Art in Second Life – Page 244 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Examining the wrong pictures and taking a little Whiskey with your coffee

Posted on January 2, 2015February 26, 2019 by Inara Pey

Wrong Pictures,Melusina Parkin, e-image gallery — Wrong Pictures,Melusina Parkin, e-mage gallery

Currently on display at her e-mage gallery space is Melusina Parkin’s latest exhibition. Intriguingly entitled Wrong Pics, it offers a series of images which “are the outcome of a long work of selecting, re-thinking, and editing quite good photos, with the aim of enhancing a meaning the subject could inspire, by extreme manipulations of its features.”

The result is a collection of 16 pictures which demonstrate various unintended photographic errors such as over-exposure, colour saturation, incorrect lighting, inadequate focus, double exposure and so on, can enhance, rather than diminish, an image. It’s an outcome referred to as “fautographie”, a term popularised – although not coined – by photographic historian Clément Chéroux in his 2003 book Fautographie: petite histoire de l’erreur photographique (“Fautographie: story of the photographic error“) – which Melusina points to as influencing her exhibit. The idea that an image born of accident rather than design – what what Chéroux refers to as “photography by default” – can be as striking as anything deliberately composed or edited.

This is something of a challenging exhibition, because by it’s very nature it is founded on something of a dichotomy. “Fautographie” emphasises the way in which the accidental or unplanned photograph can be as artistic as any other photo. Yet, in order to demonstrate this, the images on display have had to be deliberately manipulated to achieve the desired results.

Not that this is any criticism of Melusina. For one thing, this dichotomy is not lost on her: at the back of the gallery lies a small plaque bearing a quote from William Gibson: It is possible to photograph what isn’t there; but it’s damned hard to do. For another, given the tools we have at our disposal in SL, it is pretty much impossible to accidentally produce a double exposure or an unintended reflection, or a lens flare, or to over-expose an image or jostle the camera during a long exposure. So just because things have been manipulated here doesn’t necessarily detract from the exhibit as a whole, or its intent.

Selected Letters, Whiskey Monday, The Pixel Bean Cafe — Selected Letters, Whiskey Monday, The Pixel Bean Coffee House

Located in the cosy upstairs gallery of the Pixel Bean Coffee House is a baker’s dozen exhibition of pieces by Whiskey Monday. Originally intended to run through until the end of December 2014, the display remains open for the present – but you may well be advised to visit it sooner rather than later, in case there are plans in hand to replace it with work by another artist.

Whiskey’s compositions are always remarkable; beautifully composed and edited, each one presents a striking image and / or theme, and this series of pictures carries the collected title of Selected Letters, a title which at first may seem a little confusing, as the subject matter within the pieces might seem well removed from communications or letters, the images appearing to focus more on aspects of self-expression and matters of place and identity, But really, aren’t all of these – our sense of self, our feelings of place and identity, and such, all little missives we send to ourselves – and to others?

The prints on display at the Pixel Bean Coffee house are available for purchase, should you desire to have a piece of Whiskey’s work in your virtual home.

The algorithms of art

Posted on December 21, 2014March 2, 2016 by Inara Pey

The Art and Algorithms Digital Arts Festival, currently located on LEA8, will be closing at the end of December 2014, and if you haven’t already paid it a visit, I would recommend that you do. It is a continuation of the Second Life element of the art festival of the same name, which was held in Titusville, Florida, between October 3rd and 12th, 2014.

Arranged around a central landing point area are eight individual exhibition spaces offering one or more pieces by well-known SL artists. Each exhibit is highly individual in terms of subject matter, and despite the fact they are all packed into a single region, they each offer an individual environment, complete with custom media streaming and parcel windlight presets.

The landing area, designed by Pixel Sideways, initially served as a tutorial area for people entering SL for the first time from the Titusville festival; as such, it may not appear to hold much of interest to the established SL user. However, I’d suggest having a little look around, as there are several points of interest to be found, including a teleport to Pixels’ own display area located high over the region. The music stream provided in the arrival area might also be of interest as well, given it is being driven by solar radiation levels being recorded by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as it orbits the Moon!

The first of the installations on display to capture my attention when visiting was Jo Ellsmere’s Biomechanical, picture at the top of this article. A homage to V. Meyerhold’s biomechanics system developed to help train actors, it was first seen as a part of the digital element of The Golden Age of the Russian Avant Garde, by Peter Greenaway (UK) and Saskia Boddeke (Holland) which I wrote about in May 2014, and makes a welcome return here. The piece features five avatars beautifully scripted to move through as series of synchronised actions, both as a single unit and as five unique elements within that unit, a slight syncopation to their movements giving them a time-lapsed grace.

