Category: Art in Second Life

It’s been a goodly while since I’ve written about the The Peale Museum in Second Life; however, an invite from Eme Capalini offered an intriguing invitation to hop along and take a look at their latest exhibition, featuring a very unique artist by the name of Lee Boot.

ICYMI, September 2020 saw the opening of a new public experience in Second Life entitled Virtual Peale, a collaborative effort between Virtual Ability Inc., Linden Lab and – most importantly, The Peale Centre for Baltimore History and Architecture, located in the first purpose-built museum building in the United States (and today a US National Historic Landmark) the Peale Centre. This has, since 1814, been a centre for art, history, community and learning, and within Second Life, the Virtual Peale has continued this long tradition, offering exhibitions of art and learning, centred on an in-world reproduction of the physical World Peale Centre in Baltimore, USA. However, rather than wibble on about it here, please feel free to read more about the project within Baltimore’s Peale Centre in Second Life, a piece written to mark the opening of the centre in SL, and which I was graciously allowed to preview ahead of time.

The new exhibition – Abstracts & Artifacts – is fascinating on a number of levels. Encompassing both the physical world Peale Centre and virtual Peale, it marks the first major gallery-oriented exhibition of Lee Boot’s work for about two decades. It is deeply rooted in Boot’s background as an artist and a researcher – he is the Director of the Imaging Research Centre (IRC) within the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) – and is also innately (if tangentially) linked to The Peale’s unique history as a place of learning and education, something he touches upon in an introductory video to the exhibition and which I’ve taken the liberty of embedding here†.

Within Virtual Peale – and as is usual for the Centre – Abstracts and Artifacts is located in the “upper floor” gallery space. To reach it, either use the TP board close to the landing point or enter the Peale Building and take the stairs up to the upper floor and walk through the “doorway” to the exhibition area – you’ll be automatically teleported up to the exhibition space (where a door on the wall behind you on arrival will take you back down to the main building).

On arrival you will have the opportunity to view the introductory video, whilst a sign under it notes that there is a sequence to the exhibit visitors are asked as to follow, using the arrows on the floor. The first of these directs visitors back to an opening statement, framed as a question:

What if it were normal for artists to have careers working side-by-side, on equal footing, with other researchers and policymakers who determine how we improve education, or public health, or how we catalyse economic development in our communities?

– Abstracts & Artifacts, Virtual Peale, October 2023

This is a question of immediate intrigue in its scope and context – and one which might well have some throwing up their hands in horror at the idea of the “trendies” and “lefties” (or whatever) stirring the mix and exerting influence on matters of health and education. However, as the introduction goes on to note, there is a strong justification for considering the idea it represents:

It’s hard not to talk about culture and think about the arts. and artists make media which now, more than ever, are the central systems and currencies of our lives.

– Abstracts & Artifacts, Virtual Peale, October 2023

There are truths within the above statement that may have about them a certain dichotomy. All too often, we are used to considering the cultural and societal of art in a historical context: what it says about the generations who came before us, their outlook on life, the nature of their culture; how it might aid us in similarly understanding the nature and structure of civilisations which came well before our own, and to whom their surviving art is the one expression we can physically grasp in terms of offering a window into their times.

However, in looking back in time, it is important to note that throughout much of humanity’s history, both art and science were closely intertwined; it is only relatively recently that they have branched away from one another – and then largely as a result of artificial constructs modern society has opted – possibly to our detriment – to enforce (e.g. those  in education being required to choice between the study paths of “the arts” and “the sciences”, with often limited opportunities to combine the two beyond a certain point). Further, art is ever-evolving, harnessing new means to present itself – to utilise the very capabilities wrought through “the sciences” to communicate, to enhance and enrich, to inform.

This is the trust of Lee Boot’s work;  he has combined his Master of Fine Arts (painting) with the disciplined approach of research, evaluation and data interpretation / analysis, to develop and direct science-driven research enterprises. This has allowed him and his fellow researchers and students at URC to prototype and develop novel media and visualisation technologies specifically aimed at promoting awareness / understanding of a broad range of social issues: the aforementioned health/wellbeing, education and economics development through to the likes of social justice, democracy and climate change.

Twenty-five years ago, media artist Lee Boot stepped away from a promising artworld career to join scientists and others doing research to find ways to meet some of our most significant public challenges. For more than twenty-five years he has brought artist’s thinking into rooms where it is seldom seen. Literally and figuratively, he has coloured outside the lines, spilled paint on his colleagues, flipped the script and reframed conventional thinking to reimagine how we meet the challenges of our time and better ground our efforts in the cultures, experiences, and lives of the people they are intended to serve.

