Memespelunk - Second Life through Juria Yoshikawa's eyes - Expect the unexpected

The first time I experienced Juria Yoshikawa's (aka Lance Shield) work, I was spell-bound... my earliest interactive art experience in the metaverse. It was the "I'm Not Here" immersive light installation at the Gaping Lotus Experience art space back in May of this year. The colors were clean and bright, like easter eggs.

Sadly, the art in the next three photographs exists only in Juria's inventory. We can't have it all ^.^


By combining these colors with light, motion, audio and animations, Juria created a space you wanted to step into and stay in.



Over the many weeks that followed, Juria's new art popped up everywhere... as often as 4 and 5 times a month. I would run to inhabit it.



Then - on July 14th - Juria took a giant leap forward. We were treated to Blink - Two Rooms and an Island - an enormous installation featuring Juria's art combined with AldoManutio Abruzzo's (RL = Dennis Moser) blissful soundscape. I don't mind telling you, plain and simple, that I was blown away. Upon arrival, we were handed gowns of light and animations... and sent off to play. We became, in fact, pixelated paint splashed onto Juria and AldoManutio's audiovisual canvas, wiggling and squiggling about in our dream states.

Fortunately, Evo Szuyuan (aka Brigit Lichtenegger) documented the opening of that show with this video:



Since then, Juria has created numerous installations - large and small - throughout the grid, but it wasn't until the island of Memespelunk came into being that Juria's art began to have some permanence. I am laughing as I type these words. I don't really believe that the word permanence exists in Juria's vocabulary :P.

I am jazzed with the way Lance, the real life Tokyo-based multimedia artist and designer who operates Juria-the-avatar, describes her: "She inevitably chooses scales larger than conventional gallery work because she is interested in people experiencing the work in a physical way - flying through them, riding on them and socializing within the art. To Juria, virtual art is about freeing oneself up to create in ways she finds impossible in real life."

Still... it isn't that Juria is impermanent. It just happens that her art has a very short life span. At least in any state. Here is one typical example... last week Juria alerted me to this:

I love Tron. Um, I love spermatozoa. I sorta love water ballet. Where am I going with this? Let's just say that an experiment went astray and an exuberance of joyful display is had for one and all. The spermatozoa are jumping and the spirit of Tron is in their hearts. Be happy. You won't get pregnant. (Statistical data: 87% of sl av's are male including the girl avs.) Splash!

A few hours later, I received another notecard:

From consumer research and the opinions of my loyal viewers, I have decided to change the name of my latest work to "Headless Spermatozoa Impregnated with the Spirit of Tron (a Water Ballet circa 1982)". Yes the sperm are HEADLESS and IMPREGNATED. Don't ask me how this could happen but it has. It has also been noted that my earlier statistic that 82% of sl avs are male was pure fabrication.

Before one more thing happened, I decided I'd better make my way over there, and this is what I found:



The tune that plays while the sperm cavort playfully in this pool is rather catchy... and happy.

I went back tonight to see what it all looked like in Windlight... and Juria had been tweaking again. Teleport directly from here.



Now the pool filled with headless, pregnant sperm had been invaded by ovum. No further explanation...

... and that is just the way it is if you - like me - are going to follow Juria's art.

Strawberry Holiday' sends us on our journey

It was a pretty invitation... luminous, with sweet particle stars.



"On Their Journeys" by Strawberry Holiday - which opened today - is a girlish, diaphanous installation that encourages daydreaming. Teleport directly from here.

The pathways are interactive... you might be enveloped in a translucent cloud, or see the steps twinkle beneath your feet.



Her "fractal trees" will surely please fiddling Flickrites as much as they did me. I don't have PhotoShop... yet... but this is one place that begs playfulness with the resulting photographs.



Here is the raw pic... Heh, as you can see, I still have a looong way to go before I can call myself a photographer.



The colors, particularly from this perspective, made me think that we need a recreation of Monet's garden at Giverny in Second Life.



In a few weeks, "On Their Journeys" is expected to join other interactive art at the much anticipated opening exhibition for the new NMC Aho Museum, curated by our very own Tayzia Abattoir.

Not Possible IRL Field Trips with Seifert Surface

NPIRL members received a notice on August 14, 2007 advising them that it was MATH FINALS WEEK. And so it was...

Our very own Seifert Surface is a postdoctoral mathematician who can explain, in terms a layperson can grasp, what in the heck is going on with the many (dozens and dozens - is that a legitimate quantity, Seifert? ^.^) elegant, math-inspired sculptures he's not only built but often scripted.

But his work isn't just about mathematical representation. These things are... beautiful. Yep. And fun. And most would simply not be possible in Real Life. Well, maybe some of them would be but you would need a budget equal to the GNP of a small nation to realize them.

So... on Friday, August 17th, this math-mage hosted TWO tours for NPIRL'ers at his Future sim, rezzing things from his inventory, activating kinetic sculptures such as a rotating 4D hypercube and a procedurally-generated Fibonacci sequence, and then...he explained them! T'was great fun walking all over the Costa-Hoffman-Meeks surface and then having him personally demo his interpretation of Robert Heinlein's Crooked House.



I'm sorry if you weren't there. Was way cool. For those of us who have always thought of math as a PITB (you figure it out), this was math therapy. But go check this place out anyway! On a practical level, *his elevator and transporter system alone* are reasons enough to drop everything and run over to have a look.
The Future
***
It was simply not possible to see all the ingenious things this man has created in even two sessions. Here are some extra links and things to kick your experience up a knot or two:

NMC Campus - Sculpture at the NMC Campus
Seifert's Sculpture Garden, The Future

Hey Scope Cleaver: thank you for introducing us to Seifert. He's a keeper!

FlowerBall - An interactive art thingy

This gorgeous show - definitely Not Possible IRL - opens to the public on Saturday but the creator, our own Douglas Story, is letting us preview now. What does it feel like to visit a flower as a bee or a hummingbird? While that isn't the stated intention of the show, I believe this is the closest we are going to come to that experience. * Read the notecard upon arrival as you should change your settings to enjoy fully. * And hey, it's on the usually not open-to-public and way cool Princeton sim.

FlowerBall

Notice issued to NPIRL group on July 17, 2007

Gazira Babeli is joining!

I'm thrilled to share with you that the inspiration for this group, Gazira Babeli, the artist responsible for the amazing interactive art at the Odyssey Project right now (and also the subject of this group's first notice) - is joining our little group.

Notice originally issued to the NPIRL group on July 7, 2007 (hey, that's 7/7/07!)

Exhibit A - Gazira Babeli - the Odyssey Project

Gazira Babeli - See her coding-meets-the-arts work at the Odyssey Project and allow her to confuse, disturb, and totally crack you up. Take friends. Interact with everything, but be warned... save the chairs on the wall for last unless, of course, you have a twisted sense of humor.

Odyssey, Exhibit A Gallery


Notice sent to group on July 4, 2007