Jo also shares the stage with Pyewacket Kazyanenko for Interstellar Princess, which they disarmingly refer to as simply, “a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all”! Featuring a small army of bots named for the phonetic alphabet, and a similar number of televisions (make sure you run media in the parcel), it’s a curious piece.

The origins of ALEA FUKUSHIMA apparently lie in a dream artist Artistide Despres had, in which he imagined a scientist-musician who was able to neutralize the radioactivity at the Fukushima nuclear power plant by transforming the energy into music. This is an interactive piece, musical instruments in the “reactor building” responding directly to avatars.

In another of the overhead domes, Feathers Boa offers visitors Painting in Three Dimensions, retrospective of her work from the period of 2007-2010. All of the pieces here also respond to the presence of an avatar, changing as you approach them and then step away from them.

Glyph Graves presents three pieces for the price of one: Ghost Flora, Breeze, and Forest of Water. The latter two pieces are presented in one of ground-level exhibition spaces, while Ghost Flora can be seen in the waters surrounding the central landing / tutorial area.

Together, these works make up an interesting exhibition, each of them showing various facets of artistic expression and the versatility available within virtual environments like Second Life for immersive art.

Art in ice

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Inara Pey

Running through until January 2015 at the Paris Metro Art Gallery is an exhibition of SL landscapes by Olympes Rhodes, featuring a collection of pictures captured from around Second Life which reflect the theme of winter in one way or another.

Some twenty-one pictures are on display, arranged on two levels within the gallery space, which has been transformed into something of an ice palace for the exhibition; the floor and walls covered in panelling covered in a ice-like effect and which are semi-transparent, so the world outside can just bee seen through the gallery’s actual windows, while the mezzanine floor of the upper level and the grand staircase leading up to it have a ghostly, translucent finish to them suggestive of them having been cut from ice.

“My job was to create an environment in the gallery that supports the works,” curator Quan Lavender says of the interior design, “And fits to the wonderful Winter scene with ice pond in front of the building.” I’d say she’s succeeded, the interior fittings rounded-off with a series of ice carvings and other accessories Quan found at the Xmas Expo, and which fit the theme perfectly.

Not all of the pictures on display may appear to be winter scenes; they don’t all have snow and frost featured within them, for example. But the theme is there to be found in each and every one, even if the presentation is subtle – such as with the pictures taken at Chouchou, which suggest feelings of winter and ice through the backdrop of the Memento Mori cathedral. In another, a little group of penguins standing on the beach provide the necessary connection.

All of the pieces have their own beauty and delicacy about them, and each one offers a unique interpretation of some very famous regions in Second Life. Their names are not given, which encourages the visitor to spend time examining each picture in greater detail to see if the location can be identified. Or at least, that was the case with this visitor!

When visiting, and if you are so minded, don’t forget that gallery owner Rose (rfb Morpork) has created a gown to match the theme of the exhibition, which can be obtained from the gift giver outside the gallery.

LEA announce AIR 8 selection

Posted on December 17, 2014December 17, 2014 by Inara Pey

On Tuesday, December 16th, 2014 the Linden Endowment for the Arts announced the successful applicants for the 8th round of the LEA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) programme.

They are: Solkide Auer, Art Blue, Giovanna Cerise, Asmita Duranjaya and Sable, Mario2 Helstein, Mistero Hifeng, NaTaS Janus, Gracie Kendal, frankx lefavre, FreeWee Ling, mediciprincess, Whiskey Monday, Haveit Neox, Lemonodo Oh, Krystali Rabeni, Searby, Sniper Siemens , Misprint Thursday, Lorin Tone and Mary Wickentower.

Qualia: The Sentience of Being - frankx lefavre, December 2014 — Qualia: The Sentience of Being – Frankx Lefavre, December 2014

The LEA received over 40 applications, and those selected were viewed as presenting “truly outstanding proposals that represent a diverse range of virtual art.”

The successful applicants will each be allocated a full region within the LEA for a 6-month period. They 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 April 2015 at the latest.

Chaos, Kosmos - Giovanna Cerise, December 2014 — Chaos, Kosmos – Giovanna Cerise, November 2014

All openings will be announced in the LEA blog.

Transcending Borders (2): celebrating the machinima makers

Posted on December 14, 2014December 28, 2014 by Inara Pey

On Sunday, December 14th, 2014, the Grand Finale of the University Of Western Australia’s (UWA) Transcending Borders was held at the impressive UWA-BOSL Grand Amphitheatre. During the event, over L$1,000,000 was awarded in prizes to artists, machinima makers and those who took part in the audience participation competition. With some last-minute additions to the prize pools, and some additional special awards, the event was a very special celebration of artistic expression in Second Life.

