This article was updated on Sunday, December 8th to reflect the fact the Château d’Ember display has been taken down, having been a special opening event.
Depth Perception is a new exhibition of the work of artist Molly Bloom, which was initially previewed at the Château d’Ember, on the Adult-rated, Gorean-themed region of Asperiche Island on Saturday, December 6th, 2014, with the main exhibition opening at midday SLT on Sunday, December 7th at the Rose Art Gallery, Angel Manor.
As the title suggests, Depth Perception offers the observer with a series of images which play with our perception of depth, and does so in a most eye-catching manner.
Depth Perception -“Throwing in the Cards” and “The Electrical Bouquet”, as displayed at Chateau d’Ember
All of the pieces on display, be they individual images, pairs of images or triptych pieces, have elements of the work extending beyond the picture frame, either as a part of the picture itself (such as the shadow of a boot which itself appears to be resting on the frame containing it), or as a 3D element in its own right (such as an extended hand holding a copy of the Bible). Some even include 3D elements that sit entirely outside of the picture itself, but which are nevertheless part of it. These can be as obvious as a television set placed before a picture, and which is clearly the subject of attention of those within the picture, or as subtle as a bird sitting on a picture frame.
However it is presented, each image is beautifully composed, and many, particularly those in pairs or in a triptych, have a narrative to them; sometimes obvious, sometimes a little more subtle (and there are stories to be found in the individual pieces as well).
The installation at the Rose offers forms the main exhibition, and presents the works on display highly effectively; the installation is really eye-catching, the grey / black of the gallery space helping to draw the eye deeply into each picture in turn.
Depth Perception – “The Queen is NOT Amused”, as displayed at Chateau d’Ember
In November, I wrote about Giovanna Cerise’s latest full region installation, Chaos, Kosmos, currently open on LEA21 as a part of the 7th round of LEA artist In Residence grants.
the initial installation has been extended with three airborne platforms offering pieces by three artists Giovanna invited to participate in her work. Together, all three are referred to as “Project Algorithm”, and each appears to be designed to carry forward something of the original theme of Chaos. Kosmos – examining the relationship between two seemingly opposite elements which may actually be two sides of the same coin. In the case of the original piece, this involves examining the relationship between the ordered cosmos and its chaotic origins (which it still, despite its own order, also echoes).
The three new pieces on offer are reached via the spherical teleport at the Chaos, Kosmos landing point. As they are all independent works, the order in which they are visited doesn’t appear to be important. As such, I’m tackling them here on the basis of height above ground – from the lowest to the highest.
So the first piece is Live and Die, by Pol Jarvinan, which appears to examine the relationship between life and death; neither of which can exist without the other, and yet both are opposed to one another. The relationship is presented, to my eyes at least, on a number of levels.
The major part of the piece, when cammed around, can give an impression of a graveyard, the black and white shapes frequently forming crosses as the camera moves – the field of death. In the centre of this is a small region of colour – life. Yet even this colour exhibits something of an ebb and flow: the word LIVE is green / healthy; the word DIE is pale / sickly. between them lie a series of geometric shapes in a rusted hue; suggestive of ageing. Throughout the piece are black-and-white circles which, as the camera moves, can appear to be individual or overlapping, perhaps again symbolic of the relationship the exists between being and not being.
Project Algorithm: “observatorim” by Nino Vichon
Nino Vichon opts to examine the algorithm – or relationship – between fantasy and prediction through his piece, Observatorium. Here, he sets out the view while appearing separate, fantasy and prediction are perhaps intertwined. Neither requires linear steps in understanding, and both can be based upon creative or intuitive leaps of the imagination as much as anything else. As such, they are not mutually exclusive in application; rather they are complimentary. He illustrates this through the examples of chemistry and its relationship with alchemy (from which it grew), and astronomy and its relationship with astrology (ditto).
The uppermost platform is home to Daco Monday’s Chaos, perhaps the most involved and perplexing of the three pieces. It is defined as “the Algorithm of history”, although quite how it should be interpreted is difficult to discern.
