It's hip (this week) to be square-ish

In Real Life, a monolithic cube might make you think of the Kaaba in Mecca.


This photograph by Muhammad Mahdi Karim

In Second Life®, especially if it has some special physics feature, it makes me think of conceptual artist and scripter Selavy Oh. As art professor Amy Freelunch pointed out, Selavy has carved a niche for herself with pieces that almost always feature a cube or cubes falling, pushing or floating, such as some of her Tectonics series, and her Architectural Intervention piece.

Much of art in Second Life® requires some degree of technical/scripting skill to produce. This week, the theme seems to be physics... and cubes.

Those of us who spend even a wee bit of time at performance space and presentation/sandbox Brooklyn is Watching (BiW), have been aware for some time now that Selavy has been planning the opening of her "Nested Cubes" installation to the public today, at 4:30pm SLT (teleport directly from here)...



Selavy's Nested Cubes isn't really orange... I've been playing some more with Torley's Windlight presets

...so it came as quite a surprise yesterday when I discovered this piece by Hyperformalist DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley) at about 1,200m above the Brooklyn is Watching space (teleport directly from here and take one of the chair tours he offers there).



Subtractive Reactive Social Sculpture by DanCoyote Antonelli

Notably, I inspected it and it was created July 22, 2008. Yesterday.

I immediately sent DanCoyote an IM that read simply, "rascal." He was busy working but his brief reply read... "I am a coyote." I have not yet been able to confirm that he understood why I was calling him names, and if his response addressed my implied charge or, shall we say... question. I hope to learn more.


Higher resolution version here
Music: "Neurofunk," composed by Michael Genato, ASCAP; published by Mike Genato Music, ASCAP and Freeplaynjj, ASCAP
Video: Bettina Tizzy

At any rate, I visited Nested Cubes recently with postdoctoral mathematician Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman), who's astonishing Noobility installation, created in collaboration with his brother, Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman), is now wowing the crowds over at Rezzable Productions' Black Swan (teleport directly from here). Seifert was my companion of choice for this expedition because of his knowledge of physics, especially as they are related to virtual art. As I expected, upon rezzing he was examining the piece with care. I hope he won't mind my sharing his comments as we reviewed it.

Seifert Surface: I checked to see if the things that fall are the same objects as the things you fly into. Not always the case... there might have been a switcheroo.

To mix it up?
Seifert Surface: For some reason or other. Eg, it could have been done so that the things you fly through go invisible and at the same time rez a physical cube in the same place... so it looks like you fly through the thing and it falls, when in fact the original cube is still there, just invisible. Then you bring back the original cube at a later date. That isn't what's going on here, though. The original cube is falling... invisiprims, and some sort of pusher. These are all good things to be experimenting with.

I later contacted Selavy to ask if she had used Keystone Bouchard's (aka Jon Brouchard) marvelous Reflexive Architecture scripts, but she clarified that all the scripts are her own. I also learned that Nested Cubes re-rezzes itself after a ten minute absence of avatars. "The viewer is an important part of this work, as in any work," she said.

~*~

Aha! Just as I was preparing to publish this piece, an email came in from DanCoyote Antonelli:

"Sel is a friend and I think a very big talent in Second Life... a rising star and diehard Hyperformalist.

My installation of the RSSS (Reactive Subtractive Social Sculpture) at BiW was in response to her cubic arrays in BiW and at Design Island. This is an example of similar morphology (cubic array) and completely different conceptual behavior. The demonstration of this fact accounts for my timing.

The piece I have at BiW was pioneered in late 2006 and is a well documented and coherent approach implicating the viewer into a sculptural relationship with the work. In fact, I contend that it implicates two viewers since the active viewer who is in the piece cannot see the length and breadth of the metamorphosis of the piece, so it takes at least two.

You know what they say... "The simpler the art, the more complex the explanation..."

