of four human elements of virtual existence. These Monads, as we have transmuted beyond Sin or Virtue, are the principles of Affect, Agency, Volition, and Complicity. which are all complex significations embedded into Gazira's Hammer.

Affect: Identification with the act. One of the most striking images of the Gazirae is that of the fourteen Sins/Virtues rampaging before their puppeteer in a bold thrust, akin to an ideologue ordering their army into action. This encapsulates this writer''s fascination with the evident identification of increasing numbers with virtual worlds, and as of this writing, there were 65,000 people logged into the single online world of Second Life alone, showing the “reality” of virtual reality. This evidence is also embedded within the results of each intervention of the Gazirae, from the amusement of the appearance in the Uqbar region, varying to confusion and even anger in other instances. The paradoxical question of the visceral reaction to virtual events shows that affect is not just for identification for another body, but for an identification with their proxies/avatars as well. Although the avatar version of Burden's Shoot (Kildall or Mattes) is different from the first, both create a “gut reaction”. There is reality in the virtual.

Agency: The act of intervention. If the avatar did not have some sense of real agency, some ability to intervene in affairs, this essay would not exist, as Gazira would have had no effect. Perhaps this is a realization of Baudrillard's primacy of the hyperreal – the object/image that has greater effect than its subject. But this is in agreement with the principle of Agency, as Gazira, and her doppelganger Gazirae, the replicants controlled by a simulacrum, create reaction to her actions. Although this may sound like the erection of a wilderness of mirrors, there are vectors of effect as well as affect when the hammer swings. The effects of the impact (to paraphrase Sanborn) of the virtual mallet are evident in that they set off chains of causality in the physical, even if they are as simple as the fact that she occupies a space in which the hammer is realized in a gallery, asking you to pick it up and swing it yourself. And more specifically, the way she does.

Volition: The will to action. The fact that Gazira sets her plan in motion is a testament to the principle that one has the ability to act through the virtual. The Aktion zur Macht breaks the stasis of virtuality, setting forth the path of agency to the creation of affect. Through the creation of the Sins and Virtues, Gazira has set them upon others, setting up causal chains, however slight, but this prime mover, probably the simplest, is a fundamental factor of intervening.

Complicity: The inseparability from the act, or the impossibility of total abstraction. The double sign of the hammer in the virtual and the physical and their similar functions illustrates our complicity with actions in either world. Through the hammer, argument of separation of subject and object through mere virtuality implodes, as the difference is far more complex. It is no longer the question of the effects of hitting someone with the hammer in the gallery or in the virtual, as both actions hold us complicit with the real issue of violence itself actual or implied, leaving the hammer itself transparent. Violence through cartoon or oak mallet differ little in terms of their being consistent with the same practice, and that is the gesture of the swing, and the effect of the impact. Gazira and her vices/virtues ask you to pick up the hammer and hit your friend over the head with it, but then say, “Funny, that doesn't happen here... Ahahahah....” through this doubling and the resultant difference of effects, Gazira holds us responsible for the violence of signs, the affect of the impact, the effect of the hammer's extancy, the volition of the swing, and the complicity to the hammer and its function.

Before ending my sermon, I would like to talk about the narcissism of the Global Village; of cyberspace. As McLuhan said,

"The global village is a world in which you don't necessarily have harmony. You have extreme concern with everybody else's business and much involvement in everybody else's life. It's a sort of Ann Landers column writ large... huge involvement in everybody else's affairs. So the Global Village is as big as a planet and as small as the village post office."

In many ways, this intense concern is emblematic of the collective dream of pop technoculture less from from Star Trek and more to World of Warcraft. The shift of focus away from the outward vision of Buckminster Fuller 's “Spaceship Earth” to the inwardly looking complicit panopticism of McLuhan's “Global Village” seems to be the object of the swing. Perhaps this inward look is the gaze into the abyss that Gazira is hammering at. Rather than “leaping into the void” a la Klein, is Gazira hammering away at the null-sets of illusion in the void of cyberspace to get at the truths that remain in virtual existence? Is there anything there?

Or is she merely asking you to hit your friend in the face with an oak mallet because that is the most fundamental form of human communication remaining?

In the end, what remains is a communion of reflection; something that is considered an endangered species in the age of constant partial attention deficit. As the Gazirae descend upon us, there is a moment in which we are forced to meditate upon the four elements of human existence in the virtual, and then the offering is put forth.

The Hammer of Gazira. Given for you. May it dispel your illusions.

Now, SWING.

Amen.
Patrick Lichty

Like springtime blossoms, art is thriving at Brooklyn is Watching

Try as I might, I can't keep up with all the new artists and artwork on display at Second Life®s acclaimed art critique Mecca, Brooklyn is Watching (BiW) (teleport directly from here).

I dropped in yesterday and the place was bursting at the seams with mega sculptures. From left to right: That big brownish thing looming in the sky by DanCoyote Antonelli; like a burst of champagne fizzies, Juria Yoshikawa's piece invites you to drink it in; and a new artist discovery for me, Werner Kurosawa's rockin' spinning-prim sphere.