– Lee Boot biography

Within Abstracts & Artifacts the artist offers (in keeping with the title of the exhibition) pieces of abstract art, together with text elements which frame ideas as questions. The individual pieces of art partnered with the text elements might at first appear to be entirely random but each has a form and substance within it when studied, serving to illustrate and amplify the ideas posed within the written interrogative.

That the clarity of meaning may not spring forth at once should not be taken as a negative; the art is as much about altering perception as it is about illustrating an idea; ergo, it should engage the grey matter sitting between the ears, and may do so is so subtle a manner that repeated study of individual piece might well be required. In this, and as Boot notes in his video introduction, each section of the exhibition should not be considered as text + images, but as a visual interpretation of ideas drawn from a sketchbook used to formulate concepts and thinking.

Within the centre of the exhibition space is an area devoted to previous projects formulated by Lee and the URC, and it is worth taking the time to view these. Those elements taking the form of video screens (like the TVs within the main exhibition) can be touched to receive an introductory note card on each exhibition and a link to watch the video through a browser on Vimeo†.

All told, a genuinely engaging exhibition revealing the rarely-seen work of an artist-researcher at the forefront of disassembling the artificial barriers between art and science / research – my thanks to Eme for the invitation, and apologies for not making the opening. While visiting, do be sure to take in the ground level Peale Centre’s displays, both indoor and in the grounds.

SLurl Details

• Virtual Peale (The Peale Museum, rated: General)

† Please note the videos presented in the exhibition may require you to log-in to Vimeo.

Having opened at the start of October and occupying a skybox gallery at Mareea Farrasco’s IMAGOLand galleries, Phantasmagoria is the latest exhibition by Carelyna.

Whilst the title might well evoke thoughts of ghosts and spectres, this is a collection which takes the term in a different direction to ideas of ghosts and demons, being far more subtle in intent – as I’ll get to in a moment.

The term phantasmagoria is said to have originated in the last decade of the 18th Century as a French concatenation of the Ancient Greek phántasma (“ghost”) with either agorá, (“assembly” or “gathering”) or (agoreúō, “to speak publicly”).  Exactly who coined it is subject to debate, but Paul Philidor, a magician and showman, is perhaps most widely recognised as having popularised it in the late 1790s and early 1800s, using the terms to promote his shows featuring ghostly apparitions and the shades of departed famous people – although such shows, utilising everything from concave mirrors to magic lanterns and camera obscura to create / project such ghostly phantoms, reach back into at least the 17th century. Others who started using the term around the same time as Philidor include French dramatist and proto-science fiction writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier, and Belgian showman Étienne-Gaspard Robert – who is also credited with coining the term fantascope to describe the equipment he, Philidor and others used to create their spectres.

For her show, Carelyna has created a collection of sepia-rich, ghost-like images of individuals. It overall tone, they are suggestive of the flickering images witnessed by those sitting through one of Philidor’s shows. Some are clearer than others, presenting an well-defined study; others are caught in a halo of light and brightness which both adds to the suggestion they have perhaps caught the spirit of a person who may not have been there – or that the image was taken a long time ago, and time and light have not been kind to it.

However, while they have that faded, ghostly sense about them, as noted above, these images are not intended to portray the spirits of the departed or suggest we’re within a magic lantern show; rather they and intended to evoke ideas of mood and emotion. From celebrations of life and expressions of love, to studies of strength and introspection and of potential loss or aloneness, the emotional depth found within these 12 pieces is both intense and also entirely open to interpretation: while Carelyna offers a suggestion or theme within the title of each. it is very much down to how we individually respond to each of them in its own right.

An engaging and expressive exhibition.

SLurl Details

• IMAGOLand Art Galleries (Rising Phoenix, rated Moderate)

Open through October at the NovaOwl Sky Gallery is an exhibition of art by Louvre (Iamlouvre), a physical world artist who is now making her mark in Second Life, having joined (I believe) in 2021. This is the first time I have witnessed at exhibition of her work, and found it to be richly expressive.

Entitled Agua (the Spanish for “water”), this is an exhibition which fully embraces the space in which it displayed, Louvre demonstrating that as well as being a skilled artist, she has an innate sense of space and design, offering an environment that neatly folds itself around the exhibition’s theme, with the art split between the two levels of the gallery.