The Museum of the Globe - 2D gets 3D

Last year, Hidenori Watanave, a Japanese architect in Real Life with an active Second Life®, sat on a jury for something called the Digital Design Competition 2007, and the Grand Prix winner - with a 2D submission - was Museum of the Globe, by Atelier Ten Architects, a Japanese metaverse developer and web services company, not to be confused with the prestigious global environmental design firm Atelier Ten .



In June, TeaCup, the Japanese free blogging service division of the publicly traded Internet services and web hosting company GMO, provided technical assistance in collaboration with Atelier Ten to take the 2D design and realize it in 3D. The actual construction was realized by Ichiro Furse of Atelier Ten Architects.





Hideroni will be presenting this at the International Electronic Langauge Festival FILE 2008 in Sao Paulo, and at SIGGRAPH2008 in Los Angeles, in August.

I asked Hyperformalist DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley) for his opinion of the sim-wide installation.

DanCoyote Antonelli: This is pure Hyperformalism. It is messy in a unique way, but it keeps its overall shape well. It is in between my cubic and cylindrical arrays and Seifert Surface's spore. It is not dirty enough data for me in total, but I think it is a wonderous thing, in some ways related to the shatter sphere.


Seifert Surface's "Spore" - photo by Bjorlyn Loon

How do you mean "dirty enough?"
Dancoyote Antonelli: I mean the data is perturbed in a way attributable to the artist's hand. There is such a thing to me as "too far removed from the work..." - too distant, and the piece slips out of my range of interest and becomes a photograph of some data and not art. Some imperfection must make it a human work I think. I love the little trees below, too. They reflect well in the water.

Teleport directly from here

It is majestic: DanCoyote's Antonelli's Tower of Light

Hyperformalist DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley) has been away from his keyboard for several weeks, and while I have not yet had a chance to catch up with him, word has it that he is feeling refreshed. Drop in at Brooklyn is Watching (teleport directly from here) and look up and into his Tower of Light.



...but when you do, you must take his tour (look for the white chair) and teleport to the various sections of this epic installation. In particular, be sure to go about 1,200m and look down from there... then ascend to about 2,100m and discover the surprises tucked into one of the two large blue pods.




There is a very high degree of difficulty in portraying what can be seen there, so I'm especially excited to point you to Arahan Claveau's video of this installation with audio that gives it a mysterious and shimmering quality, not unlike Stanislaw Lem's Solaris.

In addition, Arahan created the first in what will hopefully be a weekly series of videos capturing one or more art pieces that have been rezzed at Brooklyn is Watching just prior to their Wednesday podcast, which I've had the pleasure of participating in two weeks running. That video will be posted on the Brooklyn is Watching blog later tonight.

Kiss the Sky: Tipping point on the axis of a virtual world

2008 has already been a landmark year for art in virtual worlds. It is the year that Brooklyn is Watching gently dipped its toes in Second Life® and found itself nearly crushed by a multitude of artists and artwork. Babelswarm, the winner of the Australia Council for the Arts' Second Life arts residency, came to life. Blackthorn Hare got his Masters degree in Second Life sculpture. This year also marked the launch of Arthole, which I will write about soon, and the opening of the Kirsti Aho Museum, and one week ago, we celebrated the unveiling of our Garden, simply the largest collection - ever - of content creation that is not possible in Real Life.

Meanwhile, another show just debuted that is critical to our understanding of the unique possibilities in a 3D virtual medium, and the list of participants reads like a Who's Who of virtual abstract art. I welcome guest blogger Bjorlyn Loon, and her insightful piece on this collection.


by Bjorlyn Loon



DanCoyote Antonelli’s (aka DC Spensley) new exhibit, Kiss the Sky, is an historical document in recognition of a community of artists in Second Life. Like most of us, artists and critics are searching for new words and constructs to define their virtual experience. Says Antonelli: “Since virtual worlds are a change of venue – a drastic change of venue – the former critical language is not enough.”

