Speculum is the title of Giovanna’s Cerise’s new installation at LEA6, the home of the UWA’s Full Sim Arts series.
While the title of the piece may give rise to thoughts of certain medical examinations, let me assure you that this is not the intent here. Giovanna is using the word purely to mean “mirror”, and quite without any hint of medical connotations at all, although there are a number of oddly endearing figures earnestly peering into what appear to be mirrored lenses close to the landing point.
The mirror, as multiplicity and continuous playback. The mirror, where the invisible overlaps the original and the hidden appears suddenly. The mirror, as an illusion of which you can not do without. The mirror as a projection in an unreal dimension. The mirror that opens the door to …
Beyond the figures with their little eyepieces held up to their lens-like heads, is a truly astonishing build, which Giovanna recommends is viewed using either the Verdigris windlight setting or a sunset setting. I used both, and they serve the installation well.
The main parts of the build comprise huge, intricate wooden structures, gigantic lattices of beautiful complexity, which hold aloft great cog-like discs representing mirrors. Three of these rise from the waters of the region, their mirrors pointing skywards, while a fourth floats overhead, holding its mirrors upright.
Between and under these stands another construct, a huge rectangular piece, partially wreathed in shadow, within which sits a series of white convex forms, again suggestive of mirrored lenses. To fully appreciate this piece, you not only need to see it from without, but also travel through it (click the single mirror cog raised on a pole at the landing point to be teleported). The optical effects seen as you walk through the “lenses” and shadow areas can be striking.
Giovanna has always shown great aptitude in using light and space in her work, as well as using geometric forms and structures, and her artistry with all of them is very much on display here. This is a stunning and immersive build, and will remain in place through March. I do thoroughly recommend you pay a visit.
I’ve been something of a fan of the work of Lorin Tone and Madcow Cosmos for a good while now; ever since their 2011 Through the Lens of Dreams exhibit (see here) in fact. As I understand that Madcow is not quite so involved in SL nowadays as was once was the case, I was intrigued when I saw that Lorin had been awarded a region as a part of the 8th round of the LEA’s Artists In Residence programme, and wondered what might be popping-up.
MadTone is the title of the exhibit, and it opened on Sunday, February 15th. Developed by Lorin with help from partner Judi Newall, together with Kelly Shergood and Xon Halostar, it presents marvellous visual creations with carefully designed sound scapes, so be sure to have local sounds enabled when visiting!
Those who have visited previous installations by Lorin and Madcow are liable to recognise some of the pieces displayed here. There are, for example, items here from the likes of In the Belly of the Whale, the collaborative installation led by Eupalinos Ugajin and Ole Etzel in January 2014, and from Of Sound Mind from September 2012. As such, and while it is not perhaps intended in such a manner, the installation represents something of a retrospective of Lorin’s partnership with Madcow. It’s certainly a reminder of their whimsical creative genius.
Exploration is not as a straightforward as it may seem; there is no set path, and there is a lot to see on land, in the air and under the water. To make sure you get a good feel of all there is to discover, you can hop on to a dragon a short distance from the landing point, and it will take you on a flight around the region and introduce you to points of note within it, allowing you to get a good feel for the installation, ready for a more leisurely explore and play once the dragon has dropped you off (there’s a teleporter system to get you back to the ground if you hop off the dragon at one of the airborne pieces).
If you enjoy light-hearted, interactive installations with a touch of whimsy about them, I’ve little doubt you’ll find MadTone pleasing to the eye and ear. Similarly, if you’re someone who has enjoyed Lorin’s and Madcow’s work in the past, it offers a happy trip down memory lane. If you’re somewhere between the two – go visit anyway!
And when you do, keep an eye out for the talkative turtle / frog and its Shakespearian insults! 😉 .
Kayly Iali is an artist and the owner / curator of i4 Galleries of Art. A suite of four gallery spaces within the Port Lydius region, i4 Galleries occupies the same quarter of the region’s sky space as Lusus Saule, whose work I also recently reviewed.
February saw the start of four new exhibits at i4 Galleries, three of which sit within the abstract school, while the fourth presents an delight take on the idea of vintage postcards.