Transcending Borders challenged entrants to interpret the title of the competition in any fashion they deem applicable, and produce a 3D artwork (in no more than 150 prims) or short film based on their interpretation, be it on transcending borders of space and time, love and loss, nationally or culture or language, or the real and the virtual, and so on. The result was a glittering array of 67 artworks and 38 machinima, representing a broad diversity of interpretations of the theme.

The Grand Finale was hosted by the UWA’s Jayjay Zifanwe, with the UWA’s art curator, FreeWee Ling also on hand to announce the special Curator’s awards in both the art and machinima categories.

In the first part of this report, I covered the awards for the Transcending Borders 3D Art Challenge. Here, I review the winners in the the MachinimUWA VII Transcending Borders Challenge, in which machinima makers could submit as many films on the them as they wish, as long as each entry had been specifically filmed for the Challenge, and should preferably run for around 4 minutes 30 seconds (although this latter point was not a “hard” rule.

Audience Participation Prizes

Alongside the “main” challenges focused on artists and machinima makers, Transcending Borders included two audience participation competitions. Anyone who was not on the official judging panel was invited to provide what they thought the top 10 would be as decided by the actual panel, and those with lists which most closely matched the final list of prize winners as determined by the judges, would receive a special prize.

And the winners were:

5th place winner (L$5,000): Elle Thorkveld
4th place winner (L$7,500): Chic Aeon
3rd place winner (L$10,000): Karima Hosian
2nd place winner (L$15,000): Lalie Sorbet
1st place winner (L$20,000): Dyzo.

Commenting on the machinima audience participation competition, Jayjay said, “No tall order to attempt to participate in this challenge, as one had to watch all the machinima [38 entries].
Quite amazing, as all the top 3 correctly predicted 8 of the top 10 [as determined by the judge’s votes].” He went on to note that of these five individuals, three had been in the top five of the last art Grand Challenge, perhaps showing that there was something of a science in how the winners make their selections.

For Chic Aeon, the audience participation prize was the start of a remarkable part of the evening, something she shared with Haveit Neox.

Machinima Prizes

Note that SLurls are given with the titles of all winning pieces, and all the entries into the MachinimUMA VII Transcending Borders challenge can be seen on the SL Artist website.

The 10th through 6th places winners, who each received L$25,000 are:

Joint 10th place winners:
- Delphine et Hippolyte, by Yepar Saenz (Martinique, French Carribean)
- Striding Unknown Roads, by Lilia Artia, Haveit Neox & Mouehane (Switzerland, USA and Switzerland)
9th place winner: The Ghost in the Machine, by Chic Aeon (USA)
8th place winner: Reading Primchords, by Haveit Neox (USA)
Joint 6th place winners:
- Little Marie, by Pepa Cometa (Spain)
- Butchery by Iono Allen (France)

As there was a tie for 4th place, there was no individual 5th place prize winner. Instead, the top four prizes in the MachinimUWA VII Transcending Borders challenge were awarded as follows:

Joint 4th prize winners (L$35,000 each):
- Transcending (Surreal) Borders, by Joe Zazulak (Spiral Silverstar) (USA)
- The Connection, by Karima Hoisan & Natascha Randt (Costa Rica and Germany)
Joint 2nd place prize winners (L$60,000) each:
- The Sixth Extinction, by Erhthro Asimov (France)
- No Man’s Land, by Vilvi Rae (Finland)
Grand prize winner: Metaphore, by Tutsy Navrathna (India)

Jayjay had contacted Tutsy ahead of the event to inform him he had won a prize, but due to Internet issues, Tutsy could not remain connected to Second Life for the event. Instead, a short speech he had prepared ahead of time was read out by his friend, Yoon.

I would like to express a warm welcome to all participants and visitors for attending this grand finale. Also I would like to express a big thank you to UWA, Jayjay and all the organizers of this contest for offering the opportunity to many people, to discover or establish themselves as creators in 3D or Machinimas.

Transcending borders in and with a movie is less tough than transcending the borders of a contest itself. A work of NicoleX was refused because it conflicted with the UWA borders. I do regret the work has been refused, it shows the limits we have to deal with sometimes.
Yet we also cannot be deaf and blind for using our freedom of expression with a sense of awareness for the consequences. When input and output become disproportionate, other
solutions are needed.

Therefore again, many thanks to both UWA and all people that participated with their movies and opinions. And I am secretly proud as well a tiny little bit, thank you all!

Special Awards

In addition to the top ten awards, the Grand Finale included a number of special awards, both from the MachinimaUWA VII Transcending Borders challenge and also from the 2014 Project SciFi, which the UWA partners.