Dancoyote Antonelli: "The people in this show are each like a Picasso, or like the abstract expressionists of our time. They have embraced virtual world conditions, and are representing an avant-garde within an avant-garde that is nearly incomprehensible in material-world art. Feel the history, we are living in it!

One of the reasons that Hyperformalism has not mainstreamed until now is that there are a lot of practitioners that are not communicating with each other. In Second Life Hyperformalism has found a home in that it is an indigenous art form. Hyperformal work has always existed uncomfortably in the material sphere.

While space in virtual worlds is a simulation, place can be real. In fact, art experiences are the only thing that can be real in both the virtual and material worlds at the same time.” Kiss the Sky is tiered in the air above New Media Consortium’s NMC Arts Lab (teleport directly from here), and visitors are encouraged to interact with the works, and to experience them on many levels, including sight, sound and play.

Not all of this work is brand spanking new: it is not intended to be. What is new about it is that it is all together. This is a survey, a critical milestone to mark this time in history and present the shared histories of these artists in one concentrated punch.”

In addition to work from DanCoyote Antonelli, Kiss the Sky artists include Chance Abattoir, Vlad Bjornson, nand Nerd, Selavy Oh, Adam Ramona, Nebulosus Severine, AngryBeth Shortbread, Sasun Steinbeck, Sabine Stonebender, Seifert Surface, elros Tuominen, Juria Yoshikawa, and i7o Zhu.

Antonelli has developed a new native architecture for experiencing this exhibit, which might otherwise be difficult to maneuver as a result of its massive scale. Strategically placed purple seats call up a menu where you can select from among the 35 works in the exhibit, and the seat will gently transport you to your choice. Says Antonelli, “What is important is that there is no remediated architecture here: Interface serves content. The seats take you to all the exhibits, near the sign that only opens when you are near enough to read. The signs and seats are in the same place in each exhibit, so once you get it, you have it.”

Hyperformalism is non-figurative abstraction in a hyper-medium, including abstract objects arranged in simulated space, navigable on a network, as well as expressions of reactive and interactive artwork behaviors and geometric or algorithmic pattern play in 2, 3, and 4 dimensions. Because Hyperformalist works are unique created entities that are not representational, viewer relationships are less fettered by pre-existing symbolic weight and the artworks encourage fascination with form and pure relationships. The virtual world provides the ability to liberate the work from scale constraints and provides a perfect context for this post-conceptualist movement.


Juria Yoshikawa’s creation embraces Kiss the Sky in sheer physical dimensions. "In all three of my works, as the name of the show Kiss the Sky suggested,” says Yoshikawa, “I tried to create forms to pull people in and draw them skyward. In the large piece Infinite Pixel Loop most of all, I was aiming at a reaction of immersive upward motion."


Conversely, the pulsating rock specatacle of i7o’s Zhu Name Unknown contrasts with the aerial setting of Kiss the Sky, suggesting a literal and conceptual grounding.


According to the artist, Adam Ramona’s works in Kiss The Sky “explore the audiovisual relationship between the avatar and virtual space. Sound and vision are created and modified dynamically by the avatar's movement through space, creating a real-time composition unique to that user and time.” Seen here: A Rose Heard At Dusk


Seifert Surface is directly concerned with the mathematics of 3D, which Antonelli describes as “one genre of hyperformalism.” For example, Surface’s Spore, created in 2006, “is based on a process that turns up in nature a lot: 'growing' new objects around some axis at an angle of 2pi/Phi from the previous one, where Phi is the golden ratio, (1+sqrt(5))/2.” Siefert’s Meandering Hypercube “is a projection of the hypercube from 4d to the 3d of Second Life, just as the 3d of Second Life projects to the 2d of a computer screen.”


Veteran artist Sabine Stonebender describes her KissTS – MoreAndLess as “Positive space vs. Negative space in an endless cycle,” and it is mesmerizing.