I’ve encountered the work of JudiLynn India previously in SL, and have always been struck by her bold use of colour and materials. An artist working in acrylics and digital art in the physical world, JudiLynn here presents 14 striking pieces of her art which demonstrate her work to its fullest advantage.
The large format in which the works are presented allows the rich detail in each, including the texturing apparent within it, to be clearly seen, adding to their vibrant look and feel. number also exhibit a rich, dynamic energy in both the use of colour and line; there is a sense of power and movement within them, while other are more restful in nature, presenting a calming influence whilst retaining a strong use of form and colour.
A former graphic artist working in advertising, Ieko Catnip switched to painting some 20 years ago, inspired by the work of Zao-Wou-Ki, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies and Hans Hartung. She specialises in lyric abstraction and has her own contemporary art gallery in SL.
The fifteen pieces displayed here are of similar large format presentation to JudiLynn, which again allows the riches and dynamism of each item to be shown to its fullest.
Also, as with JudiLynn’s work, there is a striking dynamism to the pieces on display, although one somewhat different in nature. The shapes within several of the pieces are far more anthropomorphic in nature, more suggestive of the human form in motion, while in others there is sense of movement and form which might suggest a ship in a storm or lily pads on the water.
Vonnie the Fox is a relative newcomer to Second Life. An artist in the physical world, the exhibition at i4 Galleries marking the first public display of her work. She sees SL as a means of exploring and experimenting with digital art and expression, listing both SL art and building as two of her interests.
Here she takes an interesting approach to abstract works, presenting a series of colour images of scenes in Second Life shot through the medium of Linden Water. This gives the pieces a rather unique sense of motion / distortion, while the use of bright colours, either within the subjects of the pieces or through the selection of windlights, leads to a set of highly individual pieces. Don’t forget to check his Flickr stream, either.
The final exhibit in this quartet steps away from abstract foundations and is, perhaps, the most interesting in both idea and format – and one which offers a unique way of showing appreciation to a friend.
David Peyton works mostly in photography and mixed media, and his exhibit at i4 combines both to present a series of vintage postcards featuring a range of sights from around Second Life
Not only is a delightful series of postcards offered for admiration and (like the works in the other three exhibits) also for sale, it is presented with a wonderful dash of humour through the Kisses on a Postcard element of the display, which feature imagined missives from the likes of Napoleon to Josephine or Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, and others. What’s more, David also offers a special service: select a postcard, pen your own message and David will supply you with a set of 20 individually numbered postcards you can send to friends in SL.
As an added bonus, once you’ve toured the main gallery spaces, you can also teleport to the Skyloft (ou can also reach it via the teleport board at the gallery landing point). Here you’ll find Kayly’s own work on display, a beautiful mix of abstract and still life work, presented in an ambient environment that really shows them to their best advantage, making it easy to see any of the pieces displayed on a wall in your own home.
All four exhibits in the main gallery spaces will be open through until April 2015. Given their proximity to one another (The Vonnie the Fox and David Peyton exhibitions are just around the corner to Judilynn India and Ieko Catnip), they can be enjoyed together. This is something especially worthwhile given the abstract theme carried within three of them, while David’s exhibit offers a unique and charming approach to art in SL. A trip to Kayly’s skyloft will also round-out any visit perfectly.
“Presently striving to become an artist in Second Life”, is how Lusus Saule describes himself. I think he’s being far too modest; his artistry is clearly evident in his work, and I find it remarkable that I haven’t seen more of his pieces exhibited through SL galleries.
As it is, his work can primarily be found on display in his own Lusus Art gallery complex, a suite of four gallery spaces located in the Port Lydius art region and nested behind the i4 Galleries.
Officially opened in October 2014, the spaces are currently displaying four aspects of his work which all have a decidedly mathematical leaning, and which each present a series of fascinating studies.
I was actually drawn to his work when I spied one of his fractal images on a poster while visiting Port Lydius for other reasons. As regular readers know, this particular form of art has a specific attraction for me, so seeing the poster encouraged me to go take a look, and I was quite delighted by all I discovered.
