Category: Art in Second Life

The HuMaNoiD side of Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
HuMaNoiD - LEA 6
HuMaNoiD – LEA 6

Making a welcome return to Second Life – for a limited period of time, at least – is Wendy Xeno’s HuMaNoiD, which can now be seen at LEA 6, having last been available on the grid a little over a year ago.

I first encountered HuMaNoiD far back in 2012, on the recommendation of Chestnut Rau. At the time, it was a fascinating, contemplative visit, and throughout several return visits over the years, I continued to find it an evocative place; I’m pleased to say this it still is.

HuMaNoiD - LEA 6
HuMaNoiD – LEA 6

For those who have visited HuMaNoiD in the past, all of the familiar elements are there: the ground level watery landscape, the cello awaiting a player as J.S. Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude can be heard. Around this stand five doorways inviting visitors to open each in turn and step through, and explore the realms in the sky on the other side of each one.

Beyond these, water breaks the landscape into a series of vignettes the visitor is invited to explore. Again, for those who have been to HuMaNoiD in the past, there will be a pleasant feeling of familiarity and comfort to most of them, although one or two nuanced changes have been made from the original, the result of working within the dome needed to give the installation a feeling of an infinite open space;. However, it’s fair to say the changes enhance the region’s aesthetic; I particularly like the bridge suspended beneath balloons (seen at the top of this piece).

HuMaNoiD - LEA 6
HuMaNoiD – LEA 6

The sky spaces are in places similarly reworked, but all present environments rich in context and colour, and once again offer places of contemplation and introspection.  With the sky a little darker than previously, but the elements of poetry still to be found and read, a visit to HuMaNoiD offers much to all, whether you recall the original or make this opportunity a first visit.

One definitely not to be missed, I understand HuMaNoiD will remain at LEA 6 until the end of July.

HuMaNoiD - LEA 6
HuMaNoiD – LEA 6

SLurl Details

Windlight: a new magazine for art in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

WindlightWindlight is the the title of a new arts magazine for Second Life which will be launching in July 2015.

Founded by John (Johannes1977 Resident), himself a SL photographer and also RFL of SL activist, Windlight brings together a talented team to cover art in all its forms in SL with monthly news, reviews, articles, interviews, commentary and more.

A joint venture with AviChoice Productions, organisers of the the Avi Choice Awards and publishers of Avi Choice Magazine, Windlight’s goal is to cover the Second Life art scene and to support  artists, photographers, galleries, and art-related events. The first issue will feature artist Bryn Oh, and photographer Skip Staheli alongside Sasun Steinbeck, Nikki Mathieson and more.

When I call the team behind the magazine talented, I’m not exaggerating. Joining John, who is the magazine’s co-publisher and editor as well is its founder, are: Nikki Mathieson, owner of Avi Choice Productions and Windlight’s co-publisher, Jessi2009 Warrhol, the magazine’s Marketing Manager, together with contributing writers Emma Portilo and Shakti Adored.

Windlight brings together a talented team: John (Johannes1977 Resident), Founder, Publisher & Editor In Chief; Nikki Mathieson, Co-Publisher & Owner of Avi Choice Productions; Jessii2009 Warrhol, Marketing; Emma Portilo, Featured Contributor and Shakti Adored, Featured Contributor
Windlight brings together a talented team: John (Johannes1977 Resident), Founder, Publisher & Editor In Chief; Nikki Mathieson, Co-Publisher & Owner of Avi Choice Productions; Jessii2009 Warrhol, Marketing; Emma Portilo, Featured Contributor and Shakti Adored, Featured Contributor

The Windlight Magazine Art Gallery Fellowship Programme

As a part of the magazine’s desire to help promote and support artists and photographers, Windlight is launching the Windlight Magazine Art Gallery Fellowship Programme. this offers those accepted into it with gallery space free of charge for a period of 30 days.

Applications are now being taken for the first round of awards, so if you are interested, do make sure to check the application guidelines and complete the application form.

The Windlight Gallery will provide free space to artists under the Windlight Fellowship Programme
The Windlight Gallery will provide free space to artists under the Windlight Fellowship Programme

Commenting on the magazine as we discussed the upcoming first edition, John said, “In establishing Windlight, we hope to provide a means by which the rich, incredible diversity of art within Second Life can be more broadly enjoyed and appreciated, by both Second Life users and, hopefully, an audience beyond the platform as well.”

As someone who genuinely appreciates art within Second Life, that’s a vision I can fully support, and I am both honoured proud to say that I’ll be joining Windlight from August 2015 as a contributing writer. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity; joining the team will not only allow me to extend my friendship with John and Jessi, both of whom I’ve come to know by way of Relay for Life; but will also further increase my own understanding of, and appreciation for, art in general.

