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.

Brooklyn is watching (us)

Pavig Lok, lead creator of the inimitable Greenies Home Rezzable, put a bug in my ear about a new mixed realities project that is just getting underway in Second Life. It sounded promising, so I set out to learn more.

Since March 1 and for a year, artist Jay Newt (aka: Jay Van Buren) of the Real Life art gallery Jack the Pelican Presents is going to navigate the virtual world of Second Life and hobnob with les pixelated artistes as part of his conceptual art project Brooklyn is Watching.



"BROOKLYN IS WATCHING" FAST FACTS

* "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. A performance space and presentation/sandbox in Second Life have been set up for this. (Teleport directly from here) An avatar, in the shape of an eyeball and under the name Monet Destiny will view and project the goings-on there at all times onto a large screen monitor at the Real Life gallery.



* A computer at the gallery will run the Second Life application at all times when the gallery is open (every day from 9am to 3pm SLT, except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays) – via the eyeball avatar Monet Destiny - and when visitors to the gallery so choose, they may drive the avatar and take it wherever they want. The BiW avatar is scripted to follow anyone who approaches the stage, if its not receiving any commands from a person at the gallery. The stage itself, is rigged with a giant spring that raises the stage suddenly and violently when someone in the tower presses a special button, catapulting anyone on it, off it immediately. This creates a ‘gong-show‘ effect where people in the gallery can express their displeasure or boredom with the activities on the stage.

* Avatars will be able to send a jpg snapshot to the gallery and anyone inside the gallery will be able to email snapshots back to the BiW avatar. A dedicated blog will document the exchange and other activities.

* A weekly podcast called “Brooklyn is Watching” will be recorded at the gallery featuring 'guest stars’ from both the Real Life art world and Second Life. The format will be unabashedly patterned after Diggnation, a popular podcast about tech-news.

Jay Newt: Brooklyn is Watching is about “cultural colonialism,” marketing, the attention economy, critique, dialog, power-relationships, and the difference between potential and actual with four parts spanning the virtual, 3d space of Second Life, the two dimensional “traditional” Internet and the ultimate hipster mothership, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is an artwork, an entertainment product, a venue for critical dialog and a marketing vehicle. It also will be a hell of a lot of fun.

Bettina Tizzy: Who is Jay Newt in Real Life and what are you all about?

Jay Newt: I am a painter mostly. Born in Kansas... moved to NYC in 1997 to get my MFA in painting at Parsons. I first found out about Second Life from Rubaiyat Shatner - who I met at a College Art Association conference. He told me about it and I got in world - this was about 2 years ago - and I immediately had this feeling on the back of my neck like "oh my god this going to be huge." It was like the Internet was in 1994... just about to break out.

I got involved in Ars Virtua - one of the early "serious" virtual art galleries - helping curate some things and sitting on the board that selected artists in residence, and then that gallery gave me a virtual show, which was really when I got more emotionally involved.



Jay Newt: Jack the Pelican Presents has been around for about five years. It's a gallery run by Don Carrol who has been an artist and an art critic for years. JTPP has an international reputation. When I had an artist residency in Holland, I was amazed that people had heard of this Brooklyn gallery that is a few blocks from my studio, and the same thing happened when I visited London. It's got a better rep in Europe than it does across the East River in Manhattan.



Bettina Tizzy: ... and your own art? What is it all about?

Jay Newt: I make paintings, and do events. The paintings are of stuffed animals, spaceships and fursuiters. The events have, up to now, been artworld-furry world combined happenings, like the "fursuit portrait paintoff' which I've done in Rotterdam, Brooklyn and Kansas City.

Bettina Tizzy: Are you a furry?

Jay Newt: I'm not. I call myself a "fan of the fandom." One of my furry friends calls me a "meta furry." I am fascinated and delighted by furries, partly cause I just don't quite get it and never will.

Bettina Tizzy: How close to your original idea is "Brooklyn is Watching?"

Jay Newt: It really is very close. Boris Kizelshteyn built everything just like I drew it.



Jay Newt: I'm convinced that Second Life is the future. So what is "fun" to me is to create a venue where people can show their stuff and have an audience that will take them seriously and help "break" Second Life to the wider world, especially the NY art scene. It's like a portal into another country or something.

Amy Freelunch (aka Amy Wilson) is a good friend of mine and for years we've shared a blog. She's a painter, and has been shown in lots of prestigious places. She went through a whole "SL sucks" and then "wait, no it doesn't" process. Had to do with meeting the right people.

In May 2007, she published a book called Postcards from Second Life.


That's me, in an avatar by Yoa Ogee, interviewing Jay Newt

Jay Newt: We will have a weekly podcast starting next week. It will use the blog as its agenda to record everything that happens... well, everything of interest. We're just a bunch of people in Brooklyn with our own slant on things and no apologies for being biased.

Bettina Tizzy: What is Williamsburg, Brooklyn like?

Jay Newt: It's New York's young artist neighborhood, but it's also full of 23 year old trust fund kids with art degrees, and lots of people who work in media, advertising, etc. It's really cool and really annoying sometimes. Have you ever seen "Hipster Olympics?" That was filmed in Williamsburg, like a block from this gallery.



According to artist and scripter Sasun Steinbeck, there are 404 art venues in Second Life. Sasun knows this because, for the past two years, she has managed a gallery information kiosk system she created - and updates every week - that has dispensed 115,375 gallery lists, so far.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of the city of New York, and also the most populous borough, with more than 2.5 million residents. It is said that if Brooklyn were an independent city, it would be the fourth largest in the United States. Brooklyn has its own Sasun Steinbeck, better known as the Brooklyn Arts Council.

Brooklyn has many neighborhoods, but the two most recognized for their art and gallery scenes are the DUMBO district (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and Williamsburg, which in 1992 was declared "The New Bohemia" on the cover of New York magazine. For years thereafter, Williamsburg - blessed with low rents, and a belly-to-belly proximity to the seat of power in the Americas: Manhattan - began its ascent up the hipster hill as buzz about it being a haven for the artist community got louder and louder. This had the reverse desired effect however, and rents have nearly doubled in the area in a very short while.