Of his Plant Deco installation, artist Vlad Bjornson says “The changing, geometric shapes of each piece are fractal and self-similar in nature, somewhat like the structure of Real Life plants. The colors of each piece were inspired by some of my favorite artists, borrowing color pallets from their works. Each piece changes to a unique configuration each time it is touched, with billions of possible combinations.”


AngryBeth Shortbread extends her Real Life art into Second Life with a strong emphasis on sound, play, and interactivity. Her Pusher-Tron is no exception.


Nand Nerd, who refers to himself as an… “Artist? I'm no artist. What would I know about art? I'm an Engineer, damnit,” has always been intrigued by Antonelli’s art. “The flexi-hedra started off as a whimsical use of the new flexible path feature,” says Nerd, “Once I'd seen the outcome I was hooked and developed a range of polyhedra to be given the same treatment.” Nerd’s Square Antiprism Tower at Kiss the Sky responds to touch in unexpected ways, which defy gravity.


Nebulosus Severine, who has been working in Second Life since 2005, produces works which she describes as “Chromotive [Chroma (color) + Emotive (drawing out or evoking emotion)].” Her Pulse Points (I, II, III) is a crystalline structure which surrounds the avatar in pulsating light.


Chance Abattoir is interested in interactivity, and brings skills in texturing, building, 3d modeling, and scripting to the artistic task. His 5.3.5(2) juxtaposes dissimilar shapes which evolve according to the angle of view, and change further, and more dramatically, upon touch. Chance elaborates, “It's not meant to convey anything other than self-reflexivity. Each part of the art refers to another part of the art.”


In the year and a half that elros Tuominen has been in Second Life, he says that he has “never stopped learning about building, scripting, textures... I feel like a child, playing with everything I find, and expressing myself freely.” Tuominen is a prolific artist, treating his friends to new poetry or sculpture every single day. For elros, Underconstruction City v.06 is a massive work, demonstrating his increasing mastery of the medium, and communicating his expanding reach towards impossibilities.


Sasun Steinbeck has been working on her Morphing Sculpture for years, perfecting it. It scintillates against a starry night sky or cloudless blue with equal impact. Like many of the works within Kiss the Sky, Steinbeck’s is configurable by the visitor, in this case via choices of texture.


Selavy Oh describes her Soft Structure as “part of a series of conceptual works exploring and utilizing inherent properties of the simulated world of Second Life. Motion of the structure is created by virtual wind, the color reflects cloud density, and the cloud-like fragility of the installation is emphasized by temporarily dispersing the elements upon avatar intrusion.”

In sum, for all their differences, the works of art in Kiss the Sky achieve Antonelli’s goal of creating a historical node. People will look back at this exhibition, with the experience of years, and see a tipping point, where, according to Antonelli, “Hyperformalists on Second Life have more in common with each other than we do with the material or conceptual art worlds.”

All photos by Bjorlyn Loon, with these exceptions: Overview: Antonelli, Infinite Pixel Loop: Yoshikawa, Morphing Sculpture: Steinbeck, A Rose Heard At Dusk: Ramona, Pulse Points (I, II, III): Severine, and Soft Sculpture: Oh.

Fibreculture Journal critiques DanCoyote Antonelli's 'Art and (Second) Life'

Jo-Anne Green, co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts - Turbulence, has alerted me to a just-issued and noteworthy paper on art in Second Life.

Malia Ventura (aka Caroline McCaw) is a senior lecturer and academic leader in communication design at Otago Polytechnic, in Dunedin, New Zealand. She has just published the paper Art and (Second) Life in Fibreculture Journal, an Australia-based peer-reviewed international journal that "encourages critical and speculative interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and communication technologies and their policy frameworks, network cultures and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability."

Mostly, she explores two running themes: the Hyperformalist art of NPIRLer DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley), his philosophy and accomplishments, and the context in which his art is produced and read, while addressing the environmental metaphors of Second Life. In the second thread, she also draws parallels between his art and the settler culture of New Zealand, "to consider the role of art in new environments."