There is a quote within the piece, “la luce diurna e razionalista della storia moderna si va spegnendo il suo astro declina avanza il crepuscolo e ci avviciniamo alla notte” – which, I think is a reference to Novoe srednevekov’e (“The End of Our Time”, also known as “The New Middle Ages”) by the religious and political philosopher / Christian universalist Nikolai Berdyaev.
Project Algorithm: Chaos by Daco Monday
As I have no idea if I’m barking up the wrong philosophical tree here or not, I’m loathe to plumb this piece further in writing (although I’ve been mentally scratching my head over it during the course of the last 24 hours…). Therefore, should you wish yo know more, I can only suggest you go take a peek for yourself.
Project Algorithm will remain open, along with Chaos, Kosmos, until the end of December 2014.
Related Links
Chaos, Kosmos SLurl (Rated: General) – use the teleport sphere at the landing point to reach the platforms.
I’ve become something of a fan of Frankx Lefarve’s work over the last couple of years, and always look forward to his installations. They are invariably thought-provoking and beautiful in both design and execution.
This month, he is once more back at LEA18, the location for his last LEA piece, Insidious: the Spread of Ideas, which I reviewed here. Now, and open through until the end of the year, he brings us Qualia: The Sentience of Being, which takes as its basis Frank Jackson’s thought experiment, Mary’s Room.
Jackson, a philosopher best known for his primary focus of studying philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and meta-ethics, offered Mary’s Room as a philosophical illustration of his argument against physicalism, the thesis that the universe is entirely “physical” in nature, consisting only of the kind of entities postulated by physics.
In Jackson’s experiment, Mary is a brilliant scientist forced to investigate the world from a black-and-white room. and via a black-and-white monitor. However, she is able to acquire all the physical information she needs to understand the concepts of colour, and the ability to comprehend the wavelength combinations from the sky which stimulate the eye and, in doing so, lead to the various nervous interactions which result in our uttering the phrase, “the sky is blue”, and so on. Thus, she has all the physical knowledge to understand the world beyond her monochromatic room, and to acknowledge the physical interactions that go on within it. But is this really the sum total of the universe beyond her room, and in acquiring the physical knowledge, has she reached the fullest extent of her learning? Thus, Jackson asks:
What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.
With Frankx’s piece, the visitor initially arrives in Mary’s room, beyond which lies a world of colour and movement, accessed by approaching one of four walls in the room, which will open automatically. Which wall you opt to open first is up to you; they are marked with various items: Buddha (which you face on arrival), clock, mosaic and lightning, but the order in which they are taken is not necessarily important. Be aware that the walls may be a tad slow in responding as you approach them.
Outside of each wall, set against the backdrop of the universe, are walkways, each of which leads to spaces, guarded by what might be called star gates through which you must pass to fully see see beyond them. In certain ways, these might be said to echo the discoveries Mary might have made following her exit from her observation space. Four example, in one, there are elements of red, perhaps signifying the ripening tomato Jackson mentions and, more subliminally in shape and colour, the heart, our engine of life; in others we see flashes of blues and yellows as we step into them, suggestive of the sky, and so on.
This is a deceptively complex piece, one slightly Bowman-esque in its leanings (Bowman as in, “My God, it’s full of stars!”) if handled correctly. The simplest route through the work is to travel back and forth from the black-and-white room, visiting each of the main segments in turn. However, there is another way, pointed-to in the introductory note card, and which I recommend.
There is a transparent path connecting each of the four main segments which leads one through the intervening geometric forms spaced in a circle between them. You may need to use CTRL-ALT-T at times to see the path (I recommend toggling on and off when needed; otherwise the red interferes with the installation). This will take you on an unfolding journey through the installation which may well lead to an entirely different perspective.
I have no idea if echoes of David Bowman’s journey through the star gate of 2001: A Space Odyssey is intentional or simply a case of my own projection onto the piece. However, it seemed to resonate with the overall theme of the work; that there is more to our universe than can be adequately explained by our understanding of the physical. Indeed, to go further, that our discovery of such other things – up to and including intelligences far superior to our own – might actually redefine our understanding of the “physical”, just as in Jackson’s thought experiment, Mary’s experiences in the world of colour may have reshaped her perceptions.