Not in this photo but well worth checking out, Oberon Omnura's kinetic forest.

Never heard of Brooklyn is Watching? Here's the 101, plus info on how you - and your art - can be a part of it.

Olza Koenkamp looks inside out

Polish Olza Koenkamp (aka Piotr Kopik) is a full time artist with two lives: one as a human and another as an avatar in Second Life®. His virtual self operates a store where he sells freakish avatars of his own creation. In Real Life, he paints and is a co-founder of szu szu, a group that creates art for public spaces.

Not for the squeamish, Olza's avatars give us a view from the inside.



Olza recently participated in the collective virtual show called "Stop Making Sense." Above, a torso glides happily on ice, and below Olza, wearing one his avatars, spins gracefully alongside the torso object. Visitors to the installation could hop in the rink and select from several skating animations to interact with it.



For years, Olza's art explored his relationship with physical reality: objects that are within hand's reach, simple human gestures that are usually considered unattractive, like nail biting, or piles of abandoned objects and trash usually found at construction sites. In his show There is some escape, it was possible to peer at the busy world outside from inside a pile of junk.



Today, Olza is fascinated with the inside of his body. He doesn't care what it looks like, but concentrates instead on his feelings, how his body works and its relationship with his mind and psyche. His interest in Eastern philisophies and practices such as yoga, led to his "realization" that he needed to REBUILD himself. From that point forward, he gave his Real Life works the moniker PSYCHOSOMATIC REBUILDING. In Second Life, he refers to his activities as PSYCHOSMATIC REBUILDERS.

When it comes to expressing the feelings of the body, Olza believes that there will always be some deformation. "When I think, for example, about my tired eyes, I need to draw them with really heavy eyelids. The eyelids may need to have some additional flaps, the color might need to be more violet to express some little pains around the eyeballs..." explained Olza.

He doesn't care or want to control how people react to his work, whether they find it scary or funny. Furthermore, he is surprised that people are sometimes shocked by it. "Look at pop culture, look at all those games for children, thousands of litres of blood and killing. Look at the movies, with huge horror monsters and children's cartoons with spitting and farting. And what about the history of twentieth century art: piss paintings and drawings by Warhol, Viennese Actionism (Schwarzkogler cutting his penis) and many, many radical and classic artworks. Compared to them, my avies are funny little bunnies," he said.

Olza now crosses back and forth between Second Life and Real Life to create his art on either end. He uses his Real Life graphics as the basis for his virtual works, and his avatars to make collages and avatar stickers in Real Life.



See also:
* Olza's Flickr stream

You can teleport to Olza's PSYCHOSOMATIC REBUILDERS shop from here. Many thanks to Tooter Claxton, who greatly admires Olza's work, for the introduction.

Whatever next? A Furry in Istanbul?

Posted by Alpha Auer (your eyes and ears in Istanbul... ;-)

The Amber Art and Technology Festival is up and running here in Istanbul, going strong until the 16th of November. While more information on the contents and the mission of this 2 year old festival can be obtained at their website http://08.a-m-b-e-r.net/, I would like to write a very fast communication on two installations presented as part of the festival, both of which involve Second Life® and both of which can be participated in online over the next few days.

"Avatarium – A Consumer Paradox" is by Paul Sermon (known as Sylvester Grut in Second Life). "Since the early nineteen-nineties Paul Sermon’s practice-based research in the field of contemporary media arts has centered on the creative use of telecommunication technologies. Through his unique use of video conference techniques in artistic telepresence applications he has developed a series of celebrated telematic art installations that have received international acclaim and have been cited on numerous occasions amongst his peers in this field".

On a personal level, I have been an admirer of Paul Sermon's work for a long time, my favorite installations of his being Telematic Dreaming and Telematic Seance. "Telematic Dreaming" especially strikes an emotional chord with me that sadly very few other works in our seemingly unemotional contemporary art milieu manage to achieve. The reaching out of the two lonely figures of artist and viewer/participant, separated by huge distances and dispersed lives, within the intimacy of a bed had me quite choked up when I first saw the images and read about the context of this intensely delicate piece.





Here in Istanbul, Paul Sermon, has struck out on a far more playful tone, by bringing Second Life avatars into Real Life. And into a totally, artificially, absurdly unreal Real Life shopping mall at that: Virtuality superimposed upon virtuality: City's is one of the chi-chier shopping malls of contradictory old Istanbul; all gleaming brass and marble, brandishing a level of polish which simply cannot be perceived as real, placed as it is, smack in the middle of a city some 4000 years old. So right here, amidst the stores of the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier and Prada, my furry reporter friend (who has been such an invaluable help to me in recent weeks) made her altogether bizarre appearance earlier on today!