“These images were created with the 3D fractal software called Mandelbulber,” Lusus says of the pieces on display in his Fractals exhibit. Five of these are quite strikingly offered in the kind of panoramic format I personally feel is ideal for capturing the beauty of this type of work. Intriguingly, Lusus says that these items were the result of getting sidetracked using the software while working on a larger project.
“I originally wanted to see if it was possible to create an immersive experience by creating fractal images that surrounded the viewer,” he says. “[So] look out for these some time in the near future!” I can say that it is something I’ll certainly be doing.
Alongside of the fractal exhibition can be found Droste Images. Here Lusus presents series of images taken in, and of, regions in Second Life which he has then manipulated to create finished works based on the Droste effect. This essentially sees the same image repeated within itself, each version geometrically reduced. Such images form visual instances of strange loops, itself a foundation of fractal geometry, making it the ideal partner to the fractals exhibit. Indeed, some of the images on display here are suggestive of another mathematical form which utilises fractal properties: mandelbrots.
Across the courtyard from Fractals and Droste Images can be found Op Art and Animated Gifs.
Op Art blends of Op Art and Kinetic Art in a series of striking pieces which have a geometric / mathematical foundations. Traditionally, Kinetic Art relies on the observer’s movement around the art (be it 2D or 3D) to generate the sensation of motion. While this is clearly evident in the pieces displayed here, Lusus has added to it through the use of scripts to generate additional movement.
This actually gives these pieces considerably greater depth, and when combined with slow, simple camera movement when viewing them, can result in some startling effects, most of which are rather difficult to capture in a still image. The movement and depth within individual pieces can also change simply as a result of the distance from which they are viewed, giving rise to a range of optical effects and illusions that enhance the Op Art aspect of the works.
Animated Gifs,as the name implies, presents a series of animated GIFs to the observer – although they may not appear to be animated when first viewed. This is because Lusus is utilising SL’s Media On a Prim capability for his work. This means that in order to be correctly seen, media needs to be enabled within the viewer, and individual images clicked upon (the frames may go white for a few seconds prior to the images displaying).
The result of this is a series of animated images and abstracts, all following geometric patterns which are perhaps both more fluid and complex than might otherwise be achieved through purely scripted means of showing animated gifs. Again, still images don’t really capture the dynamic nature of these pieces, they have to be viewed first-hand.
Whether viewed individually, or toured together, Lusus’ gallery spaces are more than worth a visit. You can also find out more about his activities in SL via his website, and if you’re ever in need of a helping hand with an aspect of using Second Life, be aware that he also curates the Metaverse Tutorials website as well.
During the Round 6 of the Artist In Residence (AIR) series at the Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA), Sniper Siemens produced a wonderful retrospective on Second Life, looking back over the platform’s history from 2001 through until 2014, with a small peep at what might be coming.
At the time of that exhibition, Sniper had just two weeks to get everything together and create the installation. as a result, as delightful as it was, much was left unsaid.
Now, as a pert of the AIR Round 8 submissions, Sniper has returned to the LEA to present a re-worked and expanded look at SL’s long and tangled history with The Greatest Story Ever Told, which officially opens to the public at 15:00 SLT on Saturday, February 7th, 2015. Having been given the opportunity to have a preview walk through the installation, I can say that it is, quite simply, superb.
As with the original, the visitor is taken on a chronological walk through SL’s vast and tangled history, only here the journey starts in 1999, and instead of walking through a watery domain, one is lead through a wooded landscape along a series of paved footpaths which allow the platform’s history to unfold as one progresses along them.
And history is quite literally everywhere, right down to the names of the paths themselves, which start off evocatively enough: Battery Street (complete with a model of the Lab’s offices there), which is followed by Da Boom, Natoma, Ritch, Zoe – all the names of some of the original 16 regions which comprised Second Life at its “birth”, and which were themselves drawn from the names of streets around the Lab’s original base of operations in Linden Street, San Francisco (and the fact that several of them are all the locations of eateries / hostelries was, I’m sure, entirely coincidental 🙂 ).
The paths lead the visitor chronologically through SL’s history, with information boards, images and interactive elements, together with a small army of little residents and Lindens, encompassing key events and changes. The information provided is drawn from a number of sources, including the Second Life wiki and the wiki’s History of Second Life pages. Several of the boards make for interesting reading, as they present information written at the time some events were unfolding, thus given them an added sense of presence.