Sometime in the early years of our planet, billions of years ago, two gases allied themselves – hydrogen and oxygen. They became a liquidity, which enabled the emergence of life on earth. Water – the basic element – the element of constant change. It all began with water and water is inside anything living. Water – the element of constant change.
Thus reads the introduction to H2O, a photographic exhibition by Walt Ireton – known in the physical world as Jay Evers – at his Sominiem Art Gallery in Tabula Rasa. Based in Hamburg, Germany and Enschede in The Netherlands, Walt’s business is creative wedding documentary and event photography. However, his passion lies within the fields of natural, street, and macro photography.
These three aspects of his photography are combined H2O, which, as the introduction and title suggest, focuses on the subject of water. On display are some 37 images taken from the physical world (four of them stunning photo montages of a single image divided into three or four parts), split across two levels of the gallery space which Walt also designed. And believe me when I say, they are simply stunning.
“Water is very good in showing us how restricted our visual perception actually is,” Walt says of the exhibition. “Our eyes can see only a small part of the existing light [and] all information that our eyes do see, is filtered in various ways before it reaches the conscious part of our brain.
“Another aspect of water is, that it is moving most all of the time,” he adds. “A camera is capable of de-accelerated perception, which with longer exposure times makes moving water look like diffused veils or misty clouds. A vision of the primeval ocean suggests itself.”
All of which leads him to conclude that while a photograph does not really show an absolute and objective moment in time, it can nevertheless, and almost literally in the case of the natural flow and motion of water, freeze a moments in time which then themselves become timeless, literally.
And “timeless” is precisely the adjective to apply to many of the images here, from the foamed water roiling around rocks so suggestive of that primeval ocean Walt notes through to the amazing sight of the very top of a fountain plume caught in that 1/6000th of a second as it arches and twists at the start of its gravity-induced fall back towards the ground, with so many more in between – such as the reflection of a building caught in a street-side puddle, something unlikely ever to be captured in the same way ever again.
As well as the H2O exhibit, the upper levels of the gallery space (reached via the Anywhere Door on the ground level) also play host to two further exhibitions. The first is Impresiones de La Gomera, presents real life images of the island of La Gomera capture by Walt and his parter, Seoreh Voight, The second is Working Under Pressure, presents the comic book artistry of Martin Scarborough as large-format pieces.
As a final note, not only are the images displayed in H2O and Impresiones for sale at the gallery, those living it Europe can avail themselves of Walt’s website if they so wish and order copies to grace the walls of their physical world home. And when visiting Tabula Rasa, why not avail yourself of the other galleries and exhibitions in the region – including Walt’s own City Windows?
Second Life photographer, blogger and friend, Ziki Questi, has two new exhibitions of her work under way in Second Life right now.
The first, located at the Rose Theatre Art Gallery, Angel Manor, features landscape images with a decidedly watery theme. In fact, of all the original pieces selected for the display, only one didn’t have a watery theme, and so that was swapped out for another at did!
Featured here are some of Ziki’s more recent works from places such as Binemist, NorderNey, The Colder Water, Square Pegs in Round Holes, Sarawak, and more, all in Ziki’s familiar panoramic format, tastefully displayed in one of the gallery’s larger exhibition spaces, with plenty of light and which also offers comfortable sofas from which to admire Ziki’s work.
“When Holter first contacted me,” Ziki says of the second exhibition of her work, which is located at the Holtwaye Art Space, curated by Holter Rez, who co-runs the gallery with WayneNZ, “he clearly had some thoughts in mind about what sort of theme he wanted, and I was very surprised to see what he had assembled.”
She continues, “most people probably know me as a photographer of landscapes and artwork, and I often think of my own work that way. But Holter assembled a group of ‘organic’ and ‘inorganic’ images, as he put it, that are more abstract, or at least less immediately recognizable by subject matter.”
The result is Geometries of the Grid, a selection of images by Ziki spanning a number of years, and taken (predominantly) at art installations which have appeared in Second Life. Each piece – as the title of the exhibition suggests – has been selected for it geometric content and appeal. Spread across two floors of the gallery, the display offers a unique way in which to revisit and recall some unique installations that have appeared in SL.