Water symbolises much more than an infinite space where we lose ourselves
when we look to sea. Water symbolises transformation, Life. All of us are water.  

– Louvre (Iamlouvre)

On the upper level, prints of her work are mounted on easels and walls, some of the latter backed by curtains of water tumbling to the floor below. On the lower level, this water spreads across a floor decorated with squares, some just below the surface other rising above it. All offer a sense of being stepping stones, encouraging visitors to make their way across them. These squares and mirrored by cubes and blocks climbing up the walls, the shimmering curtains of water visible in the gaps between them.

Close to the gallery entrance, sixteen cubes present sixteen paintings by Louvre, each painting repeated on all six faces of the cubes. Further back sit two larger cubes, each with an image of one of her paintings projected within it whilst further pieces are mounted on easels in an intentionally understated display, the entire level dominated by a single piece entitled Submarine.

Almost all of the paintings might be seen as portraits of a most unique kind. Few present a complete individual; rather they present images wherein the subjects are blurred or obscured, as if seen through a sheen of water, or with their subjects incomplete of cracked and fractured. In amongst them are paintings of a more abstract nature, but even these contain a sense of water-like fluidity and motion.

All of this is heavily suggestive of the opening lines of Louvre’s description for Agua, of water giving, being and transforming life. But there is more here as well, as Louvre goes on to note:

Water is also the tears produced by pain and sorrow. It is the force of the DANA flood that just hit my city. Washing away the homes of many neighbours and friends, taking within it their daily objects and their homes. Never in all my life have I been able to contemplate a greater disaster so closely. 

Water is the effort of my hands helping them, to the point of exhaustion, with water and more water.

– Louvre (Iamlouvre)

Storm Dana lashed Spain with torrential rain in early September, causing widespread flooding, particularly in the region of Castilla La-Mancha, home to the cities of Madrid and Toledo, with water levels rising such that streets, major transport arteries  – and most particularly, homes were overwhelmed. Such was the force of the water in places that cars were overturned or smashed together and evacuations were ordered. At least two deaths occurred, and several more people were reported missing.

It is this devastation, this sense of loss Louvre conveys through her paintings through their blurred / missing / incomplete elements. This reflection of Dana’s destruction is – as Louvre notes – very personal. She has witnessed the loss and hurt it has caused, and sought to help alleviate it through practical support for those around her hit by the storm’s ferocity. That this has also triggered her creativity through her art additionally completes the circle represented by Agua: that as a force of nature, water has the power to both positively and negatively bring about transformative experiences in life.

SLurl Details

• NovaOwl Sky Gallery (Novatron, rated General)

As I write this, it is a little over nine months since Aneli Abeyante announced that her long-running Second Life Art gallery, La Maison d’Aneli would be closing at the end of its (then) new exhibition, which opened on December 14th, 2022. However, passions, ideas and creativity tend not to always behave or turn out as we planned, and frequently have a habit of demanding release even when we think otherwise.

Here I am at the end of my adventure as a gallery owner, of course I will stay on Second Life as a simple artist … I thank all the people who accompanied me …. what a beautiful adventure we have shared, more than twelve years with an exhibition per month, and you always there. Long live creation!

– Aneli Abeyante, December 2022

In Aneli’s case – and to our good fortune – La Maison d’Aneli refused to simply pass into Second Life history, and instead insisted she continue to breathe life into it and allow it to continue to bring regular ensemble exhibitions. And so it is that, on September 27th, 2023, the gallery officially re-opened with a set of five individual exhibitions by noted SL artists.

Occupying a location pretty close to (if not right on top of) that of the last iteration of itself, La Maison d’Aneli once again offers its familiar ground-level landing point, complete with event venue and exhibition hub. The latter presents direct teleports to each of the current exhibitions in progress, while a separate additional teleport disk network allows for quick transfers between allow five and a return to the ground level.

For its re-opening, the gallery features exhibitions by Asperix Asp, Xirana Oximoxi, Morlita Quan, Deyanira Yalin and Aneli herself. Given the names involved, you can be sure that these are exhibits that will engage both eye and mind, and it is recommended that they are each visited under the default Shared Environment and with Advanced Lighting Model enabled.

Asperix Asp is a digital artist hailing from Spain and who has been creating and displaying his digital artwork since 1985, not long after trade more traditional methods of artistic expression for the keyboard, mouse, monitor screen and other tools of the digital age. His work has been critically acclaimed and award-winning, and over time has grown from purely 2D to encompass 3D modelling and seeking expression through diverse natural inspiration – such as via paludarium (a type of vivarium incorporating both terrestrial and aquatic aspects). From  2007 through 2014 he explored and exhibited his work within virtual spaces such as Second Life, before taking a leave of absence through until 2020.

