On Artists and their Patrons: An SL6B discussion to help shape the future of the Arts

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

On June 1, the New Media Consortium's (NMC) CEO Larry Pixel (aka Dr. Larry F. Johnson) guest blogged here on a topic that has sparked a vibrant dialogue: On Artists and their Patrons: Nurturing Support for the Arts in Second Life®.

The arts in Second Life may be blossoming, but the level of sophistication in terms of sponsorship, promotion and funding still lags far behind Real Life. Also of much concern: lands that were previously available, and amply so, are drying up.

What do our artists and their patrons need to do to get up to speed? How can we encourage more of Second Life's residents to step up and provide meaningful support to the arts?

Please join us tomorrow for a critically important panel presentation to discuss how we can foster and shape the future of arts in Second Life... and begin to put them on par with their Real Life counterparts.

ON ARTISTS AND THEIR PATRONS, Nurturing Support for the Arts in Second Life

WHEN: Friday, June 26, 2009 at 7pm SLT - (60 minutes)
WHERE: NMC's Cooper Coliseum (teleport directly from here)

The session will be conducted in Second Life voice.

PANELISTS:

* Alexandar Vargas (multi-sim arts patron, including Welsh Lakes, artist)
* DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley, artist)
* Douglas Story (artist)
* Mondray Chandler (RL Museum)
* Nur Mo (founder/owner of Poetik Velvets; patron)

Chair: Bettina Tizzy

GOALS:

* To inspire more land owners to provide significant land and other means of support to artists.
* To compare and contrast funding/support methods in Real Life versus Second Life. This level of sophistication and understanding has to begin with us.
* To encourage artists and their patrons to discuss expectations at the onset.
* To come up with a tool set, sort of a Chinese menu, that is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Many thanks to Larry Pixel for bringing attention to this important issue and to the NMC for their support and the use of their venue.

The safety of spaces

He has challenged our idea of place since the beginning with the Far Away... a field of wheat, grey skies, a rusty old train, a table... but in our pixelated reality it is a comforting riddle that has gripped the imagination of tens of thousands of its visitors. Now, AM Radio, degreed in Fine Arts and living in the Chicago area, has unveiled two new installations: Husk, on a sim sponsored by the New Media Consortium, and The Quiet, sponsored by Princeton University. It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to his new Machinima featuring - and weaving together - all three places, with music by Torley Linden.



I learned today that AM seeks to inspire viewers to create and define their own narratives of experience as evidenced within the Flickr groups (see below) that are dedicated to each of the installations.

He shared the following quote with me from John A. Jalke's "The Visual Elements of Landscape":

A view, as a complex set of objects (a kind of place itself), can be categorized to basic components. These components include: (1) extent of view or the distance over which sight is effective; (2) foreground-middleground-background discontinuities or the existence of multiple horizons; (3) enframement by which the sight is bounded; (4) focal points that serve as attention getters; and (5) sense of security implicit in focal points that imply refuge. Effective views contain prospects that enable viewers to survey considerable distances over several successive horizons.

AM Radio: At once, you can read these ideas to mean that safe havens are, in fact, tactical positions, or more simply, great hiding places. Refuge implies safety. The way in which a place can imply safety is via its tactical position in a landscape. Comfort can be specifically constructed into a new unfamiliar space via it's ability to supply a visual advantage. The visual advantage allows the user to remain in a place while monitoring all entry points, as well as to plan an escape should the refuge fail. The design of the space should also imply the possible exploration of further, unseen spaces.

AM's work seeks to show that ideas of landscape and tourism are as pervasive in 3d virtual spaces as they are in real life. By creating a framework of traditional, and recognizable experiences based in realism, the artist can begin to manipulate the rules our souls would wish to prohibit. Rules such as gravity.

AM Radio: Realism in virtual spaces declares a universal language, upon which abstractions can be created. By transporting the user into a safe place by using rich visuals steeped in nostalgia and familiarity, these spaces calm the user into accepting what would seem to be impossible and dreamlike situations. The viewer is then free to form ideas and to make emotional associations upon the implied meanings of objects and symbols within the sims, rather than wondering if and how they should. The viewer subsequently and confidently shares those ideas and emotions with their fellow virtual travelers via images, dialog and stories.

Flickr groups about these three installations:
The Far Away (teleport directly from here)
The Quiet (teleport directly from here)
Husk (teleport directly from here)

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.

Mr. Pixel goes to Washington

Update: You can view the testimonial here.

Our own Larry Pixel (aka Larry Johnson, PhD), CEO of the New Media Consortium (NMC), testified today, along with Philip Linden (aka Philip Rosedale) - soon to step down as CEO to become Chairman of the Board of Second Life's Linden Lab - before Congress and its Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The topic: "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium.” You can read what Larry had to say here.

It's a shame that Philip didn't publish his prepared remarks on the web, as well. For the record, I'd be happy to share my thoughts with the marketing and public relations team of Linden Lab. I think they need to pull up their socks, don't you?