Both exhibits offer a very individual view of Second Life as captured through the eyes of a very talented photographer, as such, both come highly recommended.
Open now, and with events running through until the end of November 2014 at LEA 6, under the umbrella of the LEA / UWA Full Sim Art series is Rebirth … together, presented by the 2Lei collaborative.
Now in its fifth year, 2Lei began as a project involving artists, gallery owners, musicians, etc., with the aim of raise awareness and disseminate events related to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which falls on November 25th.
The installation / event is described by the organisers thus:
This year’s theme is “Rebirth… together!”. We cannot just denounce: we must dare to hope, to dream, to act, to make the dream come true and springboard for new dreams. Dreams in which men and women cooperate together to build a more just, more healthy society, in which violence does not represent the instrument upon which to convey anger, frustration, fear, and aggression.
We wish every woman’s heart beat be as strong as the drum of life. No woman will be forgotten or left behind. The “Rebirth” marks the passage of the works of artists who are exhibiting in these spaces, and the performers who will take turns on stage. The program is rich and detailed, and offers many insights. Now we want to talk about “rebirth”. A rebirth towards a world where people can live, breathe, and dream without the fear of having to defend themselves. We are reborn together in front of each painting, opera, photograph, theater or musical show that a fragment of this kaleidoscope of images, desires, dreams, passions, and every project of rebirth involves. Primarily this involves the denunciation of what is evil, of what is burning, what clip wings, and cuts short lives. Then, after the denunciation, comes the dream: the work, the strength to believe it, and to make it happen together. “TOGETHER” is the keyword of a true renaissance. And we will be the first to give testimony. Men and women who, together, believe in this project and have put in place. Thank you for sharing this journey with us.
Rebirth … together features works by artists from across Second Life and the world at large, spread across several gallery areas within the region, both at ground / water level and on floating islands overhead. All offer a mixture of 2D and 3D art, with pieces focusing on the many different ways in which violence against women can take, be it physical, emotional, mental, verbal, etc., some of which are quite striking in context and form. There are also a number of event areas scattered through the installation, which will be active through most of the remaining 10 days of the event.
The programme for these events days comprises (all times SLT):
Friday, November 21st, 2014:
13:30: “RELIVE” – Art exhibition by various artists (Duna Gant) featuring music by Morlita Quan and Ultraviolet Alter
14:30: – A tour of the 2Lei installation
Saturday, November 22nd, 2014:
13:30: SoloDonna even area – Sniper Siemens – Elettra Beardmore
14:45: Music by Andromeda Slade
Sunday, November 23rd, 2014:
13:30: Live concert by Musicante Malandrino with a Surprise Guest!
Monday, November 24th, 2014:
13:30: L’Arme d’Amour (Viola Tatham, Andromeda Slade) present I Loved Her More Than Her Life, a one-act play written by Cristina Comencini
14:00: Rosanna Tafanelli, Francesco Bonetto, Lapsus Weinstein and Alejandra Balhaus discuss issues of violence against women
Tuesday, November 25th, 2014:
13:00: Reading and music by Libriamo Tutti – Imparafacile (Imparafacile group)
14:00: Idee Libere Alternative (Francy Lytton, MarinellaMonti) present a reading of Women in rebirth by J. Folla edited by Margherita Hax, followed by a live concert by Trinity Ermingtrood and then poems by Cordediseta Rosea
15:30: Official closing of the live events for this year’s 2Lei
Sunday, November 30th, 2014:
11:00: STAND! – the SL Fashion World Stand with 2Lei (by Mila Tatham, Aliza Karu, Bodza Blackadder, Absinthe Montenegro)
13:30: Particle Show by Tansee Resident with music by Andromeda Slade
Since 2012, 2Lei has offered events throughout the year and has participated in other SL activities with featured art exhibitions. In 2014, for example, 2Lei was represented at the SL11BCC celebrations with works by Paola Mills, and a mesh sculpture composed by Moore Tone, with creative contributions of all 2Lei committee members. Those interested in tracing the history of 2Lei may wish to visit the retrospective display area in the south-east corner of the region.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 