Within this exhibition he presents a selection of his fractal art under the title Demiurgia. It comprises sixteen quite exquisite pieces, each one exhibiting the beauty of finely-crafted jewellery. But whether each image is that of an individual piece, or represents the focus on a single facet of a much larger piece, is impossible to say; each image is unique unto itself, yet all are bound one to another through the subtle use of colour, tone, form and finish.

Two-dimensional art they may be; but there is something fundamentally tactile captured within each one, as if in reaching out to them we could feel the soft cold/warmth of the metal, the tiny crystal-like roughness of the filigrees and burnished peaks and troughs formed by the turn of the metals.  These are pieces we can see are formed through the artistry of a true artesian – and in that, the title for the exhibition has been well chosen.

Hailing from Catalonia, Xirana Oximoxi is an artist whose work is very much driven by a mix of her experiences, moods and outlook, informed by impressions and reflections on the world at large. As such, her work is constantly in flux, often being driven by the words on the printed page or as a result of a day’s reflections or through research into ideas and explorations of new means of expressionism.

With the Undefined, she presents reflections on the relationship between an artist – in this case a cartoonist – and the characters they create. It’s a story itself told in the form of a comic strip. It is very much driven by that process of discovery, research and expression. As Xirana notes in introducing it:

The comic strips tell stories of everyday life, dreams, fantasies and thoughts. The main objective is to learn how to create cartoons by doing it and also to make the reader smile. They are inspired by nonsense, by that is silly and illogical and by the Theatre of the Absurd.

– Xirana Oximoxi

However, within this flow of apparent light-heartedness runs a deeper pondering: who is ultimately in control of things? The cartoonist or the characters and creations to which they give birth and form? Is it the artist who drives the creative process – or the creative process which drives the artist?

Morlita Quan is a multi-faceted artist I’ve long admired, having written about her art and installations within Second Life on numerous occasions within this blog. As a musician and recording artist specialising in experimental music, she has achieved considerable success. Starting in 2008 and continuing through to the present, she has particularly sought to combine music and other art forms utilising emerging technologies, often collaborating with numerous Fine Arts universities and also with other artists – be they visual, musical, spoken word or performance.

As a visual artist, Morlita has followed a similar path of experimentation with genres, techniques, subjects and forms (both 2D and 3D), as well as seeking to collaborate with other artists in both physical and virtual spaces. Here she presents a broad cross-section of her work: abstract paintings, 3D pieces, photographs; studies of the natural and still life captures brought together in a compelling and stunningly fluid selection of work.

“Experimentalist” is a term which might also be used with Deyanira Yalin. Having begun her artistic journey painting in oils and acrylics and participating in physical world expositions in Mexico City, the years she expanded her technique and portfolio, firstly through other canvas-based media prior to embracing digital means to explore new opportunities and potentials  – something which brought her to Second Life.

More recently – and like many artists in L and beyond – she has more recently started to experiment with the Midjourney AI tool, about which she notes:

It is a new platform for artists to express what we think and how we visualize the piece. It has made a significant impact on me and my creativeness, and you will see that influence in some of these pieces in the exhibit. But, I add my own personal touch and interpretation with Photoshop to each piece to give it my artistic personalisation.

– Deyanira Yalin

Like many, I am admittedly ambivalent about Midjourney and its growing popularity, largely as a result of the blasé attitude those behind the application have towards matters of copyright and fair use (a criticism not limited to Midjourney, to be sure).

However, like any tool, the key to something like Midjourney is how it is employed and what the user  – artist or otherwise – brings to the table for use alongside Midjourney in order to create art, rather than simply combine images from other sources to meet a descriptive requirement (which is essentially what Midjourney does). In this, Deyanira demonstrates she brings a lot to the table by way of her own artistry and talent, as the pieces offered in her exhibition at la Maison Aneli demonstrate.

For her exhibition Aneli takes us into a 3D world of animated prims and images. There is not a lot to say about this installation – not because it lacks for description, but rather because its geometry and form should be seen and appreciated rather than merely described

SLurl Details

• La Maison d’Aneli (Virtual Holland, rated Moderate)
• Asperix Asp
• Xirana Oximoxi
• Morlita Quan
• Deyanira Yalin
• Aneli Abeyante