As with the original presentation, both technical and social changes are documented, with many of the “blanks” in the original now completed. As a result, a much richer picture of Second Life is painted, the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, and some events are put into their proper perspective – such as the FBI’s 2007 look into certain activities in SL. Nowadays, this is often seen causing the Lab to later ban gambling on the platform. However, as the information provided in The Greatest Story Ever Told reveals, this really is a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc., and the circumstances of both the investigation and the reasons for banning gambling on the platform are quite different.
The path eventually leads the visitor to 2015, and a brief look at what the Lab’s next generation platform might hold for us. It is followed by a little Linden and resident holding a sign: This is not the end – a clever play on the fact that this isn’t the end of the installation, as the path leads on to a retrospective of the Burning Life (now BURN2) event in SL, and in a more subtle touch, to the fact that the new platform doesn’t mean Second life is coming to an end.
The Greatest Story Ever Told – LEA17: … and correcting the misconceptions around the FBI’s 2007 investigation of certain activities in SL …
There is a lot to take in with this installation; not only through the information boards and images and little vignettes one passes, but also in the overall way in which everything is presented. Take, for example, use of high walls along two sides of the installation which, while preventing any overlap between it and the neighbouring installations, combines with the setting of The Greatest Story to remind us of something of SL’s “walled garden” reputation. Then there is the way in which many technical elements intrinsic to SL’s development are also presented: windlight, projected lighting, mesh, materials.
All told, this quite simply a brilliant expansion of the original concept, and I’m really pleased that Sniper has been given the opportunity to revisit the subject, expand upon it, and in doing so, has retained the same touch of humour in many of the individual pieces presented within it. The Greatest Story Ever Told is a genuine delight, something everyone should find the time to visit and walk through.
Given the nature of the installation, I’ll leave the final words here to Sniper:
The History of Second Life is the story of all us.
Every single person who has decided to be part of it must to thank a small group of peoples that one day they saw a vision. If today you can rez a prim, drive a car or dance in a disco, it is possible thanks to this small group of people. Many others have continued to maintain it and develop it, even without a remuneration. So, learn to respect those who allowed this and enjoyed the best Second life.
As a reminder: the Greatest Story Ever Told – SL History 1999-2015 opens to the public at 15:00 SLT on on Saturday, February 7th. Note that teleports may not work until then.
Opening at 12:30 on Sunday, February 1st at the Seaside Gallery, which is owned an operated by JMB Balogh is the debut public exhibition of work by SL photographer Slatan Dryke.
As its name suggests, Scenes features images captured from around Second Life which each create a vignette of their own, each with a little story to tell. Most of the images (if not all) have been taken at well-known locations in Second Life, but such is the angle and nature of each picture, the locations aren’t always easy to identify.
A considered use of colour and lighting is evident in the images, affording them a unique look and feel. Slatan states that he rarely uses post-processing to enhance his images, relying purely on his eye and SL’s windlight capabilities. This has given rise to some very striking pictures, some of which are included in this exhibition, such as Jaundiced Sepia (seen at the top of this article, on the left). There is such a beautiful quality about this one piece that were it not for the recognisable form of the little café, the eye could be so easily fooled into believing it to be a picture taken in the physical world; the bicycle in particular looking as if it is simply awaiting a delivery boy to jump onto the saddle and pedal off on his rounds. Slatan himself poses in a couple of the images, and with Muse Amplitude (directly above on the left) in particular, this again gives the piece an added depth.
With 18 pieces on display, this is not a large exhibition, although a number of Slatan’s animated sculptures are also on display as well, and available for purchase alongside the pictures. I’d perhaps like to have seen the images themselves a little smaller in size, if only to see one or two more included. But this isn’t a complaint; rather an admission that I found myself rather attracted to some of the pieces presented – I mentioned two above – and would like to see others the artist has which encompass a similar theme and / or approach.
A a debut exhibition, scenes serves as an excellent introduction to Slatan’s work for those unfamiliar with it, and I look forward to see his work displayed in other galleries in SL.