MachinimUWA VII Transcending Borders Special Prizes

Honourable Mention Prize for message within a film (L$15,000): Unseen Transcended Borders, by Eric Takkar & Arcane Marenwolf (USA and Australia)
Honourable Mention Prize for artistry within a film (L$15,000): The Embryo, by Ultraviolet Alter (France)
UWA Special Prize (L$25,000), awarded by the UWA representatives on the judging panel to the film that interweaves a number of locations from the UWA campus in it: The Ghost in the Machine, by Chic Aeon (USA) – Chic’s third win of the evening, and the second for her entry

Curators Choice Award (L$25,000) for the film, selected by UWA’s curator FreeWee Ling, that weaves one or few of the artworks in the challenge into it: Reading Primchords, by Haveit Neox (USA) – Haveit’s third individual win in the Finale with both the film and Primchords, the artwork which inspired it. Haveit also shared a prize with Lilia Artia and Mouehane for Sharing Unknown Roads

Commenting on her choice, FreeWee said:

For the machinima curator’s prize there were several entries that included artwork from current or past UWA shows. Some were focused specifically on a single piece or two, some incorporated art as a background to their narratives, and some had only a brief sighting of a work. I was looking for machinimas that most effectively used the artwork to tell the story of the film. The films that did that best seemed to be those by the 3D artists themselves. Among those, there was one film I thought was most engaging with the 3D art being essential in telling a story.

Project Sci-Fi Awards

Mention was also made of the two SL-based machinima which had also received prizes inthe 2014 Project Sci-Fi competition. This event was judged by a jury entirely separate to that of Transcending Borders.

2014 Project SciFi Challenge Honourable Mention (AU$200): About Face, by Avajean Westland (USA)
2014 Project SciFi Challenge winner (AU$300) Metaphore by Tutsy Navrathna (India).

Congratulations to all the winners.

As with the first part of this report, I would again like to extend my personal thanks to both Jayjay and FreeWee for the incredible amount of work they do in the promotion of virtual world art and the potential of virtual worlds. Transcending Borders is not only a fitting theme for a UWA Grand Challenge, reminds us that both Jayjay and FreeWee help artists, educators, students and virtual worlds enthusiasts transcend the borders between the virtual and the physical each and every day.

Transcending Borders (1): celebrating the artists

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Inara Pey

The UWA-BOSL Ampitheatre: scene of the Transcending Borders Grand Finale

On Sunday, December 14th, 2014, the Grand Finale of the University Of Western Australia’s (UWA) Transcending Borders was held at the impressive UWA-BOSL Grand Amphitheatre. During the event, over L$1,000,000 was awarded in prizes to artists, machinima makers and those who took part in the audience participation competitions. With some last-minute additions to the prize pools, and some additional special awards, the event was a very special celebration of artistic expression in Second Life.

The Grand Finale was hosted by the UWA’s Jayjay Zifanwe, with the UWA’s art curator, FreeWee Ling also on hand to announce the special Curator’s awards in both the art and machinima categories.

Opening the event, Jayjay said:

It’s been an absolute pleasure for me to work with all of you over the course of these challenges, and especially to those who went above and beyond the call of duty to make all of this a success. Thank you FreeWee Ling, curator of art at UWA & RL Honorary Fellow at UWA. Thank you LaPiscean Liberty, co-host for MachinimUWA VII, champion of machinima of Second Life. Also much thanks to those who have provided support and sponsorship which sees the overall prize pool standing at more than L$1,000,000 across both art and machinima. Special mention needs to be made of all who have been such strong supporters.

These challenges are sponsored by Tom Papas and SciFi Film Festival, LaPiscean Liberty and SL Artist, AviewTV, Arrehn Oberlander and MetaHarpers, Kip Yellowjacket and Virtlantis, Taralyn Gravois and Arts Castle Gallery, TheDoveRhode and Peace is a Choice and S&S Gallery of Fine SL Art, Barbie Alchemi of Creations for Parkinsons, Jon Stubbs and UWA Student Services, as well as The UWA Virtual Worlds Project.

I want to thank all of you for being here today, bringing the world together. The UWA Art, Architectural & Machinima Challenges, the teaching & research have seen people from all corners of the globe involved with students, artists, builders and machinimatographers hailing from Lithuania, Singapore, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Finland, Greece, India, Colombia, Poland, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Ukraine, Taiwan, Hungary, Latvia, Russia, Venezuela, Belgium, Mexico, Wales, Canada, the USA, the UK, Uruguay, Scotland, England, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, France, the French Caribbean, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Denmark, Holland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Cuba, Serbia, Tunisia, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and parts unknown. More than 45 nations with 6 of the 7 continents of the world represented.

The following is a run-down of the winners of the 3D Art challenge. The MachinimUWA VII: Transcending Borders awards are presented in a further article in these pages.