So – keep your eyes out for Windlight this July!

Artistic timbres in second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

 

Slayton Drake: A Palette of Timbres, Cape Able Art Gallery
Slatan Dryke: A Palette of Timbres, Cape Able Art Gallery

Saturday, June 20th saw the opening of a new exhibition featuring the art of Second Life photographer and sculptor, Slatan Dryke.

A Palette of Timbres, hosted at Virtual Ability’s Cape Able Art Gallery, presents 27 images captured by Slatan together with a number of his still and animated sculptures. As might be taken from the title of the exhibition, each of the images on display features strong tonal colours which mark them as much as – if not more so – than their subject matter.

Slayton Drake: A Palette of Timbres, Cape Able Art Gallery
Slatan Dryke: A Palette of Timbres, Cape Able Art Gallery

The result is a series of pictures, many of them of familiar places across Second Life, presented in the most striking of ways, where the choice of colour both projects a sense of texture and tone of mood – much as musical timbre is used to describe the deeper sense of tone and quality evidenced in the sound of music – light, dark, warm, bright, cool, and so on.

Of course, we’re all familiar with seeing colour in art, responding to its use and the way in which the artist makes use of his or her palette; but within several of the pieces here, there is the deliberate over-emphasis of certain colours and shades to present the subject matter in such a way as to almost give it a voice, a sound; perhaps even a harmony. Thus, the observer is offered a glimpse into the world of psychoacoustics which is in many respects, entirely in keeping with the place in which the exhibition is being hosted.

Which is also not to say that one needs to be deeply immersed in the theory of timbre and sound or the use of colour in order to appreciate the pieces on display. Slatan has a fine eye for composition – as fine a composer’s ear for music, one might be tempted to say –  and his images are exquisite in their detail and beauty, which makes them tempting additions for any collection or home.

Should you be interested in owning a copy of any of the pieces displayed, please keep in mind that Virtual Ability is a non-profit 501(c)3 organisation, and is prevented from allowing third parties such as artists from selling directly on their regions; so please contact Slatan directly.

Slayton Drake: A Palette of Timbres, Cape Able Art Gallery
Slatan Dryke: A Palette of Timbres, Cape Able Art Gallery

While visiting Cape Able, do make sure you visit the resource centre there, and learn more about Virtual Ability’s work with the hearing impaired, including their Deaf Chat Coffee house – see iSke’s comments following this article on the work there. Also be sure to visit the Fenimore Art Museum, which is currently hosting an exhibition of the work of American artist and illustrator, Maxfield Parrish.

SLurl Details

LEA announce AIR 9 selection

Posted on by Inara Pey

LEA_square_logo_60On Friday, June 19th, 2015 the Linden Endowment for the Arts announced the successful applicants for the 9th round of the LEA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) programme.

They are: Kiesta Aljon, Cica Ghost, Thoth Jantzen, Livio Korobase, FreeWee Ling, Katharine McGinnis, MiaSnow Myriam, Fuschia Nightfire, Artistik Oluja, Caliandris Pendragon, Seafore Perl, Czechoslovakian Resident, Edie1943 Resident, Lacocinelle Resident, Storm Septimus, Pixels Sideways, Surreal Skytower, Misprint Thursday, Lorin Tone and  Michael Wexhome.

Cocytus: the 9th circle of Hell - Frankx Lefavre, AIR round 8
Cocytus: the 9th circle of Hell – Frankx Lefavre, AIR round 8

The LEA received over 40 applications, and those selected were viewed as presenting “truly outstanding proposals that represent a diverse range of virtual art” – and it is pleasing to note some new names within the list of awardees.

The successful applicants will each be allocated a full region within the LEA for a 6-month period commencing on July 1st, 2015. They will then have up to four months to prepare their projects, which range from full-sim immersions, to innovative builds geared specifically for multimedia works such as sound and machinima.

Each installation must be open for a minimum of two months of the 6-month allocation, and it is expected that some will be open in advance of the four-month build deadline. All exhibits must be open to the public by the end of October 2015 at the latest.

City Inside Out Phase II: "Stories" - Haveit Neox, AIR round 8
City Inside Out Phase II: “Stories” – Haveit Neox, AIR round 8

All openings will be announced in the LEA blog.

A Toysoldier’s artistry in The Living Room

Posted on by Inara Pey
Toysoldier Thor at The Living Room
Toysoldier Thor at The Living Room

Now open at The Living Room, the music and arts venue operated by Owl Dragonash and Daallee, is an special exhibition of the art and artistry of Toysoldier Thor, which features items of both his 2D and 3D art.