Notably, Ms. McCaw's paper is derived from interviews conducted with DC during August of 2006, which preceded his Full Immersion Hyperformalism installation, and the second ZeroG SkyDancers Dancing with Angels , as well as the latest and current ZeroG SkyDancers event.

Gary Hazlitt's trailer is the next-best way for those not using Second Life to get a sense of what transpires during Second Spring: ZeroG SkyDancers, which is in the final stretch of its three month run and expected to close at the end of March.


You can see a higher resolution version of this here.

I contacted DC to get his impressions on Fibreculture Journal's piece:

DanCoyote Antonelli: I am very proud to be written about by such a scholarly person as Caroline McCaw. Her critical credentials are impeccable, and in the short time we had to speak with each other, she has gleaned more about my project in Second Life than most. It is often said that art in Second Life is without critical intervention. For the most part this is true. However, this work of Ms. McCaw's is as good as it gets and I am delighted beyond words that my work in virtual worlds is the subject of her paper.

This has been a good month for DC, insofar as Real Media exposure is concerned. He is also featured in the print edition of the March/April 2008 issue of Step Inside Design - along with artist Sabine Stonebender.

DanCoyote Antonelli overcomes Real Life constraints in Second Life; finds a home and venue for his art

The realm of any original theorist is a lonely place. I spent two engrossing hours with NPIRL'er DanCoyote Antonelli, and we only scratched the surface of the world this thinking man has invented for himself. Whether or not you agree with... or even understand his doctrines, know this: DanCoyote is making art history in the metaverse, and you can and should experience this masterpiece for yourself now at the Arts and Letters installation for Full Immersion Hyperformalism: (Teleport directly)
Bettina Tizzy: Who is DanCoyote and where is he/what does he do in real life?
Dancoyote Antonelli: DC Spensley is the artist behind the agent/avatar DanCoyote Antonelli. DanCoyote is a logo, not a personality. While I respect that people have a rich role playing life in SL, and know how important it is to many, it is not my project to role play in SL. I am called DC in both worlds. It is my project to merge the two through my art practice.

I am in San Francisco… have been a practicing, exhibiting artist here (in RL) for over 20 years. (My) work spans genre and medium. I am fortunate to have many different threads in my career, (and) while I create and display physical works in RL, I also have a burgeoning digital output as well. The two connect actually, theoretically and literally.

I have been attempting serious art with digital tools since Photoshop 1.0, so my research is many, many degrees older than SL. However, none of that work had a venue.


I thing the Web is a lousy place to show art. It is like TV in that all things become equal and flat on TV. Let’s say you have Gandhi on one side, and Britney Spears on the other in an interview on TV. The audience assumes they are both equal since they are being interviewed on the same show… but in fact, they are not. Gandhi is a world hero for the ages, Brit is a pop entertainer. Both contribute, but not in equal ways... so I do not like to show my work on the Web.

Bettina Tizzy: Please describe that aha! moment... when you realized that SL was the right venue.
Dancoyote Antonelli: I actually had an opportunity to get into SL in 2004, but was in for a few minutes and decided it was a strip mall; didn’t come back. In early 2006 I was at the San Francisco Art Institute doing a performance piece called "Love is Stronger than Hate," when a friend told me about a call for entries for Ars Virtua. Rubaiyat Shatner is the curator. I contacted him via email and he gave me instructions to meet him in SL.

As I (re)explored SL, I realized a few fundamental things. #1: This young culture was starving for serious art. Retail, porn and gambling were the dominant forms as they are in RL. I knew then I wanted to plant roses.

The second thing I realized is that my work was native in SL. I had finally found a home and a venue for work I had been doing on faith for a decade.

#3 is the third realization that people in SL are surrounded by cheap reproductions. The art market - such as it was - had topped out at 300 Lindens. I decided to do a conceptual experiment to begin to cultivate value in SL, and refused to make copies of my work for any reason. (I) don’t resell work after a collector acquires it. My first offerings were around 2700L.