The whole experience gets fed back into Second Life in real time displayed on numerous video screens inworld. So, you can in fact, admire yourself prancing around City's of Nisantasi here in Istanbul if you teleport to Sylgrut, Paul Sermon's Second Life location, between the hours of 1.00 AM and 5.00 AM SLT through Friday November 14th, directly from here.

...

The second installation is entitled Hello World and I will need to give you Taso Telling's artist's statement in full, since I have not yet seen the piece in action myself due to the fact that this work will only have its opening tomorrow, Thursday November the 13th between 8.00 AM and 8.30 AM SLT.

"Hello World! is an art installation which takes place both in SL and RL in Amber Art and Technology Festival in Istanbul. The work brings together the RL and SL audience, through real time video streaming.



The theme of the festival is "interpassivity", and SL audience will meet the Real audience "Caged" in interpassivity as the Real Audience turns into the Virtual Artwork. Thus the work intends to question the relationship between the artwork, the audience and the artist and also the so-called superiority of real life over second life, and promotes open source and open content share culture. Anything in the installation is copyleft!

Metaverse should not be a place to reconstruct but to deconstruct our borders, superiorities, chains and mind cages. So let's give a chance to it!

Taso Telling (aka Umut Tasa)"

Thus if you teleport from here to the Amber Festival location at Cirrus between 8.00 and 8.30 AM SLT tomorrow, Thursday the 13th, you will have your rare opportunity to stare at us, poor new media aficionado Istanbulites, helplessly caged here in Real Life staring back at you! ;-)

Brooklyn is Watching reaches a demi-milestone

It hardly seems possible that more than six months have elapsed since Pavig Lok clued me in to a new development on the grid, which I subsequently shared with you when I announced that Brooklyn is Watching had arrived.



It was back in March when a blurry-looking viking dood, Jay Newt (aka Jay Van Buren), showed up with his strange green screen flooring - Second Life's equivalent to the bad shag rug - and an annoying eyeball follower, to openly question and discuss, without any reverence whatsover, the "art" that was plunked there.



Jay and his jolly troop of merrymakers (art historians, critics and assorted other experts) - I'm sure there's a lot of beer involved somehow - have taken the whispered veneration out of art in this new medium and put it on the block for a real review. The consequences of these critiques began as a tiny ripple and are now being felt throughout the grid.

Art in virtual worlds is coming of age. Carry on...

"Brooklyn is Watching" is a project sponsored by Popcha, a New York based media technology company, and taking place simultaneously at the art gallery Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, New York and in Second Life. Artists are invited to place their work here). An avatar, in the shape of an eyeball and under the name Monet Destiny follows the goings-on there at all times and projects what he sees onto a large screen monitor at the Real Life gallery. Every Wednesday evening, Jay and several other notables, including Shirley Marquez , Man Machinaga (aka Patrick Lichty) and Max Newbold (aka Beth Harris of the FIT) gather to discuss what is rezzed at BiW.

The Perils of Mixed Realities events - as experienced by Hamlet Au

Last Thursday, and in the company of my friends and NPIRLers Pavig Lok and Flea Bussy, I teleported into a recreation of a penthouse in Manhattan. The event - a mixed realities party on the occasion of the Real Life and Second Life® book signing of Wagner James Au's (aka Hamlet Au) The Making of Second Life.



Hamlet was in New York city, in the company of Iris Ophelia, to speak at a Fashion Institute of Technology event. In fact, Iris gave the keynote address on the Institute's Technology Day. Go Iris! As an aside, there's a girl who's inventory I'd like to raid any old day of the week.

Since Hamlet was already in the Big Apple, the opportunity to throw a Real Life media bash in his honor was... um... low-hanging fruit, so his publisher - HarperCollins - did just that.


Falk Bergman, Hamlet Au, KallfuNahuel Matador, oh-dear-I-didn't-get-her-name- but-she-was-very-nice, and Flea Bussy

I've never attended a mixed realities event on the Real Life end, and I tend to get engrossed with the people around me - in any life - so I can well sympathize with Hamlet who was torn between attending to his guests in Manhattan, as well as the avatars who were present at the pixelated penthouse. I understand that there was a balcony that he kept heading for, during which time he would leave us avatars to our own devices, and his white-suited self would slip into "away."



Fortunately for him, Iris - who was also present in both worlds - would stand up and jiggle his mouse now and then to bring him back to life - but there was really nothing she could do short of operating his avatar - in the face of the onslaught of tricks that some of us (I'm not naming names) pulled on the poor man.


The lovely Iris Ophelia kept coming to Hamlet's rescue

Various lamp shades were placed on his head, a skirt wrapped around his waist, garbage bags rested at his feet, and cockroaches the size of Saint Bernard doggies visited him.



I stashed my photographic records of these horrors (lol) away, thinking they would never see the light of day, but then Kit Meredith blogged about it and, good sport that he is, Hamlet did, too.

It is a concern, isn't it? Those of us who inhabit virtual worlds must live two lives, and it gets even more complicated when we have to be present - and darling, witty and engaged - in two places at once.