I profiled Toy’s work back in February 2015, and for those who haven’t as yet visited his gallery space in Second Life, the exhibition at The Living Room serves as an excellent introduction to his art, featuring as it does several of his 3D sculptures, some of which are displayed alongside his own 2D interpretations of the pieces, as well as a number of his paintings.

Toysoldier Thor at The Living Room
Toysoldier Thor at The Living Room

Included in the latter is one of my personal favourites, Assassin’s Prayer (shown above), beautifully displayed behind a glass partition. This is quite honestly an utterly captivating piece, which beautifully blends elements taken from both Second Life to produce a finished picture which carries a powerful symbolism and story.

Also on display here is Shattered, another emotive piece (not shown here) which has taken Toy on a remarkable journey, as it has evolved from a painting in the physical world through to a mesh model within Second Life to becoming a 3D printed model, and which is now a beautiful piece of physical art cast in bronze, and which can now be pre-ordered as a part of a second casting run. You can read more about this piece on the upper mezzanine of the exhibition.

Toysoldier Thor at The Living Room
Toysoldier Thor at The Living Room

For the exhibition, the gallery space at The Living Room has again had a make-over to keep the look and feel of the space in keeping with the artwork on display, and the finished result is highly effective. The exhibition of Toy’s work will continue at The Living Room through until the end of the month.

As usual, there will also be special live events at The Living Room in June, comprising:

  • Thursday, June 16th – live music with:
    • 17:00 – Billy Thunders
    • 18:00 – Anidi Huet
  • Tuesday, June 23rd 19:00 SLT – Toysoldier Thor closing party with BartAlan Barbasz.

SLurl Details

A fractal Metropolis in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Met-1_001
Metropolis

At the end of 2015, the population of the world will reach 7.3 billion human beings, among which more than 50% are in urban areas. In 2050, UNO forecasts, as a central scenario, 9.6 billion people, with 2/3 living in cities, which therefore will have to host 2.5 billion additional inhabitants in the next 35 years. Tokyo gathers more than 35 million people, while New Delhi, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Shangaï and Osaka account already for more than 20 million.

Thus Gem Preiz describes the theme for his latest exhibition of fractal art, Metropolis, which opens on Saturday, June 6th at the Influence Art Community.

Those familiar with his work know that Gem’s fractal art often suggests huge architectural landscapes and forms: towering fingers of colour and light, sweeping cityscapes frozen in time, a glimpse of places of the future and perhaps of worlds away from our own – as much in time as perhaps in distance.

Metropolis
Metropolis

With Metropolis, as his opening description suggests, Gem presents nineteen of these magnificent vistas to comment on the increasingly teeming nature of our global civilisation as more and more of just enter the world, live longer and bring forth a need of ever bigger and more complex cities, which themselves become ever more indistinguishable one from another as our reliance on technology homogenizes them such that shopping malls, business centres, even our lifestyles, become as standardised as everything else we reply upon.

The pieces are arranged in such a way as to suggest the visitor is within the huge metropolis of the exhibition’s title. Spread across multiple levels, linked by catwalks and teleport elevators, the images are suggestive of huge, glass-fronted towers and views across a gigantic cityscape.

Metropolis
Metropolis

To give a senses of scale to this “city”, and to link back to the theme of our ever-expanding and increasingly technology and business-driven civilisation, the squares and levels through the exhibition space are filled with the black silhouettes of people all apparently moving hither and thither, carrying briefcases, pulling travel cases, hurrying to this or that appointment, talking on their cellular ‘phones, haling one another and … occasionally, trying to catch-up with news the old-fashioned way: leafing through a newspaper, or holding a hand to their chin as if pondering – or lost.

So it is that Metropolis works on two levels. Taken as a whole, it admirably stands as an installation that reflects the central themes of Gem’s introductory notes; it demands one cams back in order to take in all of the scenes presents as broadly as possible, to witness this as a a city awash in activity. At the same time the images demand our studied attention, because they are all individually quite simply breathtaking in scope and form; there is a wealth of detail and complexity within each that is truly magnificent. So real do they feel, that it is hard not to wish you could step into them and walk along the halls and corridors that seem to lie behind their tiered, windowed facades, or wander the avenues and paths that sit between their ornate structures.

Metropolis
Metropolis

This is another masterful display of fractal art by Gem which will remain available for at least the rest of the month. Not only has he provided the art and the theme for the exhibit, Gem has also provided a suitable musical track on his You Tube channel which can be listened to while exploring the installation. Recommended.

SLurl Details