Bettina Tizzy: So all one-of-a-kind pieces? Every single piece you make?
Dancoyote Antonelli: Yes, unique. My only concession is that I can display works, but not make them available for collectors. So in the last year and a half, the value of my work has evolved from 2700L to 150,000L. I sometimes display a work in a collection, yes, but never resell editions, prints, copies, etc. Unique objects are of great value to collectors… and art can, and does appreciate in value, just like in RL. This is not to say that I am all that interested in commerce. It was a conceptual experiment.

Bettina Tizzy: My read is that you are opposed to open source.
Dancoyote Antonelli: Many people jump to that conclusion. Open source is important for tools and delivery artifice. It is an enabler. (In any life,) your value in commerce of any kind is directly connected to the quality of your ideas. Ideas = creative capital. (I support it) by making some things open source. I have also done very public works at the OSMOSL (Open Source Museum of SL), an experiment with Brown University.

The feeling out there on the street is that open source means my content should be free. Tools and delivery should be free to encourage culture. Artists, like plumbers need to pay the bills; (get paid) for their work… and artists make creative capital.

Bettina Tizzy: Explain, in lay terms, what Hyperformalism is...
Dancoyote Antonelli: I use Hyperformalist to describe the art movement that the art world missed…the differential of technological proficiency and old school modernist dominance kept critics and thinkers from mainstreaming important developments in the boundaries of art. Part of my conceptual project is what I call “neologism.” I am a theorist as well as a practice person. Neologism = new word, in demonstration of theory.

Everything I do is abstract, but none of it is random. Hyperformalism is formalist abstraction, (as in) basic building blocks of aesthetic experience: form, shape, color, volume, etc, in hyper medium which allows for scripting and ersatz gravity.

The work I do in SL is not modeling for RL. I make it my mission to push as hard as possible to overcome RL constraints. It is my goal is to bring the Guggenheim audience into virtual reality to experience my work.

Bettina Tizzy: What tools do you use primarily?
Dancoyote Antonelli: (I) have been using Photoshop since 1.0. Another tool I use is a film production model. I use everything at my disposal. I own 10 Macs of every generation, and have software tools for every generation… many not available anymore.

Visual art is only a portion of my project. I also compose audio and perform. DanCoyote actually came into being as an audio performer at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco where my combo played at the "Bang the Machine" show: DanCoyote and the Alonso Quixano Experience. I am a fan of John Cage, in that I believe that the constraints of "music" are too limiting. The stream here (Arts and Letters) is my work.

Bettina Tizzy: I am listening. Describe it.
Dancoyote Antonelli: At different times…atonal, arrhythmic audio, hyperformalism, related to Edgard Varese.
Bettina Tizzy: but, but… that description sounds... so cold! I find it warm and conflicted, and earthy, and other worldly, at once.
Dancoyote Antonelli: It is warm because it is not practiced. I set up circumstances. I don’t dictate. I compose the circumstances of chance operations - like in Cage - but not for the same reasons. Cage was trying to take the hand of the artist out of the picture. That has been (proven) impossible. My hand appears in the possibilities, the set of potentials I bring to bear, not in the choreography of what occurs.
Bettina Tizzy: That is too theoretical. Take that down a few notches and explain it to me as if I were your grandmother. What do you mean?
Dancoyote Antonelli: I make noise, granny,
Bettina Tizzy: ahaha
Dancoyote Antonelli: …for its own sake... in complex ways that some call art and most call noise.

DanCoyote’s key collaborators are:
Patrons: Giulio Perhaps, Larry Pixel, Kitty Tully.
Scripters: ZenMondo Wormser, Qarl Fizz, Seronis Zagato.
Music: For the SkyDancer show: ZeroOne Paz, Mick Mahoney; for Arts and Letters: Jamie Timms with the JAMX Co-Lab.

Many thanks to DC for providing some of the photography for this post.